Forced to walk, without arrests: this is how the caravan of thousands of migrants fleeing Tapachula advances

Thousands of Venezuelan migrants, mostly Central Americans, have organized this week to walk north in a new caravan that no longer starts from Central America, but from the capital of the southern border of Mexico.

Fleeing from Tapachula and the trap of the bureaucratic labyrinth that keeps them trapped in a prison without bars, under the open sky, where they survive without work in one of the poorest corners of the country and only with the money sent by their relatives has become their daily nightmare.

Around 4,500 people, according to local press counts, advance among the towns of Chiapas at a key moment: in the framework of the Summit of the Americas, where the leaders of the continent will discuss their destiny and that of thousands of others.

That mass of hungry and exhausted souls is, at the same time,

The group started its journey on Monday and hundreds of other desperate migrants have joined.

This Thursday, the most advanced were in Acacoyagua (Chiapas, 78 kilometers from Tapachula).

But, according to a local reporter who follows the caravan, José Torres, most of them are still in Escuintla, about five kilometers behind.

The great mass has dispersed and many walk in groups of 20. With no other destiny than to obtain a paper that regulates their stay in Mexico, given the inability of the overwhelmed institutions at that point on the southern border.

A refugee certificate, a humanitarian visa, a temporary visa or a safe-conduct (an exceptional migratory tool) to save time and not be detained and returned to the starting point: almost always Tapachula.

Paper is the first step, then

The images of this new caravan, the largest in the last two years, according to local media, have surprised the passivity of the authorities to stop it.

The photo of thousands of migrants in the framework of the Summit of the Americas is an argument for the Government of López Obrador to obtain more aid, since this country accepted during the Trump era to welcome not only migrants who go to the United States , but to those who have requested their refuge there.

Everyone must wait in Mexico, according to the controversial

treaty (Remain in Mexico, in English).

To which is added another, Title 42, which allows hot deportations to Mexico, agreed in times of pandemic.

Migrants eat fruit as they walk in a caravan to cross the country and reach the border with the United States, in Villa Comaltitlán, Mexico, on June 9, 2022. QUETZALLI NICTE-HA (REUTERS)

The repeated scenes of immigration agents running and attacking migrants on the train tracks have not been observed, even the National Guard has been in charge of ensuring their march along the local roads that connect the small towns they pass through on their way north.

There is only one macabre condition for this apparent truce: they can only advance on foot.

A migrant from the caravan, who prefers not to reveal his identity, has told this newspaper by phone how a family has tried to buy a bus ticket to get to Mexico City.

They already had a document issued by the National Migration Institute that allows them to move around the national territory for a month.

But the transport company has prevented it.

“If they see them in the vans or buses, they stop them and get them off.

They don't stop them, but they force them to walk," says Torres from Escuintla.

The bureaucratic labyrinth: the new wall

The wall that divides Mexico from the United States has become more sophisticated.

In recent years, both the governments of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and that of Biden understood that in order to contain migration in Mexico - a fundamental objective of US policy that has not changed after the departure of Donald Trump in 2021 - it was not necessary more cement, no higher fences.

There is a corner in the south of Mexico, next to Guatemala, that functions as the perfect dam.

In Tapachula, a city of just over 300,000 inhabitants, more than 120,000 migrants seeking refuge have been crowded between last year and this year, according to data from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar).

And there another 15,000 have been detained by immigration agents.

That poor city of the most marginal Mexico is more than 3,000 kilometers from the United States and each year receives the vast majority of the bag of migrants who flee from any country in the Americas and many from Africa and Asia.

Thousands of new inhabitants roam its streets, many of those 100,000 join others who have been waiting for a response from the immigration authorities for years.

With skyrocketing rental prices in the face of excess demand, with zero job opportunities and harassed by sporadic raids that capture them and push them a little further back: Guatemala.

The wall is the strategy of wear.

A refugee camp without white tarps, with international aid that is not enough for the magnitude of the tragedy —UNHCR has declared itself overwhelmed, like the rest of the Mexican institutions— and which the press, neither national nor foreign, seldom looks at.

These days it has done so because that group of thousands of desperate women, men and children brings together the fears of the most powerful country on the continent.

In the United States, they will be discussed, how migration strategy can destabilize a government, and how Mexico can better deal with being the backyard of a continent's migration.

Meanwhile, in Escuintla, a hundred people think only of where they will spend the night.

He counts the money they have left to buy something to eat, heal the wounds on their feet, avoid dehydration in the humid and suffocating heat of this corner of southern Mexico.

Your plans are not enough for more than 24 hours.

His only and imminent objective is to survive.

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