Chiapas truck crash

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Chiapas truck crash
Tuxla truck crash.jpg
Location where the accident occurred, pictured in 2019.
Chiapas truck crash
DateDecember 9, 2021 (2021-12-09)
Location Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas, Mexico
TypeTruck crash
CauseExcessive speed
Deaths55+
Non-fatal injuries105

On December 9, 2021, a traffic accident occurred in the Mexican state of Chiapas when a freight truck smuggling over 180 migrants overturned and hit a bridge. [1] At least 55 people were killed, and over a hundred were injured.

Contents

Background

In recent years, Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, has witnessed a sharp increase in the number of Central American migrants passing through in an attempt to reach the United States. Mexican authorities routinely find migrants being packed in vehicles as they are smuggled through the country, including 600 migrants from 12 countries discovered in the back of two trucks in Veracruz in November 2021. [2]

The crash is the deadliest incident involving migrants passing through Mexico since the 2010 San Fernando massacre, when 72 migrants were shot and killed by members of the Los Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas. [3]

Crash

On December 9, 2021, a freight truck left Guatemala for Veracruz, carrying over 150 migrants in its cargo container. Most of the migrants were from Guatemala, as confirmed by the Guatemalan ambassador in Mexico, Mario Búcaro. [4] However, Jordán Rodas, Guatemala’s top human rights official, stated that it is possible that about 200 migrants had been packed into the vehicle's container. [5]

The driver lost control of the vehicle on the Mexican Federal Highway 190 between Chiapa de Corzo and state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from Tuxtla, at around 3:30 pm local time. According to witnesses and survivors, the truck was traveling at excessive speeds and flipped over while driving around a bend. [6] It crashed into the base of a steel pedestrian bridge and its cargo container was smashed open. Survivor Celso Pacheco, a Guatemalan migrant, stated that the truck seemed to have lost control under the weight of its human cargo. [6]

Rescue workers who first arrived on the scene remarked that they had witnessed migrants who had been in the trailer fleeing the crash, fearing being detained by immigration agents and subsequently deported. [7] A number of them were bloodied and limping, having sustained numerous injuries. Locals told media that the driver of the truck fled down the Grijalva River shortly after the accident. [8] The Guatemalan consul in Tuxtla Gutiérrez helped transfer the injured to hospitals in the region.[ citation needed ]

Victims

At least 55 people died and 105 more were injured. [9] Most of the victims are believed to have been Central American migrants from Guatemala and Honduras, although the exact nationalities of each victim have yet to be confirmed. Alejandro Martín, a fire department official, confirmed the presence of several minors among the dead. [4] Many of the victims had paid ten to twelve thousand dollars to be smuggled to the Mexico–United States border, and now face deportation to their home countries. [10]

Chiapas governor Rutilio Escandón stated that 49 people died at the scene, and five more while receiving medical attention. [11] Luis Manuel Moreno, head of the Chiapas state civil defense office, stated that around 21 of the injured had serious injuries and were transported to nearby hospitals. Another 24 people traveling in the vehicle were unharmed. [4] [12]

Aftermath

Shortly after hearing the news, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tweeted that the crash was "very painful" and that he "deeply regrets the tragedy". The Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, also expressed his condolences and announced that the foreign ministries of the affected countries had been contacted. [13] He declared a crackdown on human trafficking. [14]

Gov. Rutilio Escandón also lamented the tragedy and assured via Twitter that he had given instructions to give "prompt attention and assistance to the injured". He added that "responsibility shall be determined according to the law". [4]

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute stated that it would offer lodging and humanitarian visas to the survivors and that the authorities would help identify the dead and cover funeral expenses or repatriation of their remains to their home countries. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chiapas</span> State of Mexico

Chiapas, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas, is one of the states that make up the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises 124 municipalities as of September 2017 and its capital and largest city is Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Other important population centers in Chiapas include Ocosingo, Tapachula, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Comitán, and Arriaga. Chiapas is the southernmost state in Mexico, and it borders the states of Oaxaca to the west, Veracruz to the northwest, and Tabasco to the north, and the Petén, Quiché, Huehuetenango, and San Marcos departments of Guatemala to the east and southeast. Chiapas has a significant coastline on the Pacific Ocean to the southwest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tuxtla Gutiérrez</span> City and municipality in Chiapas, Mexico

Tuxtla Gutiérrez, or Tuxtla,(Spanish:[ˈtuɣstlaɣuˈtjeres], Nahuatl:[ˈtuʃt͡ɬa]) is the capital and the largest city of the Mexican southeastern state of Chiapas. It is the seat of the municipality of the same name, the most developed and populated in the state. A busy government, commercial and services-oriented city, Tuxtla had one of the fastest-growing rates in Mexico in the last 40 years. Unlike many other areas in Chiapas, it is not a major tourist attraction, but a transportation hub for tourists coming into the state, with a large airport and a bus terminal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Governor of Chiapas</span>

The governor of Chiapas is the chief executive of the Mexican state of Chiapas. The state constitution stipulates a term of 6 years, to which governors can only be elected once. It also specifies the qualifications for becoming governor: a Mexican citizen by birth, aged at least 30 years old, and having not less than 5 years residency in Chiapas. The current governor is Rutilio Escandón from the MRN, who assumed the position in 2018.

Federal Highway 190 is a Federal Highway of Mexico. Federal Highway 190 is split into two segments: the first segment travels from Tehuantepec, Oaxaca in the east to Puebla City, Puebla in the west. The second segment travels from La Ventosa, Juchitán de Zaragoza Municipality, Oaxaca in the west eastward to Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, Chiapas. Fed. Highway 190's eastern segment ends at a Guatemala-Mexico border crossing at Ciudad Cuauhtémoc. The Pan-American Highway route in southern Mexico continues into Guatemala as Central American Highway 1 (CA-1).

