Avelino Meza
Secretary General of Fuerza Migrante
Biography
This biography was written in Spanish and appears here in translation.
Avelino Meza is a Mexican immigrant professional born in the state of Chihuahua. He is a founding member and secretary general of the binational movement Fuerza Migrante (FM).
As secretary general of FM, he has led efforts to win recognition for the leaders and organizations in the United States that have fought for years for the rights of the Mexican community living abroad.
His work has been key: in just three years, under the leadership of Dr. h.c. Jaime Lucero, he has helped build a binational (Mexico–U.S.) platform of 227 organizations, 600 hometown associations, and 200 pro-immigrant leaders working toward the economic and
social empowerment of the Mexican community in the United States and their families in Mexico through education. Since 2017, Avelino has focused on building a network of strategic partners to develop binational social programs and tools.
He also assembled a team of legal advisers in Mexico to support initiatives by immigrant leaders seeking to defend their political rights through civil or judicial channels.
As secretary general of Fuerza Migrante, he coordinates the work of the Binational Council's 14 commissions in the United States and Mexico, and he is committed to advancing and defending the nonpartisan immigrant agenda of the binational Mexican community.
Under his leadership, Fuerza Migrante has signed collaboration agreements with 50 municipal governments and migrant affairs offices in Mexico. He is a steady champion of binational financial cooperatives focused on Indigenous communities and Mexican immigrants.
He has taken part in numerous forums in Mexico's Chamber of Deputies and the Mexican Senate to advance the organized Mexican community abroad's fight for its political rights.
As secretary general of Fuerza Migrante, he coordinated the legal team's work in support of an initiative by Mexico City hometown groups to restore the Migrant Deputy seat. The case became a landmark
victory and set a precedent for other Mexican states to move forward on the issue.
He also took part in the appeal filed by the binational movement Fuerza Migrante and several of its member organizations, which asked for affirmative-action measures allowing Mexicans living abroad to run for federal congressional seats, in compliance with the ruling issued by the TEPJF (SUP-RAP-121/2020).
In that case, Mexico's Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary (TEPJF) ordered the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the political parties to amend their rules and regulations so that Mexicans living abroad could run for seats in the Federal Congress, beginning with the June 2021 elections.
The TEPJF ruling is the greatest political rights victory in the history of the Mexican immigrant community. It also recognizes the decades-long fight by individuals and civil society organizations to secure their political and electoral rights at the federal level.