A caravan of at least a thousand migrants resumed its march towards the United States on Monday in southern Mexico, accusing local authorities of lying to them.
The caravan, which formed on December 24 in southern Mexico, dispersed on January 2. The migrants, the majority Venezuelan, had obtained promises of passes to cross Mexico.
The immigration services “made promises that they did not keep,” a migrant from El Salvador, Rosa Vazquez, told the press. “They just wanted to disband the group. But they were wrong because we are all here and we are going to march. »
“They didn’t follow up, they left them in centers […]they separated families and caused serious problems,” commented one of the organizers, Luis Garcia Villagran.
The migrants left the town of Arriaga, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, behind a huge banner reading “Exodus from poverty” and chanting “We are not criminals, we are international workers.”
Migration to the United States reached a record level last year. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Mexico City during Christmas week for a meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on the topic of migration between the two countries.
Between October 2022 and September 2023, a record 2.4 million migrants crossed the southern border of the United States, according to the US Border Patrol.
With more than 3,000 km of border with the United States, Mexico is a country of transit and waiting for migrants, mainly from Central American countries plagued by violence or poverty (Honduras, Guatemala , Salvador), the Caribbean (Haiti, Cuba) or Venezuela.