TEHRAN, October 18 - More Honduran migrants tried to join a caravan of several thousand trekking through Guatemala on Wednesday, defying calls by authorities not to make the journey after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to cut off regional aid in reprisal.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The caravan has been growing steadily since it left the violent Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Saturday. The migrants hope to reach Mexico and then cross its northern border with the United States, to seek refuge from endemic violence and poverty in Central America.
Several thousand people are now journeying in the caravan, according to a Reuters witness traveling with the group in Guatemala, where men, women and children on foot or riding in trucks filled a road on their long journey to Mexico.
A first group made it to Guatemala City by dusk on Wednesday. They crammed into a migrant shelter and a primary school across the road and bedded down on inflatable mattresses.
"My husband was an electrician. They killed him nine months ago," said Carolina Aguilar, 40, from the gang-controlled town of Choloma, sitting on a patch of ground with her two daughters, 17 and 11.
"We don't have a house and I have no job. We only manage to live from gifts," she said.
Many had hitched rides or walked about 150 miles (241 km)from the Honduran border.
"We've lived in neighborhoods where our children have seen disaster after disaster," said Daisy Turcios, at an earlier stop on the road. "We have seen dead bodies thrown in front of us. So that's my goal, in truth, to reach a country where life can change for my children."
Nearby, kneeling in the dirt, Abigail Castro kissed her small son and wrapped her most precious documents into a plastic bag, waterproofing them against uncertain conditions ahead.
"Whatever money I have, I need it to buy drinks for my son, fruit," she said. Some friendly Guatemalans had offered transport in pickup trucks or cars, she said, but "everyone wants to get on" so they would have to go by foot.
Source: Reuters
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