The next morning we grabbed a colectivo and went to Ciudad Hidalgo and Tecún Uman, two of the most visited cities on the Mexico-Guatemala border. There we saw the cat and mouse game in action. As people crossed the Suchiate River “illegally” on inflatable rafts, the Mexican military watched but didn’t do anything to stop them.
It’s a forbidden but obvious traffic. Well-dressed people board the balsas to get to work; others start their journey through Mexico; and behind it all there are armed militares there supervise the crossings, but at no point do they interfere. A few hundred meters from the official border checkpoint, it’s everyday life at the river.
For those making their way toward the United States, the next move is a three-hundred-kilometer walk across Chiapas to catch the trains in Arriaga. It hasn’t always been this way. In 2005, Hurricane Stan hit the coast of Chiapas and destroyed the railway from Tecún Uman to Arriaga. Some Central American migrants decide to take the trains in the north of the state, but for others the journey has become even more difficult.
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