MEXICO: Mexican theme park features a game about immigrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico to the United States

Record ID: 303980

  • Title: MEXICO: Mexican theme park features a game about immigrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico to the United States
  • Date: 29th September 2006
  • Summary: (L!2) EL ALBERTO, HIDALGO, MEXICO (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF SUN GOING DOWN OVER MEXICAN BORDER TOWN EL ALBERTO VARIOUS OF ELDERLY WOMAN WALKING IN TOWN VARIOUS OF PEOPLE IN STREETS AND SUN SETTING
  • Embargoed: 14th October 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mexico
  • Country: Mexico
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVABUH2P77EK2BLMYOI4C9Y40V4V
  • Story Text: Despite the threat of starvation, dehydration and capture, nearly three million illegal immigrants are estimated to make the desperate "coyote run" across the Mexican border and into the United States each year.
    Last year 1.2 million were captured by United States border patrol in the attempt, but that does not deter the residents of the small border town of El Alberto where most of the townspeople - up to 90 percent, by local estimates - have ventured across the border illegally.
    Now, some men in the town work as "coyotes", as they call those that for a fee will act as guides for immigrants chasing the "American Dream" across the border.
    Wearing balaclavas and carrying small lanterns, the men lead their troupes through marshy swamps and treacherous ravines, knowing the best ways to evade the U.S. border patrol guards.
    Javier Garcia also calls himself a "coyote", however the difference is that his clients are not illegal immigrants, but tourists from Mexico City who plan to return home.
    "We are not going to use the lamps. Immigration officers could be close and see where we are going and even turn us back, back to the beginning where we started in the church," Ecoalberto Park guide Javier Garcia said.
    Welcome to Ecoalberto Park - a tourist spot some 168 kilometres north of Mexico City - where pretending to make a border run is considered an extreme sport.
    For around 15 U.S. dollars the adventure park offers travellers the opportunity to trek through the night with men dressed as border control guards in hot pursuit.
    Javier is one of the park guides, and each night he takes tourists on a 3-hour border run simulation, leading participants over marshy swamps and artificially constructed cliffs and forcing them to hide in shrubs.
    The park - sponsored in part by the Mexican government - has drawn criticism from U.S. patrol guard for re-enacting an illegal and dangerous activity and training people how to make the border dash.
    But Javier says the park is just trying to draw attention to the terror of the experience.
    "Many people have said that we train people, but it's not like that. We just do it so that people can see the suffering that every immigrant experiences trying to cross to the United Status," he said.
    The community of El Alberto launched the EcoAlberto Park seven years ago to give residents an economic alternative to migration. The project is funded by local residents - who share ownership - and a grant from the federal government's National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Communities.
    The border run simulation is fast becoming the park's major attraction. Its highlight is a crawl through a hidden tunnel.
    "It's a special situation, that creates this bond of brotherhood and moves the group forward," said Poncho, one of Ecoalberto Park's guides.
    But while this is just for fun, around 500 immigrants were reported to have been killed in the real thing last year, the majority of them being overcome by severe dehydration and heat exhaustion especially on the dangerous Tucson-Arizona desert route.
    "When we go to the border we find the "coyote" (people who help others cross the border for money) and we don't know who he is. He has no identity, so we have to trust him. Who he is, what he's like, I don't know. We simply put ourselves in his hands and trust him. And another of the situations (involved in border crossing), the funny things we say. Also, it's so that they don't see us, the face of . . . of you know what," Poncho said.
    The park guides say they try to inform the people of the risks of trying to get across the border.
    "This place is very dangerous, there are a lot of very dangerous animals, a lot types of scorpions," one of the men dressed as a US border patrol guard said.
    Ecoalberto Park also tries to simulate the danger of the experience, forcing the tourists to sprint for cover as pretend US border patrol, or "milangra" as they are called, close in on the group.
    "What did you come here for? It's not good to cross here, there is no work left for Mexicans," one fake border control guard said.
    "Well, I've no desire to go to the other side, and well, it informs people that here in Mexico we can do many things without having to go looking for other things in other places," one of the game participants Tania Fuentes Prieto said.
    The park organizers say that the idea for leading tourists on mock crossings emerged when several returning migrants were swapping tales of the "coyote run".
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