We passed through New Mexico rather quickly, in one day.  To be honest there isn’t much there, aside from 300 soldiers freshly returned from Iraq and more Border Patrol than we’ve seen on any stretch of highway in Texas.

There are only two international crossings in New Mexico.  The crossing at Santa Teresa, just outside of Sunland Park, is essentially a suburb of El Paso, and has been used mostly by ranchers moving livestock across the border.  It is being developed, however by The Verde Group, which now owns the land on the U.S. side, and Grupo Mexico, the owners on the Mexican side.  We are told that these outfits hope to turn the area into a high-tech bi-national trade zone, but it is still in the early stages.  

The second and last crossing in New Mexico is at Columbus/Puerto Palomas.  Puerto Palomas has become a major flash point lately.  Local police are routinely threatened or killed when their investigations get too close to the cartels.  Recently, the police chief sought political asylum in the U.S., and is now awaiting his hearing in a Federal Detention Center.  Police officers in Palomas now, are choosing not to take the risk of going home after work and are sleeping on cots at the station.

Just a few miles from Palomas is the much sleepier town of Columbus.  The colorful and stuccoed facades of the buildings are another reminder that we’re not in Texas anymore.  The day we rolled in, the west wind was so strong that they had closed the highway going north to interstate 10, not our road fortunately.  We walked into Martha’s Bed and Breakfast, unsure wether to stay and sniff around or to keep driving towards Arizona.  We were inspecting the few brochures in the empty entrance way, when an older sunburnt gentleman came to the top of the stairs clutching a couple books of sheet music, he was definitely a guest.  We asked how he liked the rooms, “On a scale of 1 to 10…probably a 13…maybe 15.”  A guest perhaps, but a salesmen none the less.  On the question of what line of work he was in came a more vague answer, “I’m down here with Homeland Security…I work all along the border.”  

We walked around the corner and found the office and Martha looked up from her typing.  ”Where are you folks from”, she said in an over-smoked voice.  Clara gave her automatic response, “Berkeley, California” and immediately regretted it.  ”Are you a liberal”?, Martha followed.  I wondered if my being from Nashville would smooth it out some, but decided just to let the question hang.  When we asked her how she liked, the area, she mentioned the quality of the weather twice before admitting that it would probably help if one were her age to properly enjoy it.  Her red-faced guest had finally come down the steps and was sitting down to the piano, “Do I get a cut”?, he smiled, his face glowing even redder.  ”What, are you checking people in now”?, Clara and I paused for a few emphysemic chuckles as the man went into his first selection, Moonlight Sonata, and we knew that we couldn’t stay much longer.

With the music filling the Bed and Breakfast with the strange beauty of a plastic plant, Martha, unsolicited, told us the man’s true business: building the fence.  ”How do people feel about the wall around here”?  ”Oh, it’s helped a lot.  We had the head of the Minutemen here a couple weeks ago, he’s a good friend of mine, well they couldn’t find one illegal in two weeks so they moved on to Arizona”.  The man had finished with Mozart and was now fumbling through Debussy, as we backed out the door he looked up from the keyboard, “Did I scare you off”?  ”Not at all”, I returned, “I like your selections”.

Back in the van, there was the sense that we had narrowly escaped the Hotel California.  There are plenty of stories there to be sure, but we decided to answer the western call toward Arizona, and headed back out into the wind.

Say “border documentary” these days and most people seem to insert the word “fence” right between “border” and “documentary,” a piece of mental approximation soon followed by: “what’s happening with the wall?”  

Though we here at Border Stories have a broader focus, federal plans to construct nearly 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border are foremost in the minds of many of the Americans we meet here on the border, some of whom are committed to a full-pitched battle against the project.  And outside of this region, news reports on the implementation of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 consistently place above the fold. 

So what is happening with the fence – and the plans to build it?  

In short, the Department of Homeland Security is in a race to build all 670 miles of fence provided for in the Secure Fence Act of 2006 before a Dec. 31, 2008 deadline.   The good news, for DHS, is that nearly 240 miles have already been constructed in California, New Mexico and Arizona much of it by the National Guard troops stationed there under Operation Jumpstart.

In Texas, where the Rio Grande traces a ‘friendlier’ border, DHS contractors struggled for months just to get the lay of the land; local landowners slowed progress on the fence by denying federal surveyors access to their land.  That well-covered battle appears to be winding down after U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, denied a motion to dismiss a federal condemnation lawsuit against Eloisa Tamez, a Lipan Apache who owns three acres of land on the border in El Calaboz, TX.   

Hanen’s decision may quell that legal skirmish, but a larger one is a-brewing.  The Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife are challenging DHS’s waiver of a smorgasbord of federal laws under the REAL ID act, including environmental reviews.  The Supreme Court may hear the case in its next session.

