Migrants traveling in a caravan heading north toward the U.S. border rest Tuesday in Juchitan, Mexico. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
By Michael E. Miller
JUCHITAN, Mexico — The buses they were waiting for had never arrived, so now the migrant caravan was moving again — a sea of weary men, women and children, borne forward in waves by nothing more than their blistered, bleeding and bandaged feet.
As the migrants streamed past her in the pre-dawn darkness, Roxana Orellana stood on a concrete curb, rubbing the small belly that showed through her sleeveless green shirt.
The 21-year-old was five months pregnant. Her back ached and her feet throbbed from three weeks on the road. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to push her toddler’s stroller today as the sun rose and the temperature soared and her family’s water ran out.
But now that hope was gone.
“There are no buses,” she said. “So it looks like we’ll have to keep walking.”
On the 20th day of the caravan’s journey north from Central America, signs of its physical toll were everywhere — in the bright white bandages that stand out against dust-caked clothes, in the chorus of coughs that fill their camps at night, in their limping gaits and bloodshot eyes as they set out each morning.
‘I can’t turn back’: Migrant children trek through southern Mexico
As a migrant caravan, with an estimated 2,300 children, makes its way to the border, a parent and a boy explain why they're making the trek. (Drea Cornejo , Julia Galiano-Rios/The Washington Post)
In recent days, at least two women in the caravan have been rushed to hospitals to give birth.
As the caravan has wound its way north, it has drawn the ire of President Trump and the anxiety of federal officials in Mexico, many of whom do not want to be seen as helping migrants reach the United States in the final days before the American midterm elections.
But without buses — blocked by the Mexican federal government Wednesday night — how far the caravan goes may come down to how healthy it remains.

Mauricio Gonzalez, 39, from El Salvador, prepares a tarp to sleep on in Juchitan on Tuesday. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
Even the strongest on the caravan are starting to complain.
“Dear God, my whole body hurts,” said Humberto Osorio Argueta, a tall 22-year-old from Honduras with biceps bulging from his tank top but painful blisters on his feet.
Despite the disappointment over the buses, Thursday morning was better than most.
The previous day, as they waited to hear about transportation, roughly 4,200 members of the caravan had rested in an unfinished bus station on the outskirts of Juchitan that city officials had turned into a temporary shelter.
They had arrived Tuesday afternoon with fresh injuries after crossing more than 30 miles of a stretch of Oaxaca state known as La Ventosa, for the hot winds that whip cars from side to side on the highway.
On Tuesday, state health-care workers treated at least 138 members of the caravan, mostly for respiratory illnesses from dust and the dramatic change in temperature from days walking in 100-degree heat to nights spent sleeping on the cold ground outside, said Benito Noyola, from Oaxaca’s System for Integral Family Development.
Since the caravan entered the state Saturday, Oaxacan health workers had treated 1,125 people.
Tuesday, another one arrived in the form of a young woman whose right eye was red and weeping.
“Yesterday something just hit my eye, boom!” said Cinthi Fajardo, an 18-year-old who said she had left home in Santa Barbara, Honduras, because she couldn’t find a job.
“It burns whenever I open it,” she said. “Today has been the worst day so far.”

Vinisa Pineda Martinez performs an ultrasound on Grey Elizabeth Perez, age 22 and 32 weeks pregnant, in an Oaxaca family-services truck in Juchitan. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
After Fajardo was Grey Elizabeth Perez, a 22-year-old from Honduras who was 32 weeks pregnant and worried that the long walks were hurting her baby.
Vinisa Pineda Martinez, a health worker in bright blue scrubs, took Perez inside a mobile health unit and asked her to lay down. Then she put gel on her stomach, turned on a sonogram machine and showed Perez her baby.
It was a boy, she said.
“I thought so, since I could feel him kicking,” Perez replied, Pineda later recalled.
The health workers said their efforts were part charity and part protection against problems the caravan could bring to Oaxaca.
During a previous two-day stop in Tapanatepec, bathrooms had been scarce and some migrants had relieved themselves near the river flowing through town. Migrants had then bathed and washed their clothes in the water, which at times smelled like sewage.
At the bus station in Juchitan, hundreds of migrants slept side by side on cardboard or thin blankets under massive tents. Others slept in the unfinished rooms, which included a ticket office and a waiting area for buses that would never come.