They began their journey on Christmas Eve, while most Mexican families were preparing to gather at their homes for dinner and drinks. A new caravan of migrants left Tapachula in the southern state of Chiapas on Sunday morning and continued their march as early as Christmas with the aim of crossing the border into the United States. According to newspaper and agency reports, there was a crowd of around 8,000 people, mostly from Central and South American countries. Complete families and individuals, women with their children, young men and adolescents come. A new caravan of people driven from their countries by poverty and violence seeks a better fate in the United States. Just this Wednesday, a bilateral summit will take place between high-ranking officials from Mexico and the United States to once again discuss strategies to curb terrorism and migration. Two agendas, that of the authorities and that of people in need, will overlap this week.
The migrants named this caravan “Exodus from Poverty”. Far from their homes, these people stopped in a park on Sunday evening and received some food from churches and residents of Chiapas, according to the AP agency, which added that elements of the National Guard and local police monitored the progress of the march without intervening. “We walked a lot. To be honest, I don't know how many kilometers. My daughter can no longer walk. I carry her in my arms because she needs rest, she is only three years old and she is not well, she is sick,” a man from Honduras told Portal. “The President of the United States should help us as migrants. In reality, some of us only go to the United States for five, six, seven years and then return to our home countries. This is why we ask Joe Biden to help us,” another Honduran told this agency.
The migration flows from Central and South America have been extraordinary and have put the authorities of Mexico and the United States on alert. According to the US Border Patrol (CBP), the number of migrants apprehended at border crossings with the United States increased by 31% between the last week of November and the first week of December, from 53,016 to 69,462 apprehensions (its acronym in English). The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador estimates that a third of the migrants are Mexican. The reactions of the US authorities to stem the migration flows have been drastic and have jeopardized the good diplomatic relations between the two countries. One measure was Washington's unilateral closure of three border posts. Another example is the Texas government's passage of a strict anti-immigrant law that allows local authorities to arrest and deport undocumented people to Mexico.
The López Obrador government has raised its voice against these measures and called for a reconsideration of the approach used to address the migration phenomenon. The issue has escalated and now occupies a priority place on the agenda of bilateral relations. Last week, López Obrador and Biden held an official telephone call to discuss the issue at the request of the US president. In the statement, the Mexican government “emphasized the need to reopen border crossings as soon as possible to ensure dynamic trade flows and improve economic relations,” it said in a statement. The White House, in turn, noted that “additional enforcement actions are urgently needed to reopen key ports of entry across our shared border.”
Migrants walk through Tapachula.Juan Manuel Blanco (EFE)
The heads of state agreed that a high-level US delegation would visit Mexico and hold a meeting with President López Obrador this Wednesday. The delegation will be led by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and will be accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and National Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall. This meeting is expected to detail the “additional compliance measures” Washington needs to comply with the Mexican government's demand to reopen border crossings.
The López Obrador government continues to adopt a position of rejecting coercive measures to curb migration and calls on the United States to cooperate more closely in addressing the structural causes that drive the massive exodus of people from their countries of origin and their attempts to reach the United States to achieve this, motivate states, despite the enormous risks that illegal crossing of Mexico entails. López Obrador has offered the governments of sending countries – particularly Venezuela, Honduras, Belize and Colombia – to channel investments into these areas to finance social and labor programs. The Mexican government has indicated that the US delegation at the bilateral meeting on Wednesday will insist on advancing this agenda of structural solutions.
“They don’t understand that you have to move forward. Why can't they help us and shake our hands? We need support from them [los gobiernos]” a Honduran woman who was in the caravan with a 7-year-old child told the AP. “This journey was very hard for us migrants. We need help from immigration and the government to put their hand on their hearts and allow us safe passage,” a Venezuelan woman told the agency. The group of migrants will continue their journey through Mexican territory. By New Year's Day they will have traveled hundreds of kilometers. As with Christmas, the holiday will pass by strangely, like a fast truck driving by indifferently.
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