Northern Baja California, Mexico, shares a border with the United States, and this proximity, combined with the region’s strong agricultural market, has encouraged a flood of internal migration from other parts of Mexico, particularly from communities in Oaxaca and Guerrero. These migrants arrive to serve as cheap labour in the region’s estates and cooperative lands (ejidos), with indigenous migrants converging with local traditional peoples. These peoples are comprised of five different nations which have descended from the Yumano people, and all five are among the most endangered in Mexico according to the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (Comisión Nacional de Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas, CDI).

In addition to the internal migrants and the indigenous natives, the region also sees Central American immigrants, and Mexican and international deportees from the United States. Human rights organisations in Baja California – such as the Pro-Migrant Coalition (Coalición Pro Migrantes), the Desert Migrant Youth Shelter (Albergue Juvenil del Desierto) and the Scalabrini Migrant Shelter (Casa del Migrante Scalabrini) – provide legal support for these groups as they demand labour rights or humanitarian assistance, or as they fight for the implementation of migration agreements between Mexico and the United States.

But the human rights issues in Baja California are broader than these basic needs, including forced disappearances, evictions and public security service abuses committed against indigenous traders, cases of torture and arbitrary detention, the sexual trafficking of women, and the serious conditions faced by prisoners.

In July-August this year, PBI Mexico team members visited two of the main US-border cities in Baja California, Tijuana and Mexicali, to learn about the context, difficulties and tasks facing human rights defenders (HRDs). Local HRDs advised PBI of the blindness and indifference to social and human rights issues shown by State authorities and the media, as well as the associated lack of awareness in the society at large.

The Cucapas’ demand for prior consultation

The Cucapa are an indigenous people who reside on both sides of the US–Mexico border. Together with the Cochimi, Kiliwa, Kumiai and Paipai, the Cucapa are one of the five original nations in the state of Baja California. Also known as “the river people” because of their relationship with the Colorado Rover, the Cucapa have centred their economic survival on fishing, which forms a strong part of their cultural heritage. Because of development in the region, the community was forced to relocate their fishing activities to the Colorado’s delta, in the state’s north-east. Baja California’s Cucapa population of around 300 people lives in the municipality of Mexicali.

The construction of dams – such as the Hoover Dam built in the United States in the 1930s – has already led to a transformation of the region’s habitats. The work affected the river’s flow and displaced the Cucapa southwards. Before the dam’s construction, the powerful Colorado River flowed from the Rocky Mountains in Utah to the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California), as Ricardo Rivera de la Torre explains. Rivera is a lawyer and the secretary of the Citizens’ Commission of Human Rights of the Northeast (Comisión Ciudadana de Derechos Humanos del Noroeste, CCDH), the organisation which is taking the Cucapas’ case (outlined below) before national and international bodies. He is an expert in the Cucapa case and in indigenous matters in Baja California.

Since 1993, with the creation of the ‘Upper Gulf of California and Colorado River Delta’ Biosphere Reserve (Reserva de Biosfera ‘Alto Golfo de California y Delta del Río Colorado’), authorities from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, Semarnat) – through the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas, CONANP) and the management of the biospheric reserve – created environmental laws to conserve the region’s ecosystems. The Cucapa were not consulted during this process, and the reserve’s core protection zone (zona núcleo) was established in territory which the Cucapa consider ancestral lands, where they have lived and fished for thousands of years. “So, since 1993, the Cucapa have suffered a continuing ordeal. Why? Because in applying the decree of the biosphere reserve, a program for the management of the reserve is issued, and [in that program] the indigenous people are forbidden from doing what they have always done to survive: fish,” states Rivera¹.

The Cucapa, organised as a cooperative, then demanded their rights as an indigenous nation: autonomy, traditional laws (usos y costumbres), and access to natural resources. In 2002, after the Cucapa had made their complaint, the National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH) responded with Recommendation 008/2002. The CNDH recognised the Cucapa as traditional owners in accordance with article 2 of the Mexican Constitution, as well as their cultural relationship to fishing. In the Recommendation, the CNDH asked Semarnat and the Ministry of Agriculture (Secretaría de Agricultura) to modify and apply the policies which would permit the Cucapa to exercise their right to fish in the reserve’s core protection zone. The law which authorised the establishment of the reserve – the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection (Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente, LGEEPA) – does not explicitly forbid this right.

Despite this recommendation, the Cucapa still do not have an exclusive area for fishing, although their do maintain their fishing activities. They have been accused of bringing in a threatened species – the curvina golfina – but the Cucapa allege that the fish is not actually endangered, and that the quantities they catch have no impact on the species’ survival. On the other hand, according to Ricardo Rivera, “it has been documented that fishers in the Gulf of Santa Clara, in one day, have taken in more than one thousand tonnes. In six months, the Cucapa catch a total of 300 tonnes.”²

CCDH members have reported that the inspectors sent by the Federal Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection (Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente, PROFEPA) – the body responsible for the protection of threatened species – are accompanied by soldiers and marines during their inspections. “The soldiers are the intimidating ones, they threaten the indigenous people so they can’t go in [to the core protection zone] to fish.”³

The CCDH has presented its case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). In one October 2008 hearing, the Cucapa demanded their right to prior consultation and free and informed participation. Their aim was the modification of the decree which established the protected natural area, the reserve’s management program, the LGEEPA and its regulations, as well as the agreement which establishes a ban on fishing curvina golfina in Mexican waters.

