Border Hopping

My last few days in Chiapas were spent visiting official crossing points at the Mexico-Guatemala border. I'm not really sure what I was expecting. I guess I thought I could just drive up, snap a few pics, ask some questions and move on down the road. Turns out the border isn't really all that accessible.

Starting in Tapachula, we (my PNC and I) mapped out our road trip. Itinerary: Mazapa de Madero, Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, Carmen Xhan, Talisman, Union Juarez. Now, these crossing points are registered on the official website of the Instituto Nacional de Migracion. (INM). As such, you would imagine some sort of pageantry or ritual to mark these crossing points, or a paved road at the very least. Not so much.

Day to day transportation from one small town to the next generally consists of jumping in a combi. A combi is a large white van (think Jon and Kate plus 8, circa 1985) with three rows of seating. Official capacity, including the driver and the "transportation specialist", is 20. Not including kids. No AC, but all the windows open, if your lucky. It's quite an extensive network of combis here in Mexico. Seeing as how large bus companies only travel to certain cities and travel by taxi is too expensive for the average Joe, the combi business is flourishing.

The system is similar to that of my beloved Chicken buses in Guatemala. There's the driver and his helper, who I like to think of as the transportation specialist (TS). As the driver zips along at a nausiating pace, the TS hangs out the door, continuously yelling out the next destination in an abbreviated, diner kind of way. The driver taps on the horn for good measure and slows down to ask every pedestrian along the road/highway if they, by any chance, are also heading to Moto (Motozintla). If it's a yes, the TS swings open the door, tells everyone to scootch and the combi barely slows down as the next rider jumps in and falls into a seat. It's a pretty sweet job, and I've already decided that when and if I'm ever down on my luck, I'm going to head back to Chiapas and turn in an application to be a TS.

So, basically, you take a combi as far as you can and then jump into the next one and then the next one to get to your final destination. One ride rarely costs more than 25 pesos. In order to reach Mazapa de Madero, we took a combi to Huixtla (pronounced weaks-la), then to Motozintla, then to Mazapa de Madero. This took us about 3 hours, so we were happy when we got there. We were not happy, however, to find that the border isn't actually in Mazapa. That's funny, someone should let the INM know. Our trek continued. We had to take another combi to the Bridge Bacaton and then wait for a kind soul to take us up the mountain on an unpaved road, populated by various livestock, to Barrio Veracruz (Gracias a Dios on the Guatemalan side), where we finally found the border. The kind soul (who immediately reminded me of Freakshow from Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. He really, truly was lovely) navigated these treacherous terrains beautifully while downing tacos and an orange Fanta.

The border was marked by a series of small white statues and a serious landscaping job. When talking about borders, we (academics) generally talk about them as regions. We like to say that borders aren't impermeable walls, they are transnational regions with shared cultures and economies on both sides. Borders are man-made limits that marcate changing political territories, you don't actually see the border emblazoned in the earth. Wrong. Mexico has taken pains to do just that, using white statues and what must be a fairly large lawnmower. The Mexico-Guatemala border (at least at the spots we went to) can be very clearly seen. This was kind of odd, as the physical border was juxtaposed against a sleepy little town where it was difficult to tell where Mexico ended and Guatemala began.

Our journey continued over the next couple of days, and the other crossing points were fairly similar. Of course, some a bit more busy than others, but all fairly remote.

We finally started heading back to Tapachula to hit up the last two spots, Talisman and Union Juarez. We decided to take an overnight bus (roughly 6 hours) from Comitan, catch a few hours of sleep and then get back to the business of border crossing. One thing I should know by now: never try to plan ahead when Mexican transportation is involved. I wasn't even really all that surprised when we stopped at around midnight and the driver announced that we couldn't get through. Meaning, due to the intense rain (please see flash floods in Pearly Pits), there was a landslide and the highway was blocked indefinitely. The company's solution was to backtrack 3 hours to San Cristobal de las Casas, wait for a 3 hour maintenance check/oil refill, and then take a different highway to Tapachula. This would turn our 6 hour trip into an 18-20 hour trip. Bummer. We essentially held a town (bus passenger) meeting on the side of the road. One particularly riled up man made an impassioned speech about our right to dependable and safe transportation. Why should we just sit back and allow "The Man" to jerk us around like this? Don't we deserve better?? HELL YEAH!! My inner proletariate just couldn't resist. Long story short, 12 hours later we finally made it to Tapachula.

We ended our border crossing journey in Talisman, right outside of Tapachula. The border at Talisman, like that of Ciudad Hidalgo, is marked by the Suchiate River. Here there are no balsas, but there is a nifty little zip-line to illegally cross the border by way of the river. After my last experience as an undocumented immigrant, I fought every urge to get strapped in and fly into Guatemala. Oh, the rush. Anyway, Talisman is also nearby a variety of fincas, or coffee plantations. Mexico, much like the US, imports a lot of agro labor, especially in the Southern fincas, and Talisman serves as the main entry point for Guatemalan finca workers. I watched as they waited on the bridge for their contractor, all tenderly holding their neatly wrapped machetes, until they were allowed to cross, single file, into Mexico to wait for their work visas to be issued by the INM. This was all done silently, underneath a flock of vultures onimously circling closely overhead.