In the shoes of an illegal immigrant: at a park in central Mexico, tourists pay to simulate an illegal border crossing. Does this teach empathy, or is it just plain crass?

• Author: Healy, Patrick O'Gilfoil
• Position: SOCIETY

Clad in black clothes and moonlight, our guide Poncho adjusts his ski mask and faces us to speak. The desert has claimed many lives, he says, but tonight we will make it across the border.

The night is crisp and clear in the central Mexican highlands. Our group of 13 is about to set out on one of Mexico's more bizarre tourist attractions: a make-believe trip illegally crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States.

DARK ENCOUNTERS

The four-hour caminata nocturna, or nighttime hike, traverses desert, hills, shrubs, and riverbeds in the Parque EcoAlberto, an eco-park about three hours northwest of Mexico City (and 700 miles from the U.S. border). Tourists on the mock border crossing, led by "fellow immigrants," have to run and hide from fake Border Patrol agents.

Hnahnu Indians (pronounced nyahnyoo) opened the park in 2004 with help from the Mexican government. Since then, some 3,000 tourists--mostly Mexican--have paid 200 pesos each (about $18) to take the journey.

Park officials say it teaches empathy and offers tourists a taste of life as an illegal immigrant, but opponents say it's just plain crass.

"Of course it's just a game," says Antonio Flores, a professor from central Mexico who hiked the caminata last year with a group of students. "[But] it was very interesting, very important. Often, immigration is a subject so far away. This gave us a chance to experience it through our own steps."

The Hnahnus know firsthand about the challenges immigrants...