At least 48 people died when a bus tumbled down a cliff onto a rocky beach Tuesday along a narrow stretch of highway known as the "Devil's Curve," Peruvian police and fire officials said.
EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT - In this photo provided by the government news agency Andina, firemen recover bodies from a bus that fell off a cliff after it was hit by a tractor-trailer rig, in Pasamayo, Peru, Tuesday, Jan 2, 2018. (Vidal Tarky, Andina News Agency via AP)
The bus carrying 57 people was headed to Peru's capital when it was struck by a tractor trailer shortly before noon and plunged down the slope, said Claudia Espinoza with Peru's voluntary firefighter brigade.
The blue bus came to rest upside down on a strip of shore next to the Pacific, the lifeless bodies of passengers strewn among the rocks.
"It's very sad for us as a country to suffer an accident of this magnitude," Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said in a statement.
Rescuers had to struggle to rescue survivors and recover the dead from the hard-to-reach area in Pasamayo, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) north of Lima.
In this photo provided by the government news agency Andina, rescue workers load an injured man on a stretcher after he was retrieved from a bus that fell off a cliff after it was hit by a tractor-trailer rig, in Pasamayo, Peru, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. (Vidal Tarky/Andina News Agency via AP)
No road leads directly to the beach, complicating rescue efforts, Espinoza said. Police and firefighters used helicopters to transport six survivors with serious injuries to nearby hospitals. Col. Dino Escudero said 48 people were confirmed dead and at least three were missing.
Transportation Minister Bruno Giuffra said initial reports indicated both vehicles involved were traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of the crash. Calls by The Associated Press to the company that owns the bus were not immediately returned.
As rescue operations continued late into the night, authorities announced a suspect had been detained for allegedly robbing belongings of victims.
Traffic accidents are common along Peru's roadways, with more than 2,600 people killed in 2016. More than three dozen died when three buses and a truck collided in 2015 on the main costal highway. Twenty people were killed in November when a bus plunged off a bridge into a river in the southern Andes.
EDS. NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT - In this photo provided by the government news agency Andina, an injured man is transported over water from a bus that fell off a cliff after it was hit by a tractor-trailer rig, in Pasamayo, Peru, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. (Vidal Tarky, Andina News Agency via AP)
The nation's deadliest traffic crash on record happened in 2013 when a makeshift bus carrying 51 Quechua Indians back from a party in southeastern Peru fell off a cliff into a river, killing everyone on board.
Espinoza said the passengers in Tuesday's crash included many returning to Lima after celebrating the New Year's holiday with family outside the city.
The highway is known as the "Devil's Curve" because it is narrow, frequently shrouded in mist and curves along a cliff that has seen numerous accidents. Police said the bus fell an estimated 80 meters (262 feet).
Miguel Sidia, a transportation expert in Peru, said that while road conditions in the Andean nation have improved in recent years, lack of driver education and little enforcement of road rules still lead to many fatalities each year.
In this photo provided by the government news agency Andina, an injured man is transported over water from a bus that fell off a cliff after it was hit by a tractor-trailer rig, in Pasamayo, Peru, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. (Vidal Tarky, Andina News Agency via AP)
He called on authorities to immediately conduct studies into building a new highway farther from the cliff where the accident occurred.
"As a Peruvian, it's shameful," he said.
BOULEVARD, Calif. (AP) — Julia Paredes believed her move to the United States might be now or never. Mexico was days from requiring visas for Peruvian visitors. If she didn't act quickly, she would have to make a far more perilous, surreptitious journey over land to settle with her sister in Dallas.
Mexico began requiring visas for Peruvians on Monday in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country, after identical moves for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians. It effectively eliminated the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border, as Paredes, 45, did just before it was too late.
“I had to treat it as a emergency,” said Paredes, who worked serving lunch to miners in Arequipa, Peru, and borrowed money to fly to Mexico's Tijuana, across from San Diego. Last month smugglers guided her through a remote opening in the border wall to a dirt lot in California, where she and about 100 migrants from around the world shivered over campfires after a morning drizzle and waited for overwhelmed Border Patrol agents to drive them to a station for processing.
Senior U.S. officials, speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting of top diplomats from about 20 countries in the Western hemisphere this week in Guatemala, applauded Mexico's crackdown on air travel from Peru and called visa requirements an important tool to jointly confront illegal migration.
For critics, shutting down air travel only encourages more dangerous choices. Illegal migration by Venezuelans plummeted after Mexico imposed visa requirements in January 2022, but the lull was short-lived. Last year Venezuelans made up nearly two-thirds of the record-high 520,000 migrants who walked through the Darien Gap, the notorious jungle spanning parts of Panama and Colombia.
More than 25,000 Chinese traversed the Darien last year. They generally fly to Ecuador, a country known for few travel restrictions, and cross the U.S. border illegally in San Diego to seek asylum. With an immigration court backlog topping 3 million cases, it takes years to decide such claims, during which time people can obtain work permits and establish roots.
