After two years of hiatus due to the pandemic, this weekend the caravan of Central American mothers looking for their children, missing migrants in Mexico on their journey to the United States, resumed. Under the slogan “We have never left,” this Sunday several dozen women entered Mexican territory through the southern border, which separates the country from Guatemala. Between May 1 and 10, the caravan will travel through several states and will make its final stop in the capital, Mexico City.
In its XVI edition, the “Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrant Persons” resumed its steps in the restart, after two years of blockade due to the Covid-19 pandemic, of the search for their children, Central American migrants who disappeared in Mexico during his journey to the United States.
This Sunday, May 1, the caravan, under the slogan “We have never left,” entered Mexican territory through the southern border that divides Mexico and Guatemala.
On Friday, April 29, a group of women left San Salvador, the Salvadoran capital, and between cars and on foot, they arrived this Sunday, along with other groups of mothers from Honduras and Guatemala.
After crossing the border point of the Mexican National Migration Institute in Ciudad Hidalgo, Suchiate, a municipality belonging to the state of Chiapas, the caravan of Central American mothers started, which for the next ten days will travel through the states of Chiapas, Tabasco and Veracruz and Ciudad from Mexico.
In their last stop, the capital, there will be activities in the Mexican Senate, where the wives of disappeared migrants will demand that the authorities inform them of whether or not there is progress in respect of the complaints they filed for their disappeared relatives.
“We are going to walk for 10 days through the states where our relatives have passed and we will take their photos, in addition to other images of other children, because there are mothers who do not have the resources to be able to leave and have entrusted us with the photos to search for their children,” Etelvina Esteban, whose brother Hijinio disappeared in the city of Matamoros, on the northern border, told EFE.
The steps of the caravan during the next ten days
During this Sunday, the caravan of migrant mothers began the search with a photographic exhibition of their disappeared relatives in the municipality of Tapachula (Chiapas).
On Monday, May 2, the group will travel to the road section between Chiapa de Corzo and Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas, where a tribute will be held to the 56 migrants who lost their lives last year in a traffic accident. .
On its way to the capital on May 10, Mother’s Day in Mexico, the caravan will be accompanied by the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement (MMM), a group of organizations that leads political and social actions in solidarity with the subcontinent’s migrant community. .
The president of the MMM, Tañía Vázquez Alatorre, told EFE that, unfortunately, “it has become an ordeal to travel through Mexico to reach the United States, so the caravan of migrant mothers aims to find people in Mexico because many of them stay in this country.
16 years of tireless struggle
The Caravan of Central American Mothers has been organizing since 2004, year after year, (except for 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic) and denouncing the disappearances of their relatives in Mexican territory.
This form of struggle has not only highlighted the worrying situation of Central American migrants in Mexico, but has also served to denounce human rights violations suffered by migrants en route from Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
The caravan has the support of human rights organizations and multiple non-governmental associations throughout the region, as well as Amnesty International, which has been joining the complaints of Central American mothers for years and asking the Mexican authorities to comply with its obligation to protect the integrity of migrants in the country.
316 disappeared have already been found alive, but there are still more than 2,000 missing migrants
The Mesoamerican Migrant Movement has confirmed that this caravan, throughout its fifteen previous editions, has already found 316 living sons and daughters, a fact that gives encouragement to the families of the more than 2,000 migrants still missing in Mexico.
In April 2021, the Mexican Federation of Public Human Rights Organizations (FMOPDH) published a report in which, citing family reports, it gave the data of the more than two thousand disappeared migrants. In addition, they denounced that “the seriousness of the human rights violations against the migrant population is overwhelming.”
“We are not going to give up until we find them because every Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran leaves with a dream that in the end becomes a nightmare when leaving on the migratory route. And the relatives are left with anguish,” said Honduran Carolina Soto Colindres. , who mentioned that faith and hope are the ingredients that make this caravan go out year after year to search for their missing relatives.
380 Salvadoran migrants died in Mexico between 2009 and 2013
The Committee of Relatives of Deceased and Disappeared Migrants of El Salvador (Cofamide) is the institution that represents the families of victims and disappeared Salvadorans on their journey to the United States.
This institution finances and organizes each year the outgoing caravan from the Central American country to Mexico with the aim of finding their relatives, but also to “make migrants aware of the danger of migrating illegally,” Omar Jarquin, a member of Cofamide, told reporters, in statements collected by the ‘Telesur’ media outlet.
“Mexico has a lot of work to do to respect human rights and care for each migrant in transit,” he added.
According to data provided by this organization, between 2009 and 2013 alone, 380 Salvadoran migrants died in Mexico.
More than 114,000 migrants deported in 2021 and four caravans dissolved in 2022
In the last week, the Mexican authorities dissolved the fourth caravan of migrants that has been formed so far in 2022. This caravan originated in Tapachula, the Chiapense municipality that borders Guatemala.
A hundred migrants were dispersed, prior agreement with the immigration entity, by members of the National Migration Institute (INM), accompanied by the National Guard with anti-riot equipment. The previous caravan was dissolved on April 16.
According to data from the Migration Policy Unit of the Ministry of the Interior, Mexico deported more than 114,000 foreigners in 2021. For its part, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar) reported that, also during the past year, the country received a record number of refugee applications: 131,448.
Between January 1 and April 13, 2022, Mexican immigration authorities have intercepted 115,379 migrants, 15% minors and the majority from Central American nations.
In fiscal year 2022, which officially counts from October 1, 2021, it has already recorded 1,060,094 migrant encounters on the southern border with the United States, according to the Customs and Border Protection Office of that country.
A figure that could grow substantially in the coming months, when the Joe Biden government repeals Title 42, an exceptional mechanism promoted during the Trump Administration at the beginning of the pandemic by which the country can expel migrants immediately upon arrival. to US soil, without being able to make his asylum request from there, as happens under regular conditions.
With information from EFE and local media
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