A Blind Spot between Guatemala and El Salvador

<p>It is a border without bureaucracy. Blind spots, abundant between Guatemala and El Salvador, are hubs for contraband, drug trafficking, and migration from Central America. They are sites where residents make an honest living with one foot on each side.</p>

Carlos Barrera

Carlos Barrera

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Asunción Mita is a blind spot. Not the entire municipality, which covers 476 square kilometers and by official count has 42,572 inhabitants, of course, but generally speaking, it can be said that Asunción Mita is a blind spot in Guatemala. On the other side is El Salvador. It is also fair to generalize and say that in Guatemala and El Salvador, when someone says “blind spot,” no one thinks of the area of the retina that lacks photosensitive cells or the military jargon that defines a vulnerable place where an ambush can occur. A blind spot in these parts is precisely a place like Asunción Mita: a point where one can cross the border without anyone’s permission. Here, going from one country to another is normal. At these points, the border is just another stretch of dusty, muddy roads flanked by acres of grass and cattle. Here, immigration requirements are a mere formality intended for immigration checkpoints. These roads are a network of dirt roads where nothing happens for hours — until something happens.

Guatemala and El Salvador share a 200-kilometer border in the departments of Santa Ana and Ahuachapán in the latter, and Chiquimula and Jutiapa in the former. Between the two countries, there are four border controls with immigration checkpoints: Valle Nuevo-Las Chinamas, Pedro de Alvarado-La Hachadura, La Ermita-Anguiatú, and San Cristóbal. These points distribute the flow of migrants and trade traveling from the rest of Central America. But the border is porous and has other rules unwritten in official documents or regional treaties. The 154 blind spots between the two countries operate under their own rules.

One of the first rules is dictated to me by a coyote in the shade of some leafy ceiba trees on the outskirts of the municipality of Asunción Mita: “Here, you don’t get involved in any blind spots, so you don’t witness something you shouldn’t see,” he says, continuing with a series of coded statements: “No one wants to get their turf heated up,” “you don’t want them to know what your business is.” The coyote has been smuggling people from El Salvador to Mexico for ten years. His favorite crossing point is a neck of the village of Anguiatú La Vieja. There, an old bridge that connected the railway between Sonsonate and Esquipulas in the last century serves as a pedestrian and motorcycle crossing for people who want to move between the two countries without immigration bureaucracy.

The coyote knows this blind spot like the back of his hand, as well as the rest of the places that are part of the villages of Asunción Mita. Anguiatú La Vieja is a tiny village of tiny houses. There is an area called “El Centro,” with a store where Salvadorans stock up on vegetables, which are cheaper here than in their country. There is a soccer field where Guatemalans and a handful of Salvadorans mix to play on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. From the center of the village, a narrow street leads to the bridge. “People of different nationalities cross there, even when there are soldiers... we know how to work it out,” says the coyote, who is not the only one in Mita who manages to get people or things across from El Salvador.

The connection between Guatemala and El Salvador through the blind spots has a recent history rooted in organized crime. In the first decade of this century, the Texis Cartel, a criminal network of Salvadoran politicians, gang members, police officers, and businessmen, controlled drug trafficking from El Salvador via a route called El Caminito, which crossed Santa Ana into Jutiapa, where the oldest Guatemalan drug trafficking clan, the Lorenzana family, operated at the time, as well as the criminal gang Los Temerarios, originally from Asunción Mita. Here, on the outskirts of the municipality, both groups are still remembered. An old liquefied gas smuggler whom the coyote put me in touch with refers to both gangs as “them”: “No one here wants to mention them, but when they cut off someone’s head, there’s always someone else who wants to control the business,” he tells me in an alleyway in the municipality.

A brief exchange begins between trafficker and coyote.

“Over there, in Sitio de Las Flores and Pajonal, they're still active, Los Temerarios.”

The coyote replies: “Yes, but now they’re more into contract killings.”

“They’re always well armed.”

“The problem is if they see someone they don’t know... If they see me, there’s no problem, because they know I’m someone who’s gotten involved with them.”

The smuggler nods and ends the conversation.

“Yes, but they work at night.”

The two men know the deepest hiding places in this region. The smuggler is a 70-year-old man who has spent much of his life transporting liquefied gas cylinders from El Salvador to sell them in Asunción Mita, taking advantage of state gas subsidies in the neighboring country. Five years ago, he was captured while traveling on the Pajonal road to the village of Sitio de Flores with forty gas cylinders. He was released after paying bail and spending a month in detention.

