Central Americans reading information they have been given about the asylum process while the queue up for a shower in the migrant hostel in Palenque. Paul Miranda. Some rights reserved. “I am afraid. I can never go back to Honduras,” Rosario tells me over a warm batch of doughnuts she has just fried. She is in the small flat where she now lives with her husband and three children in the jungle town of Palenque, Mexico, about 90 miles from the nearest border crossing with Guatemala.
Rosario is one of many people fleeing their home countries and turning to Mexico for help. Statistics published by the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) – the state body which analyses asylum cases – show that requests for asylum in Mexico are up. In 2013, Mexico received 1,296 requests. In 2016, the number had increased to 8,788. The COMAR predicts that this year the total number of people seeking sanctuary will reach nearly 20,000.
How did Mexico, a country long-associated with drug cartels, organized crime and high levels of emigration to the US, become a country of refuge?
