By Sonia Pérez P. -
The Associated Press
The suffering of the families of the Guatemalan migrants who traveled in the damaged trailer in Chiapas, southern Mexico, does not end.
In addition to not knowing anything about their loved ones, they are now receiving threats and extortion from people who tell them they are kidnapped in Mexico.
An image to which the news agency The Associated Press had access this Monday shows a message sent from a telephone in Mexico in which they ask one of the families in Guatemala, who published his number to receive information on his missing relative,
$ 3,000 in exchange for information
.
Extortionists are also using altered photographs in which they combine photos of the faces of the disappeared with the bodies of other migrants.
The calls are not limited to Guatemalan territory.
Relatives of migrants in the United States have received the same type of calls
.
"We are afraid, he says there are 40 kidnapped, we don't know if my brother could be there," said a migrant who resides in the United States and who for security reasons asked that his name not be published.
Bodies in body bags are placed on the side of the road after the accident on December 9, 2021.
On Thursday, a trailer loaded with migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador that had left southern Mexico bound for Puebla overturned in Chiapas while speeding, causing the death of 55 people and injuring more than one hundred.
Until Monday, the Mexican government has not made public a list of the dead migrants, but
lists of unconfirmed deceased people circulate on social networks.
Some of the wounded Guatemalans decided to return to the country on their own.
The Guatemalan government made available telephone numbers to which families located in low-income communities, without access or who do not even speak Spanish well, should call to request or give information about their relatives, but they have not received any news yet.
On Friday, the Guatemalan Government sent a high-level commission to Mexico with Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo at the helm and two prosecutors who spent a few hours with the injured, and then met in Mexico City with the Foreign Minister of that country. Marcelo Ebrard.
Hundreds of migrants who left Chiapas at the end of October arrive in Mexico City
Dec 12, 202100: 19
Thousands of migrants flee poverty in Guatemala every year.
According to experts, between 300 and 500 migrants leave each day for the north
and pay an average of 10,000 dollars to human smugglers.
To obtain the money, they often borrow or pledge their houses or land.
Migrants, the vast majority of whom seek to reach the United States, where some three million Guatemalans live, contribute to the country more than 11,000 million dollars a year in remittances, the equivalent of more than 14% of the country's Gross Domestic Product.
[At least 55 migrants die after overturning a trailer in which more than 150 were traveling overcrowded in Chiapas]
According to official data from the Directorate of Migration, from January to November of this year almost 15,000 Guatemalans, including
more than 3,000 minors, were deported from the United States by air
.
In the same period, 58,225 others were deported by land and air from Mexico.