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TAPACHULA, MEXICO – This is only last week that a caravan with thousands of migrants from Central America is hidden for the night here in Tapachula, in southern Mexico.
A few days later, a new group of several hundred people arrived, extending to the central square and the surrounding sidewalks.
Now two other caravans are also on the way.
The fact that the first of these caravans was able to pass from Honduras to Guatemala to Mexico encourages other migrants to travel in large groups, reversing the well-established logic of migration from Central America to the United States. United: rather than trying to travel undetected, some migrants exchange invisibility against security.
"Everyone wants to train another caravan," said Tuesday David David Gálvez, a Honduran farm worker, while he was resting on the central square of Tapachula after entering the city with hundreds of people. other migrants, part of the second caravan to arrive this month.
But unbeknownst to migrants, this remarkable new approach has fueled the exacerbated anti-immigration sentiment in the United States and created new obstacles in their path.
In the run-up to the mid-term elections, President Trump is trying to energize Republican voters by focusing on immigration, a topic that motivated his base during his 2016 campaign.
Mr. Trump described the first caravan, which left Honduras on October 12, as an invading horde. He sends troops to the border with Mexico and considered taking steps to close this border to migrants, including those seeking asylum.
Migrants traveling in these caravans know that Mr. Trump opposes their entry into the United States and heard about the military deployment at the border. But many say that they are confident that once they reach the border, Mr. Trump will be hit and will open the doors.
Migrant rights defenders such as Miroslava Cerpas of the Human Rights Research and Development Center in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, warn that they may be separated, expelled or injured along the way.
But many migrants are deeply religious and "believe that there will be a miracle, that some Moses will appear" to guide them, said Ms. Cerpas. "For these people, it's the caravan of hope," she said.
Trump urged the governments of Central America and Mexico to prevent migrants from continuing to migrate north, creating a dilemma for political and public relations in the region. The Guatemalan and Honduran presidents, both facing accusations of corruption and trying to appease him, ordered the security forces to stop the groups – without much success. The migrants have just passed the officers sent to arrest them.
The response of the Mexican government has been contradictory. Officials seem to be sensitive to the contrast they must face with the Trump government crackdown on migrants, including Mexican immigrants. At the same time, they intend to maintain relations between Mexico and the United States on a solid foundation.
The Mexican government has invited migrants to apply for asylum, and nearly 2,200 migrants have accepted the offer, the government said on Tuesday.
"Undocumented migration is not a criminal act in Mexico," Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete Prida said earlier this week. "It's a vulnerable population."
Navarrete warned that migrants must respect the law and present their papers to seek refuge. But it was clear that Mexico did not have the ability to control the flow of Central Americans across its country.
Several migrants who arrived in Tapachula on Tuesday in the new caravan said they were inspired by the success of the first group, which crossed Guatemala and made it quite easily to Mexico.
The images of this mass migration show the power of traveling together. Young women feel safe enough to push their children in the strollers offered along the road and families crowd on the plateaus of pickup trucks offering rides. Over the rivers, people form human chains to cross.
Together, the trip is also cheaper, said Reverend Mauro Verzeletti, a Catholic priest who runs Casa del Migrante, a refuge in Guatemala. By traveling in groups, he said, migrants can get rid of the "structure of coyotes, drug traffickers or organized crime" that has been controlling the trail for years, charging thousands of dollars.
The groups also received a wave of support – food, clothing, shelter, medical care – from governments and ordinary citizens.
After Mr. Trump took office, the number of illegal crossings on the southwestern border of the United States was reduced to more than 40 years. But the numbers have started to climb again this year. In September, a record number of family travelers were apprehended by the Border Patrol.
But there is no evidence that caravans are encouraging more people to leave El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras for the United States, migrants' advocates said. Indeed, many people in the two caravans that currently cross southern Mexico say that they would most likely have emigrated whether the caravans took shape or not.
What the big group is doing is giving "visibility to a phenomenon that has been going on for a long time and nobody wanted to see," said César Ríos, director of the Salvadoran Migrant Institute in San Salvador, who works with deported.
On October 12, when the first wave of caravans left San Pedro Sula in Honduras, it only had a few hundred people. As the news broadcasted, thousands of additional migrants joined the procession crossing the border between Guatemala and Mexico.
The group, mainly from Central America, fractured after entering Mexico. Some have advanced more quickly, others have fallen behind for convalescence, seek asylum in Mexico or return home.
Nevertheless, the central group, which was Wednesday in the city of Juchitán, in southern Mexico, has thousands of people.
The unhindered progress of this caravan in the north has profoundly affected the poor countries of Central America, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled in recent years to flee violence and political repression, as well as poverty exacerbated by poverty. drought and crop failures.
About two weeks ago, a tracking caravan was formed in the city of Comayagua, in central Honduras. When he left, he had about 350, said several migrants. As he crossed the border with Guatemala, he reached about 1,500 people.
Together, the migrants flooded the security forces and headed north, several said. Even more migrants joined the group as he was moving across Guatemala. One of them was Marvin Tol, 35, from the Guatemalan town of Escuintla.
"My country is very bad," Tol said.
He said that he was considering trying to migrate to the United States looking for work. But the news of the passing caravan – and the success of the first to cross the borders unhindered – prompted him to speed up his departure.
"I had planned to go there, but I joined the caravan instead," Tol told Tapachula on Tuesday.
A third caravan left San Salvador on Sunday and is expected to soon reach Mexico's southern border. A fourth, formed in the Honduran department of Olancho, crosses Guatemala, said Ms. Cerpas, a defender of migrants' rights in Honduras.
The Mexican government prevented the first caravan from legally crossing the southern border, but thousands of participants illegally crossed the border. displeased Mr. Trump.
When the second caravan arrived on Sunday at the southern border of Mexico, the migrants were again greeted by police.
A fight broke out after a Mexican police officer insulted the Honduran flag of migrants, said Sergio Seis, head of migration of the Ciudad Hidalgo government, which is on the border.
Migrants threw bottles and stones before the police pulled them with tear gas, witnesses said. A migrant was killed.
But on Monday, the members of the caravan formed a human chain and crossed the Suchiate. Mexican sailors observed the skiffs but did not intervene, said boatmen and porters working on this part of the river.
"It was pretty and it was sad at the same time, because children and women were coming," said Juan Carbajal Díaz, a porter who oversaw the passage.
A helicopter from the Mexican Federal Police flew over the group for at least 10 minutes, the blades of it flogging the water of the river.
Delmis Aracely Macedo, 30, who was traveling with Mr. Gálvez, the Honduran farm worker, his boyfriend, was under the rotors. Fearing drowning, she began to cry, she remembered.
Then the authorities seemed to calm down. Most migrants rushed to Mexico as their illegal entry was apparently ignored.
In Mexico, the first caravan was welcomed with considerable support. But even the migrants were aware that other caravans following their path might not receive the same welcome.
The caravan is like a guest of the house, said Mr. Gálvez laughing: "The first day he feels – and the third day he stinks."
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