In the last migrant caravan that left Tapachula, Chiapas, last weekend, one of the men walking in the front row shouted: “We want to get to Mexico City.” The country's capital has become the new promised land. The United States is too far away for a wave of hundreds of devastated men, women and children, with no more savings than those sent to them by their relatives and those that the mafias have not yet managed to snatch from them. The footage of the US Border Patrol crackdown from a few months ago sent a very clear message to them: stay on the other side. As they headed north, crossing towns, jungles, and train tracks, Daniel Arias followed them on his cell phone, surprised: “Do you really want to come here?”

Arias is 18 years old and has been living in the capital of Mexico for three years since he arrived from a small town in El Salvador. He never imagined that his last stop on The Beast —the feared freight train that also carries thousands of migrants on its back— would be in this city, ahead of time. But I was too small to continue north alone. His brothers, some of whom had already done so three times —and been deported three times—, advised him to settle in the country. And he is still very afraid of the stories that come from the desert, the Rio Grande, drug trafficking and massacres.

But Mexico isn't Oklahoma either. From where the stories of prosperity came to his Salvadoran house by phone. His brother earned in dollars, many more a week than they had spent in the Arias' shack in their lives. And their salary freed them from more days from sunrise to sunset working the land: corn and beans. Thanks to the dollars, Arias was able to go to school. And before they taught him to read, he learned what death was. His father was shot to death in front of him when he was six years old. And just because of that, he never wanted to join a gang. The youngest of nine brothers fled El Salvador the day some gang members threatened to kill him and any man of his blood.

He prefers not to tell his mother that he has slept in ATMs in the State of Mexico. Nor that the banks of the Alameda, in the center of the capital, are a safe place, where they also dance cumbia at night and liven up her dreams. Much less than when he finally got a job, in a blacksmith shop, a client yelled at him: "Go to your country, starving", and he did not remain silent. And now he has no more income than a plate of chicken rice that he is about to eat at a migrant shelter. Who shares a windowless bunk room with six Haitians.

“And why do you want to come here?”

Gabriela Hernández runs Casa Tochán, one of the few centers in Mexico City that give asylum to the new wave of migrants who are looking for what they need in the capital. that a few months ago they would have searched for in the United States. From January to September of this year, at least 11,311 people have arrived in the city, according to figures from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar). Some statistics that possibly hide all those who have not started the process yet; or that they did so in Chiapas, but got tired of waiting for an answer —more than 63,000 have requested it on the southern border, the highest number in history— or those who have not been able to do so directly.

Doña Gaby, as the tenants call her, struggles these days to make the most of every corner of this gray space. A network of rooms, stairs and more improvised sheet metal rooms where 32 migrants live in bunk beds, mostly Haitian men who arrived a month ago from Tapachula. “Those days we became more than 80 people. Mattresses were placed in the corridors, on the terrace, at the bathroom door”, says the director.

From the shelter, which does not get institutional support and is only financed through private donations, they try to get them a job and little by little they become independent. But it is being especially hard for the Haitian population, since the language barrier is another obstacle for potential employers, according to Hernández. Those who have gotten some temporary work have done so in a construction site on the street behind, for 200 pesos a day (almost $10). And on Thursdays, between legal advice workshops for their asylum procedures, they give Spanish classes.

The government of the capital, led by Claudia Sheinbaum, warned that no exceptional measures would be taken before the new arrival of hundreds of migrants. Government shelters or other measures that alleviate the pressure that civil society centers are receiving these days will not be enabled. "From what we know, his presence will not be very long," the president said a few weeks ago. The only option they have is to request a refuge in the Comar —exceeded with cases and with little budget— and regularize their stay to get a formal job. But the bureaucracy has extended the deadlines for what is possible and many have not received an answer for months. While that happens, the only way out is to try to survive.

If Arias could choose, because choosing death is not an option, he would return to his town. He misses the countryside, the fresh air, playing soccer with his friends, going for a walk hand in hand with his mother after eating. He misses his mother a lot. Now he lives in a neighborhood of gray alleys and steep houses, with no green area other than the urban garden that an NGO has installed on the roof of the hostel. And the months, like this one, in which there is no work, not even a penny to go to the movies, he spends his time glued to Facebook. “And why do they want to come here?” he insists while watching the videos of the last caravan.