For now, the CCDH is working to exhaust the legal means available within Mexico. This year, they lodged an appeal to “invoke the constitutional reforms made last year in regards to human rights⁴”. The CCDH does not believe the issue can be resolved in the short term, however, the fact that the Cucapa are already spoken of in international tribunals is already a success. Rivera says he only sees two ways to close the case: “the first, when the government understands, attends to, and resolves this problem – and respects [the resolution] – that is one way, and that can take years. The second, when the last of the Cucapa ceases to exist.”⁵

San Quintín: the land of work

The Valley of San Quintín, some 200km south of the city of Ensenada, and some 300km from the US border, stands out for the development of its agricultural industry and the use of cutting edge technologies to produce vegetables for export. The high levels of investment and production are in strong contrast to the extreme poverty and terrible labour conditions, especially for indigenous women migrants from elsewhere in Mexico.

Every growing season in San Quintín, tens of thousands of men and women – mostly from communities in Oaxaca and Guerrero – cross the country to work as agricultural day labourers. In addition to the low salaries, overcrowding and poor hygiene of their living conditions, some employers still implement employment practices from the turn of the last century, such as the tiendas de raya. These are company stores which sell food and items, for cash or credit, to workers in such a way that the worker generates unpayable debt for their basic needs.

Approximately half of all day labourers are women⁶. The director of the Collective for the Promotion of Comprehensive Development (Colectivo para la Promoción del Desarrollo Integral, Coprodi), Diana Briseño Robles, points out that they are also victims of sexual assault, feminicide, and that many are forced to work when they are heavily pregnant. Coprodi, a collective made up of 20 human rights organisations, work with women migrants in the Valley of San Quintín.

The organisation, based in Ensenada, leads the legal defence in cases of people trafficking and workplace exploitation in the municipality, with a strong gender focus. Their prime concern is migrants’ access to healthcare and other basic services. Coprodi are currently conducting an evaluation of the progress made in compliance with the General Law for Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence (Ley General de Acceso a las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia) on a regional and state level. Although Briseño recognises that the law’s decree in the state of Baja California⁷ and programs such as the Program to Support Women’s Organizations (Programa de Apoyo a las Instancias de Mujeres en las Entidades Federativas, PAIMEF) have lead to some advances, she has observed inconsistencies between theadministration of the law and the application of international treaties such as the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (“Convention of Belém do Pará”), the ILO Convention 169, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

The first agreement, the Convention of Belém do Pará, establishes Mexico’s obligations – and thus Baja California’s – to protect women and their human rights. It places a special emphasis on “the vulnerability of women to violence by reason of, among others, their race or ethnic background or their status as migrants, refugees or displaced persons”⁸. For Coprodi, it is essential that public policies for the application of Mexican laws are implemented with consideration for gender and interculturality.

We thank the human rights defenders of Baja California⁹ for their time and their willingness to share their work and challenges, and we urge the local authorities¹⁰ to pay greater attention to the work these citizens are conducting, in order to protect their safety and strengthen their civil initiatives which aim to ensure that all Baja Californians have a dignified and just quality of life.

¹Interview with CCDH members, 20 July 2012.

²Ibid.

³Ibid.

⁴In June 2011, the Mexican President enacted the Constitutional Reforms on Human Rights (Reforma Constitucional en Materia de Derechos Humanos), which – among other measures – grants constitutional protection for any human rights which Mexico has ratified in international treaties, and establishes the obligation of all State authorities to prevent, investigate, punish and make amends for human rights violations.

⁵Interview with CCDH members, 20 July 2012.

⁶ For further information in regard to migrants from Guerrero who work as agricultural day labourers in the north of Mexico, see the report Migrantes somos y en el camino andamos, produced by Tlachinollan’ Human Rights Centre of the Montaña (Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña ‘Tlachinollan’), Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero, Mexico, November 2011.

⁷The General Law for Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence for Baja California (Ley de Acceso de las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia para el Estado de Baja California was approved in 2008 to comply with the national General Law for Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence.

⁸Convention of Belem do Pará, Art. 9, www.oas.org/juridico/english/treaties/a-61.html.

⁹Citizens’ Commission of Human Rights of the Northeast; Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights (CMDPDH); Desert Migrant Youth Shelter; Pro-Migrant Coalition; Blanca Mesina; Scalabrini Migrant Shelter; Binational Human Rights Center (Centro Binacional de Derechos Humanos); Citizen Committee against Impunity (Asociación Ciudadana contra la Impunidad, ACCI); Commission of Relatives, Prisoners and Exprisoners of the Penitenciary System (Comisión de Familiares, Internos y Ex Internos del Sistema Penitenciario); Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition (BSCC); United in Support of Vulnerable Groups (Unidos en Apoyo a Grupos Vulnerables); and Collective for the Promotion of Individual Development (Colectivo para la Promoción del Desarrollo Individual). PBI also interviewed journalist Lorena Rosas Chávez.

¹⁰Representatives of the Attorney General for Human Rights (Procuraduría de Derechos Humanos); Captain Eduardo Vega Cambero, Federal Police (Policía Federal) in Baja California; Office of the State Attorney in Mexicali; Baja California Secretary for Public Security (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública de Baja California); Office of the CNDH in Tijuana. PBI also interviewed representatives of the Human Rights Program of the Universidad Iberoamericana In Tijuana. and representatives of the US Consulate in Tijuana.