Guatemala forces hold back migrants with batons, tear gas
Guatemalan police and soldiers launched tear gas and wielded batons and shields against a group of Honduran migrants that tried to push through their roadblock yesterday.
A group of about 2000 migrants had stopped short of the roadblock the night before.
The roadblock was strategically placed at a chokepoint on the two-lane highway to Chiquimula in an area known as Vado Hondo. It’s flanked by a tall mountainside and a wall leaving the migrants with few options.
About 100 migrants tried to make their way through authorities but the security forces beat them back and fired tear gas. None made it through and the larger remaining contingent kept its distance during the melee.
Some migrants were injured by baton strikes.
One man, who did not give his name, leaned against a wall near police with a bandaged head.
“They hit me in the head,” he said. “I didn’t come with the intention of looking for problems with anybody. We’re brothers, Central Americans. We’re not looking for trouble. We just want to pass.”
Later, hundreds of migrants sat down on the roadway, refusing to leave and insisting they be allowed through, appealing to the soldiers as fellow Central Americans.
Leila Rodriguez, of Guatemala’s human rights office, spoke to the migrants, acknowledging “this is a distressing moment we’re experiencing”.
“We want to start a dialogue with you, to ask you to accept some of the needs of the Guatemalan people right now,” Rodriguez said, in apparent reference to President Alejandro Giammattei’s refusal to allow caravans through out of fear they could spread Covid-19.
Some of the migrants wore face masks, others didn’t, but there was little social distancing among them. Few had the negative Covid-19 tests that Guatemala requires for people entering the country.
As the standoff stretched toward 24 hours, some migrants, like Ismael Eliazar of Choloma, Honduras, lay down in the grass beside the roadway. “We have only had water, even my stomach is grumbling,” Eliazar said.
Referring to the damage wrought by two major hurricanes that hit his hometown near San Pedro Sula in November, Eliazar said “there is still mud everywhere there, everything got knocked down, we lost everything”.
Guatemalan soldiers and police had blocked part of a caravan of as many as 9000 Honduran migrants on Sunday at a point not far from where they entered the country, seeking to reach the US border.
The soldiers and riot police – about 450 in total – formed ranks across a highway.
Guatemala’s immigration agency distributed a video showing a couple of hundred men scuffling with soldiers, pushing and running through their lines, even as troops held hundreds more back.
Honduras has been ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic and the hurricanes that hit the country in November leaving its most productive northern regions in tatters.
Many of the migrants hope for a warmer reception from the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who will be inaugurated on Thursday.
So far, Biden’s team has indicated it will not make immediate changes to policies at the Us-mexico border. —AP