Migrants head for Mexico City in push to US border
A LARGE group of Central Americans pushed on toward Mexico City from a coastal state, planning to exit a part of the country that has long been treacherous for migrants seeking to get to the United States.
At a gymnasium in Cordoba, about 1,000 members of a migrant caravan that has been moving northward through Mexico voted to try to get to the capital on Monday by walking and hitching rides.
Cordoba is 178 miles from the capital by the shortest route, which would be the group’s longest single-day journey yet since they began more than three weeks ago.
A few hundred others had already arrived at a large outdoor sports area in the capital, where they lounged on benches and watched locals play football.
City employees piled hot food on to Styrofoam plates for the migrants, some of whom had hopped freight lorries to speed their arrival to the capital.
The new day’s march to Mexico City did not start easily.
Migrants briefly blocked traffic on the busy road to beseech passing lorry drivers for a ride, but none offered one. The weary caravan participants made it to Cordoba after a 124-mile trek through Veracruz, a state where hundreds of migrants have disappeared in recent years, falling prey to kidnappers looking for ransom payments.
The estimated 4,000 migrants in Veracruz are still hundreds of miles from the nearest US border point.
They hope to regroup in the Mexican capital, seeking medical care and rest while awaiting stragglers.
The caravan has found strength in numbers as it meanders north, with townspeople coming out to offer food, water, fresh clothes and replacement footwear.
Other migrants who had moved out ahead of the main body rested at a church in Puebla, a city roughly midway between Cordoba and Mexico City.
It is unclear what part of the US border the caravan will aim for eventually, or how many may splinter off on their own.
Most of the migrants said they remain convinced that travelling as a large mass is their best hope for reaching the US.
The migrants generally say they are fleeing rampant poverty, gang violence and political instability primarily in the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.