The state government of Chiapas has launched two programs to provide temporary employment to 890 people from other countries.
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 22 April 2025 — The municipal president of Tapachula, in the Mexican border state of Chiapas, Aarón Yamil Melgar Bravo, has proposed that migrants from Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti who are stranded in the municipality be employed in different public works and factories. Among them, mentioned to EFE, was the Maya Train, the Interoceanic Corridor.
According to the official, the state has almost 400 hectares available for industrial projects that promote trade between the Pacific and the Atlantic, and between North and Central America. The migrants, Melgar Bravo told the Spanish agency, could be inserted into the crews for “the completion of the train tracks connecting the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to Puerto Chiapas.”
The municipal president has specified that the migrants “will be able to remove the containers from the boats and take them to the trains. Obviously, the other branch of the railway tracks is going to go to Suchiate (the border with Guatemala).”
However, the recruitment process has not yet started, and no date is set in the near future, as the Cuban Yumili Acosta told 14ymedio. Last February she joined the three-month temporary program that the government of Chiapas promoted for 500 migrants, most of them with asylum procedures before the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR).
“In May the program ends, and we were told that we would have to wait. Everything depends on their budget. If the money doesn’t arrive, the program will end,” says Acosta, 27, who has received 1,250 pesos ($61.59) per week for five-hour days from Monday to Friday.
Cuban Yaniel Ponce de León, who is also part of the group that sweeps streets, collects garbage and paints public spaces, says that “the municipal president of Tapachula says the money is not certain. I was told (by officials) that it is more for Guatemalans.”
Between February and March, the state of Chiapas promoted two temporary employment programs for migrants, opening 890 places during this period. The most recent is for fumigators to stop the spread of diseases such as dengue, malaria, zika and chikungunya.
Each of the 390 migrants is paid a salary of just over 2,300 pesos every two weeks, less than the average wage of 3,350 that a worker receives. In addition, they do not have medical services or other benefits stipulated in the Federal Labour Law such as the payment of utilities, a savings fund and food vouchers.
Despite the unfavorable working conditions, for the Cuban Deivy Gurrola, the possibility of having a job is an incentive: “I could rent a room and support myself here in Mexico, because yes, we want to live cheaply, and we will work in able to afford that,” she told EFE. She also wants the Mexican authorities to encourage a regular stay for those who wish to work on these projects, “so they can find work quickly in established factories and companies.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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