Will The Real U.S. Citizen Please Stand Up

I'm not sure if my northern readers are exposed to all of the news about drug cartel business on the Texas/Mexico border right now. It's always been around, but lately it has gotten VERY bad. I don't watch the news that much, but my Mom definitely does - she likes it....and she lives right next to the border, so it's important that she knows what's going on.

Every year when I visit, we go shopping right over the Mexican border in Nuevo Progreso. It's a very easy walk across a big bridge (over the natural country border of the Rio Grande River). There, of course, is Immigration and Border Patrol stations there, with armed border police - normal to see that.

There are turnstiles to get into Mexico and it costs 25 cents to go through the turnstiles and that's it - no I.D. checking, no nothing - they don't care. Afterall, almost everyone that is walking across the bridge is going to be spending U.S. money over there, so they welcome the visitors with open arms (it's mostly elderly from the northern states that are 'wintering' down in south Texas). You can drive over the bridge, but my Mom refuses - she says that her car will 'disappear' and be disassembled and sold for parts. Maybe she's right?

Anyway, we paid our 25 cents and headed into Mexico this year like usual, but I was surprised to see that the Mexican police were checking cars - not something I have seen before.... (see pic below)

There's also a sign on the U.S. side right before you would drive over the bridge (see below) that says it's illegal to bring guns into Mexico......right, right. One of my co-workers is from El Paso (FAR west Texas, right where Texas, Mexico and New Mexico come together) and he said that basically all along the border, drugs are coming from Mexico to the U.S. and that tons of weapons are going from the U.S. to Mexico. That's the 'traffic pattern'. I asked him what touristy things I would find in El Paso (for another LONG roadtrip) and he said that the mountains are pretty over there and then New Mexico is right there, so there are cool things to see there......but he said I SHOULD NOT cross the border into Juarez under ANY circumstance. The drug/weapon trade is SO bad there that he knew somebody that went over the border into Mexico, got shot for suspected involvement in some bad stuff. He didn't die, but was taken to the hospital and went straight to the operating room to undergo surgery. The 'bad guys' actually followed him to the hospital, busted into the operating room, and shot him 4 more times on the operating table during surgery - with the surgeon and nursing staff right there - THAT killed him. AH!

So anyway, I'm glad my friend told me that AFTER I got back from south Texas. And also - the manager of the place where my Mom lives down there came up to her on Thursday night when I arrived and said that if we were planning on going to Mexico to shop, we can't go on Saturday. Apparently it's gotten so bad that for the next 4 Saturdays, they were shutting down the bridge to pedestrian and car traffic. No shoppers in Mexico! At that point, my Mom got worried, but I convinced her that I needed some new jewelry and wanted to find a cool pot for my back porch, so we went. I'm not sure if we're brave or really stupid!!

SOOOO, by the time we were back in Texas, I didn't think about the whole border thing much more, but when I went to drive north out of town - heading to San Antonio for the night......I hit another border issue: a border patrol check point! It was about 2 hours north of the border and all of a sudden traffic just came to a stop. I figured there was a big accident and I was really annoyed because I just wanted to get north to San Antonio before nightfall. Anyway, as we inched along for a while, it became apparent that it wasn't an accident, but a border patrol check point where they make every car stop, they ask if you are a U.S. citizen and they have drug dogs there, sniffing every single car that goes through (I passed).

Here are my pics of the experience: (And yes, I'm even a tourist during serious federal matters)