SAN ANTONIO – Lunchgoers at a local Honduran restaurant were watching a Spanish-language television network’s coverage of thousands of Central American men, women and children allowed to enter Mexico for now.
The caravan that some say could grow to 10,000 hopes to reach the United States if Mexico continues to allow their passage north.
In the U.S. the past four years, a young man from Honduras said there’s a chance some of his own family might be in that caravan.
If he had stayed, he said, “I believe I’d be in the same condition they are.”
He was seated at a table with a woman from El Salvador who said that, years ago, she crossed a desert to start a new life in America.
She said the Hondurans are coming to escape hunger, injustice, poverty and crime. She said, sadly, her son stayed behind, only to be murdered by the gangs in El Salvador.
She described how they even threaten young children at their schools.
“The gangs are extremely dangerous,” said another woman at the same table.
However, Simona Hernandez, a lifelong U.S. citizen who was at the restaurant selling religious items, said she’s suspicious.
“I think there’s somebody that’s bringing them over here,” Hernandez said. “There’s a lot of people coming over here and I don’t think it’s right because there’s a lot of criminals, a lot of bad people.”
Not true, said the woman from El Salvador. She said they’re honest people, willing to work hard to support their families.
Another Honduran in the lobby of the restaurant said, “If they did wrong, they should pay. But everyone else should be allowed to enter.”