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The Tamaulipas massacre: how the American Dream dies in Mexico
MIGRANT ROUTES TO THE US

The Tamaulipas massacre: how the American Dream dies in Mexico

Lorena Arroyo / Pablo Ferri / Hector Guerrero|Comitancillo (Guatemala) / Camargo (Tamaulipas, Mexico)|

They invested and risked everything in search of a better life, traveling to the United States without documents that would allow them to work. But they were found shot dead, and their bodies charred in the north of Mexico, a territory where migrants are preyed on by cartels and a corrupt system takes advantage of them. That’s how the hopes of a group of 15 Guatemalans turned into a nightmare. EL PAÍS has reconstructed their story

Workers erecting the new border wall in the desert of Baja California.
AMERICAS

Trump’s other walls

Lorena Arroyo / Hector Guerrero / Teresa de Miguel|Mexico City / Sonora / Baja California|

The most efficient barrier built by the 45th president of the United States is not made of cement or steel. Instead, what’s managed to stop both legal and illegal immigration is an intricate web of executive actions, administrative orders and agreements with other countries obtained through threats. The real and virtual hurdles built over the last four years have affected the lives of thousands

The lost border in the jungle

The dictionary definition of the Spanish word “selva” is not just limited to “jungle,” but also encompasses confusion, conundrum. Those terms also define the Guatemalan department of Petén. The territory shares more than half of its border with Mexico, and practically the entire border with Belize. The jungle occupies the majority of this territory. Since 1998, the US Drug Enforcement Administration has considered it to be a key corridor for drug smuggling. Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán came through here, and massacred members of the Los Zetas syndicate. If you ask who is in charge now in that 2.2-million-hectare jungle, you’ll get timid responses. But a journey through this immense area allows you to understand how, for years, the main suspects have been “nobodies” in this place

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