The caravan trip of several hundred migrants from Central America to the border with Mexico has been an annual event for the past 10 years. Many of these migrants take this journey partly in search of that safety and better life they lack in their home countries, and partly as a political rallying cry. This year’s caravan of migrants grew from the usual 300 to over 1,600 people setting off on foot toward the Mexican border.
The majority of people who joined the caravan this year include migrants from Honduras, where increased gang violence “has made the murder rate one of the highest in the world.” Increased tension in the country has also been felt because of the current political crisis. Many Hondurans believe that the U.S.-backed president Juan Orlando Hernandez stole the presidential election in November, and several days of violent protests followed the election. The size of the caravan triggered negative reactions from the United States, the President tweeted that the group was a threat to border security. The President ultimately decided to deploy National Guard troops to assist border patrol along the southwest border.
Alex Mensing, an organizer with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, who helped organize this year’s caravan said that the group’s main objective to draw attention to the conditions of poverty and violence in Central America and the role the U.S. has in creating those conditions may have been lost, and worries that the response from the U.S. “may embolden anti-immigrant hate groups.” Some of the demands of the migrants that are part of the caravan include “calling for an end to political corruption in their home countries and an end to U.S. aid for weapons in Central America.”