Mexican Indian Bucks the Odds, Asks U.S. for Political Asylum

Amid growing clamor over alleged human rights abuses in Mexico, a Triqui Indian from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca sought political asylum in a U.S. immigration office in Los Angeles Wednesday, claiming that his activism jeopardized his life at home.

Attorneys representing Severo Victoriano Sanchez Gonzalez said they hope his petition will serve as a test case that opens the doors to asylum for Mexican nationals. Though Mexicans make up the vast majority of Latin Americans who enter the United States illegally, they rarely seek asylum, and asylum is almost never granted to Mexicans.

Sanchez, 28, said he and other members of a peasant organization seeking land reforms have been harassed, beaten and, in a couple of incidents, killed by the “hired guns” of wealthy landowners acting with the support of Mexican authorities.

“A leader dying can end the struggle,” Sanchez said in explaining why he came to the United States to seek protection. He spoke in an interview after a press conference on the steps of the downtown Federal Building where his attorneys filed the asylum petition.

Americas Watch, a human rights watchdog organization, issued a highly critical, 114-page report last June that detailed widespread abuses in Mexico, including killings and torture allegedly committed by state and federal police.

Mexican officials have acknowledged some abuses but said the government is working to prosecute the guilty and prevent future violations of human rights. Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari appointed a 12-member commission June 6 to investigate alleged abuses.

Sanchez blamed his troubles on a perception that those who oppose the government and the Establishment are communists or guerrillas. He said he received three death threats last year and was warned by the governor of Oaxaca to go into hiding for his own good.

Sanchez said he led a march of 200 peasants into the capital city of Oaxaca in 1986, served as a visible spokesman and negotiator for a political campesino organization, the Triqui Movement for Unification and Struggle, and helped peasants take over hundreds of acres of farmland that they contend belongs to them.

His attorney, Antonio Rodriguez of Los Angeles, said he filed an application for asylum on Sanchez’s behalf with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Rodriguez conceded that although Sanchez has a “well-founded fear of persecution”--the litmus test for asylum--his chances are remote. But he said he believed Sanchez would become a “pioneer.”

“There are hundreds of Mexicans here, seeking refuge, but living in the shadows of being undocumented,” said Javier Rodriguez of the Latino Justice Center, who also represented Sanchez. “This may help in bringing them forward.”

In 1987, only nine Mexicans were granted asylum nationwide, out of 42 requests. Last year, 66 Mexicans sought asylum but none were approved.

Mexican asylum petitions are rarely successful because Mexico has a government that is considered to be democratic and which enjoys good relations with Washington.

“There is very little evidence that people are being persecuted in Mexico,” INS spokesman Duke Austin said in a telephone interview from Washington. “It’s not a quota system. There’s a standard of law: if you can establish a well-founded fear of persecution. That is not easily done in democratic countries” like Mexico.

As an asylum applicant, Sanchez can seek work and escape deportation while his case is being judged.