Nuevo Progreso Report for November 2011

COMMENTARY | The first thing that strikes you as you cross the bridge is the absence of the military. They had been parked at the bridge for some two years or so, searching cars and trucks, looking professional, while at the same time maintaining their aura of intimidation and potential for sudden violence from any real or perceived threat. They were simply gone. There had been nothing on the news about it. The sandbag bunkers were dismantled except for a forlorn gun emplacement as you would enter the town. Looking more carefully I could see that the quasi hidden military encampment tucked to the side of the bridge was completely deserted. There never had been too much reason to have the military in Nuevo Progreso in the first place. It was a relatively quiet town due to its intrinsically poor performance as a smuggling route, due to both geography and low bridge traffic.

Mexico is playing an extremely dangerous game with both the drug cartels and the drug war. Of course, it's the people, increasingly on not just one but both sides of the border, who are taking the risk. Mexican presidents in a tradition now stretching for decades have left the country at the end of their term. For one thing, extradition is much more involved and complex than a simple straightforward arrest in one's own country.

The drug war does seem to be entering a new faze; for whatever reason the Zetas are more or less supreme over much of Mexico. Close to the mouth of the Rio Grande remnants of the leadership of the Gulf Cartel have been captured in the Rio Grande Valley. They were perhaps seeking the relative tranquility of Texas. Cartels still seem not to want to have the knock-down, drag-out firefights and military combat in the United States that they no qualms about having in Mexico. The northern side of the Rio Grande, while not a neutral zone by any means, still is not the free-fire zone that we have to our south. The Zetas have moved on into parts of Mexico where they have not been before, and now are butting heads with the Sinaloa Cartel. The biggest of the biggies. Perhaps the baddest of the baddies as well. We shall see.

It would seem reasonable to assume the army has shifted north along with the conflict. They have a lot more to do in areas that are much more important than Nuevo Progreso. They aren't giving out any reasons, but this is one of the more likely assumptions. To keep the roads open on the major trucking and industrial routes takes a lot of patrols and a lot of manpower. So the army has shifted upriver.

Meantime, life goes on, death does as well. And business never stops. The business of the border has been trade; the most profitable trade is contraband. The smugglers have not slowed down. The unwinnable war in Iraq is going to go on without us; Afghanistan has gone from unwinnable to almost total untenability. But The War on Drugs slogs on. Mexicans die by the tens of thousands and American prisons are filled to overflowing with the poor and unfortunate of our citizens - a price that the government and the economic elite are more than happy to pay.

The little border tourist town of Nuevo Progreso straggles, or struggles, on. Mexicans don't complain that much, at least not when they are sober, and not to outsiders. There is a reign of terror in Mexico - people are careful of what they say, especially to strangers.

Winter Tourists that come to the town are now more and more Baby Boomers. Many times they don't scare as easily as the young millennials do.

While numbers did seem to be down, there were Winter Visitors in town. They no longer go at night, and they stay in groups, still they come, as do I.