Mexican Militias, Migrant Defenders Hold Summit On Citizen Role In Public Security

A coalition of Mexican activists and civil-society groups including former self-defense militia leaders José Manuel Mireles and Hipólito Mora, priest and migrant-rights advocate Father Alejandro Solalinde, and journalist Sanjuana Martínez gathered on Wednesday in Mexico City for a summit meant to “visualize and create consciousness that the problem of public insecurity is not just the problem of Michoacán and that all citizens can act as autodefensas [self-defense militias] faced with the absence of the State,” according to a website promoting the forum.

Excelsior reports that the groups also discussed non-violent ways that citizenry can mobilize to combat drug-related violence in regions most affected by it. Mireles and Mora, who were at the forefront of the organization of militias -- and until recently, of negotiations with the federal government -- in the state of Michoacán, were received as keynote speakers of a sort. But the questions handled during the summit extended into other principal problems facing Mexico, including poverty and, in the case of Solalinde, the rights of undocumented migrants passing through the country on their way to the United States.

Solalinde said migrants in Mexico had suffered an “unending series of violence” documented by human rights groups, journalists and academics and well-known by authorities, who he accused of acting as an “impediment” to steps to protect migrants. “In spite of the violence, the migration doesn’t stop.” The priest went on to recommend that Mexican civil society seek out new mechanisms to ensure human rights protections and “demand that migrants not be treated as criminals, but rather victims of an inadequate immigration policy."