Drug-related violence prompts tens of thousands to flee

Geneva-based organization claims more than 100,000 people have left their homes in 2010 as a result of drug-related violence

By Bronson Pettitt

Mexico Weekly / March 30, 2011

The number of people in Mexico displaced due to drug-related violence marked an all-time high last year, a new report suggests.

According to a report released last week by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), last year about 115,000 Mexicans living in violent areas decided to move elsewhere within the country as a direct result of increased violence.

In total, more than 230,000 people have decided to relocate since President Calderón launched an armed offensive against drug trafficking organizations in December 2006.

As opposed to refugees, who look for shelter in other countries, internally displaced people are forced to live elsewhere within their home countries due to violence, wars or disasters, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Most people being forced to leave their homes due to drug-related violence are from Chihuahua and Tamaulipas (most have moved to the neighboring Durango, Coahuila and Veracruz), the report says.

In 2010, there were 571 execution-style killings related to drug-trafficking in Tamaulipas and 4,246 in Chihuahua, according to official figures.

Ciudad Juárez is the city in Chihuahua most battered by drug-related violence while in Tamaulipas the most violent municipalities are Guerrero, Mier, Miguel Alemán, Camargo and Díaz Ordaz.

Back in November, as many as 400 people fled Ciudad Mier after the Zetas cartel threatened to kill everyone there, according to the IDMC. There were 93 homicides in the city of the same name last year and 21 in November, the federal government says.

In Ciudad Juárez, where there were 2,661 execution-style slayings last year, there are as many as 116,000 empty homes, according to local authorities.

'Government Has Done Little to Help'

“There have been few attempts to define the scale of displacement in small rural towns in Tamaulipas and Chihuahua, even though the violence is believed to be even more intense in those rural areas,” the report says. “Furthermore, forced displacement has taken place alongside strong economic migration flows, making it harder to identify and document.”

The report also says the Mexican government has done little to help internally displaced people.

“In 2010, federal authorities did not acknowledge, assess or document the needs of the people displaced, instead focusing their efforts on fighting the drug cartels,” the report says.

In the Americas, Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people with between 3.6 million and 5.2 million, the report says.

The report also states that the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti displaced more than 1.5 million people, 800,000 of whom were still in shelter camps in late 2010.

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