Thousands of Central American migrants set up tents and strung tarps at a stadium in the central Mexican city of Queretaro, where they arrived on Saturday afternoon after departing the country’s capital at dawn on their long trek to the US border.
Their day began with dedicated Mexico City metro trains whisking them to the outskirts of the capital.
At the end of the metro line, migrants began making their way to a main highway to resume walking and hitching rides with the tacit approval of Mexican officials.
Photo: Reuters
Near a major toll plaza about 30km north of the city, Mexico state police and human rights officials helped load men, women and children onto eighteen-wheelers and asked passing buses and trucks if they would carry migrants.
Maria Yesenia Perez, a 41-year-old who left La Ceiba, Honduras, nearly a month ago with her eight-year-old daughter, said she was prepared to wait to gain entry at the US border.
“I decided to come [with the caravan] to help my family,” she said, before she and her daughter were hoisted onto the back of a semitrailer.
Perez is one of about 4,000 migrants who proceeded to Queretaro — a state capital 200km to northwest of Mexico City — and then possibly to Guadalajara, Culiacan, Hermosillo and eventually Tijuana on the US border.
Whereas migrants like her originally carried tiny knapsacks with bare essentials in Mexico’s tropical south, their belongings swelled noticeably after a stop in Mexico City.
Many were hauling bundles of blankets, sleeping bags and heavy clothing to protect against colder temperatures in the northern part of the country.
Some left the capital with bottles of water and clear plastic bags of bananas and oranges for the long trek. Others were given juice and ham sandwiches from volunteers as they set out.
Astrid Daniela Aguilar, who was traveling with two cousins aged three and four, lined up alongside the highway to await a chance at hitching a ride.
“You can’t find work there,” she said of her home country of Honduras.
When they arrived in the stadium that Queretaro officials had prepared for them, they began getting ready for the night. Some set up tents, others found shelter beneath its concourse.
Volunteers offered sandwiches, tortillas and rice to the migrants.
The caravan planned to leave Queretaro for Irapuato about 100km to the west at 5am yesterday.
The caravan became a campaign issue in US midterm elections and US President Donald Trump has ordered the deployment of more than 5,000 military troops to the border to fend off the migrants.
Trump has also insinuated without proof that there are criminals or even terrorists in the group.
Many migrants said they are fleeing rampant poverty, gang violence and political instability primarily in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, and they have been on the road for weeks.
On Thursday, the UN rejected a demand by caravan representatives for buses to the US border, saying that its agencies were “unable to provide the transportation demanded by some members of the caravan.”
Mexico City is more than 965km from the nearest US border crossing at McAllen, Texas, but the area around the Mexican border cities of Reynosa, Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo is rife with drug gangs and the migrants consider it too risky.
Migrants are taking a still perilous, but somewhat safer and longer route to Tijuana in Mexico’s far northwest, across from San Diego.
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