The crossing was closed after the September 11 attacks, due to fears it was too vulnerable, but reopened in 2013. Here, an innovative crossing connects residents with tourists who hike in the towering Sierra del Carmen Mountains. Resilience, ingenuity and a good sense of humor help.Ĭonsider Boquillas del Carmen, a tiny Mexican village located across the Rio Grande from Texas’ Big Bend National Park. So how do those of us from the border deal with times like these? side and 86 percent of those interviewed on the Mexican side said they were opposed to building a wall. For example, in a Cronkite News-Univision News-Dallas Morning News poll in 2016, 72 percent of respondents on the U.S.

This reality isn’t always appreciated elsewhere, even though the facts are there in plain sight. Some 10 million people live on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and residents of the 14 sister border communities largely view themselves as one community. “And I’ve seen fences and walls do wonders for the livelihood of coyotes (immigrant smugglers) and politicians, but not much else.” “I’ve seen physical barriers along the border since I was a kid,” Garza said. Bush and a native of Brownsville, Texas, told me.īerrinches means “tantrums,” and their physical manifestations have been around for decades, erected by Democrats and Republicans alike. “Those of us (who) have lived along the border have long understood that dealing with Washington’s berrinches is just part of the deal,” Tony Garza, a former U.S. And they’ve also given me some perspective on the current debate over walls and tariffs, deportations and so on.īecause, you see, we’ve been here before. They’ve made me find the sweet spot of who I am -at home on both sides. Later in life, as a journalist, I have roamed the 2,000-mile border by car and by foot, alone and with colleagues.

As a boy, I stared at a Christmas star shining from the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, wondering whether that was what the First World looked like. You could call me an adopted child of the border.Ī native of the northern Mexican state of Durango, I spent much of my childhood between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. This article is adapted from AQ’s special issue on the U.S.-Mexico relationship.

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