At least ten migrants died and twenty-five others were injured on Sunday, October 1, when a truck in which they were traveling illegally overturned on a highway in the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico, on the border with Guatemala, according to local authorities. A source from the prosecutor’s office, who asked not to be identified, explained to Agence France-Presse that the victims would be women, including a minor, from Cuba.
The truck was partially destroyed in the accident, which occurred in the early hours of the morning, on the section of highway that connects Pijijiapan to Tonalá, on the Pacific coast of the state of Chiapas, from where many migrants want to reach the United States. This is the second accident of this type in less than a week. On Thursday, September 28, two migrants were killed and twenty-seven others were injured when the truck transporting them also overturned in the state of Chiapas.
At the beginning of August, in the west of the country, at least eighteen people died and twenty-three others were injured in the accident of a bus, which fell into a ravine. It mainly transported migrants. In December 2021, fifty migrants died in a truck accident, also in the state of Chiapas. Most were from Central America, including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Many migrants cross Mexico illegally, crammed into buses, trucks and even freight trains in inhumane conditions in an attempt to reach the United States. This weekend, in the northern states of Chihuahua and Zacatecas, nearly three thousand migrants were left stranded in isolated areas when the freight trains they were traveling on stopped for no apparent reason.
The “most dangerous land migration route in the world” in 2022
Last week, the largest rail operator suspended 30% of its operations, overwhelmed by the influx of undocumented foreigners. The US Border Patrol officially recorded 1.8 million migrant crossings at its southern border between October 2022 and August 2023.
A report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), released on September 12, found that the US-Mexico border was the “most dangerous land migration route in the world” in 2022, with 686 dead or missing recorded. Migrants are victims, during their journey to the United States, of smugglers, but also of attacks by criminals, as well as sometimes by the authorities themselves.
A UN working group on arbitrary detention denounced on Friday the extortion of “vulnerable migrants” by “officials, including police officers”. More than 240,000 migrants were placed in detention centers in Mexico in the first half of the year, in many cases beyond the legal deadline, the UN rapporteurs also denounced.
Faced with the influx of migrants who are “overwhelming” Mexico, the president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, called for “help” from his American counterpart. On Friday, Washington and Mexico promised to redouble their efforts to strengthen their economic and security cooperation around the issue of migration, as well as drug and arms trafficking.
