Most of the 54 people killed and the dozens who were injured when a truck full of migrants flipped over in southern Mexico on Thursday were Guatemalans, authorities said on Friday, as survivors relived the horror of the accident.
The accident occurred when the truck crashed on a sharp curve outside the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the state of Chiapas, said Luis Manuel Garcia, head of the Chiapas civil protection agency.
The trailer broke open, spilling out people, when the truck crashed, according to video footage of the aftermath and civil protection authorities.
Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandon said 49 people died at the scene, and five more while receiving medical attention.
"It took a bend, and because of the weight of us people inside, we all went with it," said a shocked-looking Guatemalan man sitting at the scene in footage broadcast on social media.
"The trailer couldn't handle the weight of people."
Of more than 100 injured, 95 were from Guatemala – with the others from Honduras, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Mexico, officials said. Most of the dead were also from Guatemala. Several dozen were injured and taken to hospitals in Chiapas, which borders Guatemala.
A Reuters witness heard desperate cries and sobs from the survivors as Mexican officials rushed to the scene.
Images showed a white trailer flipped onto its side on a highway, with some people splayed out on tarps on the ground for medical care. Images also showed rows of what appear to be bodies of the accident victims wrapped in white cloths.
A video of the aftermath broadcast on social media showed a woman holding a child wailing in her lap, both bathed in blood. Another video showed a man curled up in pain inside the destroyed trailer, hardly moving as helpers pulled out bodies.
The fatalities included men, women and children, Chiapas civil protection said.
'Irregular migration is not the best way'
“It hurts when these things happen,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said about the accident, stressing that the way to tackle migration is to resolve the despair people feel at home.
“We have been insisting that one needs to address the root causes,” he said at a press conference.
Migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America typically trek through Mexico to reach the US border, and sometimes cram into large trucks organised by smugglers in extremely dangerous conditions.
“This shows us that irregular migration is not the best way,” Kevin Lopez, a spokesman for Guatemala’s presidency, told Milenio television.
El Salvador’s foreign minister Alexandra Hill said her government was working to see if Salvadorans had died.
Mexico’s national migration institute said it would offer lodging and humanitarian visas to the survivors, and Chiapas Governor Escandon said those responsible for the accident would be held to account.
Officials in Mexico routinely come across migrants packed into trailers, including 600 people found hidden in the back of two trucks in eastern Mexico last month.
Mexican authorities in Chiapas have attempted to persuade migrants to not form caravans to walk the thousands of miles to the US border, and have begun transporting people from the southern city of Tapachula to other regions of the country.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has also urged migrants not to leave their homelands for the United States.
Critics have said tougher policies lead migrants to seek out human smugglers, putting their lives at risk.
“(Authorities) generate smuggled migration that generates billions of dollars in profits,” said migrant activist Ruben Figueroa.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)
