Caravan of mostly Central American migrants advance slowly across Mexico

10/29/2021

Source: Reuters

Thousands of mostly Central American migrants trekking across southern Mexico on Wednesday advanced only a short distance, with children and painfully blistered feet, the latest human caravan seeking to reach either Mexico City or the U.S. border.

The mass of men, women and children left the village of Huixtla early in the morning, walking about 10 miles (16 km) north along a local highway to the town of Villa Comaltitlan, in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, witnesses told Reuters.

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US-bound migrant caravan slowly making its way north

10/27/2021

Source: Al Jazeera

Thousands of migrants from Central America and the Caribbean travelling in a caravan are making their way across Mexico, hoping to reach the US border, and heaping pressure on the Biden administration.

About 2,000 migrants, among them many families with small children, were trekking on Wednesday in the scorching heat of Huixtla, a city in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

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Security forces fail to prevent 2,000-strong migrant caravan heading north from Tapachula

10/25/2021

Source: Mexico News Daily

A large migrant caravan is heading north after leaving Tapachula, Chiapas, where National Guard troops in riot gear were unable to stop it despite a blockade across the highway on Saturday.

As many as 2,000 migrants set off from Bicentenario Park in Tapachula at around 7:00 a.m. and marched north up the main highway. The National Guard attempted to block their path near the town of Viva México but the front of the caravan charged the police line and, amid chaotic scenes, crowds of people ran past the authorities, who were unable to deter the surge.

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3 nights in a migrant detention center—for the crime of not carrying passport

10/13/2021

Source: Mexico News Daily

I went to the south of Mexico to meet migrants and cover their struggles on their northward journeys, but I never envisioned I’d become one.

Traveling back from a town to Tapachula, Chiapas, on October 3, the minibus I was in was stopped by immigration officials at a checkpoint. I soon realized the highway was littered with such checkpoints, stationed with heavily armed soldiers.

An immigration official asked to see my passport. I didn’t have it, but offered a UK driving license. Insufficient.

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‘Criminalization of migrants is unacceptable:’ Doctors Without Borders

09/09/2021

Source: Mexico News Daily

The situation migrants face in Mexico is unsustainable and policies that criminalize them are unacceptable, according to the Mexican division of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

The organization said in a statement that it has launched an emergency intervention in Tapachula, Chiapas, “where some 40,000 people are trapped due to the failure of the asylum system.”

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National Guard and immigration agents clash with migrants in Chiapas

08/30/2021

Source: Mexico Daily News

A caravan of hundreds of Haitian, Cuban, Central American and South American migrants clashed with members of the National Guard (GN) and immigration agents on Saturday after leaving Tapachula, Chiapas, on foot.

The GN and National Immigration Institute (INM) agents resorted to using force to halt the advance of some 600 migrants who departed Tapachula after staging protests for several weeks to demand that their asylum cases be extradited.

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Villagers return following vigilante violence in Mexico

08/06/2021

Source: Associated Press

About 370 people who had fled confrontations between vigilantes and armed groups in Mexico’s southern Chiapas state returned to their village Thursday, according to a local priest.

In July, a couple of hundred armed men descended on the mountain township of Pantelho, burned vehicles and at least a dozen homes, vandalized the town hall and abducted 21 people.

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New self-defense militia appears in Chiapas, Mexico to fight organized crime

07/21/2021

Source: Reuters

Just like the Zapatista rebels before them, the indigenous people of Chiapas state in southern Mexico have taken up arms, though this time they said it was to beat back the organized crime gangs plaguing their communities.

Dozens of armed, hooded people belonging to a group called ‘El Machete’ marched over the weekend in the streets of Pantelho in the mountains of Chiapas – a first public act.

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Vigilantes drill in southern Mexico with rifles, machetes

07/20/21

Source: AP

Another shadowy group of armed residents emerged in Mexico over the weekend, when a hundred or so vigilantes armed with rifles, shotguns and machetes staged a public drill in the southern state of Chiapas.

The group in the township of Pantelho was introduced over a loudspeaker as “The Machete,” and it claims to be fighting the incursion of drug cartels in the largely Indigenous mountain communities of Chiapas. Some of the drill was conducted in a Maya-family language.

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5 dead in southern Mexico from mudslide, drowning

07/07/2021

Source: The Washington Post

Four residents of the southern Mexico state of Chiapas died when a landslide caused by heavy rains collapsed their house, and a Portuguese tourist died when she fell into a rain-swollen river, authorities said Tuesday.

The state civil defense office said the landslide claimed the lives of a woman and three children Monday in a rural community just outside the Chiapas state capital.

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