Someone Orchestrated the Border Crisis

You can see a long way from Border Patrol Hill. A clear day and good pair of binoculars get you visibility for twenty, thirty, sometimes forty miles into Mexico. It’s view broken only by the rolling terrain on both sides of the Amistad reservoir. This used to be a barren and canyon-strewn section of the near despoblado: now it’s a “recreation area,” a dammed lake with recreation mostly on the north side. On the south side, it’s all business. The business is trafficking: drugs, people, lawlessness, the common coin of Mexico hellbound for Texas. 

I stood on Border Patrol Hill at sunset, binoculars in hand, and surveyed the far shore. The low red sun was ideal for illuminating glass and metal at a distance: I could see the glints and flashes as the vehicles moved down from the approach roads onto the sandy shoreline. Nearly the whole apparatus of transport was visible from here, at this hour, when it was bright enough to see but dim enough that prudent drivers turned on their headlights. Carretera Federal 2, the cartel-controlled Mexican route hugging the border from Matamoros to just west of Ciudad Acuña, brought the main traffic — and then the vehicles bearing their cargo and people pulled off onto the tributary roads, descending momentarily out of sight before popping up again on the bluffs above the shoreline.

MORE

-Chuck