Displaced: The ordeal of losing everything

El Universal: Americas Program Original Translation by Anna Moses
See Spanish Original.Ignacio Alvarado. One night in May 2011, several trucks stealthily arrived in La Noria, the historic village to the northeast of Mazatlán which for centuries was used by carts laden with gold and silver extracted from the mines of Sinaloa and Durango. They drove through the deserted roads while dogs barked frantically. Finally they stopped in front of a house and a group of twenty armed men approached. The dogs' barking was silenced by the sound of the gunshots. From a distance, through the only window in the house, on the top of a small hill, Ricardo observed what he called, "hell on earth."

"Although I was 100 meters away, I felt the bullets. Everything echoed. But what scared me the most was to see the fire, the fire coming out of the rifles. It lasted forever. It was never-ending. It was like 10 minutes in which God was not present."

From then, effectively, La Noria became no-man's land. Communities belonging to the area, such as New San Marcos and Juantillos, for example, were left empty after the mass exodus of inhabitants. Violent gangs entered the town again and again to kill or abduct men and women, whether for their affiliation with a criminal group or simply to ensure they could not cooperate with one.

And so that night Ricardo, who until then had resisted the idea of leaving, woke his wife and their three children to gather some belongings and abandon their land at dawn, something he had not thought of in his nearly 70 years.

Drug War and Human Rights: One million 600 thousand people displaced in Mexico

La Jornada: "While the government of Mexico continues not to recognize the existence of forced internal displacement caused by its war strategy against organized crime, it is increasingly difficult to determine the real dimension of the phenomenon and assist victims. So scholars and specialists in the field warned during the last day of activities for the "Day of Training in Internal Displacement", organized by the National Commission on Human Rights.

Sebastian Albuja, representative of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said the federal government is responsible for resolving the lack of data and reliable statistics on this subject, but has not done so because that would imply its admitting that there are displaced persons as a result of its public safety strategy, and that would be political suicide.

Laura Rubio, a researcher at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said the lack of accurate statistics on the number of internal displaced persons makes it difficult to attend to the matter, and makes the phenomenon continually grow worse.

Oscar Torrens, director in Chiapas of the United Nations Program for Development, said that the armed conflict in Chiapas in 1994 generated 25,000 displaced people in that state, who to date have received virtually no attention, although there is a law in the state Congress which would help analyze the issue.

Leticia Calderon, Mora Institute specialist on immigration issues, said to admit the large number of internal displaced persons in the country--it is one million 600 thousand according to the company Parametría--would imply that the government admits its responsibility." Spanish original