Migrant survivors recall horror of Mexico truck crash

Survivors of a truck crash in Mexico that killed 55 migrants and injured more than a hundred recounted from their hospital beds how their location inside the truck determined who lived and who died.  Those unlucky enough to be riding jammed against the fragile walls of the freight container almost certainly died, survivors said.

Those in the middle of the packed group survived, cushioned by their fellow migrants as the container flipped onto the road. One survivor from Guatemala, Andres, said that he had been thrown out of the vehicle and had only suffered a hurt arm.

About 250 migrants were on board the truck which crashed into the base of a steel pedestrian bridge in Tuxtla Gutierrez on Thursday evening. It was one of the deadliest days for migrants in Mexico since the 2010 massacre of 72 people by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

While the Mexican government is trying to appease the United States by stopping caravans of walking migrants and allowing the reinstatement of the "Remain in Mexico" policy, it has been unable to stanch the flood of migrants stuffed by the hundreds into trucks operated by smugglers who charge thousands of dollars to take them to the US border — trips that all too often lead them only to their deaths. In a news conference on Friday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that it in order to tackle the problem, issues had to be looked at in "the communities of origin" of the migrants.