Danger dividing border communities
People who don’t live near the border often don’t realize that some communities exist on both sides of it.
Read the whole thing.MATAMOROS, Mexico — A quarter-century ago,two American journalists set out westward from the mouth of the Rio Grande on a journey of serendipity along the U.S. Mexico border, reaching the Pacific Ocean about a year later.
Among the enduring images painted in the book “La Frontera” were cross-border communities intimately linked by culture, family and history, and at times separated only by a rusty fence line or a shallow river.
“At that time, it was almost fashionable to refer to the border as a third country, between the other two, but I suggested that hadn’t yet occurred. It still was a place that divided more than it united,” author Alan Weisman recalled.
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“It used to be that half the family lived in the U.S. and half in Mexico. You’d see children crossing the bridge alone to visit their relatives. We saw ourselves as one community,” said Ruben Jauregui, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection supervisor in El Paso.
“Twenty years ago, we would have a problem convincing people they were coming back from a foreign country.
They’d say, ‘No, I’m not, I’m coming from my grandmother’s house in Juárez,’” he recalled. “But that’s not so anymore. Now there is no mistaking.”
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For border residents who grew up on both sides of the line and still have vital personal and professional connections, the current crisis makes them feel like being the child caught in a bitter family breakup.
“It’s a soul loss, like the loss of a loved one. Half my persona is in Mexico. All my research is in Mexico. I’ve carried on a love affair with Mexico all of my life,” said Antonio Zavaleta, 63, provost at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
His family goes back five generations here and, as a child, Zavaleta crossed back and forth on a whim.
“My Aunt Eva owned Palmito Hill on the U.S. side, the site of the last battle of the Civil War, and my grandmother’s place was on the Mexican side, so we’d either take a rowboat back and forth or swim. It was something we did without thought or fear,” he said.
“When I went to school, half my class was from Mexico,” he said.
He said there was plenty of truth to the border being a charmed place, half-Mexican, half-American, a special world for those who lived there.
“It was not just a romantic notion. It was part of our reality and to a certain extent, it still is, but it has changed markedly,” said Zavaleta who has all but stopped going to Mexico.
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This is the book referred to at the beginning of the article: La Frontera: The United States Border With MexicoCameron County sheriff’s Lt. Robert Rodriguez spots headlights on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande as he patrols Boca Chica Beach. It later was determined the lights belonged to fisherman. Jerry Lara/Express-News