The accident occurred on a highway in the state of Chiapas, the main access point for undocumented immigrants, when the trailer hit a wall, allegedly due to speeding.
Covered with white sheets, the corpses were arranged in a row on the road, in the midst of an intense mobilization of paramedics, authorities and residents of the place such as Sabina López, observed AFP.
“Do not fall asleep! Do not close your eyes! Remember what you promised your mother! Hold on!”, Says Sabina, who was pleading with a migrant to his companion after the mishap.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador lamented the tragedy and said it was a “very painful” event, according to a message on Twitter.
“I sympathize with the families of the victims, to whom we offer all the necessary consular assistance, including repatriations,” Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said on the same social network.
The Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, indicated that the victims are from different countries.
“Most of them are from Guatemala,” said Luis Manuel García, state director of Civil Protection, citing survivors.
The tragedy occurred three days after a criticized US program that forces migrants to wait in Mexico for a response to their asylum applications was reactivated by court order.
The wounded were transferred to public and private hospitals, while the National Migration Institute reported that it works to “identify the bodies, cover funeral expenses and facilitate the repatriation of the remains.”
He also offered “humanitarian assistance” and regularize the migratory situation of the survivors.
Television images showed the deployment of ambulances, firefighters and rescuers at the scene, while some shocked migrants awaited medical attention.
The event occurred between the city of Chiapa de Corzo and the capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
“Migratory alternatives and legal avenues are required to avoid tragedies like this one,” the United Nations Office for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Twitter.
The transfer of migrants in trucks is one of the most common methods with which human traffickers intern them into Mexican territory, with the aim of reaching the northern border and trying to cross into the United States.
This modality is also one of the most feared, as travelers have told AFP on the Mexican-American border.
According to these testimonies, migrants spend hours locked in cabins without ventilation and avoiding drinking water so as not to have to urinate, without the drivers answering their prayers to stop and not die of suffocation. Some perish on the way.
Fleeing poverty and violence in their countries, others have preferred to be part of caravans that make much of the long journey on foot, subjected to extreme climates and the threat of organized crime.
The accident coincided with the start of the Summit for Democracy by US President Joe Biden, who excluded Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti, the origin of most of Latin American undocumented migration, from the meeting. .
Analysts such as Michael Shifter believe that this measure, which also involves Bolivia, may make it difficult to solve the migration crisis.
On their way to the United States, the migrants are also victims of abuses by Mexican authorities, according to the Oenegés, and of accidents like this Thursday.
On November 9, 12 migrants, including several Central Americans, died in Chiapas in an accident that involved two trucks that were burned.
In October, three Hondurans died and 23 more were injured when the vehicle in which they were traveling overturned in the eastern state of Veracruz.
Also in that region, four Cubans lost their lives in a road accident in September.
In another case that caused commotion, on January 22, 16 Guatemalans and three Mexicans were found charred in a vehicle that had 113 gunshot wounds in the state of Tamaulipas (bordering the United States).
Due to this fact, 12 elite police officers from Tamaulipas were arrested, where in August 2010 another 72 migrants, mostly Central Americans, were killed by alleged gunmen of the drug trafficking gang Los Zetas.
The flow of undocumented immigrants multiplied after the coming to power of Biden, who promised to analyze their cases.
More than 190,000 migrants have been detected by Mexican authorities between January and September, triple the number in 2020. Some 74,300 have been deported.
The United States, in turn, recorded that 1.7 million people entered illegally from Mexico between October 2020 and last September, a historical record.
Source From: Ambito
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