Two trends converge along Mexico’s southern border. One concerns the US recession, which has shocked the Mexican economy. The peso’s buying power is greatly diminished. Capitalizing on the peso’s decline against the Guatemalan quetzal, Mexican migrants flock south to sell toys, clothes, and foodstuffs. One popular route stretches from Cuidad Hidalgo, a city in the state of Chiapas, to Tecún Umán, a Guatemalan village with a bustling market.
The police chief of Tecún Umán turns a blind eye: “It’s illegal, but it’s a job for these people.” When it comes to breaking the law, arbitraging trinkets is a benign offense. Most of the estimated 5,000 smugglers return home soon after hocking their wares, and they aren’t known to bring drugs or guns with them.
The second trend is the realignment of drugs routes over land. As the US cracked down on transit routes in the Caribbean, trafficking operations shifted, pushing Colombian-made cocaine up through Central America en route to the US.
As a result, the 600-mile border between Mexico and Guatemala is now “a no-man’s land, a wild frontier,” according to a Mexican naval commander. The border is remote and rugged, part highlands, part jungle. The Mexican government has sought to impose a “vertical border” of police checkpoints spaced 25 km apart. To avoid being caught, migrants take to the hills.
Enter Los Zetas. Drawing their lower ranks from discontented youth in Chiapas, the Zetas leadership is a motley stew of former Mexican and Guatemalan special forces. While drug trafficking is the primary enterprise of the Zetas, over recent years the gang has diversified operations to include kidnapping. Migrants make easy prey. Men crossing the nether region between Mexico and Guatemala are tortured, women are raped, and ransoms are demanded from relatives living in the United States.
Mexican officials are aware of the problem along the southern border, and reform is underway. Former governors and prosecutors in Chiapas have been arrested on corruption charges. Police forces have been beefed up. But the Zetas have hit back, assassinating high-level bureaucrats. In a country where jobs are needed the Chiapas police have 300 unfilled vacancies.
Given American pressure for serenity along its border with Mexico, the cauldron of anomy in Chiapas receives comparatively little attention. It’s easy to advise a less gringo-centric strategy. The more fickle reality is Mexico’s drug gangs are a transnational threat. When the Zetas are under attack they flee across the border to Guatemala. For crackdowns in Mexico to have more than a temporary effect, law enforcement across all transit points—from Colombia to Canada—will have to raise the heat, and keep it up, in tandem.
