The Latin American Report # 178
Cuban migrants die in Guatemala accident
This news is from last weekend, but time—and the self-imposed rational limit I believe this report must have in terms of length—had not allowed me to cover it. The collision between an agricultural vehicle (pickup truck), a motorcycle, and a truck, resulted in the death of eleven people, including nine Cuban migrants. The distinction made about the type of vehicle—an agricultural one—in which the Cubans were traveling indicate that it is not intended for passenger transport. Unfortunately, accidents on the road are not extraordinary events, but the increasingly frequent occurrence of those involving migrants among the victims is alarming.
Irregular migrants generally travel overcrowded in extremely precarious means of transport, a risk they take in questionable and treacherous desperation. This dynamic is happening every day, it is happening right now, without the transit countries, those of origin or destination having ways to order this flow, or to order their societies. However, in the Cuban case, I have explained many times the harmful impact of U.S. policy on the economic development of the island. Then, as part of a supposedly coordinated escape valve between Havana and Daniel Ortega, many Cubans travel to Nicaragua—which does not require a visa for us—to begin the route to the southwest U.S. border from there, thus avoiding even the dangerous and costly Darién Gap crossing.
A 29-year-old Cuban citizen who survived the accident is recovering in a Guatemalan health institution (source). In México, criminals murder "by mistake"
Four day laborers were killed and seven more wounded amid an armed attack that trapped them in the pickup truck in which they were traveling last Sunday, at a geographical point belonging to the municipality of Caborca, in the northern border state of Sonora. The individuals "were attacked with gunfire by criminals who were stationed on the heights of a hill in the (referred) locality", explained the Sonora prosecutor's office in a statement. The driver of the pickup truck with some 30 passengers inside stopped and the day laborers identified themselves as such, but four of them had already died on the spot as a result of the hail of bullets. The fact that the attack was stopped after their identification fuels the hypothesis that it was "a mistake", but it is certainly unbearable the disregard for one's own life or that of others that we see within criminal groups in Mexico, especially when innocent people are killed, in this case, three minors under 15 years of age—agricultural day laborers, think about it—and a woman. As usual, no arrests have been reported in this case so far. Also over the weekend, in another Sonora municipality, Yécora, two women and a two-year-old child were massacred by hired killers "who were traveling in three armored vehicles equipped with high-caliber weapons".
In another criminal stronghold, located in the southern state of Guerrero—México is a never-ending red chronicle from north to south—attacks occurred last Monday that left another four people dead and one wounded. The local press said that those killed were drivers of the local transportation network in Chilpancingo and that one of them—a cab driver—was calcined in his vehicle. Public transport came to a standstill, with all the perpetrators of the attacks effectively escaping after executing the victims. Yesterday, Tuesday, schools and businesses did not open there. Over the weekend, two other cab drivers had been killed. The good people end up once again caught in the crossfire between criminals, in this case, distributed in the groups Los Taclos and Los Ardillos, which fight for the control of the territory. The following message circulated on the networks, and is attributed to Los Ardillos after apparently taking revenge for the death of the first two drivers on Monday: "The leadership of Los Ardillos sends the following message for the events that occurred where [two] innocent transporters lost their lives without justification offering an apology, but there had to be a forceful response to the aggression suffered by the people who for the mere fact of being originally from Petaquillas or like the murdered Chilapa driver, were attacked by members of Los Tlacos". The response? "We communicate to all the citizens of Chilpancingo and the surrounding area that they should not go out tomorrow if they do not want to be affected. We are going to clean up again".
SourceHaiti in flames
Thousands of Haitians continue in the streets, standing firm in their demand that the Prime Minister must step down, with February 7 as the supposed deadline to meet it. The level of violence seen in the protests continues to increase, with one dead and several wounded reported today. The police used tear gas and live bullets to repress the masses. So, in the metropolitan region, people have naturally adopted a sort of curfew, with schools and other public and private institutions closed. Also on Wednesday, police killed four members of a state environmental agency in Port-au-Prince, specifically assigned to the Security Brigade for Protected Areas—a diffuse structure that got out of control and is now said to be linked to leader Guy Philippe—, in a surreal display of the troubling state of violence in the continent's saddest nation. The agents of the aforementioned entity tend to be "heavily armed", and in the face of an overhaul by the disputed government of Ariel Henry—seeking to reduce its dangerous firepower—have engaged in confrontations with the police that already today had fatal consequences.
SourceAnd this is all for our report today. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
