EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexican truckers fed up with highway robberies and violence expressed their concerns by turning a portion of one of Juarez’s busiest avenues into a parking lot on Monday.
Members of the National Transportation Association parked approximately 50 vehicles on two of the four traffic lanes of the PanAmerican Highway (Federal Highway 45), causing bottlenecks in south Juarez. Similar protests were taking place in other cities throughout Mexico on Monday.
Miguel Enriquez, a spokesman for the group, called on the Mexican government to stop the violence that has claimed the lives of at least seven truckers driving loads from manufacturers in Central Mexico to the border.
Group members said the violence is worst in Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, Puebla and the roads coming out of Mexico City, where organized criminal groups are targeting them. At least one of the fatalities involved a trucker in southern Chihuahua state.
“So many robberies, assaults and shootings have us on the brink. We need a solution,” Enriquez said during the protest in Juarez, which lasted at least two hours.
The robberies are rampant to the point the association has told its 500 affiliated independent trucking firms to ban their drivers from hauling loads at night.
The National Confederation of Chambers of Industry released a report last week documenting 85,000 robberies involving truckers since 2018. In 2023 alone, the robberies resulted in losses to companies in excess of $400 million, the group said.
The truckers said one of their representatives was meeting with federal officials in Mexico City at the same time the protest was going on.
(ProVideo contributed to this report.)
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