GUATEMALA: Migrants and family members of missing migrants set out from Guatemala City to Mexico City to demand more security for people travelling across Central America

Record ID: 348255

  • Title: GUATEMALA: Migrants and family members of missing migrants set out from Guatemala City to Mexico City to demand more security for people travelling across Central America
  • Date: 25th July 2011
  • Summary: GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA (JULY 24, 2011) (REUTERS) GUATEMALAN FLAG
  • Embargoed: 9th August 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Guatemala, Guatemala
  • Country: Guatemala
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA1BCUQ2CLTEYTO387EFETGSH4C
  • Story Text: Thousands of migrants and family members of missing migrants gathered in Guatemala City on Sunday (July 24) as they prepared to head towards Mexico City to demand more security and kidnap prevention.
    The demonstrators met with human rights organizations in Guatemala City before they set out to cross the Mexican border along the same path that in 2010, more than 11,000 cases of murder, kidnapping, and rape were reported.
    "We support all the family members of migrants who have disappeared during their transit through Mexico," Alvaro Vasquez of Human Mobility said. "We support their parents, the children, the boys and girls, the youth, with the brothers of all migrants who unfortunately have lost their lives or were never heard from again during their migration."
    The caravan, entitled Step by Step Towards Peace, aims to call attention to abuses migrants face at the hands of criminal organizations and in some instances, authorities.
    A mother of a missing migrant told Reuters Television she hopes to find her daughter.
    "I want to accompany, I want to be useful, I want to feel that I am fighting to have my daughter back and I know that I will obtain this. I know that God is with me and I will have the good fortune of bringing back my daughter," Juana Antonia Cetino said.
    Miguel Angel Roman said he hoped to find his son who had set out for the United States but never made it.
    "Going to the United States is hard but many are lucky if they arrive and become better. That was his decision (referring to his son), to become better but he did not manage to make it because he was kidnapped by those men. We do not say that he is dead or that he is alive," he said. "Only God knows and we hope that one day we find him, however that may be, but that we find even his remains so we can leave all of these doubts behind."
    The caravan will leave Guatemala and cross into southern Mexico in bus while another group of migrants will depart from Tabasco on train. They are expected to converge in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico on July 28.
    Both groups are expected to travel through towns along the route considered to be dangerous. Their arrival in Mexico City will coincide with the visit of Felipe Gonzalez, representative of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
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