Introduction

A Paradise for Contraband?

IN 2006, AN ARTICLE in El Financiero described the Mexico-Guatemala border as "a paradise for contraband
. . . the problem, which is little spoken about, is that illegality dominates everything at the border."1 Each
day, ten-ton trucks, upwards of twenty years old, rumble through an unmonitored road crossing the
Mexico-Guatemala border in the dry lowlands of Frontera Co- malapa, Chiapas, Mexico, and La
Democracia, Huehuetenango, Guatemala (Figures 1.1 and I.2) as they churn up a mixture of dirt and
cracked pave- ment. Local newspapers report that at least ioo trucks transit the route each day, smuggling
anything from corn to sugar, coffee, clothing, vegetables, so- das, and gasoline.2 The route is also
increasingly important to the drug trade. An official border crossing, replete with the modern
manifestations of the Mexican and Guatemalan states, straddles the Pan-American Highway a few miles
away at Ciudad Cuauhtemoc on the Mexican side and La Mesilla on the Guatemalan side. Hundreds of
unmonitored passages traverse the over 540-mile-long Mexico-Guatemala border, including paths crossing
through mountains, jungles, and rivers. With just ten official entry points between Mexico and Guatemala,
only eight of which are visible, the majority of cross- ings are informal.3 Of the forty-five informal vehicular
crossings along the Chiapas-Guatemala border, this one hosts the most commercial activity.4 A recent
Mexican government report detailing the security implications of the "blind spots" along the border
identified this one with a giant bull's-eye .5