Global Workers crossed into Guatemala to meet with the human rights organization, Casa del Migrante (“Migrant’s House”) that assists migrant workers on the other side of the border. The Center mostly helps Central American migrants who are heading north. Offering food, shelter, and limited medical care, over 17,000 migrants pass through its doors every year. More recently, the center has looked into the Guatemalan migrants who cross over to Chiapas to work in the harvest. The center has begun to educate Guatemalan workers on their labor rights in Mexico. Conditions are not good on the plantations in Chiapas, but little is known about the extent of the problems. Some workers have complained about not being paid for months at a time. But without meaningful access to justice in Mexico it is challenging for those workers to demand that their rights be respected. With limited options to enforce even the most basic labor rights, many will likely choose the risky route of migrating to the United States in hopes of finding better paid work. Unenforced labor rights have negative domino consequences well beyond the immediate employer-employee relationship. Development and rule of law at home is a key factor in realizing the right not to migrate.
Tapchula, the southern most city in Chiapas, is a city known for the Central American migrants passing through on the train as they head to the United States and as an area of destination for Guatemala migrant workers. Hundreds of Guatemalan women and girls come to Tapchula to work as domestic workers. In addition, approximately, 60,000 Guatemalans migrate annually to work in the harvest in the southern plantations. All of these workers suffer labor abuses, the extent of which is largely unknown. The one and only human rights organization in Tapachula, the Center for Human Rights, Fray Matias (almost all of the human rights organization in Chiapas are named after Jesuit priests) is just beginning to expand its work with the abused Guatemalan migrants. After some outreach campaigns on labor rights resulted in workers decrying exploitation, they are further exploring bringing labor cases on behalf of the workers. At the present they just support, but do not directly represent, workers through the Ministry of Work labor complaint process. Distressingly, the state only employs one lawyer to bring labor complaints to court for a multi-county area. With only one lawyer to bring claims free of charge for thousands of workers one can only imagine the amount of injustice that goes unaddressed. For the few labor cases that Fray Matias has supported, many were halted due to portable justice issues that is the cases were dropped because the workers returned to Guatemala.