A caravan of migrants, mostly from Central America, head north along coastal highway just outside of Huehuetan at Chiapas State, Mexico, on Sunday, October 24, 2021.
A group of about 2,000 mainly Central American migrants has continued their mass exodus from the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, reaching a town about 26 kilometres away.
Migrants walked in the early morning on Sunday, starting out before dawn, to avoid the burning heat.
Mostly from Honduras and El Salvador, many were accompanied by small children.
By midday on the second day of their march, they reached the town of Huehuetan, in southern Chiapas state.
Unlike previous marches, the one that started on Saturday from Tapachula did not include as many Haitian migrants, thousands of whom reached the US border around Del Rio, Texas in September.
Minor scuffles
Tens of thousands of migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti have been waiting in the southern city of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, for refugee or asylum papers that might allow them to travel, but have grown tired of delays in the process.
Eduardo Polanco, a migrant from El Salvador who's been in Mexico for more than a month with his family of 5 said he holds a document signed by a judge that authorises them to keep walking.
On the first day of their march, the migrants pushed past a line of state police who were trying to stop them.
There were minor scuffles and a small child suffered a slight head wound, but the migrants continued on their way.
They made it only a few miles to the nearby village of Alvaro Obregon Saturday before stopping to rest for the night at a baseball field.
Carlos Alfaro, a 70-year-old migrant from El Salvador, said they can migrate "Thanks to God", as "Without money, there's nothing."
Police, immigration agents, and National Guard have broken up smaller attempts at similar breakouts earlier this year.
Reminiscent marches
In August, National Guard troops in riot gear blocked several hundred Haitians, Cubans, and Central Americans who set out walking on a highway from Tapachula.
Mexico requires migrants applying for humanitarian visas or asylum to remain in the border state of Chiapas, next to Guatemala, for their cases to be processed.
Anthony Beltrandez, a Cuban who left his country in 2018 to go to Uruguay, had been waiting for 1 1/2 months in Tapachula for papers that would allow him to reach the US border.
"But they took a long time," said Beltrandez, a furniture restorer. So he decided to join the group of migrants who left Tapachula on Saturday.
"There has been a lot of heat, a lot of sun," Beltrandez said of the walk.
In January, a larger caravan of migrants tried to leave Honduras but was blocked from crossing Guatemala.
Jose Antonio, a Honduran in the latest group who did not want to give his last name because he feared it could affect his case, said he had been waiting in Tapachula for two months for an answer on his request for some sort of visa.
"They told me I had to wait because the appointments were full," the construction worker said. "There is no work there (in Tapachula), so out of necessity I joined this group."
The marches are reminiscent, but nowhere near as large, as the migrant caravans that crossed Mexico in 2018 and 2019.
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