Picture perfect weather again for another trip to Nuevo Progreso. I had taken my last pill the day before and it was past time to head south. We had terrible floods in July and the Rio Grande had swollen over its banks in some places and then it was over, the waters went down and it hasn’t rained a drop since. Two Mexican kids about 10 to 12 years old were wrestling on the sandbar that had surfaced during this mini-drought. You could see where the drop off would be if the water level was normal. It would suddenly get very deep, very quickly. The Rio Grande is tricky or truchoso, as they say. It can be very deep, or very shallow, or fast or slow. As far as taking lives it averages about one a day, more or less. No one knows for sure. Some of course drown getting to the US side (there are many ways to meet an untimely demise, especially when your crossing and you don’t really know how to swim). And some bodies are dead when they hit the water. They get flushed down the river… how convenient for the body disposers, Statistics from Mexico on corpse recovery seem to be getting more and more unreliable. I trust the US version less and less as well.
About 4pm Nuevo Progreso is pretty much a ghost town, just a few straggling tourists were making it back across the bridge, and nobody other than myself was coming in. There is some kind of safety in numbers in Mexico. I suppose like anywhere else. Companions are potential witnesses to criminal activity, both non and government criminal and a crowd can also serve to diffuse your singular vulnerability to attack. After all a lion can only pull down one zebra at a time…the rest stampede to safety. Around 5 pm in December it can get real lonely real fast.
The Snow Birds have always headed south across the bridge in the morning, but now they are making it earlier than ever. And they were always early. Could be filling up the parking lot at daybreak so they can make an early get-away. But that’s too early for me to check. I, as well have always figured the “bad guys” were sleeping in at 8am or so. They can shoot you in their dreams, but better that than when they are awake.
In previous reports I’ve explored why Nuevo Progeso, Mexico is one of the least violent towns on the admittedly very violent drug-cartel plagued border. Still there has to be a lot going on under the radar. But very little is visible on the surface.
I don’t know if vodka and lemonade is an official drink or not, but I had one at pharmacy bar and headed back. I heard a most intense buzzing crossing the bridge. Yes, it was the little open deck shallow water craft that passes for a Border Patrol Gunboat. I hope the BP guy had body armor at least. The river was down so low, that it was hardly wider than a canal, so he had to stay right in the center. The Rio Grande widened on the west side of the bridge so he hugged the Texas side like a security blanket. He was going much too fast to cut any sign of any crossing or smuggling activity. Wisely he was just trying to stay alive.
Reminds me a little of Forrest Gump, of the movie of the same name. No matter how dangerous or nasty the job was, he would always say: “Yes Sir, Lieutenant Dan, thank you Lieutenant Dan!” I think maybe Homeland Security searches out the Gump types. They can come in handy. Especially when a floating duck is needed to carry the flag alone exposed on the water, without real weapons or armor on the liquid border of a country with the largest purely criminal insurrection in the world going on today.
May the force be with us all and with the pitiful swift boats and their captains of the Rio Grande.
End of Part one
