Venezuela, Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, El Salvador, Ecuador, Nicaragua, China and Sudan.
The caravan of migrants that left this Monday, March 24, from southern Mexico heading to the United States is made up of migrants who come from different parts of the world.
This is a reflection of Tapachula, the city from where they left, through which, according to reports from the National Migration Institute (INM), only in the year 2023, people from 103 countries on the five continents of the world passed, a small “Babel” where Those who flee the crises in their countries come together trying to look for a better future.
This Monday around noon, a group of 30 people took shelter under the shadow of the Viva México bridge after walking for about four hours in the sun.
In that tumult that sought relief from the 37 degrees Celsius that made them sweat profusely, Venezuelans, Cubans and Hondurans predominated, but there was also a group of Chinese, Haitians, and Africans who tried to communicate with the few words in Spanish that they could pronounce. .
A young 37-year-old Chinese man was trying to enlist among the migrants asking to return to Tapachula, defeated by the heat and the 14-kilometer walk.
A Sudanese man was trying to buy water by typing in Arabic into Google Translate on his phone.
A Haitian spoke Creole and leaned on another Haitian who spoke good Spanish to ask how long it would take to get to Mexico.
The caravan of migrants, about 2,000 according to their spokespersons, left this Monday, breaking the bureaucratic border and fear that Tapachula has become in recent years.
In this city, according to local activists, some 40,000 migrants from all over the world remain trapped, making it a city where the result of the current global crisis is concentrated, which has caused an unprecedented migration crisis.
Tapachula is a kind of cosmopolitan city in its most miserable version.
Interviewed with the help of Google Translate, a Chinese man named Fen Huan H. claims that he was fleeing threats from the government of a province of the People's Republic of China in the north of the country.
“It's a very long problem to explain,” he says.
A Sudanese man named Salah, originally from the Dafur region, says he came here fleeing the ethnic wars ravaging his country and causing him to stop studying.
A Haitian named André says that he came fleeing from Port-au-Prince because in his neighborhood the gangs came at night to rob, kill or rape women in their own homes.
In Spanish, several Hondurans say they are fleeing gang violence, an Ecuadorian, from drug trafficking violence, and a young Salvadoran claims that he fled his country after being harassed by the police under Bukele's emergency regime and falsely accused. of being a gang member.
The caravan seemed to be the meeting of all the evils of the world.
The migrants left this Monday with the hope of being able to reach, first, Mexico City and then the border with the United States.
However, they made little progress.
The inclement heat in this region, combined with the fact that they have to travel on foot along the road that boils at midday, caused the majority to stay in a nearby town called Huhuetán, just 14 kilometers from Tapachula, still more than 3,700 kilometers away. the border they so long to reach.
The caravan was led by Father Heyman Vásquez, a priest and human rights defender who accompanied the departure of the migrants along with activist Luis Villagrán.
However, both leaders abandoned the march a few kilometers after it left.
In the crowd were women, children, young people and the elderly with tragic life stories, with cruel pasts but with a lot of hope.
Upon arriving in Huhuetán, around 3:30 in the afternoon, the migrants arrived exhausted from the heat and fatigue.
There, a health camp from the NGO Operation Blessing in alliance with UNICEF was waiting for them, which immediately dedicated itself to caring for migrants who arrived with heatstroke or dehydration.
A Honduran woman from Olancho was carrying her fainted 18-month-old daughter in her arms.
According to the woman, the girl had started vomiting halfway through and then stopped reacting.
The girl also suffered from hydrocephalus.
After almost an hour of waiting, she was taken to a hospital by an ambulance from Huhuetán.
Another part of the caravan followed the road to Huixtla, a town further on, and others dispersed in search of transportation by their own means.
The two groups that remained united will seek to advance on their route this Tuesday with the hope of reaching Mexico City in a couple of weeks.
Migrants face serious dangers on their way because in their quest to avoid immigration checkpoints along the way, they deviate along paths between mountains or cross private properties where they risk being victims of kidnapping, extortion and other crimes.
The southern region and particularly the state of Chiapas has increased its violence because it is in the middle of a dispute between the two most powerful cartels in Mexico, the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Nueva Generación.
In recent weeks, homicides and mass kidnappings of migrants have been reported in the area, allegedly carried out by organized crime.
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