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Tuxtla Gutz (Mexico) (AFP) – Some 2,000 migrants of various nationalities left this Sunday from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas for Mexico City, in protest of the fire that left 40 dead in Ciudad Juárez on the night of March 27.
“Today we came out symbolically denouncing a State crime. We are missing 40 dead migrants who did nothing,” said activist Irineo Mújica, director of the Peoples Without Borders Organization, who heads the caravan that left a park in the city of Tapachula, In Chiapas.
The group is made up mainly of migrants from Central America, Venezuela, Colombia and Haiti.
According to the Mexican authorities, the fire originated when a migrant set fire to a mattress in the cell where he was staying with 67 other men, in the middle of a protest against a possible deportation.
Images from a security camera showed that, once the fire broke out, neither immigration nor security personnel did anything to evacuate the migrants.
A total of 39 migrants died at the scene, most from suffocation, and one more at a hospital.
Mújica – who calls the caravan Via Crucis Migrantes – also called for the disappearance of the National Institute of Migration (INM) “not only in name but in a structural way to cut corruption.”
The migrants carry crosses and carry banners and long flags with written slogans in which they also demand free transit through the country from the government.
A Venezuelan migrant who did not want to give her name said that she and her family have been in Tapachula for three weeks waiting for documents that will allow them to move towards the United States.
“We do not want to continue here. We have suffered a lot, more than in my country because here they have extorted us and humiliated us,” he said.
On Saturday, authorities granted humanitarian visas to Haitian and African migrants, allowing them to safely transit the country.
Although Mújica’s intention is to reach Mexico City, several migrants commented that they are looking to reach the border with the United States.
According to Mexican civil organizations, 2022 was the most tragic year for migrants in Mexico, as some 900 died trying to cross without documents from the country to the United States.
