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| Mexico's other border: People crossed the Suchiate River from Guatemala into the Mexican town of Cuidad Hidalgo last February. Alexandre Meneghini/AP |
Mexico's other migrant problem
The government will soon release details of a new plan to prevent Central Americans from crossing the southern border.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 31, 2007 edition
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Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico - This summer some 200 undocumented immigrants were hidden in a truck compartment when a floor holding more than a ton of bananas collapsed, killing six. The driver reportedly fled the scene.
For many it was a chilling reminder of another smuggling tragedy, when 19 undocumented immigrants suffocated in a trailer abandoned by its driver in Texas in 2003. Yet this time it was not a case of migrants trying to get into the US, but Central Americans trying to sneak into Mexico.
Mexico spends so much time fuming over its border relations with the US that its own southern frontier – where tens of thousands of Central Americans cross each year in hopes of making it to the US – is quite often an afterthought.
The country has traditionally been just a transit point on the immigration route, and has long been under pressure by the US to step up its security. Shortly after taking office in December, President Felipe Calderón responded to the call by setting up a new border police force with 645 officers.
But his administration is under equal pressure by critics who say Mexico demands of the US what it doesn't give to its own migrants: fair treatment.
Near the top of the list of demands for many immigrant rights activists is the decriminalization of the nation's immigration laws, which, in some cases, call for two years in prison for being undocumented.
"Migration has changed," says Fermina Rodriguez, a human rights coordinator in the southern town of Tapachula. "[Mexican authorities] should view Mexico as a destination, not just a country of transit or expulsion of immigrants."
Mexico's southern frontier is hardly an obstacle at all – at least when comparing it with the censors, radar, and border patrol agents that man the US-Mexico border. Here in the border town of Ciudad Hidalgo, drugs, weapons, and people pass illegally over the Suchiate River at any time of the day.
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