The Tunnels of Everything but Love

Think you’ve had a hard time crossing a few borders in your life? Well, if you’re looking for a real adventure, try crossing under the border between Mexico and the U.S. The LA Times has this fairly badass account of life below the border, literally. I love this passage in particular – sounds like a tale from an industrial apocalypse, or maybe, Detroit:

Inside the largest known tunnels on the border — two passages that make up an enormous drainage system linking Nogales, Mexico, with Nogales, Ariz. — migrants stumble blindly through toxic puddles and duck low-flying bats. Methamphetamine-addicted assailants lurk. And young men working as drug mules lug burlap sacks filled with contraband.There are shootouts and rapes. Floodwaters sweep people to their deaths. U.S. Border Patrol agents pursue smugglers in frenzied chases, insults and threats echoing as they go. And tangles of rebar metal — points sharpened by smugglers — gouge people who get too close to some walls.