After a bad street twist of fate killed fifty five undocumented migrants in a truck on a chief transit direction to america, Mexico on Friday entreated Washington to reconsider its migration policy.
Bodies draped in white sheets covered the roadside close to Tuxtla Gutierrez withinside the southern Mexican kingdom of Chiapas, wherein a truck transporting a few one hundred sixty migrants — maximum from Central America — overturned Thursday.
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Passengers, bleeding and with damaged bones, lay in the street crying out in ache after the cutting-edge catastrophe to befall determined humans journeying via Mexico searching for a higher existence withinside the United States.
More than a hundred humans have been injured.
Thousands strive the lengthy, regularly dangerous, and costly adventure each yr to get away violence and poverty of their domestic countries in South and Central America.
Such tragedies, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stated Friday, ought to circulate the sector to address “the underlying hassle” — despair.
“The migration hassle can’t be solved via way of means of coercive measures, however via way of means of possibilities for paintings and well-being. People do not go away their villages for pleasure, they do it out of necessity,” he stated.
If america desired to save you migration to its shores, introduced Lopez Obrador, it ought to spend money on social applications in Central America — a be counted he has mentioned with Joe Biden.
But “there’s slowness,” stated the Mexican leader.
The sufferers of Thursday’s twist of fate, government stated, have been from Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
Most of the useless have been from Guatemala, stated Lopez Obrador.
“It turned into terrible to pay attention the wailing. I simply concept approximately helping,” 18-yr-antique Sabina Lopez, who lives close to the scene of the twist of fate, informed AFP.
The driver, who fled the scene, turned into allegedly rushing while he misplaced manipulate of the truck.
The National Institute of Migration stated it turned into operating to pick out the useless, pay for funerals and repatriate bodies. It stated survivors might be allowed to live in Mexico.
– ‘Don’t near your eyes’ – The loss of life toll is possibly to rise, with a few of the injured taken to health center in a critical condition, in line with Luis Manuel Garcia, a nearby civil safety official.
Lopez informed AFP she noticed a person pleading together along with his wounded companion.
“Don’t visit sleep, do not near your eyes,” she recalled him saying. “Remember what you promised your mother! Hold on.”
Another close by resident, Isaias Diaz, who arrived 15 mins after the twist of fate, defined a ghastly scene, with “a number of humans mendacity around, a number of them have been already useless.”
Diaz stated he noticed “five, six children, injured … People (who had) damaged legs, ribs, heads, cuts on their necks, everything.”
“The crying, the ache, the desperation. It turned into a totally unsightly atmosphere,” he stated.
– Broken hearts – People got here spontaneously from close by settlements Friday to area candles on the twist of fate site, and pray.
“Our hearts are damaged,” stated Rocio Hernandez, a 52-yr-antique housewife.
The Attorney General’s Office has opened a murder investigation, at the same time as authorities officers denied the truck were allowed via a roadblock earlier than the crash.
Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei and the Vatican expressed condolences to the sufferers and their cherished ones.
“Migratory options and felony avenues are had to keep away from tragedies like this,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated on Twitter.
Human traffickers normally cover undocumented migrants in vehicles bringing them from Guatemala into Mexico, from wherein they head north to the United States border. Accidents are common.
Last month, 12 migrants died while vehicles crashed and burned in Chiapas.
In a case that bowled over a rustic lamentably acquainted with violence, sixteen Guatemalans and 3 Mexicans have been observed in January burned to loss of life internal a truck with 113 bullet holes withinside the kingdom of Tamaulipas.
Migrants have informed AFP that the truck adventure includes hours locked up with out ventilation, fending off consuming water in order now no longer to must urinate. Drivers, they say, forget about pleas for sparkling air.
Faced with those dangers, many migrants decide alternatively to enroll in so-known as caravans mission the lengthy adventure on foot, enduring excessive climate and different hardships, along with extortion from drug gangs.
The waft of undocumented migrants has growth due to the fact that Biden got here to workplace with a promise to scrap the hardline border guidelines of his predecessor Donald Trump.
Mexican government have detected extra than 190,000 migrants among January and September, 3 instances as many as in 2020. Some 74,three hundred had been deported.
The United States, for its part, recorded 1.7 million humans getting into illegally from Mexico among October 2020 and September, a record. Many have been expelled.