COLUMN ONE : Dreams Die on Mexico’s 2nd Border : The country’s crackdown on immigration has thwarted Central Americans hoping to cross through to the U.S. They sit in Guatemalan frontier towns, some turning to crime in their desperation.

Like so many of Central America’s down and out, Leticia saved money, hitched rides and finagled her way from a home in El Salvador, across international borders and toward the certain opportunities of the United States.

And like so many, Leticia was stopped, caught by Mexican immigration agents and bused back to this squalid and bustling town on Guatemala’s northwestern edge. Now the 28-year-old mother of two works as a prostitute to make enough money to try the journey again. She does not tell relatives awaiting her in Los Angeles, or her husband in Canada, the true nature of her current job.

“Imagine, driven to this, just to be able to go north again,” she said, seated in front of one of the dozens of brothels that operate round-the-clock here. “You do it out of necessity.”

Leticia is among tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans who have been stranded on the way north, not along the Rio Grande but further south, along Guatemala’s Rio Suchiate. Guatemala has long been the trampoline for Central Americans--and others from as far away as China and India--positioning themselves to cross Mexico and enter the United States illegally.

But as Mexican authorities crack down on illegal immigration across their southern border, thousands of would-be immigrants are being caught and deported back to Guatemalan frontier towns like Tecun Uman.

Guatemalans and others are starting to speak of a new border, where the line that divides Guatemala and Mexico now represents what the line between Mexico and the United States has for decades--the gateway for the daring and lucky, the ultimate barrier for the frustrated.

“The border has moved south. It is no longer between Mexico and the United States but between Guatemala and Mexico,” said Raul Hernandez, who handles refugee and related issues for the Roman Catholic Church’s Episcopal Conference in Guatemala. “For the large majority of people trying to go to the United States, the biggest obstacle they now face is here.”

Especially as the North American Free Trade Agreement relaxes barriers and transforms this continent into a more unified, single bloc, Mexico’s border to Central America is expected to become the rear guard in the U.S.-backed fight against illegal immigration.

Reflecting the enhanced role Guatemala may soon have in stopping illegal immigration, a team from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service spent a month this fall training Guatemalan police and immigration agents. Although brief training courses have been offered previously, this was the first extensive program.

Guatemalan towns like Tecun Uman are feeling the brunt of the increased number of deportations, which church officials say could be as many as 500 a day.

Tecun Uman is an anarchic spot where life is as hard as it is cheap, where abandoned children sleep in the streets and furtive men and women cower in flophouses, waiting for contact from a smuggler.

The desperation of stranded immigrants forces many into crime or other seedy forms of survival. It’s big business for those who traffic in human contraband. But it frightens and worries the longtime residents.

In the last decade, the permanent population of Tecun Uman has doubled; it more than doubles again if one counts the transient or “floating” population. Permanent residents are now outnumbered by floaters.

Named for a Mayan warrior who was ultimately slain by a Spanish conquistador, Tecun Uman had one brothel 15 years ago; today, residents estimate, it has 35, plus dozens more striptease bars and 24-hour honky-tonks. There is one church and no hospital.

“Tecun Uman has been converted into a hell, where everything you can imagine is permitted,” Hernandez said. “There is prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction, money laundering. . . .”

The arrival of so many rootless people has had a destabilizing effect on Tecun Uman, says the city’s lone Catholic priest, Father Jesus Rodriguez.

“It is a population that is illegal, undocumented, foreign . . . without a sense of community identity,” said Rodriguez, a Spaniard who has ministered to Tecun Uman and the surrounding villages for about 15 years. “Each day there is a loss of community relationship. There is no love for the town or the community, no joining together to defend the town’s interests.”

Rodriguez frets that the people of Tecun Uman are sinking in a mire of spiritual disintegration. Few people, he says, are willing to take “honest work” in factories or farms; they prefer the quick cash from illicit businesses spawned by illegal immigration, from the running of cheap boardinghouses to thriving coyote (immigrant smuggling) operations.

Buses spewing noxious black smoke rumble in and out of Tecun Uman constantly, snaking through the maze of dusty crowded streets and vying for space with hundreds of rickshaw-like taxis that pass by in swarms. The buses bring people who will wait for their chance to head north, usually by crossing the narrow, shallow stretch of the Rio Suchiate that skirts Tecun Uman.

Guatemala attracts would-be illegal immigrants for several reasons. First and most obvious, its location makes it a natural jumping-off point. Second, most Central Americans do not need visas to enter Guatemala, a privilege made possible by a new spirit of regional integration. And, according to many who make the trip, Guatemalan authorities are willing to look the other way, or are easy to bribe.

Just outside Tecun Uman, customers are ferried across the Rio Suchiate on inner tubes strapped together under planks. The makeshift rafts glide back and forth in open view of anyone who cares to notice but are never impeded by authorities, according to the men who pilot them. A one-way trip costs about 35 cents.

