FOR SOME, Bartolo Fuentes is a community journalist, a social activist who defends migrants. For others, he is the organizer of the caravan that left Honduras and generated a crisis on the southern border of Mexico.
Originally from the department of Yoro, Bartolo Fuentes was in his youth a student leader. Since the 1980s he has been known as a militant of the Honduran left. He was one of the defenders of the 1954 general strike that led to a change in the labor legislation of the Central American country, according to the Latin American Summary.
In 2013 he was elected deputy from the opposition Freedom and Refoundation (Libre) party, to which the former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya belongs; however, he no longer holds the position.
Fuentes also works as a community journalist. He is the editor and director of Vida Laboral magazine and the Honduras Labor web site, focused on labor and human rights issues.
Married to journalist Dunia Montoya, he has worked on immigration issues and joined with the Migrant Caravan that began the trip to the United States from Honduras on October 12.
The Honduran government alleges that he is the organizer of this massive wave and that he has political motives.
According to the Foreign Ministry of the Central American country, “for several years Mr. Bartolo Fuentes has promoted irregular migratory movements, under deceit and false promises for the countrymen”.
The government says the activist organized in March of this year another caravan like the current one, to which he also joined.
On the current caravan, the government alleges that Fuentes even provided buses to move more Hondurans.
“This irregular mobilization was promoted and organized by the same actors as in the past, and always, have generated destabilization and ungovernability in the country,” said the Foreign Ministry.
Welsy Vásquez, deputy of the ruling National Party, accuses Fuentes of being a “coyote” (smuggler) of migrants.
Text and photo: El Universal
