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Caribbean-Latin America
Mexico's southern border: lawless roads
2009-09-29
Seems like Mexico has some of the same problems on their southern border that we have on ours.
TRAFFIC is light on the bridge linking Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico to Tecún Uman in Guatemala. Tricycle-taxi drivers and an armed guard idly stand around in the sun. All the action takes place on the river below. A small flotilla of rafts fashioned from trailer tyres and stacked with sacks of corn floats by, in sight of customs officials. Their cargo is destined for Tecún Uman's bustling market, which overflows with crackers and bread made affordable by the recent depreciation of Mexico's peso against the Guatemalan quetzal. "It's illegal, but it's a job for these people," says Antonio Aguilar, the chief of Guatemala's national police in Tecún Uman. That is one reason why he leaves the 5,000 or so small-time smugglers in this area alone. Another, he admits, is that when one of his predecessors cracked down on smuggling, a mob burnt down the police station.

Migration and the trafficking of drugs and guns across Mexico's northern border with the United States capture endless headlines. (This week agents fired at three vans containing 74 illegal immigrants as they failed to stop at a border crossing near San Diego.) But many of these problems are quietly mirrored on its southern frontier. This is "a no-man's land, a wild frontier," says Conrado Aparicio, a naval commander at Puerto Madero. That is despite recent government attempts to exercise greater surveillance.

Today's problems date from the 1990s, when traffickers began to move drugs through Central America in response to an American crackdown on their Caribbean routes. After Hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, a torrent of destitute migrants began to head north too. Mexico's governments have come to accept that if they want the United States to reform its immigration laws and to speed cross-border trade, they have to exercise more control over their own territory.
Posted by:Steve White

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