The members of the migrant caravan that left Tapachula for Tuxtla Gutiérrez on Monday resumed their walk today, said the director of the Center for Human Dignification of Mexico, Luis García Villagrán.
The contingent, made up of some 15,000 people, left the municipality of Tapachula and planned to arrive in Huixtla today. National Guard agents detained 160 foreigners who had come forward in small groups.
The foreigners, mostly Venezuelans, Central Americans, Cubans and Africans, carried children in their arms and on their backs, using plastic sheets or blankets to protect them from the rain.
Migrants seek as their first destination an office of the National Institute of Migration (INM) where they can regularize their situation in Mexico, because in Tapachula they do not get humanitarian visas.
They reject Mexico’s strategy of containing them in the extreme south of the country. Restrictive policies force migrants to legalize their situation in order to continue traveling north.
The Mexican asylum agency has been overwhelmed by the growing number of applicants.
Among those caravanists is Julio Andrade, a Venezuelan who walks with crutches because he is missing a leg due to an accident he had at the age of 25.
«Yesterday I walked 14 kilometers and I have a lot of strength to continue because disability does not prevent anything. It’s all in the mind,” she said.
