In 2023, approximately 2.8 million internally displaced persons were recorded across Latin America, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with natural disasters, conflict, and violence being the main causes. In Mexico, one of the most affected states is Chiapas, and violence marked the fate of thousands of families who fled their homes during 2023 and 2024 due to the war unleashed by the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
In its report “Chiapas, in the spiral of armed and criminal violence,” the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center (Frayba) highlights that at the end of 2023, an estimated 392,000 people were forcibly displaced in Mexico and that during that year, 40 cases of displacement due to violence were documented in the states of Chiapas, Chihuahua, Zacatecas, Guerrero, Michoacán, Tamaulipas, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Sonora, and the State of Mexico.
In 2022, the United States Department of State recognized that Chiapas, Michoacán, and Zacatecas accounted for 90 percent of the 386,000 displaced people in Mexico.
At the local level, forced displacement in Chiapas has had various causes, according to the Frayba Center, ranging from religious motives, armed uprisings, and the criminal dispute over the border and the Los Altos region.
Between January 2023 and June 2024 alone, in the Frontera Comalapa, Chicomuselo, Pantelhó, Chenalhó, La Trinitaria, and La Concordia regions, among others, 20 violence-related events were documented, causing the displacement of 15,780 people.
The Frayba Center highlights that 35 percent of the forced displacements were related to organized crime, primarily due to the dispute between the CJNG (CyG), the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Chiapas and Guatemala Cartel (CCyG) for control of drug and human trafficking routes from Central America.
Another 30 percent is related to violence generated by the collusion and inaction of authorities with criminal groups operating in the state: “All of this is in complicity with officials at all three levels of government, which also leads to a deep tearing of the social fabric of communities and peoples.”
One of the largest-scale displacement events due to violence occurred in May 2023, when clashes between CJNG hitmen and the Sinaloa Cartel forced 4,000 people to abandon their homes in the municipality of Frontera Comalapa.
Testimonies collected by the press revealed that residents were fleeing to avoid being forcibly recruited, primarily to be used as hawks, roadblocks, or as inexperienced combatants.
In September of that same year and in January 2024, several convoys with Sinaloa Cartel hitmen were filmed crossing Chiapas and were greeted with applause and celebration by residents of the regions of Chicomuselo, Bellavista, and Frontera Comalapa, among others.
A few months later, in July 2024, some 600 Mexicans living near the southern border decided to flee to Guatemala due to violence in their communities. They arrived in the Department of Huehuetenango, where they were assisted by the Guatemalan Migration Institute.
Source: infobae
