Migrant caravans towards America...a journey of hope besieged by hunger

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Before reaching the US border, a migrant caravan found itself waging a daily battle to secure food in southern Mexico. Families who have spent days without adequate meals share what they have, and continue walking despite exhaustion, on a journey in which the search for a better life turns into a harsh test of survival, and crossing the road becomes a challenge that precedes reaching the desired destination. The “Faith and Hope with God” caravan includes about 350 people, most of whom are from Central America. It set off from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on September 20, and crossed into Mexico, where its personnel faced food and aid shortages as they advanced through Chiapas.

Honduran immigrant Jose Celaya, traveling with his family and four children, says that the participants share food and sleep in parks and sports facilities, but the donations do not meet their needs. However, his family insists on continuing the journey north, after returning home has become an option that they do not consider available to them.

This suffering reveals part of the reason caravans form: groups moving together, often on foot, to reduce exposure to violence in the absence of safe migration routes. According to Doctors Without Borders, collective action gives migrants a greater presence that may reduce some risks, but does not eliminate them or protect them from hunger and exhaustion.

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The caravan does not always maintain a fixed number; People join them on the road, while others retreat or are unable to continue, as the International Organization for Migration has documented in previous convoys. Therefore, the announced numbers express a stage of the journey, and not necessarily all of those who started it.

As numbers change, so do the starting points; The country of origin is not always the place of departure of the convoy. The journey may begin in Honduras, while other caravans are forming inside Mexico, especially in Tapachula near Guatemala, where migrants of multiple nationalities gather.

MSF documents how the wait for documents and the lack of stable work and housing prompt people stuck in the city to leave en masse. In the current convoy, migrants who were waiting for their status to be settled in Tapachula joined, and the journey became a meeting place for different paths brought together by the search for a way out of the exhausting waiting.

But the gathering of these people does not mean that there is one party managing all the convoys; The International Organization for Migration has documented invitations via social networks to join previous trips, without proof that this was subject to a unified organization.

As for the current caravan, La Jornada newspaper reported the arrest of a Honduran who was described as one of its possible organizers, while participants denied that he was its leader. Chiapas authorities said his arrest was linked to a red notice in his country; Therefore, the attribution of driving to him remains a matter of dispute, just as providing assistance differs from organizing the trip.

Just as the beginnings of the participants differ, so do their goals. Some of them want to reach the United States, and others are looking for work and stability in central or northern Mexico. Among them is Hilson Soto, who joined after months of waiting for his status to be regularized, and hopes to find work to support his family. Thus, the road unites people who were forced to leave by the harshness of their circumstances, even if they were not united by a single final destination.