Nothing stops the thousands of Hondurans who resumed their long road to the United States on Monday, neither exhaustion, nor the new threats from President Donald Trump to cut aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, if they don’t prevent the caravan from leaving Central America.
We’re going to start cutting, or substantially reducing, the tremendous amount of outside help we usually give them,”
twitted Trump. In a new cataclysm of tweets, the US president lamented that Mexico has not been able to stop the migrants, so he alerted the border patrols and the military in the face of this “national emergency.”
Unfortunately, it seems that Mexico’s police and military are unable to stop the caravan that heads to the southern border of the United States. Criminals and unidentified Middle Eastern people are there,”
said Trump.
A big part of the caravan that left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on October 13th, almost ten days, managed to enter Mexico illegally and slept in the main square of Tapachula, a city of more than 300,000 inhabitants in the state of Chiapas (south), after having traveled more than 760 km on foot, with babies and children on their backs.
Despite the fatigue and the unforgiving sun, some 3,000 undocumented people, according to estimates of the AFP and organizers, continue their march to Huixtla, also a second stop before arriving in Tijuana or Mexicali, near the United States, their final destination more than 3,000 kilometers away.
We live with more fears in our country, so we keep going forward,”
said Flores, a 47-year-old migrant.
In Honduras, a country hit by gang violence and high rates of poverty, “life is worth nothing,” according to this man who looks severely malnourished.
We are used to it, our own president doesn’t want us, we do not care if Trump doesn’t either,”
explained Maria Lourdes Aguilar, 49, who travels with her two daughters and four grandchildren under the age of 10.
Her original intention was to enter the country through the international bridge, the official passage between Guatemala and Mexico. But the government of this country closed the border on Friday due to the massive arrival of Hondurans.
Many chose to cross the mighty Suchiate River swimming or in precarious rafts.
Just over 700 that did enter legally, according to official data, are housed in government shelters where they were assured that they will initiate their refugee or visa applications. But many fear that the shelters are a trap to deport them.
A second caravan of almost a thousand Hondurans began its journey on foot from Guatemala on Sunday to reach the Mexican border.
Without documents, the migrants remain in hiding for thousands of kilometers on the road and at the mercy of people or drug dealers who kidnap them or seek to recruit them against their will.
In 2010, a group of 72 migrants from Central and South America were kidnapped by Los Zetas cartel and murdered because they refused to join them, according to the government. Their corpses were found in a warehouse in Tamaulipas, bordering the United States.