This caravan walked about four hours from Tapachula to the ejido Álvaro Obregón, where its members lived Christmas under trees.
On the eve of the visit of a delegation from the United States to address the migration crisis, a caravan of more than 10 thousand migrants left the southern border of Mexico on Christmas Eve to pressure both governments.
The thousands of migrants from 24 nationalities left walking from the border city of Tapachula, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, early this Sunday and risked walking to Álvaro Obregón, where they will spend a complicated Christmas.
This contingent of people, mostly children, women and complete families, walked along the federal highway 200 and crossed the first checkpoint of the Ejido Viva México, where only personnel from the National Guard and the National Migration Institute (INM) watched them pass.
The delegate of Civil Protection, Julissa Esther Briones Magaña, confirmed to EFE that there are 10 thousand people in the context of mobility, so she recommended the migrant population to safeguard their health and that of their children and at the same time asked the drivers to drive with caution for this massive exodus of people.
According to Luis Rey García Villagrán, director of the Center for Human Dignity (CDH), this caravan is the largest exodus of this year and could exceed 15,000 people who will walk the days they can to reach Mexico City in their first point.
“There is a plug and a human knot that is reflected in this group that we lead, we tell the Mexican state that it leaves us no other choice but to walk along the road until the INM and the finger of the president of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, says yes or no. Today we walk the poorest of the poorest of those who are at the top of the need, those who do not have money to pay for visas or polleros,” Villagrán said.
The Venezuelan migrant Jesús Silva, who travels with his wife, told EFE that in Ciudad Hidalgo the migration agents put him in a unit and took him to the Siglo 21 migration station, where they gave him an order to leave Mexico.
“Really the option is to walk, I support myself in the caravan, because it is where we feel safer with Latin brothers who are leaving with a new dream, with a hope of life,” Silva shared.
The Honduran migrant José Wilmer Fernández Caballero, who showed his positive resolution from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar), has tried to leave Chiapas, but the migration authorities tell him that it is worthless and that it does not work.
“It was no use being in Tapachula for so long, wasted time, they always lower me and return me, here we carry the positive resolution, but they always lower me from the combi (bus) and tell me that it is worthless,” he said.
This caravan walked about four hours from Tapachula to the ejido Álvaro Obregón, where its members will live Christmas under trees, roofs, on the weeds, the floor, cardboard, mattresses and sheets that they carry to be able to spend this night that should be familiar, in peace and of great joy, but in which they have undertaken this trip in order to reach the United States.
Source: Aristegui Noticias
