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XINHUA

A migrant caravan traveling by foot through southern Mexico toward the U.S. border on Thursday, Nov. 4, overwhelmed a Mexican National Guard blockade trying to contain its advance and resumed its march toward Mexico City.

The migrants and guard members clashed on the highway linking the towns of Pijijiapan and Tonala in the state of Chiapas, leaving at least two guardsmen injured and many migrants arrested, according to local media reports.

After the altercation, the caravan, composed of some 4,000 migrants, mostly from Central America and Haiti, departed from Pijijiapan on its trek north toward Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas.

Luis Rey García Villagran, an activist with the Center for Human Dignification and one of the organizers of the caravan, told local press that the caravan members were asking for sympathizers to provide buses, so exhausted migrants could continue their journey.

The caravan first departed on Oct. 23 from the city of Tapachula, which borders Guatemala, with the stated objective of reaching Mexico City to regularize migrants’ immigration status before setting off again for the U.S. border.

The Central American region is seeing an unprecedented exodus this year.

Between January and August, Mexico had reported the entry of more than 147,000 undocumented migrants, tripling the number in 2020, according to figures from the Mexican government.