“We earn just enough to eat”

Half an hour's drive from there, a group of Haitians seeks to survive by placing and loading boxes at the Central de Abastos, the country's largest market. Max Boyer, 24, Gerline Louis, 25, and Jean Hyppolite, 45, are among the more than 500 compatriots who managed to break the siege of Tapachula, on the southern border, and reach the capital by bus a month ago .

They get up at five in the morning. They wash their faces. They put on their clothes. They hardly have breakfast: at that time nothing enters. They have to take a subway and a bus to travel a journey of more than two hours from the center of the capital, where they live in a pension, to their workplace: a marketer that sells spices as well as legumes, sauces, syrups or mix for micheladas The boxes reach from the floor to the ceiling. The counter has glass displays with chocolates, nuts and candies. “We were going to the United States, but not because we love that country, we want a better life. If we get work and papers here, we stay in Mexico,” says Boyer.

Boyer and Louis have been a couple since they met years ago in Chile. For most Haitians the journey began years ago: from the island to South America. He, a computer technician, traveled at the age of 19, alone. She a little later. In Haiti he studied Chemistry and worked in a laboratory. But now he can't find anything of his own, he comments as he places sauce boats on one of the shelves of the Central de Abastos stand. Boyer was the first to get a job when he arrived in the capital. They came from Tapachula with an unexpected surprise. Louis was pregnant. But after a few days, he began to have a severe headache. The pressure rose. He fell. It started to bleed. Lost the baby. A week ago, she joined the job with Boyer and Hyppolite, who entered shortly before her.

Louis sees reality harshly. Forcefully, she has become the most pessimistic of the three. When he speaks, he always uses a serious, sober tone. And a question dominates the atmosphere, a constant doubt: after being away from home for years; of having crossed a dozen countries in search of a better life on a journey in which each corner represents a new danger; of arriving in a city where they are supposed to welcome the migrant when asking for refuge, but where in reality there is no other option than to resist; of not earning enough to even send money home; of feeling the permanent risk of being deported, will this ever end?

“This is not what we thought,” Louis says. The three of them earn 250 pesos a day (a little more than 12 dollars), rest on Sundays and live in a room in a pension in the center of the city that costs them 1,600 pesos a month (almost 78 dollars). They don't have a kitchen, they prepare food on an electric stove. “I don't know whether to stay, I don't charge well for the jobs. We only earn enough to eat and the house is not good”, continues the girl. “We can't even make our food. I arrive very tired, I don't have time to cook. My mother in Haiti does not work, I have three sisters, seven nephews, they are my responsibility, I have to send money, and I still haven't sent anything. But I don't want to go back, it's dangerous. They kill people there just for the fun of it."

All they do is work. When they finish, they go to their pension. They are afraid of being stopped by the police if they are on the street. The two went through Brazil after Chile, but they were not convinced either. “In Chile the money was enough, but I had no papers; in Brazil I had papers, but no money”, summarizes Boyer. Hyppolite, for his part, left Haiti almost two years ago and went directly to Brazil, but his salary was not enough either. His family is scattered across the continent, looking for a living, and his only goal is to be able to send them remittances.

Racism

Olga Martínez, the manager of the place where they work, explains that it is difficult to get them a job because of the racism that still exists in Mexican society: “Some guys mistreated Max because they didn't want to to touch the merchandise because of the color of their skin.” When he hired Boyer, Hyppolite began going to the store, too, hoping they could find him something to do. More Haitians followed. “They were standing outside waiting for something to come out, it was terrible. Now there are positions that ask me for workers. They have taken me as an agency ”, narrates Martínez.

As the sun begins to set, they board a crowded bus back to the boarding house. Today Hyppolite was lucky: she got a seat by the window. Fatigue on her shoulders and the last rays of light in her eyes slowly close her eyelids. But the transhipment arrives earlier than expected and interrupts the dream. He is carrying a bunch of bananas that he has bought from the market. Dinner tonight. The three shuffle toward the subway. They start talking to each other in French. They laugh. And, suddenly, there are just three more workers returning home after a long day, joking, as if a brief parenthesis had opened, as if the migrant's path had stopped there, and life outside the wagon did not exist. for a while.

The last caravan with hundreds of Haitian and Central American migrants that left Tapachula for the capital is yet to arrive. This monster of 20 million inhabitants who come and go every day has the capacity to absorb any demographic challenge, from indigenous people from the highlands of Oaxaca to Afro-Americans from Haiti. But it also hides another reality, that of 2.5 million poor people. And starting this week, a few hundred more. With no more institutional support than waiting for a refuge process and the solidarity of NGOs, the migrant dream crashes in Mexico City.

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