Indigenous communities took the initiative to help and feed migrants who are stranded far from the border in southern Mexico, where uncertainty is aggravated days before Donald Trump assumes the presidency in the United States, next Monday.

In Oaxaca, one of the main cities in the south of the country, activists created a community canteen to give free food to migrants, mostly from Central and South America, who arrive to rest, raise money and resume their journey to Mexico City and, later, to the United States.

Its motto is ‘Nkaáymyujkeme’, a voice written in the Mixe language of the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca that means ‘Let’s all eat’, and which emerged during the first days of 2025, mainly for migrant children, when estimating that a “difficult year” is coming in the United States in the face of restrictive policies for mobility.

Oaxaca is the origin of migrants and to help only motivates the empathy of suffering hunger in the flesh when leaving the earth in search of a better life, its founder, Filadelfo Aldaz Desiderio, tells EFE.

“I think it is just from hunger, that is, from the hunger we spend in our communities, from the hunger we spend in the cities because in the end we are also people who migrate from our communities and, from that hunger we precisely do this work,” says the activist.

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The country is concerned about the mass deportations promised by Trump because about half of the 11 million undocumented in the United States are Mexicans and almost 4% of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP) is represented by their remittances, which in 2024 received an estimated record of 65 billion dollars.

In addition, the Government of Mexico detected a record of more than 925,000 irregular migrants from January to August, a year-on-year increase of almost 132%.

In this scenario, initiatives such as ‘Let’s eat all’ arise, which is supported by citizen donations, since there is no political or religious group that sponsors the donation of food and hot drinks in bus terminals for migrants in the city of Oaxaca.

Desiderio, an indigenous mixe culture, explains that it is about helping, but also protesting.

“It’s just that in reality migration is not going to stop, that is, all people move around the world. However, the United States is going to paralyze these people a little, to persecute them, to torture them, even to murder them. It’s a whole foreign policy of the United States,” he says.

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The menu for migrants of the first visit of the year that the canteen, led by indigenous people, delivers at the bus terminal was a plate of lentils, rice, beans and corn tortillas, accompanied by a glass of hot coffee to reduce the winter cold that in the city of Oaxaca drops to 6 degrees.

Juana Antonia Osorio, a 28-year-old Honduran who approached the group, is in the seventh month of pregnancy and is in a hurry to arrive in the United States, where Trump assumes the presidency on January 20.

“I want to reach the States before it is born so that it is American (American) and there I am going to put it to study,” .

Upon arriving in Oaxaca, Osorio ran out of money, so time was pressing.

“I want to get there quickly, but things have gotten complicated, right now I don’t have weights to continue the trip,” describes the woman, who will be a single mother because armed groups murdered her husband in Honduras.

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The traveler now receives the support of the community canteen, which has undertaken a campaign to request economic resources and food to help migrants trying to reach the border and ask for asylum in the United States.

For some migrants, the food given is the only thing they will eat during their stay in Oaxaca.

“Until now we had not eaten, we have been walking all day, waiting,” says Cristian Martínez, a Venezuelan who seeks to get to Mexico City to work, save and then go to the United States.

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