HUIXTLA – Christmas Day intended the similar as some other day for 1000’s of migrants walking through southern Mexico: extra trudging underneath a sizzling solar.
There had been no items, and Christmas Eve dinner was once a sandwich, a bottle of water and a banana passed out by the Catholic church to one of the crucial migrants in town of Álvaro Obregón, in the southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala.
Migrants spent Christmas evening sound asleep on a scrap of cardboard or plastic stretched out underneath an awning or tent, or the naked floor.
In the morning, it was once waking as standard at 4 a.m., to get an early get started and keep away from the worst of the warmth, strolling to the following the town, Huixtla, 20 miles (30 kilometers) away.
Karla Ramírez, a migrant from Honduras who was once touring with different adults and 4 kids, were given to Álvaro Obregón too overdue Sunday to get any of the meals being given out by the church. So they’d to shop for no matter little they might have the funds for.
“It was sad: we have never, ever been in the street before,” Ramírez mentioned. “Our Christmas dinner was some mortadella, butter and tomato, with a tortilla.”
Mariela Amaya’s seven-year-old son did not perceive why they needed to spend Christmas this fashion. Amaya, additionally from Honduras, tugged the hand of her drained, recalcitrant son as they walked.
“They don’t understand why we have to do this to get a better life,” Amaya mentioned. Nor did the governments of Mexico and the United States, she mentioned.
“Why can’t they help us? We need their help,” she mentioned.
What little assist there was once got here from native households, one in every of whom gave out tamales — conventional seasonal fare — and water to the passing migrants.
The migrants included single adults but in addition whole households, all keen to achieve the U.S. border, offended and annoyed at having to attend weeks or months in the within sight town of Tapachula for paperwork that may let them proceed their adventure.
Mexico claims it does not give out transit visas, however migrants stay hoping to get some form of report so they might a minimum of take buses to the border.
“This adventure has been actually arduous for us migrants. We want the (Mexican) immigration place of work and the federal government to have some pity on us, and provides us a protected habits move,” said Jessica García, a migrant from Venezuela.
Mexico says it detected 680,000 migrants moving through the country in the first 11 months of 2023.
At around 6,000 people, the migrant caravan that set out Sunday was the largest one since June 2022, when a similarly sized group departed Tapachula.
And like the 2022 caravan — which started as U.S. President Joe Biden hosted leaders in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas — this year’s Christmas caravan came a few days before U.S. officials are to meet with their Mexican counterparts in Mexico City to explore ways of stemming the number of migrants showing up at the U.S. southwest border.
The Mexican executive has already mentioned it’s keen to assist attempt to block migrants from crossing Mexico; the federal government had little selection, afte r U.S. officials briefly closed two essential Texas railway border crossings, claiming they had been beaten by processing migrants.
That put a chokehold on freight moving from Mexico to the United States, as well as grain needed to feed Mexican livestock moving south. The rail crossings have since been reopened, but the message was clear.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to arrive in Mexico City Wednesday to hammer out new agreements to control the surge of migrants seeking entry into the United States. The U.S. delegation will also include Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall.
This month, as many as 10,000 migrants were arrested per day at the U.S. southwest border.
In May, Mexico agreed to take in migrants from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba who had been turned away by the U.S. for not following rules that provided new legal pathways to asylum and other forms of migration.
But that deal, aimed at curbing a post-pandemic jump in migration, appears to be insufficient as numbers rise once again, disrupting bilateral trade and stoking anti-migrant sentiment among conservative voters in the U.S.
Arrests for illegal crossing topped 2 million in each of the U.S. government’s last two fiscal years, reflecting technological changes that have made it easier for migrants to leave home to escape poverty, natural disasters, political repression and organized crime.
____
Follow AP’s protection of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america