If the Supremes slow down the race to the Dec. 31 finish line at all, the future of the fence depends on the preferences of the incoming administration, and on the Democratic side it looks like we’d see major changes.

Democratic presidential candidates Senators Clinton and Obama both voted for the fence legislation…

but they sound lukewarm about the actual construction of the fence on the campaign trail. As Clinton says in this clip, they “were voting for the possibility that where it was appropriate and made sense, it would be considered.”  

Border Stories is planning to leave El Paso/Juarez this week and enter the western portion of this border, where there is a lot more fencing already constructed. We’ll try get some images of fence construction out to you and spend some time talking to people in communities that already have border fences.

Oh, and by the way. There is a very knowledgeable and engaged someone working on an activist- “border fence documentary,” Nat Stone.  Check out his youtube clips here. 

There’s really not that many opportunities to connect to the internet in Big Bend and the area west of there. Suffice to say, it’s been beautiful and we’ll break the silence soon.

We drive northwest out of Del Rio, TX and will drop down into Big Bend National Park for a short rest.  Above Del Rio we pass Amistad Lake, the second dam along the Rio Grande.  Mesquite trees grow right up to the shoreline, and today the water looks nearly Carribean.  Today the lake is the site of a bass fishing tournament, we saw many of their heavily sponsored boats “anchored” at the hotels back in Del Rio.  It might only be interesting to me for it’s name “The Battle On the Border”…nice touch.  

Past the lake, the terrain changes at a remarkable rate.  The land, flat behind us, begins to undulate as though mountians are nearby.  At a bridge over the Pecos river, a brief but impressive look at it’s smooth sloped walls at least 100 feet tall, before it empties it’s waters into the Rio Grande.  The once plentiful mesquite trees have become scarce, as well as any trees at all.  

Life seems more of a challenge to support in this landscape of shallow canyons, dry creeks, and smooth bare hills peppered with the black dots of the low scrub.  Along the train tracks, where empty train cars sit minus a locomotive, an abandoned empty trailer sits next to a disused concrete structure.  It has no roof, and is spray painted on all sides with confessions of love and warnings of satan.

The communities along the first stretch of this trip, the river border, have given us more than most things the sense of what is shared on either side of its waters: language, family, and economy.  They are things that we fear will be missed as we enter further into this desert, and leave the river behind us.  

Mr. Nobody

The disparity of wealth in Guatemala is old news, as is the fact that the gap, far from narrowing, grows wider every year. Casa del Migrante brought that to light in a very human, very personal way. Here were two people from Guatemala, on opposite sides of a line in the sand. One had arrived at the safe house in a comfortable van, in clean clothes, carrying a passport, a camera worth thousands of dollars and the knowledge that in a few hours, she would go home to dinner and clean sheets. Her biggest trauma at the end of the day would be hearing some harrowing stories. 

The other showed up after weeks of hitching rides on trains, being assaulted and robbed and generally risking his life. His clothes were filthy from the time spent traveling; he carried no passport and had left his home and family thousands of miles behind. His trip and the risks he took were far from over, as Casa del Migrante was but a pit stop on his trip across the US-Mexico border. He was also one of a handful of Guatemalan men in the house, all surviving the same trip from Central to North America. The ones in the house were the lucky ones; many men and women who attempt the trip are either killed, kidnapped, or turned back while crossing Mexico. 

It’s my natural response when I find out people are from Guatemala to respond, “me too” and determine what else we have in common. Nuevo Laredo and Casa del Migrante have changed that: all of a sudden, sitting on the concrete floor of the courtyard listening to these stories, it felt fraudulent to claim commonality.

Searching for meaning within division continues to lead Border Stories in different directions. What repeatedly brings us back to the source of inspiration that launched this project however, is the notion that there are actual human beings behind the numbers so ubiquitously referenced by literature and media pundits that seek to instill fear among the Americans that are suspicious, if not resentful, of the northward migration of their Latin American counterparts. 

Fortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to manufacture and propagate disinformation without raising the suspicion of those willing to look into the numbers, so to speak. For example, Colorado’s Media Matters recently called  popular Colorado AM talk host, Peter Boyles, to task for not having challenged the Minuteman Project founder’s assertion that illegal immigrants kill “about 9,000 U.S. residents” per year. After looking into the claim, Media Matters determined that no such evidence exists. 

In our own effort to look into the numbers associated with the border and the human beings that cross it, we recently caught up with Jorge, a Mexico resident (Nuevo Laredo) who cleans pools and tends to the gardens of well-to-do families in the U.S. We chose to share Jorge’s story precisely because he reflects a more gentle, albeit fundamental aspect of the U.S. relationship with its workers, legal and illegal alike, who must leave their homes in search of employment. 

