Tabasco Mexico

Cecilio Banuelos and Blake Hanning are puttering quietly, their boat braiding a white tail in the darkened waters of the Rio Grande. They are out here most nights, slicing past Mexico, scanning the shores for bandits or drug runners--for trouble in all its shapes. Peering into the darkness, the Border Patrol agents aren't sure what hides in the shadows on shore. Smugglers lurk unseen. Children throw rocks and bottles. Bullets splash in the murky water. "We're easily outgunned," Banuelos says.

Mexican authorities fired seven regional directors of the country's immigration agency Thursday after allegations that its officers in northern Mexico had delivered Central American migrants to kidnapping gangs. Commissioner Salvador Beltran del Rio described the firings as part of a wider effort to weed out corruption at the National Institute of Migration, or INM, the agency that enforces Mexico's immigration laws. Mexican officials have pledged to fight armed groups that kidnap migrants to extort money or recruit them for drug trafficking.

The political opposition filed a formal complaint against the ruling party Tuesday alleging that the Institutional Revolutionary Party bought, bargained for and stole last year's state elections in the state of Tabasco. The opposition has made similar accusations for years--but this time is different, defeated gubernatorial candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador said.

Just above this tiny village, on North Carolina's wind-swept barrier islands, the pounding waves of Hurricane Isabel opened a channel that has become a test of the human will to live by the beach, that most ephemeral of habitats. The 1,700-foot-wide channel has severed Highway 12, the only road that links the town of 1,550 year-round residents to the rest of the Outer Banks and the mainland.

ORIOL BALAGUER'S tiny corner shop on Plaza Sant Gregori looks like a chic jewelry store. But don't be mistaken. The shop is a salon of serious, couture chocolates. In a display case that seems to float in the middle of the room, shiny chocolates shaped like cacao pods march across the shelf in perfect rows.

New trips to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Santiago, Chile, have been added to the 1993 Interhostel International Spring Study/Travel Program for travelers 50 and over. In all, 15 spring programs are offered by Interhostel, now in its 14th year--to Europe, Central and South America, Mexico and Australia. Fifteen additional programs will be offered next summer.

Although many people in this rainy, low-lying tropical city regard last week's catastrophic flood as an act of God or fate, others see it largely as a man-made disaster that could have been anticipated and should have been prevented. Residents of Tabasco state, one of Mexico's poorest and most isolated areas, have experienced such calamities before, including a 1999 deluge that left more than 600 people dead.

Enrique wades chest-deep across a river. He is 5 feet tall, stoop-shouldered and cannot swim. The logo on his cap boasts hollowly, "No Fear." The river, the Rio Suchiate, forms the border. Behind him is Guatemala. Ahead is Mexico, with its southernmost state of Chiapas. "Ahora nos enfrentamos a la bestia," immigrants say when they enter Chiapas. "Now we face the beast." Painfully, Enrique, 17, has learned a lot about "the beast." In Chiapas, bandits will be out to rob him, police will try to shake him down, and street gangs might kill him. But he will take those risks, because he needs to find his mother.