The 2010 San Fernando massacre, also known as the first massacre of San Fernando, was the mass murder of 72 undocumented immigrants by the Los Zetas drug cartel in the village of El Huizachal in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The 72 killed—58 men and 14 women—were mainly from Central and South America, and they were shot in the back of the head and then piled up together. The bodies were found inside a ranch on 24 August 2010 by the Mexican military after they engaged in an armed confrontation with members of a drug cartel. They received information of the place after one of the three survivors survived a shot to the neck and face, faked his death, and then fled to a military checkpoint to seek help. Investigators later mentioned that the massacre was a result of the immigrants' refusal to work for Los Zetas, or to provide money for their release.

The 1995 Chiapas earthquake occurred on October 20 at 20:38 local time. The epicenter was located in Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, near Tuxtla Gutiérrez. It had a magnitude of Mw 7.2, or ML 6.5. Building damage was reported. Around 70 people were reported injured. In Tuxtla Gutiérrez, telephone and electricity services were momentarily interrupted. This earthquake could be felt strongly in Mexico City and in many parts of southern Mexico. It could also be felt in Guatemala and El Salvador. The centroid mechanism is of thrust faulting with a small strike-slip component. The rupture of this earthquake propagated from NW to SE over a distance of about 30 km. The duration of the rupture was about 17 seconds. The earthquake was resulted from the internal deformation of the Cocos Plate, which is subducting beneath the North American Plate.

The Ranong human-smuggling incident was a human smuggling disaster in Ranong, Thailand in April 2008. 54 people suffocated to death in a seafood container while being smuggled from Myanmar, to Phuket, Thailand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guatemala–Mexico relations</span> Bilateral relations

Guatemala–Mexico relations are the historical and current bilateral relations between Guatemala and Mexico. Both nations are members of the Association of Caribbean States, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States and the United Nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chualar bus crash</span> Train and bus crash in California on September 17, 1963

The Chualar bus crash took place on September 17, 1963, when a freight train collided with a makeshift "bus"— a flatbed truck with two long benches and a canopy— carrying 58 migrant farmworkers on a railroad crossing outside Chualar in the Salinas Valley, California, United States, killing 32 people and injuring 25. Because the vehicle was actually a truck carrying people in the back, rather than a bus, the crash is ranked as the deadliest automobile accident in U.S. history, according to the National Safety Council.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rutilio Escandón</span> Mexican lawyer and politician (born 1958)

Rutilio Cruz Escandón Cadenas is a Mexican lawyer and politician from Chiapas. He is affiliated with MORENA and is the current Governor of Chiapas. Before becoming governor, he represented Chiapas as a senator of the LVIII and LIX and as a federal deputy in the LX Legislature.

Events in the year 1959 in Mexico.

El Parral is a municipality in the Mexican state of Chiapas, located approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) south of the state capital of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.

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On March 2, 2021, an SUV carrying 25 people collided with a semi-trailer truck in Imperial County, California, U.S., killing 13 people. Investigators said the SUV had entered the United States from Mexico through a hole in a border fence and was smuggling migrants at the time of the crash.

On June 27, 2022, 53 migrants were found dead in and around a tractor-trailer near Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, United States. The deaths, caused by heat exposure and asphyxiation, reportedly occurred during an apparent illegal migrant smuggling attempt across the U.S.–Mexico border. It is the deadliest smuggling incident of its kind in United States history.

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References

  1. ↑ "Mexico truck crash: 'I woke up 50 metres from the truck'". BBC News. 2021-12-12. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
  2. ↑ "Migrants from 12 countries among 600 found in two trucks in Mexico". Reuters. 2021-11-20. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  3. ↑ MANUEL DE LA CRUZ and EDGAR H. CLEMENTE. "53 dead after truck smuggling migrants crashes in Mexico". Lebanon Express. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2021-12-10. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  4. 1 2 3 4 García, Elena Reina, Jacobo (2021-12-09). "Al menos 54 migrantes muertos tras volcar el camión en el que viajaban hacinados en México". El País México (in Spanish). Retrieved 2021-12-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ↑ "Migrant truck crashes in Mexico killing 54". CNBC. 2021-12-10. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  6. 1 2 Lopez, Oscar (2021-12-10). "Mexico Migrant Truck Crash Leaves at Least 54 Dead". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  7. ↑ "Survivors recall horror of Mexico truck crash that killed 55". AP NEWS. 2021-12-10. Retrieved 2021-12-11.
  8. ↑ "Dozens killed after truck packed with people crashes in Mexico". the Guardian. Associated Press. 2021-12-10. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  9. ↑ "Mexico truck crash: At least 54 people killed as trailer overturns". BBC News. 2021-12-10. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  10. ↑ "Mexico truck crash: 'I woke up 50 metres from the truck'". BBC News. 2021-12-12. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
  11. ↑ Garcia, Jacob (2021-12-10). "Migrant truck crashes in Mexico killing 54". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  12. ↑ "53 die in horror crash of truck smuggling migrants in Mexico". CNBC. 2021-12-10. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  13. ↑ "Marcelo Ebrard tweet". Twitter. Archived from the original on 2021-12-10. Retrieved 2021-12-10.
  14. ↑ "Mexico truck crash: Crackdown on people smugglers launched". BBC News. 2021-12-11. Retrieved 2021-12-11.
  15. ↑ "At least 53 killed as truck carrying migrants crashes in Mexico". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2021-12-10.

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