Central American Caravan Overwhelms Mexican National Guard

On Thursday, a Central American migrant caravan traveling on foot overwhelmed the Mexican National Guard trying to contain its advance and resumed its march toward Mexico City.

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The migrants and guard members clashed on the highway linking the towns of Pijijiapan and Tonala in Chiapas state, leaving at least two guard members injured and many people arrested.

Upon reaching the highway, federal agents got out of their vehicles with shields in their hands and created a barrier to prevent migrants from moving forward. The anti-riot groups initially managed to intimidate the asylum seekers, who ran away from the repressive operation. A short time later, however, the situation changed.

At the scene, some 50 migrants counterattacked the National Guard with sticks and stones. This strong reaction occurred amid the memory of the death of a Cuban migrant who was shot to death by the National Guard over the weekend. After about 10 minutes, the officers rushed into their vehicles to get away as quickly as possible from the site. The caravan then continued moving down the road.

After the altercation, the caravan, composed of some 4,000 migrants, mostly from Central America and Haiti, departed from Pijijiapan on its trek north toward Tuxtla Gutierrez City in the Chiapas state.

The caravan departed on Oct. 23 from Tapachula City, which borders Guatemala, with the stated objective of reaching Mexico City to regularize migrants' immigration status before setting off again for the U.S. border.

The Central American region is seeing an unprecedented exodus this year. Between January and August, Mexico had reported the entry of more than 147,000 undocumented migrants, tripling the number in 2020, according to figures from the Mexican government.