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MEXICO – A caravan of more than 1,000 Hondurans are heading to their country's border with Guatemala to improve life in the United States.
Dunia Montoya, a volunteer who helps migrants, said the group planned to sleep Saturday in a Santa Rosa auditorium in Copan, a town just hours east of the car from Guatemala.
The migration began to swell spontaneously Friday after local media announced that about 160 migrants had agreed to leave together for more security since San Pedro Sula. The budding migrants organized via WhatsApp cats.
"People leave Honduras every day, but this is the first time (they do) publicly and in groups," Montoya said in a telephone interview with Santa Rosa de Copan.
Other Hondurans who were thinking of leaving the country saw the opportunity to call on a support network. They stuffed their backpacks with essentials and rushed to join the caravan.
People lent vans and trucks to help the group, whose original members had left on foot. Hondurans offered bottles of water or food along the way.
Montoya, who plans to stay in Honduras, said many members of the caravan had made repeated attempts to reach the United States.
Some have not enrolled their children in school this year, planning to leave every day, she said. Others joined the group with babies aged several months.
The poor economic outlook is the main reason why Hondurans want to leave the country of Central America, which has 9.4 million inhabitants, according to a recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies. Violence was the second most cited reason.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean is forecasting economic growth of 3.9 percent for Honduras this year. The Honduran Ministry of Labor sets the unemployment rate at 6.7 percent, although nearly half of Hondurans of working age are underemployed, which means they can not make ends meet with labor paid that they can get.
"There is misery and violence that crush people. People no longer trust this country and they are fleeing, "said Montoya.
Maria Dolores Moreno, 31, said she stuffed a bag with some belongings and took her 10-year-old son to join the caravan on Friday. She did not bring any money with her. She has been unemployed for more than a year, she said. Previously, she sold Avon products.
Moreno said over the phone that she was hoping to find a job – no matter what job – anywhere in the United States.
"We want to embrace the American dream," she said.
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