Flight agencies in Tapachula (Chiapas) are doubling the cost of plane tickets for Cubans who want to fly to the Mexican capital or to the border with the United States. This is how he denounces it with 14 intervene Yumara, a 29-year-old Cuban who processed the “complementary protection” document at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar) that guarantees her being able to remain in Mexico while requesting an asylum appointment for the United States through the CBP One application.
Yumara tried to purchase a ticket at the Tapachula International Airport (AIT) but Immigration agents warned him that “it is not allowed.” However, he was not shown any official documents. Outside the air terminal, she was approached by two women who offered her a ticket to Tijuana (Baja California) for 16,000 pesos. “You arrive at the border directly, to continue your procedure,” they told him. For a ticket to Mexico City they charged her 15,000 pesos.
“What do these people think? I don’t have the money for this, I will try to leave by land to Mexico City and from there to the border,” says Yumara, who knows of many Cubans, Venezuelans and Colombians who have paid the extra cost. of the ticket that the travel agencies give you.
José Estrada, from the local agency Aerotur, argues to this newspaper that the increase in ticket costs is due to the high demand caused by migrants. Likewise, he denies that immigration authorities prevent them from boarding flights. “They warn them that if they do not have a transit permit, they cannot fly,” he says.
When I insist on the extra cost of the tickets and point out that Volaris has flights from 7,000 pesos and Aeroméxico at 9,000 pesos, he responds: “No one forces them to go to an agency.”
Estrada assures that 70% of the flights are occupied by migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti and the remaining 30% are Mexicans. Yumara, for his part, rejects that among the people who buy tickets are Haitians: “They lie, people live on the streets and the majority are washing, cleaning to make one meal a day. I don’t see that they have to pay 15,000 pesos for a ticket”.
Alfredo Gálvez Sánchez, from the Vuela travel agency, accepts that the cost of a ticket to Mexico City, which at the beginning of the year was between 4,000 pesos, has risen to 15,000 pesos. “This happens because people who come to the agencies want to fly the next day and this leads you to search for places among the airlines.”
According to AIT figures, the demand for tickets is 1,200 flights per day.
The new wave of migration in Tapachula has caused a shortage of eggs, bread, rice, and beans, warn shelter directors and activists in the region who demand government intervention. “In the supermarkets, sugar has already doubled. The kilo is between 33 and 40 pesos (1.8 dollars and 2.28 dollars),” Lorenza Reyes Núñez, director of the Todo Por Nuestros shelter, said in an interview with EFE.
The activist denounced that the Mexican authorities “do nothing” to stop the migratory flow and leave all the work to Comar, which has collapsed due to the arrival of thousands of foreigners daily in recent weeks.
Tapachula has been the scene this month of stampedes of thousands of migrants seeking an asylum appointment in Comar, demonstrations at the offices of the National Migration Institute (INM) and undocumented immigrants sleeping on the streets.
Dani Rorube, a migrant from Cuba, said that they are dissatisfied with the lack of issuance of transit documents, so they will set up a caravan to leave Tapachula. “We have gone to Immigration, from Immigration they send us to Comar and they have us in a row, as the Cubans say, what everyone wants is to walk, in a caravan or with a coyote, but it is a lot of money,” he narrated.
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