RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Some 500 migrants coming from different countries, such as Haiti, Cuba, Honduras, and El Salvador, marched on Wednesday through the Mexican city of Tapachula, bordering Guatemala, and set up roadblocks on several highways.
Arriving at a migration station in the region, Siglo XXI, the demonstrators demanded that they be allowed to move north after several caravans had been dismantled by the authorities in recent weeks.
Read also: Check out our coverage on Mexico
They also demanded the dismissal of the state representative of the National Migration Institute (INM) in Chiapas, Aristeo Taboada, whom they accused of carrying out harsh operations and deportations.
In the midst of the preparations for the Independence Day celebrations in Mexico, the migrants walked with a placard asking for an end to the repression against them. Shouting “we want to pass, we want to pass!” the foreigners walked some 20 blocks and blocked the main highway in the area.
“If they don’t let us pass, neither did the drivers with their cars,” said one of the Haitian migrants, who, like thousands, have been stranded in that region for months.
One of the Haitian migrants who participated in the march denounced the document granted by the Mexican Commission of Aid to Refugees (Comar) and the humanitarian visa. He has bought five times a ticket to travel to the north of the country. Still, the authorities prevent him from doing so. Other Caribbeans asked the federal authorities to let them pass with legal documents because they did not want to stay in this border city.
For the activist and director of the Center for Human Dignification (CDH), Luis Rey García Villagrán, the march served to denounce that Tapachula is, for the migrants, “the biggest jail in all of Latin America”.
In addition, he expressed that they have already delivered the first five petitions to the federal courts to allow them to have legal documents and thus move north. García Villagrán considered that what the INM is doing is an “illegality” and a “shame”.
THEY CANCEL “CRY FOR FREEDOM”.
At the same protest, the director of the NGO Pueblo Sin Fronteras, Irineo Mujica, announced that the event called “Grito por la Libertad” (Shout for Freedom), which was formed by migrants in the area intended to emulate the traditional Mexican Independence Shout, which is celebrated every September 15 around midnight, was canceled.
“We are seeing that the state government has banned us from the area. It’s okay; we are not going to fall into provocations,” indicated the activist.
He pointed out that this September, 16 signatures will be presented to the authorities to demand better treatment, and candles will be lit as a sign of protest and reflection.
In recent months, the region has registered a historic migratory flow with 147,000 undocumented migrants detected in Mexico from January to August, triple that of 2020, and a record 212,000 undocumented migrants detained in July alone by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
A few weeks ago, four caravans of migrants – many of them Haitians – departed from Tapachula, a municipality in the southeastern state of Chiapas, but all were broken up in heavy-handed operations by security forces.