A group of roughly 1,200 migrants began walking before dawn on Wednesday from southern Mexico. Their destination is the nation’s capital, Mexico City, where they hope to formalize their immigration status and secure better work opportunities after enduring a long and frustrating wait near the Guatemalan border. The group was primarily made up of Cuban nationals, though it also included people from Honduras, Ecuador, Brazil, and Haiti.
A Shift in Migration Goals
In contrast to previous migrant “caravans” that aimed directly for the United States border, the objective of this group and others seen over the past year is to pressure Mexican authorities. Their goal is to expedite the lengthy asylum process and allow them to leave southern Mexico, an area offering very few employment prospects.
Losiel Sánchez, a Cuban migrant, and his wife arrived in Tapachula, close to the Guatemala border, last November. They had initially hoped to use the U.S. government’s CBP One app to secure an appointment to cross the U.S. border, request asylum, and likely be paroled into the U.S. while their case was processed. However, U.S. President Donald Trump ended that program, leaving tens of thousands of migrants stranded as they traveled north. Sánchez then decided to pursue asylum in Mexico. Despite repeated visits to Comar, Mexico’s asylum agency, the couple still has no decision on their legal status. He recounted being defrauded by someone posing as a lawyer who promised to accelerate their process. Sánchez expressed his hardship, stating, “Everything is expensive and I can’t pay rent,” and explaining his motivation for heading to Mexico City: “There’s no work, they don’t want to give you work if you don’t have papers.”
Desperate for Stability
Another Cuban migrant, Anery Sosa, has been stuck in Tapachula for a year. Her attempt to gain asylum was halted after her necessary documents were stolen. She has since had a daughter with a Mexican national and now hopes to find daytime childcare so she can work, as her husband’s earnings are insufficient to cover rent and food for their family.
The migrant group seems to have organized organically through social media platforms, where frustrated individuals rallied to walk their way out of southern Mexico. Historically, Mexican authorities have sometimes allowed migrants to walk for a few days before intervening to offer assistance with documents or transportation.
Author’s Opinion
The migrants’ decision to walk hundreds of miles to the capital is less a spontaneous risk and more a desperate, calculated move to force bureaucratic action. Their willingness to endure such a trek highlights the utter failure of the current asylum system in southern Mexico, where migrants are bottlenecked without papers, work, or basic stability. This forced march is essentially a public shaming of the slow Mexican system, and it is a stark illustration that for many migrants, physical movement is the only effective protest tool they have left against institutional paralysis.
Featured image credit: Freepik
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