Forced migration and violence process: Centroamerican migrants in their way through Mexico

Migration of Central Americans in transit through Mexico has decades of history, however, a few years ago has taken a notorious visibility. In this article, based on the review of multiple sources and especially in reports of non-governmental organizations, it is argued that the cross-border and irregular human mobility of Central Americans who passed through the shelters and houses of the Documentation Network of the Defending Organizations of Migrants (REDODEM) in 2015 can be analyzed from the category of forced migration. The use of this category allows: 1) Address the structural causes of migration; 2) investigate the transit processes of migrants in contexts of accentuated vulnerability; 3) account for the violence suffered by migrants and the lack of respect for their human rights (in Mexico). Through the review of various studies on the subject and especially reports on the situation of Central Americans in transit through Mexico of the Documentation Network of Migrant Defender Organizations (REDODEM), the forced migration of Central Americans for a specific period of time (2015) is reported, with an emphasis on three processes: 1) the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of Central American migrants; 2) the description of the type of crimes suffered by migrants and the spatial distribution of the places where this happens; 3) and finally a list of social actors and institutions that violated the rights of migrants. The temporal delimitation has to do with two processes: the crisis of unaccompanied Central American migrant minors (2014) and with the implementation of the Southern Border Plan one year earlier (2014). One of the contributions of the work is to realize that the processes of violence were not generalized and that they were concentrated especially in certain specific places. In addition, it realizes that these processes of violence were differentiated depending on the social actor or institution that committed the crime.