Once in Mexico, Central Americans are often ripped off and abandoned by their illegal guides or coyotes. They are preyed upon by roving bands of robbers and rapists, shaken down by corrupt Mexican cops and ultimately caught by immigration agents and thrown out. The undocumented are routinely deported to the nearest country--Guatemala--regardless of their nationality.

“The deportees come in busloads, and we do not have the means to handle them,” said Eduardo Paz, a Guatemalan immigration official in Tecun Uman. “Most of them don’t have any money, so they stay in Tecun. Most of the Guatemalans find their way home, but the Salvadorans, the Hondurans, the Nicaraguans, they all stay here.”

Interviews with more than a dozen people in Tecun Uman reflected a widely held perception that Mexican immigration authorities have made it even tougher for Central Americans to cross in just the last few months.

Indeed, 1993 was a record year for deportations from Mexico, according to the Mexican government. About 130,000 people, the vast majority Central Americans, were ejected, Secretary of Government Patrocinio Gonzalez Blanco Garrido said.

Gonzalez denied that Mexico is cracking down specifically on Central Americans. But there has been a shift in government attitudes, with officials becoming increasingly vocal in recent months on the need to stop illegal entries into Mexico.

While attacking U.S. policies and practices that keep undocumented Mexicans out of the United States, the Mexican government has in turn become less tolerant of illegal Central Americans, most of whom are regarded as economic refugees now that the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador have formally ended.

“Mexico will attempt to stop whatever migratory flow that is on the margin of the law,” Gonzalez said.

“Now we are complying with the law; before it was something that was enforced” with discretion.

Many Guatemalans believe the Mexicans are acting at the behest of the U.S. government, while U.S. immigration officials say the Mexican government is acting to protect its own economic interests.

Central Americans who cross into Mexico or the United States represent competition with Mexican workers for jobs. The economic development that NAFTA is supposed to spawn in Mexico makes it increasingly attractive to Central Americans, these officials say.

“Mexico has more to lose now,” said an official familiar with immigration issues. “Twenty years ago, Central Americans did not perceive El Norte as Mexico. The U.S. was El Norte. With NAFTA, that could change. El Norte becomes closer.”

While denying it would ever serve as an arm of U.S. immigration policy, the Mexican government for several years quietly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the U.S. government to assist in deportation of illegal immigrants, most of whom were Central Americans. Gonzalez said he ended use of the special U.S. fund when he took office a year ago.

And so, regardless of who pays for it, deportees like Leticia, the prostitute, end up back here in Tecun Uman.

Lounging in wooden slat chairs on the front porch of the “The Babes” brothel, Leticia and two Honduran women dressed in pink spandex insisted their work was temporary, something to do for quick cash before moving on. Leticia figures she can earn $35 to $70 a week.

“I cried on the border when they caught me,” said Leticia, who has tried to reach California several times in the last year. “I support my kids, my mother, I’m all alone. We all know why we’re here, the necessity, that’s the way it is. But I still have my intentions . . . to go to the United States.”

Down the road, outside the Lord of Three Falls Catholic Church on Tecun Uman’s central plaza, three young children slept in a doorway. They left Honduras four months ago but were stopped in Mexico and deported.

“I’m trying to get back to Honduras,” said one of the children, a 13-year-old boy with matted hair and raspy voice, “but I don’t have the bus fare.”

Fernando Guillen, a Salvadoran who says he lived in the United States for 15 years before being caught during a trip in Mexico and deported, was hanging out in the plaza, about to give up on what he said was an increasingly difficult trip north.

“A lot of stuff happens,” Guillen said in street-toughened English. “People get robbed, people get killed. Two women with me (in Mexico), they were taken and got raped (by a gang of bandits).”

The Mexican authorities, he said, “detain you for three days and they don’t give you no food, not even tortillas and frijoles , man, they don’t give you nothing. The hardest part is getting from here to Mexico City. To get into the U.S. then is easy.”

Guillen, who said he has a wife and U.S.-born daughter in Santa Monica, said he has been trying to return to California since April. “But I’m getting tired, spending money and spending money,” he said. “I’ll try again after Christmas.”

The sympathy that many longtime Guatemalan residents may have had for the deportees has been eroded by what they see as the deterioration of their town and lives. The few remaining families worry about their children’s safety. Merchants complain of having to sweep their sidewalks constantly to clear trash left by the homeless immigrants and of having to fend off beggars.

“The townspeople are very resentful,” said resident Maria Lilian Perez, 33, a mother of six. “Every time something bad happens, they say, ‘Oh, it’s the Hondurans,’ or ‘It’s the Salvadorans.’ Many of the people who stay here don’t want to work honorably. They make it bad for everybody. The trip used to be better for them, but lately many have been failing, and they stay here, waiting in limbo.”

Rafael Bamaca, who runs a boardinghouse, agreed.

“They talk about having no money, then they sell their belongings, mortgage their house and pay a coyote $2,000, $3,000 to take them north,” he said, shaking his head. “Then they get cheated, ripped off and end up back here--with nothing.

“It makes me sad, but it also makes me angry. The women prostitute themselves, the men steal. . . . They talk about better futures, but what kind of future is this?”

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Mexico City contributed to this report.