New rivers of gold

摘要

In tapachula, a furnace of a city in southern Mexico, people line up inside an air-conditioned branch of Banco Azteca to process their remittances. Last year Mexicans received an estimated $24 billion from friends and family working abroad, mainly in the United States, with which Mexico forms the world's busiest remittance corridor (see map). But a closer look at the Tapachulan queue shows how the remittance business is changing. Many are not Mexicans receiving cash from America, but migrant workers sending it back home to Guatemala or Honduras. "Very similar to what happens at the other border," observes Jorge Luis Valdivieso, the bank's regional administrator, referring to Mexico's better-known northern frontier.