The refugee caravan, which left Tapachula, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, three days ago, advanced about 60 kilometers and resumed its march this Wednesday towards the municipality of Escuintla, after spending the night in the town of Huixtla.
The contingent, known as the “exodus of poverty,” consists of people from Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Colombia, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, among others.
Cuban Alfonso Reyes is one of the more than 8,000 migrants who make up the group.
According to his statement to the media, he was stuck in Tapachula for three months, with no job and no means to survive.
“We have no money left and this is the only way we can move forward,” the man from the Caribbean told an audiovisual team from the Mexican newspaper. The day.
The migrants left Tapachula on December 24, on the eve of the meeting that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will hold this Wednesday in Mexico City, in another attempt to coordinate efforts to bring order stemming the flow of migrants.
The meeting will also be attended by US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas; and Liz Sherwood-Randall, White House national security adviser.
In statements about Radio formulaLuis García Villagrán, director of the Center for Human Dignity in Chiapas, said that 90 percent of migrants want to stay in Mexico and are willing to work in any way possible as entry into the United States becomes increasingly difficult.
In addition, he pointed out that the migrants who make up the “Exodus from Poverty” do not have the means to pay human traffickers or the employees of the National Migration Institute (INM) who, as he said, ask them for money Ask for humanitarian assistance, apply for a visa or make an appointment for them.
At least half of the participants in the march, the largest of the year, are women like Honduran Marta Celaya, who has endured days of intense heat and exhaustion.
“Many women have returned because they have nothing to give their children,” she said in an interview with millennium.
For her part, the Cuban Rocío González, who is traveling with her husband and a few friends, said The day that he could no longer spend the little money he had on food and accommodation in Tapachula and decided to join the caravan.
“They denied us permission, we went to the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), we have been here for three months and they have not given us a reason for anything. “They said wait, wait, they would notify us, but they never did,” he said.
According to complaints from activists and foreigners stranded in southern Mexico, COMAR and the National Migration Institute (INM) have not responded to requests for refuge or regulation for more than a month.
“The INM and COMAR offices are closed with no hope of legalizing anyone. “Migrants would rather walk than spend these days hopelessly on the streets in Tapachula,” said Irineo Mujica, one of the march’s organizers and director of Pueblos Sin Fronteras.
“Five thousand of those who come here already have a document in COMAR and have been to the immigration office, and the doors have been closed to us. This movement is a peaceful movement and we will not fall into provocations.” “We are poor and that is why we do not have documents because the documents are given to those who have money, corruption is the mother of the National Migration Institute,” accused Villagrán during one Protest action in front of the customs headquarters in Huixtla.