In 2022, word spread that Salvadoran gang members were fleeing to Guatemala through the blind spot of El Pajonal, passing through Sitio de Flores, due to the state of exception declared after the breakdown of the pact between the government of Nayib Bukele and the gangs. One day, a banner appeared on one of the village streets reading “Marero visto, marero muerto” (Gang member seen, gang member dead).

Here, people are not prone to backing down; they say so openly. They uphold that rule: They do not want to see gang members on their territory. They have been organized and armed for three years. They set up guards and combed the roads until they fired shots to scare away people walking along the border. “We don’t want to see gang members here, we hate them,” the foreman of one of the ranches in El Sitio tells me. “With the help of the bosses, we organized ourselves,” he concludes.

In these places, as if time had frozen in an ancient rural world, there are bosses and laborers. In the entire municipality of Asunción Mita, 48.1 percent of the inhabitants cannot afford the basic basket of goods, which costs $178 U.S. dollars in rural areas. In villages where most people work on other people’s land or tend livestock, 12.4 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, surviving on less than a dollar a day.

A blind spot is usually a dangerous place, but it is also full of people who have lived there for a long time, who coexist with that danger and live their lives with a cross-border normality that has nothing to do with any criminal activity: They shop on one side, eat on the other; they visit friends or partners. This normality, which is contrary to immigration rules, is so widely accepted that even the military and police on both sides allow it. But, again, a blind spot is usually a dangerous place, especially if someone who does not usually show up in those parts appears.

El Sitio de Flores is the last village before crossing into El Salvador and reaching San Antonio Pajonal, in Santa Ana. Until 2013, police reports referred to it as a drug trafficking enclave.

Entering El Salvador, Pajonal connects with the villages of Sitio de Flores (or El Sitio) and El Guayabo. The latter is located on Lake Güija, which some locals call “the big blind spot.” To get from El Sitio to El Guayabo, I drive along a paved road in good condition. Sources have warned me that it is a road frequently used by criminal gangs. Another of my sources accompanies me: “The information we have is that everything happens at night,” he tells me before stopping to take a photograph of the bullet-riddled signs. The idea is to portray everyday life between the blind spots of the border. A woman peeks out from the door of her house. When she sees me, she slams the door and disappears. We continue our journey.

According to another coyote, El Guayabo is a crossing point for migrants, but also for drugs and weapons. It is a waiting point for everything that arrives from the other side, El Salvador.

When we arrive at the place, we are greeted by thundering Mexican banda music. We drive down a dusty road until we reach the shore of Lake Güija.

The music is coming from a white Toyota 4Runner and a gray Tacoma. Both have tires that look like tractor tires. Next to them, a group of men are sitting in wait, but we immediately catch the attention of one of them. He stands up and calls over two others who now appear to be his bodyguards. As he walks toward me, I can see that he is adorned with gold chains, bracelets, and rings. He lifts his shirt up to one side of his waist, exposing a pistol with a magazine that sticks out beyond the barrel. He puts his hand on it. I greet him. “Hello, how’s everything here at the lake?” He replies curtly, “Here, waiting.” “I’m a journalist,” I reply. “Yes, and this isn’t a good place to ask so many questions,” he says, ending the conversation. His bodyguards stare at me, he puts his hand back on the gun, turns around, and goes back to his vehicles. I leave. That was a photo I could not take.

Elvin Rivera, 30, is the foreman of a farm called El Zacatal. Elvin regularly crosses the blind spot in the Anguiatú La Vieja area to visit Salvadoran friends and look for workers for the farm. “It’s rare to see a military patrol here. I’ve been coming back and forth to El Salvador for a long time, and sometimes I’ve seen Salvadoran soldiers on the other side, but they don’t say anything,” he said as he rode toward the center of Anguiatú to stock up at a store.
El Coyote Juan has had a tough time over the last year. Since Donald Trump returned to the U.S. presidency in January 2025, work for Juan has dried up, leaving him almost ruined. “This year, I’ve only left twice. People are afraid to leave and get deported back quickly. I feel like giving up. It’s also getting more dangerous because of those who control the border between Mexico and Guatemala,” he told me in one of the villages on the outskirts of Asunción Mita.

