Mexico: Territory of confinement during the pandemic

Abstract

Since the 1990s, Mexico has been a transit country par excellence in the Americas. However, since the beginning of the 2010s, Mexican territory has been configured as an extended and violent space of migratory containment. In the regional context of Mexico and the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic accentuated state processes of migratory control and criminalization that had been in place for years (such as zero tolerance policies and migrant protection protocols during the Trump administration). Unlike other countries on the American continent, this health emergency in Mexico did not imply the adoption of strict internal measures to limit mobility. Consequently, although the influx of global migrants in transit, mostly Northern Central Americans, slowed during the first months of the pandemic, it did not cease. In fact, since mid-2020, these transitions have multiplied. However, due to the health emergency, asylum seekers and other migrants could not cross the northern border of Mexico as a direct effect of the increase in controls and strict anti-immigrant policies implemented by the United States. The blockade of the northern border, together with the continued influx of even more global migrants (many from northern Central America), meant that Mexico, in a trend that had been going on for years, consolidated itself as a regional and global territory of spatial and temporal confinement (long waiting). Therefore, this article analyzes the geopolitical implications of these processes for Mexico in the midst of a triple health, political and social security crisis.