Migrant caravan reaches Guadalajara

Most expected to take Pacific coast route to Tijuana

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Several thousand Central American migrants heading for the U.S. border arrived in the western Mexico city of Guadalajara with help from truckers and other motorists Monday, marking a month since their trek began.

Many of the migrants boarded waiting buses at the Jalisco state line that carried them to a shelter prepared for them in the city’s Benito Juarez Auditorium. Guadalajara municipal police shuttled others in patrol vehicles.

The migrants are mostly families from Honduras. At the shelter, officials had the migrants form two lines — one for families and one for men traveling alone. They were offered food and told where to go for donated clothing and free internet to contact their families.

Most appear intent on taking the Pacific coast route northward to the border city of Tijuana, which is still about 1,550 miles away. The migrants have come about 1,200 miles since they started out in Honduras around Oct. 13.

While they previously suffered from the heat on their journey through Honduras, Guatemala and southern Mexico, they now trek along highways wrapped in blankets to fend off the morning chill.

Karen Martinez of Copan, Honduras, and her three children bundled up with jackets, scarves and a blanket.

“Sometimes we go along laughing, sometimes crying, but we keep on going,” she said.

By late afternoon, the first migrants arrived on the outskirts of Guadalajara.

While the caravan previously averaged only about 30 miles a day, the migrants are now covering daily distances of 185 miles or more, partly because they are relying on hitchhiking rather than walking.

On Monday morning, migrants gathered on a highway leading out of the central city of Irapuato looking for rides to Guadalajara about 150 miles away.

“Now the route is less complicated,” Martinez said.

Indeed, migrants have hopped aboard so many different kinds of trucks that they are no longer surprised by anything. Some have stacked themselves four levels high on a truck intended for pigs. On Monday, a few boarded a truck carrying a shipment of coffins, while yet others squeezed into a truck with narrow cages used for transporting chickens.

Over the weekend, the central state of Queretaro reported 6,531 migrants moving through the state. A smaller caravan began arriving in Mexico City on Monday.