Migrants staged the Via Crucis in Tapachula, before starting a new caravan

Some 200 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, Haiti, Africa and Central America, staged the “Migrant Way of the Cross” in the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, prior to the departure of a new migrant caravan for Mexico City.

The walk left this Good Friday from the Bicentennial Park of Tapachula, on the border of the Mexican state of Chiapas with Guatemala, carrying blankets with legends such as “Viacrucis migrante 2022″ and “Cristo migrante”, while children, women and families carried small wooden crosses with them.

Venezuelan migrant Juan Cancino stressed that they are participating in this exodus because they are fleeing a dictatorship and their main objective is not to stay in Mexico, but rather they seek to advance to the United States.

“We are three months late, they want us here and we no longer have money, besides there is no more to eat and our human rights (the National Institute of) Migration and the Police are violating us,” he denounced.

The traveler said that they are given a document to do a procedure in the country, “but they remove it and break it”.

Antonio Cuello Albarrán, a migrant from that same country, explained that with the “Migrant Way of the Cross” they ask for permission to travel to the northern border.

“We are going to walk to fulfill our dreams, which we promised so much to our children and family, to get to the United States, everything is difficult, but not impossible,” he said.

The migrants arrived at the Church of San Agustín, located in the center of Tapachula, where they ended this walk with crosses, tarps and blankets to reorganize and rest to leave this Saturday in a caravan.

Luis Rey García Villagrán, director of the Center for Human Dignification, announced that this Saturday they will leave with a contingent of 700 migrants who seek to reach the Huixtla migration office to process the humanitarian visa valid throughout Mexico.

“There is no attention, they say they are on vacation, but yesterday they carried out a raid where they arrested seven migrants,” he questioned.

The activist criticized that while the migration offices in Tapachula are saturated, when migrants want to move to other administrative headquarters they are detained.

This group of people will stay in Bicentenario Park, which has been set up as a temporary camp, where they will spend the night before embarking on the trip to the Mexican capital.

The region is experiencing a record flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP) detected more than 1.7 million undocumented immigrants on the border with Mexico in fiscal year 2021, which ended September 30.

Mexico deported more than 114,000 foreigners in 2021, according to data from the Migration Policy Unit of the country's Ministry of the Interior.

EFE

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