TAPACHULA, Mexico – About 5,000 migrants from Central America, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti set out on foot Monday from Mexico’s southern border, heading north toward the United States.
Migrants have complained that processing refugee or exit visa applications takes too long at Mexico’s main migrant processing center, located in the town of Tapachula near the Guatemala border. In Mexico’s overwhelmed migration system, people seeking such visas often wait weeks or months, unable to work.
Migrants formed a long line along the highway on Monday, sometimes escorted by police. The police are usually there to stop them from blocking the entire highway, and sometimes to stop them from hitchhiking.
Monday’s march was among the largest since June 2022. The migrant caravans of 2018 and 2019 attracted much greater attention. But with up to 10,000 migrants showing up at the U.S. border in recent weeks, Monday’s march is just a drop in the ocean.
“We have been traveling for about three months and we will continue,” said Daniel Gonzalez, from Venezuela. “In Tapachula, no one helps us.”
Returning to Venezuela is not an option, he said, because the economic situation there is worsening.
In the past, he says, Mexico’s tactic has largely been to wait until protesters are tired, then offer to drive them back to their home countries or to smaller, alternative processing centers.
Irineo Mújica, one of the march’s organizers, said migrants are often forced to live on the streets in squalid conditions in Tapachula. He is calling for transit visas that would allow migrants to cross Mexico and reach the U.S. border.
“We are trying to save lives with these kinds of actions,” Mújica said. “They (the authorities) ignored the problem and left the migrants stranded.”
The situation of Honduran migrant Leonel Olveras, 45, is typical of the fate of the protesters.
“They don’t hand out papers here,” Olveras said of Tapachula. “They are asking us to wait for months. It is too long.’
The U.S. southwest border is struggling to cope with a growing number of migrants from South America who are rapidly crossing the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama before heading north. As of September, 420,000 migrants, helped by Colombian smugglers, had crossed this gap since the start of the year, according to Panamanian figures.
