From Mexico, the Reality of the Migrant Caravan

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2018

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jonathan Blitzer spent a week in Mexico with the so-called caravan—a group of about five thousand migrants, most of them from Honduras, who are making a dangerous journey on foot to the U.S. border. Donald Trump, who has described the caravan as “invaders” who might include terrorists and criminals, is using the issue to galvanize Republicans for the midterms. The reality, which Blitzer describes to David Remnick, is remarkably different: exhausted people walking thirty miles a day in sandals and Crocs, sleeping largely in the open, and wholly dependent on townspeople along their route and a few aid groups for food and water. They travel in a group for protection from kidnappers, criminals, and the notoriously severe Mexican immigration authorities. They know little about how their trek has been politicized in the U.S. Those who make it to the U.S. border will likely be greeted by an overwhelming show of American force, but, for these migrants, almost any uncertainty is better than the certain poverty and violence of their home country. Plus, a group of progressive women in rural Texas has been organizing in secret, but some of them are ready to speak out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:09.7	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The election this week is going to be, quote, an election of the caravan.
0:17.6	That's according to the president of the United States. Donald Trump has talked about the
0:21.9	migrant caravan that it's now in Mexico relentlessly, unceasingly, he's trying to whip up as much
0:28.4	fear as he can on the eve of the midterm elections. He's described it as an invading army
0:34.3	with potential terrorists and criminals in their midst. The reality of the
0:39.3	caravan is something entirely different, and one of our reporters is on the ground to describe it.
0:45.0	The New Yorker's Jonathan Blitzer spent a week reporting on the caravan, walking alongside them,
0:50.9	and talking all day long with the thousands of people who have been heading north.
0:55.2	I reached Jonathan Blitzer in Mexico.
0:58.5	John, you've spent a week embedded in the migrant caravan, as it's been called, traveling from Honduras north toward the border between Mexico and Texas, although that's a long way away.
1:09.4	Where did you join up? How far into the journey
1:11.9	has it been? And how many people were along? By the time I joined the group, they had been
1:18.4	traveling for a few weeks. I met them in southern Mexico, in the state of Chiapas, as they were
1:26.3	in a small city of about maybe 50,000 residents called
1:30.2	Mapastepec. And by then, the group had pretty much been, you know, steady at a little over
1:36.7	5,000 people. And what they've been doing is they've been kind of skirting the western edge of the
1:41.8	state of Chiapas, north bit by bit walking about
1:45.0	25 to 30 miles a day how many hours a day is that yeah i mean they start so so they start
1:51.0	early they start before the sun is up so they started around four in the morning sometimes even
1:55.0	earlier because it's so hot and once the sun comes up by eight in the morning and it's 90 95 degrees
2:00.2	and they're walking along a highway and so the heat really up by eight in the morning and it's 90, 95 degrees, and they're walking along a highway.
	...

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