We crossed the border

 

 

It wasn’t the same.  It has always been so easy, so friendly, but crossing on the weekend was different.  It was militarized.  We walked across the bridge from the U.S. like we normally do, no problem.  But there was a long pedestrian line to get past a point in Mexico we always just cruise through.  Package scanners.  Body scans.  Cars next to us in the vehicle lane being held up and searched.  Town was normal after that.

 

To get back to the U.S. there was a vehicle line that is not normally there.  Usually, cars drive right out of Mexico to the U.S. checkpoint.  That’s a careful examination there.  Suspicious cars get pulled over for a more intensive search.  This time cars were being stopped on the Mexican side of the bridge, drivers removed, while each car got a cavity search.  Surviving that, each car got to proceed on to the U.S. process that they were going to get anyway.  The traffic backup in Mexico went all the way through town.  The line barely moved.  There was a pedestrian hold up on the Mexico side of the bridge too.  Never figured out what that was about, but then they let us through.  The last part of the crossing at U.S. security included an extra scanning.

 

Why the change?  The Mexican government committed to an additional 10,000 troops at the border, and they are making their presence felt.  Maybe our little crossing at Progresso is now intercepting more drugs headed for the U.S. and more U.S. weapons headed for Mexico, both serious problems.  Couldn’t tell any difference from our vantage point.  What we could tell though is, it’s certainly different now.