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By Associated press
JUCHITAN, Mexico – In a caravan that has already traveled 250 km to Mexico, thousands of Central American migrants hope that they will no longer have to walk, at least for a while.
On Wednesday, members of the Red Cross bandaged the swollen feet of Honduran farmer Omar Lopez in the southern city of Juchitan, where the caravan stopped for the day. He was pounding hot asphalt highways every day for two weeks after spending the night on concrete sidewalks with just a thin sheet of plastic to cover himself, and this had had detrimental consequences.
"We are waiting to see if they will help us with the buses, to continue the journey," said Lopez, 27.
The organizers said the buses, if they materialized, would drive the more than 4,000 migrants to Mexico City for meetings with lawmakers, not at the still-distant US border, though some would likely continue until the end of the day. border after reaching the capital.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday congratulated Mexico for preventing migrants from being driven.
"Mexico has progressed in an unprecedented way," Sanders told Fox News. "They helped stop many of these people's caravans in these caravans, forcing them to walk in. They helped us in new ways to slow that down, to break it and to prevent it from moving as aggressively. to the United States. " "
The Mexican government has actually adopted a rather contradictory position in helping or preventing the first caravan, reflecting the country's balance: officials do not want to upset Trump, but Mexicans themselves have long suffered from ill-treatment as migrants.
During the first week of the caravan, Mexican federal police sometimes imposed obscure safety rules, forcing migrants to leave paid minibuses, referring to insurance regulations. They also stopped overloaded vans carrying migrants and forced them down. But in recent days, officials from the Mexican Immigration Protection Agency have organized rides for women and children in conflict on the caravan as part of a humanitarian effort.
And the police regularly stayed by his side as the migrants piled up on trucks.
But the first caravan – which planned to take a day off Wednesday in Juchitan, about 900 km from the nearest border crossing point in the United States – is just the beginning.
A second, smaller group of some 1,000 migrants who broke into Mexico on Monday was dragging some 250 miles. They spent Tuesday night in the city of Tapachula.
Behind them, a third group of migrants from El Salvador had already visited Guatemala and on Wednesday a fourth group of about 700 Salvadorans left the capital, San Salvador, intending to walk to the border. American, located 1,500 kilometers away.
Jose Santos, 27, brought his baby with him in the quest for quixotic. "I did not want to go, but I am unemployed and I have to get money to buy food for my son," Santos said. "There is no work here, and the violence never stops."
The first caravan started in Honduras more than two weeks ago. Since then, caravan migrants have spent the night in camps in the main squares of small towns in the states of Chiapas (south) and Oaxaca (south). But a deadly earthquake last year destroyed the central market of Juchitan, which forced its temporary relocation to the central square, which meant that there was no room for them there.
Instead, they spent the night on land owned by the municipality, on the outskirts of the city, where a high ceiling housed a cement floor. Outside the structure, many more people are sitting on blankets or sheets of cardboard in the grass, with tarps to tie the foliage to form a rudimentary shelter.
The two groups combined represent just a few days of the average flow of migrants to the United States in recent years. Similar caravans have regularly occurred over the years, passing almost unnoticed, but the news has become a hot topic for US President Donald Trump.
Just one week before the US mid-term elections, the Pentagon announced the deployment of 5,200 troops to the southwestern border, and Trump continued to tweet and talk about migrants.
On Wednesday, he tweeted, "We will NOT let these caravans, which are also made up of very bad thugs and gang members, enter the US Our border is sacred, we must enter legally." TURN AROUND!
"According to them, we will not be welcome at the border," said Honduran migrant Levin Guillen about Trump. "But we will try."
Guillen, a 23-year-old farmer from Corinto, Honduras, said the same people who killed his father 18 years ago were threatened. "We just want to find a way to reach our final goal, which is the border," he said.
Worried by long kilometers of walking and frustrated by slow progress, many migrants abandoned themselves and returned home or applied for protection status in Mexico. The initial group is already considerably reduced compared to its peak estimated at more than 7,000 people. In the spring, a caravan finally touched about 200 people who reached the US border in San Diego.
Vice Ministers of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico met on Tuesday and agreed to coordinate "special attention" for caravans, guaranteeing human rights, humanitarian assistance and "safe, orderly and regular migration" in accordance with the laws of each country.
The Interior Ministry of Mexico has stated that two Hondurans who had applied to enter had been identified as having a warrant for arrest in their country, one related to drugs and the drug. other to the alleged homicide. They were deported. The ministry said in a statement that the men were part of the "migrant caravan", but did not specify which group or specified when they were arrested at checkpoints in the state of Chiapas in the south of the country.
Echoing their compatriots in the original caravan, the Hondurans in the second group talked about the fact that the homicide rate was fleeing poverty and gang-related violence in one of the world's deadliest countries. They said that asylum in the United States was their main goal, but some were willing to seek protection status in Mexico if it does not work.
"To go to the United States is the first goal," said Carlos Enrique Carcamo, a 50-year-old boat mechanic. "But if it's not possible, well, leave here in Mexico to work or stay here."
