Migrant caravan plans to continue to Mexico's capital



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CORDOBA, Mexico – A large group from Central America on Monday agreed to leave a coastal state to travel to Mexico City to leave a part of the country that has long been a treacherous one for migrants seeking to reach the United States. United.

In a thundering vote Sunday night at a gymnasium in Cordoba, about 1,000 members of a migrant caravan heading north across Mexico voted to try and get to the capital on Monday as they strolled in and out. strolling. Cordoba is 286 kilometers from the capital by the shortest route, which would be the longest trip of the group in a day since the beginning, more than three weeks ago.

The vote took place after exhausted participants of the caravan traveled to Cordoba after a 200-km trek through Veracruz, a state in which hundreds of migrants have disappeared in recent years, falling prey to kidnappers seeking refuge. get a ransom. The approximately 4,000 migrants in Veracruz are still hundreds of kilometers from the nearest US border point.

They hope to regroup in the Mexican capital, seek medical care and rest while waiting for stragglers. The caravan has found its strength in numbers along the meanders of the north where the inhabitants of the city come to bring food, water, clean clothes and spare shoes.

While most of the caravan flocked to Cordoba, a colonial-era town in the Veracruz sugar belt, where West Indian music and dance were welcomed, blue-eyed migrants headed for Mexico City.

A few arrived at a large open-air stadium in the capital, where they sat on the stands and watched the locals play football. City employees stacked hot dishes on styrofoam plates for the migrants, some of whom had jumped on trucks to speed up their arrival in the capital.

Further back, other migrants who had moved in front of the main body were resting in a church in Puebla, a town roughly halfway between Cordoba and Mexico City.

It is difficult to know which part of the US border the caravan will eventually aim at or how many are likely to separate on their own.

Most migrants said they remained convinced that mbad travel was their best hope of reaching the United States. Migrants generally say that they are fleeing poverty, gang violence and political instability mainly in the countries of Central America such as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

"We think it's best to continue with the caravan. We will stay with her and respect the organizers, "said Luis Euseda, 32, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, traveling with his wife, Jessica Fugon. "Others have gone from the front, maybe they have no purpose, but we have a goal and that is to happen."

Manuel Calderon, a 43-year-old migrant from El Salvador, lifted his shirt to show the scars of two bullets that he said pierced his chest in his home country. He dreams of returning to the United States, from where he was deported a little over two years ago.

On the road to Cordoba, Calderon was among the people helped by the Mexicans. Catalina Munoz said that she had bought tortillas on credit to bademble beans tacos, cheese and rice when she had heard that the caravan of migrants would pbad through her small town of 3,000 inhabitants. She brought together 15 other people to help them make tacos, fill water bottles and bring fruit to exhausted migrants on the road.

Mexico faces the unprecedented situation of three migrant caravans spanning over 500 km of highway in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz. The largest group was the first to enter Mexico. It was followed by a group of about 1,000 people from Guatemala, which pbaded last week, and a group of the same size who crossed the Suchiate River on Friday.

The Mexican Ministry of the Interior estimated over the weekend that in total more than 5,000 migrants were currently crossing southern Mexico via caravans or small groups. According to the ministry, 2,793 migrants have applied for refugee status in Mexico in recent weeks and about 500 have sought help to return to their country of origin.

President Donald Trump has sent American troops to the Mexican border in response to the caravans, with more than 7,000 soldiers on active duty to be deployed in Texas, Arizona and California. Trump plans to sign an order that could lead to large-scale detention of migrants crossing the southern border and prohibit anyone illegally taken the right to apply for asylum.

Amy Guthrie, Associated Press Editor in Mexico contributed to the writing of this report.

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