Mexican village hosts an illegal immigration simulation

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

It’s not exactly Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure, but the ‘Caminata Nocturna’ (Night Hike) is becoming an unusual tourist attraction with a sociological edge, the Los Angeles Times’ Reed Johnson writes from Mexico City. The roughly 7-mile night hike through a park in rural Mexico attempts to give visitors a sense of what it’s like for illegal immigrants trying to cross the U.S. border.

The hike is run by residents of a village in the rural Mexican state of Hidalgo, which has been decimated by immigration to the U.S. For $10 a person, tourists run up mountains and along a riverbank while being pursued by actors impersonating U.S. Border Patrol agents in pickup trucks. The ‘agents’ fire guns and try to get the ‘immigrants’ to surrender. The hike started in 2004 and has been drawing visitors not only from Mexico but the U.S., Europe and Japan. It takes place every Saturday night.

Here’s a link to reader comments about the story.

-- Deborah Bonello and Reed Johnson in Mexico City