Several thousand Central American migrants yesterday planned to resume their trek through southern Mexico before dawn, while authorities there and in Guatemala tried to sort out the killing of a migrant at a border crossing.
On Sunday, while the band of migrants was resting and reorganizing in San Pedro Tepanatepec, Oaxaca State, several hundred in another group broke through border barriers in the Guatemalan town of Tecun Uman, just as members of the caravan did more than a week earlier, clashing with Mexican authorities determined not to let the caravan grow or be repeated.
The new group, whose members called themselves a second caravan, gathered on the international bridge leading from Tecun Uman to Mexico.
Photo: Reuters
Guatemalan firefighters said a 26-year-old Honduran was killed by a rubber bullet hitting his head.
At a news conference late on Sunday, Mexican Secretary of the Interior Alfonso Navarrete Prida denied that his country’s forces were responsible.
Mexican federal police and immigration agents were attacked with rocks, glass bottles and fireworks when migrants broke through a gate on the Mexican side of the border, but none of the officers were armed with firearms or anything that could fire rubber bullets, he said, adding that some of the attackers carried guns and firebombs.
“Mexico does not criminalize undocumented immigration,” he said.
Also on Sunday, about 300 Salvadoreans departed from San Salvador hoping to make their way to the US as a group.
Meanwhile, some of the migrants in the initial caravan, now estimated at 4,000 people, on Sunday rested in the shade of tarps strung across the town plaza or picked up trash in Tapanatepec, which has a population of 7,500. Others soaked themselves in the nearby Novillero river.
Tensions from a long trek through searing heat with tenuous supplies of food and other goods spilled over Saturday night when a dispute in a food line devolved into a beating. Many in the caravan have been on the road since two weeks ago, when the group first formed in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
Tapanatepec security head Raul Medina Melendez said that the town was distributing sandwiches and water to migrants camped in the central square on Saturday night when a man with a megaphone asked people to wait their turn.
Some hurled insults at the man with the megaphone before they attacked him, Medina said, adding that police rescued the man as he was being beaten and took him to a hospital for treatment, although his condition was not immediately clear.
On Sunday, several in the caravan took to microphones to denounce the attack.
“Is that the way we’re going to always behave?” a woman from Honduras asked.
Others complained of trekkers smoking marijuana or warned that images of litter and uneaten food made them appear disrespectful.
The group planned to set out early yesterday for Niltepec, 54km to the northwest in Oaxaca.
The caravan still must travel 1,600km to reach the nearest US border crossing at McAllen, Texas.
The trip could be twice as long if the migrants head for the Tijuana-San Diego frontier, as another caravan did earlier this year. Only about 200 in that smaller group made it to the border.
Most of the migrants in the caravan appeared determined to reach the US, despite an offer of refuge in Mexico.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Friday launched a program dubbed “You are home,” which promises shelter, medical attention, schooling and jobs to Central Americans who agree to stay in the southern Mexico states of Chiapas or Oaxaca, far from the US border.
Navarrete Prida on Sunday said that temporary identity numbers had been issued to more than 300 migrants, which would allow them to stay and work in Mexico.
Pregnant women, children and the elderly were among those who had joined the program and were now being attended to at shelters, he said, adding that 1,895 had applied for refugee status in Mexico.
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