To be certain, numbers and statistics have their place in assessing how to manage the ebb and flow of the various peoples that affect our communities. It is for this reason that this blog caught our attention. Specifically, it points to a recent California state-wide survey that claims:

“A majority of state residents (59%) believe immigrants are a benefit to California because of their hard work and job skills, compared to 34 percent who say they are a burden because they use public services.

And what about illegal immigrants? 

Here again, state residents take a positive view. Two-thirds (66%) think illegal immigrants should be allowed to apply for work permits that would let them stay and work in the United States, about the same percentage as one year ago (64%)… Taking it a step further, seven in 10 Californians (72%) think most illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the United States for at least two years should be given a chance to keep their jobs and apply for legal status; only one-quarter (25%) believe these immigrants should be deported. This supportive attitude is shared by majorities across all political parties (Democrats 80%, independents 72%, Republicans 52%) and among likely voters (65%) and is unchanged since December (72%).”

See the full report.

Jorge is not alone in his views it seems. 

If it really takes something like this to kick-start a national conversation on border issues, then we’ve got our work cut out for us. One, it’s just an ad that only ran in Mexico. Two, if we suddenly woke up back in the 1830′s, that map would be spot on.

I wonder where all the fuss comes from. Are we so afraid of our own history, that we can’t take a little ribbing over it once and a while? We’re not going back in time, and it’s not like a bunch of liquored up Mexicans are about to storm the border, using the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo as a torch to light the way. But I suppose that’s the beauty of targeted advertising, only a few people get the joke.

A border town newspaper up the road is reporting that the Zero Tolerance policy effectively deters would-be undocumented immigrants from crossing the border, according to the Border Patrol.  The initiative, known in other parts as Operation Streamline, Operation No Pass, or Operation Lockdown, calls for criminally prosecuting Mexican border crossers who enter illegally.  Previous policy allowed Mexican immigrants to voluntarily return to their country, barring a criminal history or a history of previous crossings.  

These policies seemed to be in the front of would-be crossers’ minds last week when we visited the Casa del Migrante in Nuevo Laredo, less than a mile from the international boundary.  After a dangerous, prolonged journey on trains through Mexico from Central America, many talked about not crossing at all, but turning back.  

Check out our full story on the Casa del Migrante when it goes up later today.  Let us apologize for some severe technical problems in recent days.  We will soon have them under wraps!

To sit on the banks of where the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo releases its troubled waters into the Gulf of Mexico is something like putting your ear to the earth and attempting to listen for its pulse. The murky estuary that joins the US with Mexico, if only for a second, is a place where birds mate and squawk, feed and take flight, only to defy what keeps humanity so painfully aware of its international boundaries. With feathered wings there are no geopolitical demarcations, but here, despite how quickly the gulf devours what is the most crossed international border in the world, you can feel the heavy mark of man.

It was precisely at the mouth of the Rio Grande that the transient and elusive nature of a border story first struck. Tijuana still remained 2000 miles to our west, when two pickup trucks appeared on the US-side of the horizon, clipped past us and then came to an abrupt halt less than 100 meters from our sand-ridden van. Moments later, a man and his family began unloading goats out of a truck-bed concealed entirely in plywood. In chaotic but controlled procession, the goats were muscled over to a small, accomplice-operated fishing boat, and then escorted across the river where presumably, they would become Mexican goats.

I approached the scene, shirtless and with a small camera in hand, hoping to capture the frenzy as an unsuspecting beach tourist might, but this hasty and rather naive effort was called into question when the man saw my camera. Predictably, he snapped: “what the hell are you doing?”

To be fair, I didn’t know what I was doing. As the man positioned himself between the truck of goats and myself, I walked closer and tried to diffuse the tension by jumping into Spanish and professing of my past relationship with goats, and of my alleged affection for the curious beings. To my surprise, the diplomacy check worked. No sooner had I confessed of my goat attachment, was the man seeking my complicity in what is in fact, a federal no-no.

“Don’t just stand there then, help me.” And I did, until the last of what would be 22 goats were gathered in confusion on the opposite side of the river, and would soon be carted off into the Mexican horizon.

In a world characterized by flux and disparity, imposing international order with walls and an under-compensated police force, especially along terrain that is vast, rugged and largely uninhabited is fundamentally an imperfect prospect. Closing one hole somehow only serves to open another and though it was never my intention to engage in someone else’s international goat export scheme, I got caught in the very border story I now embroil in an international, albeit multimedia, scheme of our own.

The very proposition that borderstories.org seeks to capture the humanity that exists between our borders- physical, cultural, economic alike- is indeed but a transient and elusive one, given the inherently globalized, political and time-sensitive nature of border control. But if we can start from this premise, and proceed with compassion for those that are not responsible for the inequities that exist between the developing world and the ‘developed’ world, and yet are very much caught- sometimes desperately- in the middle, than perhaps, if only for a moment, we may be able to see through our borders and empathize with human stories very different from our own.

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