Earthquakes Complicate Life for Central American Migrants Fleeing Violence Levi Bridges - PRI’s The World
go to original November 1, 2017

Migrants sleep on the ground at dawn at the Hermanos en el Camino shelter in Ixtepec, Oaxaca. The buildings here are too damaged by the recent earthquakes to enter. (Levi Bridges)

Life was hard enough already this summer for migrants gathered around the checkers board at the Hermanos en el Camino shelter in Ixtepec, a steamy railroad town about 450 miles south of Mexico City. But the 8.1 magnitude earthquake that devastated the Mexican state of Oaxaca in September has further complicated the lives of Central American migrants journeying north, many toward the United States. This shelter, once a well-known place of refuge, is now cordoned off with yellow caution tape. Although basic operations continue, all of the buildings are too damaged by the earthquake to enter.



As the setting sun drew long shadows along Ixtepec’s rail yard on a recent afternoon, migrants moved beds out of a dormitory at the shelter. Inspectors deemed the building too unsafe to enter. Migrants now sleep outside under large, plastic tents that make a loud crackling sound when they blow in the wind at night. Strong aftershocks still shake the buildings here, more than a month after the most powerful earthquake to strike Mexico in a century devastated the region.

“When the earthquake hit, it sounded just like a train,” said Ángel Flores, 37, of El Salvador, “only that same noise was coming from inside the earth.”

The actual train known as La Bestia, or, The Beast, rumbles past the shelter every couple of days. Migrants used to ride on top of the boxcars. But today the train tops are empty. Mexican authorities now patrol the railroad as part of an immigration crackdown, using US funding, called The Southern Border Program. Instead of riding the train northward, migrants now complete much of the trip north from the Guatemalan border to Ixtepec by walking along the railroad tracks.

This journey on foot takes some migrants weeks, leaving them more exposed and vulnerable to gangs and other criminals who wait along the way to assault them. The Hermanos en el Camino shelter is an important milestone on the trek northward, but the earthquake has complicated the shelter’s work to offer migrants aid.

Read the rest at PRI’s The World

Related: Mexico Earthquake Humanitarian Situation Report No. 7 - 31 October 2017 (UN Children's Fund)

Related: Residents Are Fleeing Mexico City’s Hippest Neighborhoods Amid Earthquake Fears (Associated Press)

Related: First Arrest Made for Building Collapses in Mexico City Earthquake (Riviera Maya News)

Update: Mexico Celebrates Day of the Dead in Year of Earthquakes, Violence (Agence France-Presse)

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