The Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.–Mexico Border

Chapter 1. A Simple Solution

Chapter 1 A Simple Solution P erhaps the core implications of Time do not occur until, straining to hear the unintelligible ramblings of the youthful radiation oncologist, we are forced to face down the possibility of our own death. Or perhaps Time’s reminder is the inevitable passing of a parent or beloved friend, or even the family pet, one second romping with the kids, another inexplicably expiring on the freshly cut front lawn, legs jerking among the roots of the bermuda as unspoken words collect on the tongues of the gathering children. The vapid democracy of illness and death produces in the living an understanding of Time as the distillate of life. Time can be particularly cruel to those residing in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Those living along the northern banks of the Rio Grande, the Big River, as well as those on the Mexican side of the Río Bravo, the Fierce River, may experience Time in very different and more direct ways than those in the interior of border states and those in nonborder states. The countenance of Time A Virtual American Dream 4 may be far different in the South Texas border towns of La Paloma, Relampago , Blue Town, Mercedes, San Benito, Brownsville, Harlingen, Santa Rosa, McAllen, Donna, Pharr, Rio Grande City, Santa Maria, Progresso, Zapata, Granjeno, Sullivan City, and San Juan than in Dallas, Dubuque, and Washington , D.C.1 For undocumented workers along the border, Time may be counted in units of mesmerizing panic while crossing the Río Bravo on inflated inner tubes linked by lines of thin, wet twine, one eye fixed on a six-year-old child, the other on the coyote, the human smuggler.2 Traversing a dangerous river is followed by a crazed dash toward a new life, beginning with a wild ride in a fifteen-year-old Ford van, motor revving, the coyote sweating in the vehicle’s air-conditioned interior as his passengers pray out loud to their patron saint. Illegal entry also may be an attempt to rejoin an abandoned life in the United States after the abuela, the grandmother, has died and the sons have rushed back home to the funeral in San Luís Potosí. How then will these same sons get back safely to their families and jobs in Des Moines, Iowa? If there is not a dangerous river to cross along some parts of the border, there may be an even more hostile desert in locales such as Nogales, where thousands have already died illegally crossing the borderline. For a Latino Border Patrol agent sworn to apprehend these workers and their families, Time’s foreshortened memory may end in uncounted bravery or a coward’s desperation when shadowy figures suddenly emerge from the banks of the Rio Grande or the deep canyons south of San Diego. Anonymous to the public in his or her green nylon uniform, often despised by local residents for a history of other agents’ transgressions, this federal law enforcer must immediately decide what action to take.3 Are these human outlines heavily armed cocaine smugglers, or are they nameless men, women, and children looking for work in a new land? Alone in the desert under a dark moon, the agent knows that, whatever decision he or she makes, backup cannot arrive in less than forty-five minutes. For those on both sides of this international boundary—whether community residents, undocumented workers, law enforcement officers, or tourists— personal safety cannot be assumed or taken for granted. The borderlands have always been a very dangerous place in which to live.4 In the border villages, towns, and cities from Brownsville to San Diego, from Matamoros to Tijuana, Time is also sensed as centuries of family, community , and regional history unique to the American experience. Those who live in Nogales, Arizona, may have as much or more in common with those residing in Nogales, Sonora, than with those of nearby Tucson. A Simple Solution 5 Although Time reigns supreme in the borderlands, geography and topography cannot be ignored. Isolated from mainstream Mexican and American culture and politics, these borderlands form nothing less than a slim wedge between two very different nations, one first-world, one in the third-.5 The rural landscape ranges from rich delta farmland with two growing seasons to high Sonoran desert. Neither entirely Mexican nor entirely American, the people of the border...