In migrant caravan, safety in numbers and no smuggling fees
Border security has increased expense, danger of solo trips
PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico — Kenia Yoselin Gutierrez had long thought about migrating from her native Honduras to the United States, but stories of others who made the trip scared her off: migrants being raped or disappearing, children stolen.
When she heard about the caravan that has now grown into several thousand people traveling through southern Mexico, she saw her chance. Her 5-year-old daughter, sister and niece joined her.
“It’s not so easy to walk this road alone and with children,” the 23-year-old said, sitting with her sister and their daughters under a tarp near the main square in the southern Mexican town of Pijijiapan. “But while we are accompanied like this, it’s not so dangerous.”
The tropical sun may be hot, the road long and Mexican authorities unhelpful and even harassing, but many in the caravan say traveling in a large group helps safeguard them from the dangers that plague the trail northward.
It’s also a relatively inexpensive way to make the trip, as intensified U.S. efforts to seal the border have driven the price smugglers charge as high as $12,000.
At the same time, kidnapping and extorting money from migrants has become big business for Mexican criminal organizations, especially near the U.S. border, making it more difficult for people to attempt crossings on their own.
The result has been caravans like this one and the camaraderie that comes amid thousands of strangers who all share a common history and goal.
“We are from the same country,” said Harlin Sandoval, who was waiting with several hundred others on the highway outside Pijijiapan, hoping to hitch a ride from passing trucks. “And I feel more protected.”
On Friday, the caravan set out for its most ambitious single-day trek since the migrants crossed into the southern Mexican state of Chiapas a week ago: a 60-mile hike up the coast from Pijijiapan to the town of Arriaga.
The group has thinned considerably from exhaustion and illness, and was about 4,000-strong compared with its peak of more than 7,000.