A ‘human wall’ of over 800 students was formed along the border between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, in a show of solidarity against US President Donald Trump's anti-Mexican rhetoric.
The chain began at the site where Pope Francis gave his speech at Cruz del Migrante on the banks of the Río Grande a year ago, in which he decried forced migration as a “human tragedy.”
The event was organized in Ciudad Juarez, in Chihuahua State, by Governor Javier Corral under the hashtag #murohumanomx on Twitter.
The governor heavily criticized “The words with which Donald Trump has criminalized the Mexican population in the United States, the way in which he has described Mexico as an opportunistic nation and an exporter of criminals,” in a speech at the event.
“...his arrogant treatment of the President of the Republic, Enrique Peña Nieto, and his persistence with the central campaign promise of building a border wall are all acts of hostility and spite that Mexico cannot ignore and ought to condemn,” he added.
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The event was also attended by former three-time Mexican presidential candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solorzano, who condemned the Mexican government’s response to the changes in US immigration policies as “lukewarm,” and called on the Mexican president to take a harder line with Trump.
A number of Mexican senators attended the protest, including Armando Rios Piter of the State of Guerrero, who had some choice words for the White House.
“The idea is to join our hands and our hearts and create the longest human chain possible, to demonstrate that as Mexicans, we are much stronger together than any concrete wall proposed by the president of the United States,” he told Publimetro Mexico in an interview.
“We reaffirm our position that nothing and no one can break the binational community that we have created,” Chihuahua State Senator Lilia Merodio tweeted.