When Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) was sworn in as president of Mexico last December, he had a menu of populist promises to Mexican voters (human rights to environmental), all of which he is systematically & expeditiously trashing in his first few months in office. Mexico has long functioned as the southern flank of US anti-immigration policy, including with the aggressive use of federal police & paramilitary death squads, even though the Mexican parliament made it legal in 2010 for immigrants & refugees to travel across Mexico to the US border.
Now in violation of its own laws, the Mexican government under AMLO has escalated open violence against Central American refugees by attacking the caravan in the southern state of Chiapas. Federal police have been threatening the caravans since before AMLO was elected but he cannot claim to stand for human rights if he does not pull the police off the caravans & allow them safe passage. That is however the quid pro quo for the US giving $4.8 billion of public & private investment to Mexico. US media is reporting that Mexican citizens are turning against the refugees in contrast to the hospitality & assistance they have always proffered. Since so many Mexicans are forced by political repression & economic exigency into joining the exodus to the US, these reports are likely fabrications as part of a propaganda war against Central American refugees.