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MEXICO – The caravan of Central America that was heading from Honduras to the US border moved from Mexico City to Saturday morning, at dawn, while migrants were tied to their backpacks , had put blankets and had arms to begin the next leg of their journey.
For much of the past week, the giant capital, which prides itself on being a sanctuary for refugees, turned a sports stadium into a camp for some 5,000 migrants and offered them all types of municipal services.
Since the caravan entered Mexico three weeks ago, the country faces the need to take into account migrants from Central America. Conflicting impulses are at stake.
This week in Mexico, doctors and dentists were on hand for free exams and the children spent their mornings drawing and coloring. After breakfast, a mariachi band played, young men quarreled with retired boxers, and in that Mexico, masked wrestlers showed up for a fight at lunchtime.
It was not always like that. For decades, successive administrations have resorted to strict enforcement measures to control Mexico's borders. The migrants tried to flee from the authorities, moving them away from most Mexicans.
Now Mexico's accession to the caravan has clearly put forward a conflicting idea, recognizing that the country's asylum laws require the government to protect migrants.
"There is a constant back and forth," said Stephanie Leutert, who studies Central American migration at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. "We want to stop people – and we want to make sure that they are safe," she said, summing up the tension in the Mexican government's approach.
This ambivalence was in evidence on Friday.
Local authorities paved the way for an advanced group of caravans that were to set off at 6 am in empty subway trains heading towards the outskirts of Mexico City. A few kilometers further, the police stopped commuter buses to transport five or ten migrants at a time to the next stop.
Traveling in stages, the migrants reached the city of Queretaro, 135 km northwest, in the evening. The state governor announced that 760 people had arrived and would spend the night in the city stadium to await the arrival of the rest of the group on Saturday.
The goal of the migrants is Tijuana, on the other side of San Diego, which avoids the crime-ridden states of northeastern Mexico.
"We will try to create a chain of protection between states," said Nasheli Ramírez, chairman of Mexico's human rights commission. She described the journey and indicated where responsibilities would be transferred one by one to her counterparts in other states.
Such goodwill was lacking for another caravan of migrants.
A few kilometers north of the Guatemalan border, federal police and immigration officers arrested a group of about 250 people – mostly men from El Salvador – and took them by bus to a migrant detention center, said Sergio Seis, a local migration official.
This group, it seems, would not receive the same welcome as that of the first caravan – and the other two following now crossing the south of Mexico -.
Contradictory approaches came as President Trump continued to hammer home the idea that a caravan of people fleeing poverty, violence and political repression posed a threat to the security of the United States. Friday he announced changes in policies that will limit the ability of migrants to seek asylum, an action targeting caravans.
But members of the caravan paid little heed to Mr. Trump's statements. Many migrants are unlikely to be eligible for asylum because they are looking for work, not refuge, in the United States.
"We have to fight, we have to try," said Agustín Ramírez, a worker at a sawmill in the Honduran town of Talanga. "God moves mountains."
The migrants left Honduras a month ago in a caravan that has grown by the thousands as the news spread and people – especially families – sought to protect themselves in large numbers.
They arrived in a Mexico suspended in political limbo. The outgoing government of Enrique Peña Nieto is expected to cede power on 1 December to a new leftist government. For years, first under the Obama administration, and then after Mr. Trump took office, Peña Nieto's government acted as a US junior partner to block the flow of migrants to the United States. North.
President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised a different approach.
He has pledged to grant temporary work visas to Central American migrants, stating that no one should be forced to emigrate, and it seems unlikely that he will not be allowed to leave. opposes those who choose to try their luck by going to the US border.
Trump has prioritized the detention of migrants over the new free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, said economist Carlos Heredia, who studies migration at CIDE, a university in Mexico City. Mr. López Obrador's answer, he said, was: "I will not do the dirty work of the United States."
"There is no doubt that there will be a clash between Washington and the López Obrador government," said Heredia. "Whatever Mexico does, it will never be enough. Trump will continue to raise the bar. "
While migrants were preparing to leave the Mexico City camp, politics seemed far removed from their concerns. They gathered around American lawyers arrived at the stadium to explain the complexity of the asylum procedure in the United States.
"They do not care about poverty," Joseph Hutz, a lawyer specializing in immigration law, told a small group. "They do not care if you are a good person."
But Hutz knew his warnings would have little effect. "We hear you and we will continue," he said in an interview, summing up the migrants' response.
He argued that migrants would have an interest in seeking asylum in Mexico, but this option was of little interest to many.
According to Casa Refugiados, an organization that helps people at the stadium fill out forms, fewer than 50 people have filed for asylum in Mexico City.
Instead, they prepared to go ahead, some trying their luck, some others that they could never return to the countries they left behind. .
"They kill everyone in El Salvador," said Claudia García Sordo, 18, from the city of San Miguel. She has been in Mexico since the spring and fled a gang that asked her to sell drugs. After her arrival, the gang killed her father-in-law, her 2-year-old brother and her 16-year-old sister, she said.
"We are not afraid," she said, not betraying any emotion. "Fear is dead for us."
