The kamikazes of poverty

Mexico's southern border with Guatemala is supposed to be a new frontier in the war against terror. But it is economic migration that causes the problems

AT THE JesÃºs el Buen Pastor refuge in the centre of Tapachula, a city on Mexico's border with Guatemala, the door is opened by HÃ©ctor, a Honduran in a wheelchair. He lost both his legs trying to jump a freight train bound for central Mexico, the first stage of what was meant to be the long journey north to the beckoning opportunities of the United States. Like HÃ©ctor, many others fall on to the track in the scramble to get any sort of toehold on the daily train. It is the â??end of their American dreamâ?, says Olga SÃ¡nchez MartÃ*nez, the director of the refuge, crowded with 25 amputees. Those who survive face a tough (but free) two-week journey north.

Nobody has much idea how many people end up like HÃ©ctor, just as no one knows, even vaguely, how many people flow over Mexico's 1,000km (625-mile) border with Guatemala. Compared with the far longer border with the United States, Mexico's southern flank has long been ignored, notes Hugo Angeles Cruz, an immigration researcher at the College of the Southern Frontier in Tapachula.

That is now changing. The area is seen by American and Mexican officials as a new frontier in the war against terror. Fresh resources have gone into policing it. That has drawn attention to the underlying problems of a very porous frontier, and the policies (or lack of them) that have created a rising human toll in an otherwise obscure backwater.

Last year Mexico deported 147,000 illegal immigrants in all, some 20% more than in 2002. Over 90% came from just three Central American countries (Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua), almost all of whom are likely to have entered through the southern border. In Tapachula, immigration officials concede that the higher figure represents not their success in stemming the flow, but evidence that more are making the journey.

Certainly, the would-be migrants on the Guatemalan side of the frontier do not seem to be deterred by any bureaucratic obstacles. Many gather in the seedy, menacing border village of Tecum Uman, whence they cross the Suchiate river to Mexico. The river bank is a medieval scene of hawkers, migrants, smugglers and even the occasional policeman.

Many of the migrants already have families or friends and promised jobs in the United States, where more than 500,000 Central Americans are thought to live illegally (and another 900,000 legally). A Honduran says he is going to work on a building site at $13 an hour (the minimum wage at home is $3 a day). â??American workers are lazy and smoke dope...we work,â? he says. Roberto, from El Salvador, makes the train ride north sound like merely a long commute. He is preparing for his ninth journey to join his girlfriend in the United States. He says the grain trucks afford the best place to hide. A train of 70 wagons can have as many as 600 illegals in it, or hanging off it, he adds.

They would benefit from George Bush's proposal unveiled earlier this month to grant temporary work permits. In the past, as the flow of migrants has risen, so have the dangers. Accidents apart, the main threat comes from ruthless local gangs, operating in and around Tapachula. Many of their members are violent youths from El Salvador and Honduras who have been deported from the United States. They have few roots in their own countries. Last month one gang killed three migrants and wounded half a dozen in an attack on a train; in all, the gangs killed 70 migrants last year. Prostitution and rape are now serious problems as well.

The migrants are the â??kamikazes of povertyâ?, says Flor MarÃ*a Rigoni, a local priest who tries to help them. He says that the deployment of more Mexican police, at the urging of the United States, since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 has made little difference. The new forces specialise in searching for drug smuggling and terrorists. They know little about migrants and their rights. Abuses by the police are rising, says Mr Rigoni. And terrorists seem unlikely to contemplate wading across the Suchiate, stinking and crowded at this time of year.

The underlying problem is common to Mexico's northern border too. The North American Free Trade Agreement, and similar trade deals between Mexico and Central America, have vastly increased the flow of goods and services between Mexico and its neighbours. If Congress agrees, the United States will this year ratify a similar accord with Central America. Only labour is left out.

Mexico's president, Vicente Fox, has long badgered Mr Bush over immigration reform. But as some Mexican officials now acknowledge, their own country also lacks a coherent immigration policy. Just like the Americans, Mexico's government treats the human traffic across its border as a security problem. It is, but largely because of the crime that the incomers attract and are victims of. There is also much official sympathy for the plight of the Central American migrants, and a common understanding of the poverty that they are trying to escape.

The result is somewhat schizophrenic. While police try to send the migrants back, officials from other branches of Mexico's government patrol the border to help advise the migrants of their human rights as they pass through the country. They even hand out the odd jumper to keep them warm. Immigration officials know that the vast majority of the migrants are only in transit though Mexico to the United States, like many of their own compatriots.

That means that in the end the solution to the chaotic carnage in Tapachula lies beyond Mexico's control. It is yet another argument for Mr Bush's proposed immigration reform. Meanwhile, Mexico would do well to try to think more creatively about how to provide rights of transit while attempting to regulate the flow through its southern back door.
http://www.economist.com/world/la/di...ory_id=2388487

Isn't it nice that Mexico is lending a hand to it's illegals to gain access to the U.S.? WTF!!!