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Migrants in a caravan used by President Donald Trump as a campaign problem almost universally ignored the results of the mid-term elections in the United States.
Central Americans were more concerned about the dangers of northern Mexico as they struggled to reach the US border, hundreds of kilometers away, rather than those who controlled the US Senate and House of Representatives.
Kenia Johana Hernandez, a 26 year old Honduran farmer, left her country with her 2 year old daughter because she could not afford childcare or education expenses. When asked if his decision to emigrate had anything to do with the US elections, the answer was simple, "No".
For her, the caravan was only a safety measure. "If I had come alone with my daughter, maybe I could not have gone that far because it's so dangerous," she said.
Gilberta Raula, 38, from Samala, Guatemala, joined the caravan on the Mexican border as it seemed like her best chance of getting her 15-year-old daughter out of the country. She has left six other children but wants to give her daughter the opportunity to study and work.
She had only the vaguest idea of the problems surrounding Tuesday's US midterm exams.
What she knew, she said, is that "the US president did wrong".
"In the way we hear, he does not like anyone," she said of Trump. To say that Trump's Republican Party had lost control of the US House of Representatives, she said, "Ah, well." Like others, she expressed the hope that it would allow them to find refuge.
Franklin Martinez, a 46-year-old farm worker from La Esperanza, Honduras, said on Wednesday that he would likely stay a bit in Mexico before heading north to see if things had changed after the US elections.
"Because now it's an anti-immigrant wave," Martinez said. "They are not well received at the border."
The experts agree that the formation of the latter caravan and those that preceded the US border has more to do with politics in Central America and the current situation in Mexico, where drug gangs frequently kidnap migrants to ransom their families. in the USA
"The first concern is collective security, there is security in numbers," said Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope. "There is a political logic to this, but this is not exactly about influencing the US elections."
"It puts more pressure on the Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadoran authorities," he said. "This sends the message that there is a human rights crisis in the North Triangle of Central America."
The former Honduran legislator Bartolo Fuentes, who helped to build the caravan of some hundreds of migrants who left Honduras on October 13, has already shared this point of view before reaching 7,000 people at its peak. Fuentes said at a press conference at the Mexico City Stadium where migrants are staying that the caravan is embarrassing the Honduran government "because the whole world is now witnessing the tragedy with which we live."
Raul Benitez, security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the Republicans' defeats in the House suggested Trump had tried to "use the migrants" politically to describe the caravan as an invasion. , and it did not work ".
Benitez said the caravan had put as much pressure on Mexico as the United States. Following the entry of migrants, Mexico has been pressured to speed up the process of determining refugee status and asylum for Central Americans.
"The caravan shows that Mexico could grant more humanitarian treatment to these people," said Benitez, "that Mexico should treat these people the way Mexico wants the United States to treat migrants."
Wednesday afternoon, Christopher Gascon, representative of the International Organization for Migration in Mexico City, estimated that there were about 6,000 migrants in the sports complex and perhaps 4,000 others in caravans that were crossing southern Mexico.
But some migrants had gone to the tent of the organization to find out how they could return home.
"They may not have a very clear idea of what they were facing," Gascon said. He added that the first bus leaving Mexico City to return migrants to their country was due to leave Wednesday night with 40 to 50 people.
In the meantime, other migrants were focusing on the arduous task of reaching the US border and applying for asylum. The American elections occupy only a small part of their reflections.
Nora Torres, a 53-year-old Honduran, anxiously asked a reporter, "How did he (Trump) do it, did he do it right or wrong?"
Torres had run a small restaurant but had it closed because gangs were asking for too much money to protect themselves.
For her, Trump's threats to make obtaining asylum even more difficult, to detain plaintiffs in tent cities and to send up to 15,000 US soldiers to the southern border were difficult to understand.
"The United States needs Hispanic labor because it costs less," she said. "So why are they discriminating against us?"
