Truck accident with undocumented migrants in Mexico, in which 55 people died, is the result of a latent problem

Since Thursday night, the American continent laments the tragic event that ended the lives of 55 – official figure as of this Friday afternoon – migrants who were in a truck that crashed in the state of Chiapas, southern Mexico. In total, there were around 160 migrants crammed into the vehicle.

Among the wounded he caused were two Ecuadorians, according to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry, which added that the prognosis for their condition was reserved. One is 25 and the other 40.

The accident occurred on Thursday afternoon on a highway in Chiapas, the main access point for undocumented immigrants to Mexico, when the driver lost control of the vehicle, allegedly due to speeding.

The driver fled, the National Guard said, indicating that the truck belongs to a company domiciled in Mexico.

The Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation for homicide, while government authorities denied that the trailer had previously passed through an official checkpoint.

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.

“Do not sleep! Do not close your eyes! Remember what you promised your mom! Hold on! ”Sabina says that a migrant pleaded with his partner after the accident.

Six of the deaths occurred in Chiapas hospitals. “There are very serious people; could rise “the death toll, he told the AFP the regional secretary of Civil Protection, Luis Manuel García.

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said that “these misfortunes have to serve to raise awareness and address the underlying problem.”

“The migratory problem is not solved with coercive means, but there have to be opportunities for work, for well-being. People do not leave their villages for pleasure, they do it out of necessity ”, he pointed out in his daily conference. However, Mexico has also taken greater action to control migration, partly at the request of the United States in recent years.

For Lorena Mena, from the Continente Móvil organization, specialized in the investigation and analysis of migratory phenomena, it is not that before the migrants did not use these means to transport themselves, but that what happened is a sample of the magnitude in which it is taking place this year ; And this has to do not only with the coyotage networks that are moving thousands of dollars with the desperation of the people, but also with an immigration policy in the Mexico-US region. That is forcing people to opt for clandestine transit.

“Migrant caravans, which are a way of visibly traveling through Mexico and avoiding being victims of traffickers or organized crime, as has happened when traveling on the La Bestia train or in small groups, have been persecuted and mistreated by the immigration authorities to let them not go on their way. In addition, in recent months, they put an unconstitutional rule of requiring documents from people who travel in buses to verify their immigration status, and the same interstate bus cooperatives (here in Mexico there are no provinces, they are called state) have issued announcements that they do not sell you tickets or let you go up without showing your papers, violating the right to free movement, because in Mexico being a migrant without papers is not ‘illegal’, it is just an administrative offense. In the end, people are choosing to travel like this and there have been several arrests of trailers or small trucks carrying migrants. This misfortune only confirms that human trafficking networks have gained much more ground and that people do not stop emigrating with everything and the risks they are taking due to the impossibility of doing so through regular channels, ”says Mena.

He also comments that when migrants enter through Chiapas, most of the trafficking networks make the connection to offer them transportation through Mexico until they reach the border with the United States, since they already have agreements with carriers, which can only be identified when excess load is observed in vehicles.

Since September, the National Migration Institute of Mexico has been detecting trailers, moving trucks, etc., taking Central Americans, Asians, Ecuadorians as well, from Chiapas to various points, even to Tijuana, in the state of Baja California, bordering the United States. United.

William Murillo, former minister of the National Secretariat for Migrants of Ecuador and director of 1800Migrante.com, an organization that provides legal aid to migrants in the United States, comments that taking migrants from one point to another in Mexico is a great business, since that, for example, in the case of the crashed truck there were more than 150 people, and if each person pays $ 1,000 it is more than $ 150,000 in total.

“The trip (seeking to get to the United States in an undocumented way) is a lottery: you may arrive, it may not be, that you die, that you drown, that they kidnap you, that they rape you, that they deport you … Despite the fact that all these warnings have existed for a long time, Latin Americans, including Ecuadorians, continue to leave (their countries) by the thousands ”, says Murillo, for whom the recent accident is another great tragedy, but it should not be forgotten that Every day there are deaths, accidents and other situations in which migrants suffer a lot.

Murillo adds that such a trip, with a large number of people, is something organized by coyoteros who move large groups to represent a good amount of money, regardless of the risks these people suffer.

And he comments that, despite what happened with the Ecuadorians on this occasion, the numbers of compatriots seeking to reach the United States have dropped, since in August 17,000 Ecuadorians had been detained, expelled and deported from the United States, but now the The figure does not exceed 900. But they still continue to arrive and the actions of the State for this irregular migration from the country are not working. (I)