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GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) – Several thousand Central American migrants heading to the US border arrived Monday in Guadalajara, western Mexico, with the help of truckers and other motorists, a month or so ago. the beginning of their journey.
Many migrants boarded buses waiting on the Jalisco National Line, which then took them to a shelter designed for them in the city's Benito Juarez auditorium. The Guadalajara municipal police transported other people in patrol vehicles.
Migrants are mainly families from Honduras. At the reception center, the leaders made sure that the migrants formed two lines: one for the families and the other for the men traveling alone. They were offered food, told where to get donated clothes and free internet access to contact their families.
Most seem to want to take the Pacific Coast road northward to the border town of Tijuana, about 2,500 kilometers away. Migrants have traveled 1,900 miles (1,900 kilometers) since arriving in Honduras around October 13.
While they previously suffered heat on their travels through Honduras, Guatemala and southern Mexico, they are now walking on freeways covered with blankets to protect themselves from the early morning cold.
Karen Martinez from Copan, Honduras, and her three children wrapped in a jacket, scarf and blanket.
"Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry, but we continue," she says.
At the end of the day, the first migrants arrived in the suburbs of Guadalajara.
While the caravan averaged only 50 km a day earlier, migrants now travel a daily distance of 300 km or more, in part because they rely on hitchhiking rather than walking.
On Monday morning, migrants gathered on a highway leading from the city of Irapuato, in the city center, looking for routes to get to Guadalajara, about 242 kilometers away.
"Now the road is less complicated," said Martinez.
Indeed, migrants have embarked on so many types of trucks that they are no longer surprised at anything. Some piled four floors on a truck for pigs. On Monday, a few boarded a truck carrying a cargo of coffins, while others snuck into a narrow-haul truck used to transport chickens.
Many, mostly men, travel on open-deck trailers used for transporting steel and cars, or ride in 18-wheel cargo containers and use one of the rear doors to allow air to circulate.
The practice is not safe. Earlier, a Honduran man in the caravan died after falling off a platform truck in the state of Chiapas, Mexico.
Jose Alejandro Caray, 17, of Yoro, Honduras, fell a week ago and had a knee injury.
"I can not bend it," Caray said while watching other migrants swarm in tractor-trailers.
"Now I'm afraid to continue," he says. "I prefer to wait for a van."
After several groups got lost after climbing on semi-trailers, the caravan coordinators started encouraging the migrants to ask the drivers first or ask someone to take the taxi to tell them where to drive.
Over the weekend, the central state of Queretaro reported the displacement of 6,531 migrants in that state. Another group was late and arriving in Mexico City on Monday.
The caravan became a campaign issue during the mid-term elections in the United States, and US President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of more than 5,000 troops at the border to repel the migrants. Trump insinuated without evidence that there were criminals or even terrorists in the group.
Many say they are fleeing poverty, gang violence and political instability, mainly in the countries of Central America such as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Mexico has offered asylum, asylum or work visas, and its government has declared that 2,697 temporary visas have been issued to individuals and families to cover them during the process of applying for permanent status. 45 days.
But most migrants swear to continue in the United States.
Jose Tulio Rodriguez, 30, of Siguatepeque, Honduras, celebrated his 30th birthday at a migrant shelter in Mexico City last month before leaving with the rest of the caravan.
"The distance between cities is longer" than at the beginning, noted Rodriguez, "but thanks to the Mexican people, we have not suffered."
These distances will be as long as you will go in northern Mexico, where cities of all sizes are often 400 km away.
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