Kids struggle; 3rd caravan enters Mexico
NILTEPEC, Mexico — Toddlers slump in strollers bouncing across the rough asphalt, and infants only a few weeks old jiggle in their fathers’ arms. Others, limp from exhaustion and nearly too big to be carried, are slung across their mothers’ chests like sacks of grain, sweaty hair plastered to their heads.
There are hundreds of children traveling in the caravan of Central American migrants. That number has fluctuated somewhat as the group’s size has grown and diminished, but kids of all ages are still everywhere and at risk of illness, dehydration and other dangers.
And if it’s exhausting for children, it’s perhaps even more so for their parents trying to care for them as they walk long hours in the sun, sleep on the ground outdoors and rely on donations of food and clothing to get by.
Pamela Valle, a 28year-old from El Progreso, Honduras, said no child should have to undertake a migration like this. But unable to find work back home, she said she had no choice but to leave and take 5-year-old Eleonor with her.
Each day when they arrive in a new town on the long trek across the steamy southern Mexico countryside, she looks first for a sheltered place to sleep. On this day that was a red tarp that a group of migrants stretched across a playground in the main square of the southern town of Tapanatepec. Then she and Eleonor went in search of food and bathrooms.
For families, the long trek has imposed a particularly grueling routine that has taken a toll after more than two weeks.
The migrants rise by 3 a.m. each day to take advantage of cooler temperatures. Parents try to feed kids who are awake while letting those small enough to carry or put in a stroller sleep. Since the group usually camps in town squares and most include some sort of playground, children run around the monkey bars in the dark while their parents pack.
Also Friday, a third caravan of migrants — this time from El Salvador — entered Mexico, bringing another 1,000 to 1,500 people hoping to reach the U.S. border.
Mexico is now faced with the unprecedented situation of having three migrant caravans stretched out over 300 miles of highways in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. The first, largest group of almost 4,000 entered almost two weeks ago and is now in Donaji, Oaxaca.
The second caravan, also of about 1,000 to 1,500 people, is now in Mapastepec, Chiapas.