Mexico’s Other Border Is Rattled by Armed Crackdown Along River

[bilo]

“The soldiers came with their M-16s and told us that they didn’t want us to work,” said a 31-year-old who goes by the nickname Rooster. He has been making a living with his raft for more than a decade. Like the hundreds of other camareros (Spanish for tubers, though the word can also mean waiters or stewards), Rooster can earn as much as $39 a day, decent money in Ciudad Hidalgo, a town of about 15,000 that spreads out from the river.

The new show of force on the border is meant to stem the stream of migrants escaping violence and poverty in Central America, a move made to appease President Donald Trump after he threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican imports to punish the country for failing to control the masses trying to make their way to the U.S.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-22/mexico-s-guatemala-border-plan-threatens-local-river-economy?srnd=politics-vp

[bilo]

The cargo depends on the direction. From Mexico to Guatemala, it’s usually cans of cooking oil or bags of rice, cases of Corona and cartons of eggs. It’s mostly people going the other way, many headed for the U.S. All of it, technically speaking, is illegal, but the customs and immigration officials on the international bridge never paid much mind, allowing the Suchiate River crossings to build into the cornerstone of a thriving economy in an impoverished region.

It's going to be tough for Mexico to stop all of this, but at least they are starting to, maybe their will to do so will toughen as their cities in the north overflow with asylum seekers waiting to have their cases heard in the USA.