Luis García Villagrán, director of the Center for Human Dignity, one of the organizations promoting the march, reported that yesterday they walked for eight consecutive hours from the town of Galeana to the main municipality of Pijijiapan, where they passed the night.
He said the contingent was camped in the dome of the sports unit, where on Sunday 13 undocumented immigrants were shot dead, killing one and injuring four when the truck they were traveling in failed to stop on orders from the Guard national.
He commented that the group was moving quickly and intended to continue the journey to Tonalá, Arriaga and, possibly, to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital.
Heyman Vázquez Medina, parish priest of the town of Huixtla, denounced that individuals from the National Guard and the National Migration Institute (INM) had threatened to arrest him when he transported children and women to Pijijiapan.
I carried water and medicine for the migrants, and on the way I distributed it to them. There were a lot of sick children and I told them to get in my truck, but since there were a lot of them, I made four trips.
Someone from the National Guard who was there saw me during the last transfer, three kilometers from Pijijiapan and with their cars, officers from this company and the INM blocked the road and surrounded me, he said.
He explained that, without realizing it, the men in uniform opened the back doors of his truck and dragged people out, who boarded a bus to take them back to Tapachula, but others stowaways forced them to bring them down.
He denounced that they wanted him to get all the people out of his truck, and he replied that he was taking them to the doctor because they needed treatment. He said that in this situation he called Irineo Mújica, director of “Pueblos sin Fronteras” (People without Borders), and arrived with another group of migrants, but in the fight that this created, they had to give in .
He said the troops threatened him and an INM official asked the national guards to take him to the local prosecution officer. They ultimately didn’t, but they took his truck’s license plate number and told him they would pass it on.
pgh/lcr
