About 600 migrants set off in a caravan from the northern Honduran town of San Pedro Sula on 15 January, hoping to reach the United States.
Hundreds of young men, women and children from Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba had gathered overnight and early in the morning at the city’s central bus station.
Shortly after dawn, they headed to the Guatemala border hoping that traveling in a group would be safer or cheaper than hiring smugglers or trying it themselves. A small second group soon joined.
Fabrisio Ordonez, a young Honduran laborer, said he had joined the group in hopes of “giving my family a new life”. “The dream is to be able to do many things in Honduras in the United States,” he said, adding that he was pessimistic that left-wing-elect President Xiomara Castro, who will take office on January 27, would be able to do 12 years of scandal-stricken quickly solve the economic and social problems of the Central American nation after the conservative administration of
“They’ve looted everything,” he said. “It’s going to be very difficult for this government to mend things.” Nicaraguan marcher Ubaldo López hoped that local authorities would not try to disrupt the group, as they have had many in the past.
“We know this is a very difficult road and we ask God and the Honduran government not to put any more barriers to use on the border with Guatemala,” he said.
He said he hoped Guatemala and Mexico would also allow the group to pass and the US government would “open the doors for us” – despite recent examples of regional governments, often under US pressure, trying to stop such caravans. Is.
Huge numbers of migrants, many from Central America and Haiti, have crossed the US border over the past year, causing a headache for President Joe Biden’s administration.
The US Border Patrol has said it had more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants on the Mexican border between the same months in September 2020 and 2021 – more than four times the previous fiscal year’s total.
Mr Biden has backed proposals for $7 billion in aid to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in hopes that an improvement in economic conditions will slow migration.
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