At least 52 people have died in a fateful traffic accident recorded on the highways of southern Mexico.
The first hypotheses point out that the truck in which 107 migrants traveled was circulating at great speed and lost the brakes in a pronounced curve, causing the vehicle to be dump over the shoulder.
In addition to the deadly victims, there are 55 wounded, three in a serious state.
All of them were crowded in the vehicle’s box at the time of the brutal accident.
The authorities have enclosed the place of the facts and have moved to those affected at nearby hospitals, while looking for the driver of the trailer, who went to the escape.
The tragedy took place on the outskirts of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas, around 15.30 local time.
A few meters from the accident was a military retainer that, on these highways, usually focuses its tasks in the search for undocumented migrants that travel hidden in vehicles.
The truck came out in the morning from Guatemala and was heading to Veracruz, following the traditional route that many Central Americans who want to reach us are used.
The witnesses have denounced that, when checking the severity of the facts, the driver of the truck escaped through the Grijalva River.
The governor of the State of Chiapas, Rutilio Escandón, has sent a message of “solidarity with the victims” promising that “responsibilities will be determined according to the law.”
Although they have not yet transcended the affected nationalities, the Honduran President Alejandro Giammattei, has regretted the tragedy and has offered “consular assistance for repatriation of bodies”.
The harsh conditions of the trip that migrants undertake in their desperate flight to the US had a similar chapter last October that, fortunately, it was outless without fatal victims: Mexican migratory authorities found in Tamaulipas three abandoned and no ventilation trucks, where they traveled
652 people, 349 minors.
The accident has transcended the same day that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has published its annual report on the insecurity of migrants in the region.
The conclusions of the study are demolding: At least 650 people died this year when trying to cross the border between Mexico and the US, the highest figure since the Agency began to document it in 2014. Michele Klein Solomon, Regional Director of the IOM
Central, North and the Caribbean, denounced that “the growing number of migrant deaths in the region is very alarming.”
With these figures, the victims accumulated since 2014 exceed 5,755.
On December 6, Joe Well and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) decided to reinstate the ‘Stay in Mexico’ program, a plan devised by Former President Trump to force migrants who request asylum in their country to wait for it to be
Resolve their procedures in the dangerous Mexican border cities.
The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that 71,000 migrants have been expelled under this protocol that qualify as “aberrant”.
Ari Sawyer, Investigator of the NGO, believes that the border agencies of both governments “have been involved in a large number of abuses that are intrinsic to the program” and denounces that “there is no way for a program designed to postpone the right to request
Asylum, forcing people to wait at dangerous sites, can operate in a way that respects human rights. ”
Natural disasters and the economic crisis caused by the pandemic have fueled a diaspora of unprecedented Central Americans.
The figures thrown by the different border agencies confirm that trend: US has detained 1.7 million migrants this year at the border, the triple of the average registered between 2012 and 2020, while its neighbor neighbor has stopped near
230,000, more than in any other year.
The decision of the Government of López Obrador of militarizing the highways of the south of the country has forced migrants to take more risks and travel in a clandestinity that, as this fateful accident shows, often has deadly consequences.