“People are going to come no matter what,” said Miguel Yaranga, 22, who flew from Lima, Peru's capital, to Tijuana and was released by the Border Patrol Sunday at a San Diego bus stop. He had orders to appear in immigration court in New York in February 2025, which puzzled him because he said he told agents he would settle with his sister on the other side of the country, in Bakersfield, California.
Jeremy MacGillivray, deputy chief of the Mexico mission of the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration, predicts that Peruvian migration will drop “at least at the beginning” and bounce back as people shift to walking through the Darien Gap and to Central America and Mexico.
Mexico said last month that it would require visas for Peruvians for the first time since 2012 in response to a “substantial increase” in illegal migration. Large-scale Peruvian migration to Mexico began in 2022; Peruvians were stopped in the country an average of 2,160 times a month from January to March of this year, up from a monthly average of 544 times for all of 2023.
Peruvians also began showing up at the U.S. border in 2022. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested Peruvians an average of about 5,300 times a month last year before falling to a monthly average of 3,400 from January through March, amid a broad immigration crackdown by Mexico.
Peru immediately reciprocated Mexico's visa requirement but changed course after a backlash from the country's tourism industry. Peru noted in its reversal that it is part of a regional economic bloc that includes Mexico, Chile and Colombia.
Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, said Peru's membership with Mexico in the Pacific Alliance allowed its citizens visa-free travel longer than other countries.
It is unclear if Colombia, also a major source of migration, will be next, but Isacson said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is in a “lovefest” with his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, while his relations with Peru's government are more strained.
Colombians are consistently near the top nationalities of migrants arriving at Tijuana's airport. Many find hotels before a guide takes them to boulder-strewn mountains east of the city, where they cross through openings in the border wall and then walk toward dirt lots that the Border Patrol has identified as waiting stations.
Bryan Ramírez, 25, of Colombia, reached U.S. soil with his girlfriend last month, only two days after leaving Bogota for Cancun, Mexico, and continuing on another flight to Tijuana. He waited alongside others overnight for Border Patrol agents to pick him up as cold rain and high winds whipped over the crackle of high-voltage power lines.
The group waiting near Boulevard, a small, loosely defined rural town, included several Peruvians who said they came for economic opportunity and to escape violence and political crises.
Peruvians can still avoid the Darien jungle by flying to El Salvador, which introduced visa-free travel for them in December in reciprocation for a similar move by Peru's government. But they would still have to travel over land through Mexico, where many are robbed or kidnapped.
Ecuadoreans, who have needed visas to enter Mexico since September 2021, can also fly to El Salvador, but not all do. Oscar Palacios, 42, said he walked through Darien because he couldn't afford to fly.
Palacios, who left his wife and year-old child in Ecuador with plans to support them financially from the U.S., said it took him two weeks to travel from his home near the violent city of Esmeralda to Mexico's border with Guatemala. It then took him two months to cross Mexico because immigration authorities turned him around three times and bused him back to the southern part of the country. He said he was robbed repeatedly.
Palacios finally reached Tijuana and, after three nights in a hotel, crossed into the U.S. A Border Patrol agent spotted him with migrants from Turkey and Brazil and drove them to the dirt lot to wait for a van or bus to take them to a station for processing. Looking back on the journey, Palacios said he would rather cross Darien Gap 100 times than Mexico even once.
Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed.
People seeking asylum, including a group from Peru, walk behind a Border Patrol agent towards a van to be processed after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Boulevard, Calif. Mexico has begun requiring visas for Peruvians in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country. The move follows identical ones for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians, effectively eliminating the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
People seeking asylum keep warm near a fire as they wait to be processed, after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Boulevard, Calif. Mexico has begun requiring visas for Peruvians in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country. The move follows identical ones for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians, effectively eliminating the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Men seeking asylum, including Peruvians, line up as they wait to be processed after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Boulevard, Calif. Mexico has begun requiring visas for Peruvians in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country. The move follows identical ones for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians, effectively eliminating the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Peruvian Julia Paredes, center in white hat, listens to instructions from a Border Patrol agent with others seeking asylum as they wait to be processed after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Boulevard, Calif. Mexico has begun requiring visas for Peruvians in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country. The move follows identical ones for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians, effectively eliminating the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
People seeking asylum walk through a field of wildflowers as they wait to be processed after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Boulevard, Calif. Mexico has begun requiring visas for Peruvians in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country. The move follows identical ones for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians, effectively eliminating the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
A Border Patrol agent instructs a group of people seeking asylum, including Peruvians, as they are transported for processing after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Boulevard, Calif. Mexico has begun requiring visas for Peruvians in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country. The move follows identical ones for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians, effectively eliminating the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Julia Paredes, right, of Peru, gets a hug from volunteer Karen Parker, after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Boulevard, Calif. Mexico has begun requiring visas for Peruvians in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country. The move follows identical ones for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians, effectively eliminating the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Peruvian Julia Paredes, left in white hat, listens to instructions from a Border Patrol agent with others seeking asylum as they wait to be processed after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Boulevard, Calif. Mexico has begun requiring visas for Peruvians in response to a major influx of migrants from the South American country. The move follows identical ones for Venezuelans, Ecuadorians and Brazilians, effectively eliminating the option of flying to a Mexican city near the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
