| | |  Editorials | Issues | October 2008 
Central American Migrants in Mexico: We Were Kidnapped
 Associated Press
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Rafael Lara Grajales, Mexico - The Sunday afternoon calm was broken by shouts from the small, mission-style house, watched over by a statue of the Virgin Mary.
Bloodied hands punched through the windows. Suddenly, dozens of people were clambering over the back wall and jumping onto the street below.
Some dropped onto the patios of adjoining houses. Most were dressed only in tattered underwear, their bodies marred by dark bruises and angry burns. One man had the handle of a knife poking from his abdomen.
The men and women ran up to shocked townspeople and pleaded in their Central American accents: We were kidnapped. The local police are involved. Please help.
For a moment, the people of this small Mexican migrant town hesitated. It would be easier, and certainly safer, to go back inside and let the foreigners hide in the surrounding cornfields of this high mountain valley outside Puebla. But then they thought of their own relatives living illegally in the U.S. They thought of the times they had fallen victim to government and police corruption, and of the growing crime and violence throughout Mexico.
Then, in an act that defied years of resignation in the face of immigrant abuse, they got on cell phones and bullhorns to mobilize the entire town. And in doing so, they launched a powerful challenge to Mexico's long tradition of complaining about treatment of Mexican migrants in the United States, while treating Central American migrants at home even worse.
Many of the more than 60 people inside the house at No. 4 East St. later said they had been picked up by police, who turned them over to kidnappers.
Evis Casco, a Honduran, said he saw the kidnappers pay a police officer $100 for him. He said his captors stabbed his hand repeatedly as they demanded telephone numbers of relatives in the U.S. and Central America.
Migrants who refused said they were beaten or burned. When they gave in, their family received ransom calls demanding payments of up to $5,000 for their release, they said.
By the afternoon of Oct. 12, anger and fear boiled over into a rebellion.
Police soon arrived. They arrested the two suspected kidnappers, who had been cornered in an empty lot. Two alleged female accomplices staying at a local hotel were also arrested.
Police loaded the two women onto a van, then moved to put the migrants in with them, witnesses said. But the crowd was outraged. They feared police were involved in the kidnapping and were taking the migrants away to kill them, according to Elizabeth Bautista, who watched from a distance with her son.
The crowd began shouting at the migrants not to board the bus: "Don't get on! You aren't safe!" The migrants panicked and began crawling out the windows. Police grabbed them and shoved them back in.
One man with a bullhorn called more townspeople to come to their aid. The crowd quickly swelled to hundreds.
A few people hurled rocks at the van, and the multitude began pushing against riot police surrounding City Hall, witnesses said.
"Run! Get away!" people in the crowd shouted at the migrants.
The migrants scattered through the streets and hid in houses.
In the end, federal police rounded up 21 migrants and took them into custody for deportation.
State prosecutor Rodolfo Igor Archundia said officials have cleared the five police officers on duty Oct. 12, but arrest warrants have been issued for four other officers who were off that day. They are accused of kidnapping and smuggling people. |
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