On 18 April, for fear of creating hotbeds of COVID 19 contagion, a Mexico City judge ordered the release of migrants from sixty-five overcrowded immigration centres in the country.
By the end of that month, with both the northern and southern border lines under lockdown, the Mexican National Migration Institute INM estimated that over twenty thousand migrants were now stranded around border lines; under the lockdown, even appointments to identify refugees are suspended. Among those now either living in makeshift camps or left to their own devices in the country are an estimated four thousand Africans. When I meet her in June that year her swollen face and dishevelled hair have long ceased to match the Ana from her WhatsApp profile photo.
The smooth face, wavy hair extensions, outlined eyebrows, lipstick and big sunglasses; the golden necklace with a round green and white gemstone, all seem to have belonged to another time, another universe. Ana, a year-old Business Management graduate speaks three languages β Portuguese, English and French β but she could not find a job in her home country Angola.
Some Angolan friends who live in America told me about this trip and I decided to take a risk. Tapachula is the almost-final wall to scale for migrants travelling to the United States. The official estimate of the number of travellers waiting here is one thousand, but there are probably close to four thousand here in this city, surrounded by humid jungle. Ana has travelled around twenty seven thousand kilometres from Maquela do Zombo, Angola, to get here in search of a better life: a trip that involves crossing wild seas in rickety boats and weeks of walking through narco-gang territory in dense humid forest.
Having risked rape, detentions and mistreatment along many parts of the way as well, it is still the forest that haunts most. Like Ana, he lived in Luanda, with his wife and two children. They fired me overnight. I did odd jobs for a while but we could not live on that. An ordinary Angolan could not get clean water or healthcare, but with oil money floating around most citizens could still grab a dollar here or there.
