Makeshift Migration Management: Central American Migrants at the Margins of Mexico

This paper focuses on the emergence of make-shift refugee centers developed by the Mexican government in southern and southeastern Mexico during the late 1970s and early 1980s, in response to the arrival of Central American migrants displaced by civil strife, political violence and indigenous persecution. The paper contemplates how the Mexican state attempted to police its margins, seeing migrants as harbingers of potential diplomatic squabbles but also as a dangerous population that might radicalize its own southern indigenous nationals. Moving beyond elite machinations, the paper will also consider how displaced Central American individuals and families processed their arrival and stay in Mexico, especially the simultaneous distance and proximity to their homes. As a whole, the case study aims to redirect attention away from migration to the US as such; or migration back to Latin America in the way of deportations; and to instead consider Mexico as a receiving country.