By David Agren
Catholic News Service

MEXICO CITY (CNS) — Honduras native Edita Maldonado walked for nearly two hours toward the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on a recent Saturday morning, clutching a plastic-covered photo of a man who had gone missing while traveling through Mexico 17 years ago on his way to the United States.

Elvira Alvarado Jimenez stands outside the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Oct. 18, holding a picture of her cousin’s daughter, Ana Aguilar, who has not been heard from in five years. Alvarado traveled from Honduras to Mexico in search of her relative. CNS PHOTO/DAVID AGREN

“He was looking for better opportunities and to support his mother,” she said of Carlos Velazquez, the brother of her son-in-law. “In the mountains there wasn’t much work, so he left.”

Velazquez made it to the southern Mexican city of Tuxtla Gutierrez. He sent two letters home, and they never heard from him again.

Maldonado was one of 14 Honduran women searching for missing migrants in several Mexican cities, Oct. 13-20. Velazquez was one of an estimated 4,000 Central Americans to have disappeared while heading north in search of better economic opportunities over the last 20 years.

The Hondurans, who came in a caravan and are the fifth such excursion since 2000, also demanded better treatment for migrants, who are often victimized by criminal gangs and crooked public officials on their northward journeys.

Last spring, Mexican lawmakers removed criminal penalties for being in the country without documents, but observers working with migrants said the situation was not improving.

“Every day the number of migrants being kidnapped increases,” said Father Luis Nieto, a Mexican priest now based in Los Angeles, who accompanied the Honduran caravan. “They’re poor and then they’re stripped of resources. . . . They have to sell what little they have.”

During the caravan’s visit to Mexico City, the National Human Rights Commission launched an investigation into the early October kidnapping of more than 60 Central American migrants; they allegedly were grabbed by smugglers working with state and municipal police officers while jumping off a train in Puebla state.

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