Drug cartels want migrants’ routes

Fight to control corridors on Arizona border turns violent

ALTAR, Mexico ˆ This village on the edge of the Sonoran Desert has been a supermarket for smugglers and the smuggled for nearly a decade. Migrants choose from an array of packages offered by coyotes and pick up day packs and anti-dehydration potions for the trek north.
Now drug smugglers want their route.

TIJUANA, Mexico ) — The police department has issued about 60

slingshots to officers in the violent border city of Tijuana,

The Border(PBS) | About the Show

Not a Drop to Drink

Produced by Matthew Sneddon, KNME-TV, Albuquerque, New Mexico

The economies of Juarez, Mexico and its sister city, El Paso, Texas are driven by a system of assembly plants known as maquiladoras. There are more than 600 maquiladoras in Juarez, two-thirds of them owned by U.S. companies. Since the first maquiladora was built in Juarez in 1976, the population of the city has increased nearly five-fold to more than 1.25 million, making it the largest Mexican city on the border. The Rio Grande fuels Juarez and El Paso’s water supply.

However, the more than 10 million people who live in these desert communities have begun to exhaust the Rio Grande’s capacity to support them.

This segment focuses on one Rancho Anapra family faced with the realities of living in a desert community with no running water. It examines the factors that contributed to growth of this particular border region: the Rio Grande, the maquiladoras and the promise of a better life.