Drugs, migrants, money, and the back-country border region
Sky Jacobs
May 2007

 

I've spent a lot of time along the AZ/Sonora border in the last 15 years and have become habituated to shrugging off people's comments about the dangers of the area. And I think rightly so... until recently. Reality is slowly catching up with rhetoric, and it's unfortunate for people like me who love exploring the border region.

 

There is so much beautiful, diverse, and interesting country to enjoy and protect in Arizona and Sonora's border regions. My list of places to go is long, and there are quite a number of them that are possible dangerous, likely a bad place to go, or certain death. I may be exaggerating, but as always there is a grain of truth. There are two little men in my head that are always bickering... "go for it, it's beautiful there, you haven't had any major problems yet"... and then, "you've already been through a lot of sketchy situations, it's only a matter of time. Quit now while you're ahead."

 

With the war on drugs and migrants crossing into the U.S. tightening, the value of these economies is becoming stronger. With this added value always comes someone willing to take advantage of the profit potential and willing to protect that profit by any means necessary. In this case huge underground cartels are taking advantage of these profits... hundreds of millions or billions of dollars a year. It's more or less like the mob, but with even more money and corruption involved... spread over many countries in this hemisphere.

 

I recently had a stake bed truck loaded with bales of pot drive by a few feet from me and it rekindled my thoughts on the whole issue. It sounds funny at first, but it made me increasingly angry at the U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. drug policy. It wasn't a hypothetical anger, but a very personal anger that this policy was causing me to be physically in danger of harm... as well as not able to do what I enjoy most -- hike, study, and enjoy this region.

 

Our policy begins to seem absurd when you take into account the fact that it is not working... not in the least. In fact what it is doing is making "bad" people very wealthy, endangering lives, harming the environment, wasting our tax dollars, making getting across the border a nightmare, among many other problems. If there was a chance of winning it would be easier to justify. But as any economist knows supply will always reach demand. The harder we crack down the more the product is worth; the more money cartels and smugglers make the more people will join that economy to get their share.

 

Recently more than a dozen cops in Canenea were shot by a group of around 50 well-armed cartel members in a brazen daylight raid. It's seems it's getting to the point were the cartels have enough money, clout, and force that most local police (as well as some military and federales) are either too scared to do anything, paid off to look the other way, or actually involved.

 

The cartels are also getting their fingers deeper into people smuggling as well. I recently learned from locals near Sasabe that the cartels are charging around $100 per migrant just for the right to pass through the region and cross the border. It's similar to the mob "taxing" businesses just because they can. These fees add to a lot of money (maybe $20,000 to $100,000 or more every day) when you consider many hundreds, or even a thousand migrants pass through the area every day.

 

Migrants are getting the short end of the stick from every side having to pay for steep smuggling fees, supplies, vehicle rides, "taxes", as well as being subject to getting robbed, extorted or simply not getting what they paid for with no recourse. And that's before they even cross the border and are subject to an entirely no set of problems. This is all happening to very nice, hard working, poor, and displaced gente.

 

This all adds up to our region being a dangerous place, and often a pain in the ass. But at this point I will continue to endanger myself to study and enjoy the remaining natural areas in the border region, the draw is just too strong… I can’t stop myself!