Mexico’s Other Border Is Rattled by Armed Crackdown Along River
“This industry maintains the tricycles, the raft operators, the taxis, buses, everyone lives off of this. What happens if it’s gone? Forget it. Everyone would be poor.”
By Eric Martin
Bloomberg.com
June 22, 2019
The rafts, made of plywood planks lashed to fat inner tubes, float back and forth all day, piloted by camareros who push poles deep into the riverbed to guide their vessels in a rough echo of Venetian gondoliers.
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.
The possible end to it all reared up last week, with the arrival of a few of the thousands of troops Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is sending to the border.
“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.
But the ripple effects could be devastating in the state of Chiapas, the poorest in Mexico, and in the administrative district of San Marcos in southwestern Guatemala, where almost two-thirds of people live in poverty. A network of suppliers and couriers pedaling tricked-out tricycles on the Mexican side keeps the camareros stocked with products that are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive in Guatemala — Ace detergent, Nivea skin cream, Nescafe instant coffee, mayonnaise, PediaSure nutrition drinks, toilet paper, McCormick spices and on and on. Rafts have been known to ferry washing machines across.
While the river trade has existed for generations, it exploded over the past five years as the Mexican peso lost one third of its value against the Guatemalan Quetzal. There are no official statistics on the value of the commerce, but according to locals it’s the biggest, and almost only, business around.
“This industry maintains the tricycles, the raft operators, the taxis, buses, everyone lives off of this. What happens if it’s gone?” said Bertha Alicia Fuentes, 71, who has been running a supply store in Ciudad Hidalgo for four decades, selling mostly yogurt and milk for river-export to Guatemala. “Forget it. Everyone would be poor.” She shook her head and lifted her hands in exasperation. “The merchandise needs to continue to flow.”
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