Reynosa's tents

It's the magic code. A sort of anti-seizure insurance. All the migrants in the makeshift camp on the Plaza de la Republica in Reynosa, a few steps from Hidalgo, in the USA, have it. They received it from the "coyote" - human trafficker - at the time of payment: five, nine or even twenty thousand dollars to reach the United States.
With precise instructions: learn the sequence by heart and repeat it when intercepted by a criminal group on the way north. It means that the toll has already been paid to the criminal organizations that control the Mexican territory. Or rather, that the "coyote" did it for them. It is the only way to "work" in the land of narcos.

The kidnappings of migrants are ongoing. «They got us in Monterrey, in Gustavo Ordaz ... But it is above all here that we need the code. Who knows if it still works ». "Here" means the border, the last leg of the journey, the longest since Donald Trump's Remain in Mexico program and then the pandemic, also armored it for asylum seekers . Turning it into a 3,300 kilometer long funnel. Far from reducing the flow, the latest containment measures have made it more chaotic and cruel.

Inside the cities close to the Rio Bravo - from Tijuana to Nuevo Laredo - anarchist enclaves are born, populated by those who wait, often in vain, for the right moment to apply for refuge. Like Claudia, camped in Reynosa square since August 15, along with 2,700 other would-be refugees from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, but also Haiti and Cuba.
A labyrinth of tents and blankets piled on top of each other, with sixteen bathrooms and twelve showers in total, where refugees spend their time trying to survive. Under the watchful eye of La Maña, as everyone calls the Gulf cartel, the mafia that controls a city of 700,000 inhabitants. And it manages the seizure industry, which is booming. Impossible to have figures.

But it is enough to talk to the refugees to touch the fear. Or to see the children playing "the kidnapper and the kidnapped." ransom to relatives and friends in the US. If you don't pay you are resold in the sex market, organs, slave labor. That's why I never slept, I was afraid they would take my daughter ", says Belgis, who came from Honduran San Lorenzo together with husband and 7-year-old daughter. La Maña and her network of spies - primarily the taxi drivers - do not let go of the "human booty".

The physical concentration of migrants in the square is convenient for narcos because it favors hunting. It is therefore not surprising that it was the Gulf cartel - as confirmed by well-informed sources - that gave away the first tents, the last spring, with which the camp was created.
Until then, it was Matamoros - 90 kilometers away and always under the control of La Maña - the epicenter of the flow. As soon as he entered the White House, however, Joe Biden suspended Remain in Mexico , the plan that forced asylum seekers in the US to await the decision of judges in Mexican territory.
After two years of limbo, 70,000 were transferred across the border, including the 3,000 inhabitants of the Matamoros maxi-camp, a symbol of Trump's zero tolerance.
However, when one tent city was emptied, another one immediately emerged. Because, rhetoric aside, the border has never reopened for refugees from the South, wounded by violence, climate change and political instability.

The Democrat Biden has left in force the controversial Title 42 issued by his predecessor: in Covid time, the express expulsion - less than 15 minutes - of those who knock on seats is allowed control to apply for refuge. Most of it is "spat back" at Reynosa. The others - tourists, entrepreneurs, professionals - can pass. The youngest and strongest choose the irregular migration for the desert.
Women and children accumulate in the square, respectively 60 and 40 percent of the total. Officially, at the behest of Biden, minors are allowed to enter by way of derogation from Title 42. The refugee families thus separate themselves.

Now the situation could get even worse: On December 2, a Missouri judge forced Biden to restore Remain in Mexico. Asylum seekers already in the US begin to be shipped across borders. Not in Reynosa, though. At least not yet.
The camp, however, continues to expand. In the indifference of the authorities, on both sides of the border.


Lucia Capuzzi
NP January 2022