Tapachula (Mexico), Sep 24 (EFE).- Migrants, activists, and religious leaders held a procession Sunday on the southern border to ask for the support of the Mexican government, with papers that allow them to transit regularly in the country up to the northern border in search of the “American dream.”
This, as part of the World Day of Refugees and Migrants, took place amid a new migratory wave, which anticipates a new record of asylum requests and a humanitarian crisis.
The migrants, most of whom are in Mexico irregularly, walked through the main streets of Tapachula with banners and flags while praying for the Mexican Government to attend their call and grant them documents to leave Tapachula.
Father César Augusto Cañaveral Pérez, coordinator of the pastoral dimension of human mobility in the Diocese of Tapachula, said that the most significant migratory flow is from Cuba, followed by Venezuela and Central America, as well as Mexicans trying to go to the United States.
“What Tapachula is experiencing is a disorderly migration because the migratory flows or exoduses are becoming more complex and more difficult every day to reach the US,” he told EFE.
Carlos Aguilera, a migrant from Honduras who left his country due to the economic crisis that led his business to bankruptcy until it could not sell anything and prompted him to undertake his journey to the US, joined this procession.
“Let them help us. We are crossing such a difficult road in another country. We are in poverty. We are bothered by many. The drivers charge us a lot. We ask for a permit because they are not giving permission. We want to get to the other side,” he said.
The Mexican priest also criticized that Mexican citizens are taking advantage of this situation, generating business by charging for hotels, housing, and tickets, leaving them with substantial economic benefits.
Another migrant from Guatemala, Arcelis Solis de Tejeda, who attended this procession and mass for the migrant refugees, reported that she fled Guatemala because she was extorted and threatened with death.
“I was a street vendor, selling tamales, paches (traditional Guatemalan dish), and typical food. The truth is that they don’t let us work in Guatemala. They ask us for extortion. I think it is unfair because we are working honestly,” she said.
During the mass, the woman prayed for her family as she explained that she could not return to Guatemala and that what they needed was to go to the US or stay in the northern border to be able to work.
The Tapachula parish priest lamented that Mexican authorities break the few or only documents that foreigners entering the country possess, preventing them from taking a bus, pushing hundreds of migrants to walk the migratory route to move towards the northern border, amid risks such as organized crime.
Cañaveral explained that Tapachula is a small city with no strength to face this migratory phenomenon and acknowledged that the migratory crisis is already aggravated and requires concrete responses from the national, state, and municipal governments.
Crime, violence, human trafficking, climate situations, the lack of human rights, and the migration of children who are walking are some of the problems experienced in the migration arriving at the southern border.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), insecurity, violence, and socioeconomic conditions are the main factors that cause thousands of migrants to leave their countries to cross Mexico and try to reach the US.
He also pointed out that the variety of nationalities of migrants crossing the country is increasing because more people are leaving their countries after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has provoked a new migratory wave in the region. EFE
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