Eight Chinese migrants have been found dead on the coast of southern Mexico,\u00a0authorities said, after\u00a0their boat capsized along a popular but perilous route for illegally entering the United States. <\/p>\n
The bodies of the seven women and one man were discovered Friday on a beach in\u00a0San Francisco del Mar, Oaxaca, the state\u2019s prosecutor\u2019s office said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Treacherous boat rides up the coast of Mexico are often used by migrants\u00a0hoping to cross into the US in an attempt to bypass\u00a0checkpoints on closely monitored land routes. <\/p>\n
The Oaxaca prosecutor\u2019s office said the migrants had traveled on a boat operated by a Mexican man, which set off Thursday from Tapachula, Chiapas state, near the Guatemala border. One Chinese man survived the trip,\u00a0the statement said. It did not explain what happened to the boat\u2019s operator. <\/p>\n
The prosecutor\u2019s office said it was working with federal agencies to investigate the incident and the Chinese embassy in\u00a0Mexico to identify the bodies. <\/p>\n
The number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the US from Mexico has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2023, more than 37,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally into the US from Mexico, US government\u00a0data shows\u00a0\u2013 compared with an average of roughly 1,500 per year over the preceding decade. <\/p>\n
Iris Wang, 35, said she chose to take the boat to reach Oaxaca instead of the bus to avoid running into police on the road, without fully anticipating the danger. <\/p>\n
\u201cThose few hours were a nightmare that I\u2019ll never forget for the rest of my life. It was too terrifying,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Wang said she and more than three dozen migrants were crammed into a boat roughly the size of two sedans. The vessel was so crowded that they had to sit with their legs crossed and couldn\u2019t move at all. <\/p>\n
The boat departed after midnight and immediately ran into a fierce storm in the pitch-black ocean. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were all shaken with fear. The waves were so high that we were repeatedly thrust into the air, all intertwined together, before falling to hit the bottom of the boat with a loud, painful bang. If it was a little higher, we would have been knocked out of the boat,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI kept shaking and crying, and I silently chanted in my mind: I can\u2019t die like this.\u201d <\/p>\n
Looking back at the journey, Wang said she felt incredibly lucky to have survived.\u00a0\u201cI never want to see the sea at night again,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The\u00a0influx of Chinese migrants spotlights the urgency many now feel to leave their homeland, even amid what Chinese leader Xi Jinping has claimed is a \u201cnational rejuvenation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Many Chinese who left the country point to a struggle to survive. <\/p>\n
Three years of Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions left people across China out of work \u2013 and disillusioned with the ruling Communist Party\u2019s increasingly tight grip on all aspects of life under Xi. <\/p>\n
And hope that business would fully rebound once restrictions ended a year ago has vanished, with China\u2019s\u00a0once envious economic growth stuttering. <\/p>\n
Other migrants nod to restrictions on personal life in China, where Xi has overseen a\u00a0sweeping crackdown\u00a0on free speech, civil society and\u00a0religion\u00a0in the country of 1.4 billion. <\/p>\n
Correction: An earlier version of this story included an image of a Japanese passport. It has been replaced.<\/p>\n\n
Eight Chinese migrants have been found dead on the coast of southern Mexico,\u00a0authorities said, after\u00a0their boat capsized along a popular but perilous route for illegally entering the United States. The bodies of the seven women and one man were discovered Friday on a beach in\u00a0San Francisco del Mar, Oaxaca, the state\u2019s prosecutor\u2019s office said in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}