The migrant march had set out on Nov. 18 with about 2,000
migrants from the southern city of Tapachula.
Migrants have grown tired of the long delay in granting
visas in Tapachula, near the Guatemala border, where many say they can’t find
work.
Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said the migrants
had agreed to stop their march Tuesday in the southern city of Mapastepec, near
Tapachula. The institute distributed video showing many of them boarding buses
to other cities in central and western Mexico.
An earlier migrant march that set out in October is now in
southern Veracruz state, but it has dwindled to several hundreds migrants, down
from a high point of some 4,000.
Mexican authorities had said the attempts to walk through
southern Mexico put the health and safety of the migrants — many accompanied by
children — at risk.
The Mexican government had relied on a strategy of
containing migrants in the southernmost part of the country to alleviate
pressure at the U.S. border.
But those states are the poorest and there is far more
opportunity to find work in Mexico’s northern and western states.
Activists claim that even migrants who have received
humanitarian visas that are supposed to allow them to travel in Mexico have
been detained by immigration agents and sent back to Tapachula.
Migrant caravans began several years ago as a way for
migrants who did not have the money to pay smugglers to take advantage of
safety in numbers as they moved toward the U.S. border. However, more recently
Guatemala and Mexico have become more aggressive in quickly breaking up the
caravans with security forces. -AP
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