MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador thanked Guatemala on Friday for helping the nearly 100,000 victims. 600 Mexicans who crossed the border into Guatemala to escape drug cartel violencebut also minimized the violence that drove them there.
In his first remarks since the refugees began fleeing earlier this week, the president added that Mexico is a big country and that, like in many other parts of the world, “there are conflicts.”
“Our (political) opponents want to see that our government is unstable, that violence dominates and that our country is destroyed,” he said. The National Guard would secure the area and the situation would be resolved quickly, he said.
About 580 people have fled violence in the Mexican state of Chiapas, including men, women, children and the elderly, according to a report by the Guatemalan government.
Families crossing the border into the Guatemalan municipality of Cuilco They said they had been forced to flee by shootings and that the drug cartels had employed locals at checkpoints and used them as human shields in the fight against their rivals.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo said this on Wednesday His administration would coordinate the humanitarian response, although little evidence of that has been forthcoming. Arévalo said his administration was working with local authorities near the border to help Mexicans “who are fleeing the conflict between groups that is happening on the Mexican side.”
Still, that was more than the Mexican side, where authorities only responded to requests for comment on the situation on Friday.
Two of Mexico’s most powerful cartels from the northern states of Sinaloa and Jalisco have been battling for more than a year for control of smuggling routes in southern Mexico, leading to several displacements.
In June, about 5,000 people were displaced by violence in another part of Chiapas, after gunmen set fire to houses in the town of Tila.
In September last year, Mexico’s president admitted that cartels had cut off electricity in some cities in Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, and government personnel were banned from entering the predominantly rural area to repair electricity cables.
