Press Review of the Americas

Headlines: Thirty-eight migrants killed in a detention center in Mexico

Candles placed in tribute to the victims who died in the fire at the Ciudad Juarez detention center, March 28, 2023. © AP/Christian Chavez

Text by: Christophe Paget Follow

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In northern Mexico, 38 migrants died and 28 others were injured on the night of Monday to Tuesday, March 28, in the fire of a detention center in Ciudad Juarez, on the border with the United States. "They were detained, they were going to be deported, they started a fire and... we didn't let them out," headlines La Cronica on its front page, under a photo taken from the video taken at the scene of the fire: we see, writes the newspaper, "one of the migrants kicking on a grid to flee the fire, while on the other side an employee of the National Institute of Migration begins to back down before the advance of the disaster".

Because, Milenio reminds us, what is called "hostel" or "migratory station" is in fact "a cell" with, in this case, "incompetent and cowardly guards". "Those responsible must be punished," writes the columnist of La Razon, as demanded by the governments of Guatemala and Venezuela, from which the majority of the victims come. Victims who also come from Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, and whose names the newspaper publishes. For the moment, those arrested are for the fire, writes La Jornada.

Excelsior speaks of "shame" in front of a Mexican migration policy "dictated by the United States", with a Joe Biden who maintained the migration policy of his predecessor: we remember, recalls the editorialist, that "Donald Trump had threatened President Lopez Obrador to impose customs duties on Mexican exports if our country did not tempt migrants on its southern and northern borders. We know the rest. The Mexican government agreed to become, in effect, a "safe third country" for the United States, where undocumented migrants could stay until their migration situation was resolved.

But, writes the New York Times, "while the new measures have sharply reduced the number of migrants entering the United States, they have created an explosive bottleneck along Mexico's northern border, with thousands of frustrated migrants waiting in overcrowded shelters from Tijuana to Reynosa.

Announcement of an investigation into the Peruvian president

In Peru, prosecutors announced late Tuesday that they would investigate current President Dina Boluarte and her predecessor Pedro Castillo, who has been in prison since last December after being ousted from power and charged with trying to dissolve Congress and governed by decree.

Dina Boluarte, its vice-president, has been in power ever since. They are accused, along with entrepreneur Henry Shimabukuro, of money laundering and illegal financing of the 2021 presidential campaign, writes Peru 21. Henry Shimabukuro who claims in court, writes Diario Correo, that Dina Boluarte in the second round of the general elections "paid nothing, even to buy a Mars. I took care of everything.

Jair Boslonaro's return to Brazil scheduled for Thursday

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is expected to return to Brazil on Thursday morning, 7:30 a.m., after a long stay in the United States. And he wants it to be known: according to Estadao de Sao Paulo, "he informed his allies that he wanted to march in an open car, from the airport to his home." For their part, the members of the Liberal Party "wanted to organize caravans for the arrival of supporters of the former president from different parts of the country. They gave it up for fear that it would escalate." According to O Globo, the political family of the former president fears above all that he will be summoned by the police as soon as he sets foot in Brasilia. Because, writes the newspaper, "in addition to the case of jewelry illegally imported from Saudi Arabia, other actions target Jair Bolsonaro, both before the Supreme Court and ordinary justice."

More broadly, for Folha de Sao Paulo, his return will create an unprecedented situation: "The former president, defeated in the ballot box by a narrow margin, who opposes the current president". The newspaper believes that the two men "have in common a toxic aggressiveness for political peace", with a Bolsonaro who "during his four years of government has fought with vaccines, with China and with electronic ballot boxes, to name just three examples". Lula "campaigned on the promise of political pacification and entered the government fighting with the president of the Central Bank and denouncing a 'frame-up' by Senator Sergio Moro as part of a federal police investigation." In short, writes the newspaper, "bad omens abound."

In Haiti, investigation of the HNP

Le Nouvelliste recalls that the Haitian National Police is understaffed, that "it does not have adequate or sufficient equipment to contain the expansion and multiplication of armed people in the country". But the newspaper also writes that "over the years, it is increasingly undermined by internal crises". And that according to a source of the newspaper, "each of the influential armed gangs that scrap in the metropolitan area has at least one agent of the PNH", which "complicates the interventions of the police".

According to the National Network for the Defence of Human Rights, interviewed last February on Magik 9, some police officers "sabotage the institution's equipment" to "weaken its ability to intervene". In another article, Le Nouvelliste writes that "the police are rich in promises of aid", from Canada and the United States among others, "which in fact arrive in dribs and drabs": "between the announcement and the execution, it takes six, seven months. Sometimes a year.

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• Mexico
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