Migrants in southern Mexico set sights on town near Gulf

“I have been through a lot,” said Guzman. “I want to spend my time differently, not in poverty.”

The only thing he left behind in his hometown is a coffin, either for his mother, who suffers dementia, “or for me, if I don’t make it,” Guzman said.

The migrants had already made a grueling 40-mile (65-kilometre) trek from Juchitan, Oaxaca, on Thursday, after they failed to get the bus transportation they had hoped for.

Cesar Caraca, a 26-year-old migrant from Honduras, said he killed a poisonous coral snake in the brush near the site at the entrance to Matias Romero where they set up camp Thursday.

“This bites a child and kills him,” Caraca said. The meter-long snake coupled with complaints of bad smells and poor lighting led some migrants to move to an empty hotel that had been damaged by a 2017 earthquake.

The migrants have not said what route they intend to take northward or where on the U.S. border they plan to reach, but Veracruz would take them toward the Texas border. Another large caravan early this year passed through Veracruz but then veered back toward Mexico City and eventually tried to head to Tijuana in the far northwest. Few made it.

Immigration agents and police in Mexico are nibbling at the edges of two caravans currently making their way through southern Mexico.

While authorities haven’t directly targeted the main caravan of about 4,000 migrants, a second, smaller caravan about 200 miles behind the first group appeared to be more leaderless, get less press attention and be more vulnerable.

A federal official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said 153 migrants in the second caravan were detained Wednesday during highway inspections in the southern state of Chiapas, a short distance from the Guatemalan border. While the precise size of the second caravan is unclear, that could be equivalent to about 10 per cent of those participating.

And there was also pressure on the first caravan. Not only did the hoped-for buses not arrive, but federal police began pulling freight trucks over and forcing migrants off, saying their habit of clinging to the tops or sides of the trucks was dangerous.

“Get off! Get off!” police officer Benjamin Grajeda shouted to a group of migrants clinging to the side of a truck outside Juchitan. “You can ride inside, but not on the outside.”

At other points along the route, police have forced overloaded pickups to disgorge migrants. On previous days, they have ordered passenger vans to stop transporting migrants.

But U.S. President Donald Trump ramped up his pre-election focus on the caravan and others behind it, talking of creating a U.S. military force on the border that would outnumber the migrants, many of them women and children.

“As far as the caravan is concerned, our military is out,” Trump said. “We have about 5,800. We’ll go up to anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, ICE and everybody else at the border.”

A third band of about 500 from El Salvador made it to Guatemala, and a fourth group of about 700 set out from the Salvadoran capital Wednesday.

Similar caravans have occurred regularly over the years and passed largely unnoticed, but Trump has focused on the latest marchers seeking to make border security a hot-button issue in next week’s midterm elections.

Associated Press writer Peter Orsi in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Sonia Perez D., The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Migrants in southern Mexico set sights on town near Gulf

What's Happening