The massacre of 72 Central American migrants in Mexico’s northern state of Tamaulipas last September and the recent kidnapping of 55 more Central Americans in Oaxaca by criminal gangs on Dec. 16 are provoking a common question:  who is looking after the migrants?

    These tragedies are discussed daily by leaders both here and in Mexico as key members of the U.S. Congress take an increasingly harder line on undocumented immigrants and lay out plans for stricter border enforcement and increased deportations.

    One such leader is Rufino Dominguez who was recently named head of the Oaxacan Institute for the Care of Migrants by the state’s newly elected governor, Gabino Cue Monteagudo. July’s election was an upset for the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) that ruled Oaxaca for 81 years and was accused of widespread corruption and repression against dissenters.

    Dominguez, a former migrant farm worker, has served as California state director of the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (F.I.O.B) in Fresno for the past nine years. He left that post to set up the migrant office in Oaxaca in late December and met with Oaxacans in San Diego to discuss the challenges he faces.

    Oaxacan migrants are scattered throughout Mexico and the United States.

    It is estimated that 150,000 live in California. Some 25,000 live in San Diego County. Most are poor, live in substandard housing, lack health care, engage in farm work and speak one of Oaxaca’s 16 indigenous dialects.

    Dominguez, a native Mixtec speaker, was born in San Miguel Cuevas, Oaxaca. He says he regards to election of Cue Monteagudo as governor a window of opportunity to help migrants, but is wary about the challenges he (Dominguez) faces personally in his new job.

    “I never thought I would be part of the government because I believe politicians have deceived us for so many years,” said Dominguez. ‘I have never wanted to be one of them.  I don’t have a lot of schooling—just barely finishing secondaria. But I am the first migrant to head the institute, and it helps that I have lived all aspects of the migrant experience.”

    Dominguez explained to his countryman at the Vista Public Library that it is much easier to deal with migrants in the U.S. where there is at least a minimal recognition of human rights. This is not true in Oaxaca, he added, where political assassinations are common occurrences.

    “Indigenous people in Oaxaca are not just victims of 81 years of PRI rule,” Dominguez explained, “but of 500 years of marginalization and abandonment by local, state and federal governments.”

    Dominguez said he made a six year commitment to head the institute, but if human rights continue to be violated and freedom of expression is curtailed, he would not stay with the government.

    Asked about his priorities in his new post, Dominguez said that he would work closely with all groups to defend not only Oaxacans but all migrants who pass through Mexican territories and who frequently suffer human rights abuse from criminal gangs as well as from Mexican police and other officials.

    Another goal, said Dominguez, is to open up regional offices to serve migrants in Oaxaca—one in the Mixteca, one in the Sierra de Juarez and another in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. “But we are not simply going to ask the government for money,” he said. “We want our own municipalities to help shoulder the burden as well.”

    One pressing need, Dominguez said, is to spur economic development in Oaxaca with the help of local, state and federal governments so that Oaxacans can remain home instead of migrating. “The governor told me that we are free not to migrate as well, but I told him we need to go where we need to go, always respecting laws and human rights.”

    “What I want to do in my new job is t o put into practice what I have learned here in the U.S.,” he said. “I want accountability. I want to change the culture where corruption is practiced, where people take their pay check and do nothing. We all need to work together.  There is plenty of work to do.”