Central American Moms Track Down Six Long-Lost Offspring in Mexico EFE
go to original November 2, 2012

More and more minors are making the long journey from Central America through Mexico and on to the US - alone. Al Jazeera's Rachel Levin reports from Tenosique, Mexico.

The Central American moms touring Mexico in search of sons and daughters who disappeared after leaving their homelands have managed to find six of their missing offspring, participants said.

The caravan of mothers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua entered Mexico on Oct. 15, and this Saturday will wind up their travels around 14 Mexican states.

Their final reunion with a long-lost family member took place late Thursday in the municipality of Huehuetan near the Guatemala border, when Leonarda Chacon hugged her son Jose Marvin Zelaya Chacon, whom she had not seen since he left Honduras five years ago.

Zelaya Chacon, 37, who lost contact with his family because of money problems, now lives and works on a ranch in Chiapas state with his Mexican wife and their 18-month-old son.

The caravan of Central American mothers has toured Mexico every year since 2006 and includes sit-ins and stops outside of hospitals, medical examiners' offices and public plazas in hopes of finding the missing immigrants and to demand that the authorities protect the undocumented as they travel toward the United States.

U.S.-bound migrants headed for the United States are often targeted by Mexican criminal organizations, which kidnap them or try to forcibly recruit them to join their gangs.

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