It can be dangerous here in the province of Tamaulipas Mexico. In fact, the US State Department declares “Do Not Travel” and gives it a category 4, the highest advisory level to US citizens and the same as Syria, Afghanistan, or Iran. Unfortunately for migrants in Tamaulipas, they’re 99.9% into their journey as this province is right on the border of the US and where Mexican cartels prey on the poor and vulnerable.
For years, migrants deal with danger in their own countries, if that be Port au Prince Haiti or San Pedro Sula Honduras. Many decide to sell everything, bid goodbye to their families and start the journey north.
Imagine dealing with dangerous rivers and deserts, traveling on top of freight trains, inside trucks, or walking for hundreds of miles through countries. All while putting up with abuse, exploitation, discrimination, trafficking, and finally possible detention and deportation. Only a truly desperate and hopeless person would be willing to deal with all of this adversity for a better life, and there’s tens of thousands who do.
And so here they wait, along the Rio Grande in Matamoros and Reynosa Mexico. Many in makeshift dwellings of tarps and blankets, only 70 meters from the USA. Here they wait, only a stone’s throw away from the US as Mexican cartels take advantage of the most desperate of people with kidnappings and ransoms.
It’s not easy being a migrant. None of us reading this have a remote idea how difficult it is.
Attached are a few photos from this past week. A young man showering, the close distance across the river to the US, a makeshift barbershop, a lunch of white bread, and a basic latrine, all only 70 meters from the USA.
To be back here in the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa Mexico is bittersweet. Not much has changed since we assisted in Reynosa 2 years ago or when we helped start a medical clinic in Matamoros 4 years earlier. Thousands of migrants are still here, and a few determined souls who we got to know 4 years prior are still here, only a stone’s throw across the Rio Grande from a better life in the USA.
As you might know, there are Venezuelans, Haitians, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorians here, but the distressed also come from as far as Bangladesh, Cameroon, and Russia.
It’s strangely fascinating and heartbreaking to experience their journey. We know and have helped many Venezuelan migrants on the coast of Ecuador where A Ripple is based. Then to experience their travel through the Darien Gap as we did in Panama this September, and now onto the northern border of Mexico so close to where they yearn. So close, but yet so very far.
Migrant: A person who moves from one place to another in order to find work and better living conditions.
In a way, aren’t we all migrants?
A Ripple
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