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The village of Anguiatú La Vieja is a street lined with old houses. There used to be an old train station there that connected Guatemala and El Salvador. Narrow streets lead from the center and disappear between the border, turning them into two blind spots, one called El Puente and the other unnamed, which leads to the village of Santa Inés de Metapán, El Salvador.(Photo: Carlos Barrera)Carlos Barrera
Four hours from Guatemala City and a few meters from a blind spot, David Romero and Elvin Rivas talk about working on farms in the center of Anguiatú La Vieja. They also comment on the recent earthquakes that were felt in Guatemala. “It shakes a lot in Guatemala,” says David, as if talking about a distant and foreign country. “Here, we hardly know what’s happening there,” concludes Elvin.
In the rural areas of Asunción Mita, people live off agriculture and livestock. According to sources, gangs operated in the blind spots, going to El Salvador to steal cattle to sell in Guatemala. “It was very easy because the police couldn’t follow them here,” my source tells me as a ranch worker herds his boss’s cattle.

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In the daily life of those who live in the blind spots, Guatemalans and Salvadorans have always coexisted. In Anguiatú La Vieja, a group of Salvadorans crosses the blind spot at El Puente to play soccer every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. No-one is subjected to immigration checks or requirements there, simply because custom prevails over the law.
Open until midnight, the old pool hall, which has been operating since 1960 on the outskirts of Asunción Mita, was a meeting place for smugglers and coyotes. When police persecution intensifies, the hall becomes an exclusive place of recreation for local ranchers and farmers.
Carlos Aguirre owns a vegetable and candy store near the blind spot of El Puente. His livelihood and that of his family depend on selling vegetables to Salvadorans who cross the border to buy cheap food. “They tell me that what they pay a dollar for there costs them 50 cents here. They are the ones who buy the most here. Even when my father owned the store, his biggest customers were always Salvadorans,” he said.
The bridge is a blind spot in the village of Anguiatú La Vieja. Below, between the rusted metal bases, are white-painted concrete blocks that serve as a landmark between Guatemala and El Salvador. Occasionally, the place is guarded by Guatemalan soldiers, who do not prevent almost anyone from crossing. “People come and go here and no one says anything,” says the owner of one of the houses that ends at the river, a few meters from the bridge.
An old gas smuggler explains that in San Cristóbal La Frontera there is a place where people cross with propane gas bought in El Salvador to resell in Guatemala. “When the subsidy was widespread (in El Salvador), we had a profit margin; now we have to see how we can get it with the subsidy and the payment that has to be made to the police in El Salvador and Guatemala,” he tells me in a low voice in an alley of a village in Asunción Mita riding the border.

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The village of Sitio de Flores is mostly made up of farms and ranches, some of which border El Salvador. Most of the people walking around there work the land or raise livestock on the farms. The village organized itself to prevent gang members from entering when the state of exception began in 2022. “We had the support of the landowners,” José, who manages one of the farms, tells me as he combs his boss’s horse.
On the afternoon of July 17, 2025, an Audi SUV was traveling on the road from El Sitio to the blind spot in Pajonal, to cross into El Salvador. The two coyotes I spoke to mentioned that the Los Temerarios hitmen’s group still operates in the area, keeping a low profile. “At the end of the road, to cross into El Salvador, vehicles pass by as if nothing were happening, under the gaze of Salvadoran soldiers,” says a trafficker who has crossed that road countless times.(Photo: Carlos Barrera)Carlos Barrera
Lake Güija is known to traffickers, drug lords, and coyotes as the great blind spot. Boats carrying people, weapons, and drugs arrive there, according to local sources. “Moving around without the right people can be costly in El Guayabo,” a coyote told me. El Guayabo is a peninsula with private ranches separated from El Salvador by the lake. In that area, the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s Office confiscated a property belonging to Francisco Morales, known as Chico Dólar, who is accused of money laundering and belonging to a criminal organization that operated in Jutiapa. But far from criminal activity, the lake is also a fishing area and a source of livelihood for the poor people who live in the area.
This is a blind spot. A concrete slab over a stream that serves as an extension of the rural roads that dozens of people travel every day between Guatemala and El Salvador. Here, between San Antonio Pajonal and Guatemala, there is no interruption to traffic or pedestrian traffic. There are no immigration procedures; people move from one country to another as normal.