They call it the cockpit. It is an open field on the border between Chiapas and Guatemala, which was designed as a huge cage, roofed and fenced with a metal mesh, as if it were for protecting animals. Except that those who are locked up there every day are about a hundred migrants, including girls, boys and women. The migrants are kidnapped and can be released until their ransom is paid and the cartel approves it. They place a seal in the shape of an anchor on the victim’s arm, as a symbol of their payment and release.
“They lock us up as if we were animals. They threaten us and tell us to find a way to get the money. “Those who do not have the resources to pay the ransom stay in the cockpit cooking to feed the kidnapped children or doing social work for the cartel, that is what they call themselves,” says Andrés, an 18-year-old Venezuelan migrant who was held hostage for a day in this cockpit until his aunt from the United States made the deposit into a Banco Azteca account and paid the ransom.
Each of the migrants – mostly Venezuelans, but there are also Haitians, Central Americans and Asians – has to pay 75 dollars or 1,200 pesos for the ransom. A criminal group captures them when they cross into Mexico, on their way to the United States. They lock them in this kind of cage, made of wire mesh. Adults are not given water or food. Girls and boys, from the age of four, also pay ransom; they are the only ones who are fed while they are deprived of their freedom. They are served a spoonful of rice and another of egg in the palms of their hands.
Organized crime violence in Chiapas
From Caracas to Mexico City there are almost 3.6 thousand kilometers, seven countries and the Darien jungle. This is what Andrés had to travel to escape hunger in Venezuela. Before being kidnapped by Mexican organized crime, he walked the more than one hundred kilometers that exist between the northeast of Colombia and the southwest of Panama to cross the Darien Gap, a humid area that reaches up to 35 degrees Celsius and dominated by dangers ranging from mafias, guerrillas, paramilitaries and dangerous animals, such as snakes or spiders up to 20 centimeters in size.
Hunger and dehydration are part of the challenges on the three days of travel. Andrés was overcome by stomach pain from hunger as he walked through the jungle, but he refused to eat roasted vulture or buzzard because it disgusted him, which is what thousands of migrants who cross through there every day have as their only alternative to feed themselves.
According to the data and memories he has of his kidnapping – which occurred in July 2024 – he assures that the cockpit would be located in the Guadalupe Victoria ejido, which belongs to Amatenango de la Frontera, a municipality dedicated mainly to the cultivation of beans and corn.
This is part of the 12 municipalities of Chiapas that have been called the Border Region and that civil organizations have warned and classified as experiencing a non-international armed conflict, supported by the legal framework of International Humanitarian Law of the IV Geneva Convention. The territories in question are: La Trinitaria, Frontera Comalapa, Chicomuselo, Siltepec, Honduras de la Sierra, Motozintla, Mazapa de Madero, El Porvenir, La Grandeza, Bejucal de Ocampo, Bella Vista and Amatenango de la Frontera.
On July 7, 2021, Chiapas was placed for the first time in the headlines of the national and international press as the epicenter of violence resulting from the conflict between organized crime groups. The turning point occurred when the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG) ambushed Gilberto Rivera El Junior, son of the operator of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the groups that maintained control in Chiapas, in the La Gloria subdivision, in the municipality of Tuxtla Gutiérrez. According to local press reports, he was traveling in an Audi and was also accompanied by a Renault, when he was attacked with high-caliber weapons in broad daylight.
Since the murder of El Junior until today, more than 10,000 inhabitants of these 12 municipalities in Chiapas have been victims of forced displacement due to this problem, concludes the report Siege of daily life, terror for the control of the territory and serious violations of human rights, presented in January 2024 by civil society organizations on violence in the Border Region.
The inhabitants of Chicomuselo are leaving
In the municipality of Chicomuselo, one of the families displaced by violence is that of Mrs. Martha, 73 years old, who gives her testimony to DOMINGA. Dedicated to commerce, her cousins had to flee the country, after their lands and businesses were taken over, and the husband of one of them was kidnapped and disappeared. One of the regions where most families are taking refuge is in Comitán, a town neighboring San Cristóbal de las Casas. There they try to protect themselves from the armed conflict between organized crime, in which they have been trapped since the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG clashed.
Last Saturday, August 24, via X a 2:20 minute video was released in which an armed group made up of dozens of people can be heard shouting, there they say that the Sinaloa Cartel had arrived in Chicomuselo to support its population. Local journalist Isaín Mandujano shared on his X account a letter he received from a displaced high school student from Chicomuselo, in which she narrates everything she has lived and suffered since the violence and the fight between two cartels began in her town.
“Today, August 26, there is a void in the hearts of the entire student body of the municipality and its surroundings; knowing that we left behind the dream of continuing to study in a place that was quiet, but that you could no longer leave without fear that something would happen to you or knowing that you could not return home, having to leave a life behind for something that was not our fault or for something that we did not ask for…”.
That same epicenter from which the locals are being displaced became one of the worst traps for Venezuelan migrants.
Source: milenio
