Migrants Clash with Mexican Troops at Guatemala Border

Report on increasingly violent repression of the latest migrant caravan which has arrived at the Guatemala and Mexican border. For updates on this situation, check Tapachula Migrant Solidarity.

Migrants, who crossed a river on the border separating Guatemala and Mexico, threw stones at Mexican National Guard militarized police on Monday. Five National Guard pigs were injured.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is also attempting to construct a Mayan Train project through Zapatista territory in Chiapas, has conceded to doing the bidding of the far-right wing US president Trump in containing migration through Mexico with militarized pig forces.

The mostly Honduran migrants numbered around 500. They were part of a group of several thousand people that had set off last week from Honduras, fleeing the widespread hunger and poverty wrought by the US-backed coup in 2009.

Our heart breaks for all the migrants fleeing for their survival that were lied to and attacked by the Mexican National Guard today. The southern Mexico border is looking more and more like the US border everyday. #CaravanaMigrante #UntilEveryBorderIsSmashed pic.twitter.com/Sf8oXgY0Bz

— Tapachula Migrant Solidarity (@SolXxtap) January 24, 2020

Migrants resisted the repression of the state forces by throwing rocks at a few members of the National Guard militarized police who were on the banks of the river, attempting to stop their crossing, while hundreds of others ran past into Mexico.

The US white supremacist policy of family separation also causes the same effects outside its borders, as AMLO allows Trump to dictact Mexico’s enforcement of its southern border. At least two mothers’ young children went missing as the migrants on Mexican soil scattered in an attempt to avoid being detained by Mexican officials.

402 migrants were detained and transferred to immigration prisons. They will be deported to their countries of origin via airplane or bus if their legal status cannot be resolved.

Several kilometers from the border, Mexican immigration authorities filled a bus and pickup trucks with detained migrants. Mexican authorities have some 1,300 people from Honduras in migration prisons and will start deporting them back home by airplane and bus on Tuesday.

Trump has threatened to punish Mexico and Central American countries economically if they fail to curb migrant flows, resulting in a series of agreements aimed at making good on Trump’s racist campaign promises to curb immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Así fueron los primeros momentos del operativo de la Guardia Nacional contra la #CaravanaMigrante pic.twitter.com/IH1hpPsemV

— Alberto Pradilla (@albertopradilla) January 24, 2020

Over the weekend, at least 2,000 migrants had been camped in the Guatemalan border town of Tecun Uman, opposite Ciudad Hidalgo on the Mexican side.

The migrants appeared to grow impatient on the bridge over the Suchiate River that connects the two countries, after some were denied permission to cross by assembled Mexican migration officials.

According to Guatemala, at least 4,000 people entered from Honduras since Wednesday, making for one of the biggest surges since three Central American governments signed agreements with the Trump administration obliging them to also do Trump’s bidding in “dealing with” migration.

While far-right politicians like Trump and the spineless leaders of Mexico and Central American states mobilize repressive forces to enforce the artificial borders of nation-states, migrants will continue to push forward and resist the brutality of border enforcement pigs.