Calexico: True Lives of the Borderlands

Preface: Why Calexico?

   Preface Why Calexico? As a journalist and a Californian, I can’t help but be drawn to the United States–Mexico Borderlands, the consequential border problems, and the migration crises affecting both sides of our southern national frontier. How can I not be? The border is an ongoing spectacular news story in the best Front Page tradition, and we Californians live that story—its tragedies and its joys—daily. In this book, I seek to transcend the rhetoric of the stalled and vitriolic national immigration debate by bringing to life the realities of the people immediately involved with it on a day-to-day basis: those who live, work, and transit the California–Mexico border. The backdrop of the California–Mexico Borderlands provides a Hollywood-like setting to begin to understand the often dire circumstances along the entire southern front of the United States of America. Calexico, as its name implies, is a city just on the California side of the California–Mexico border. This little-known community—along with its sister city of Mexicali, located just on the Mexican side of the divide—is a perfect place to contemplate the border, borderlands culture , and illegal Mexican migration, because it is far from the spotlighted Tijuana–San Diego or El Paso–Juárez type of border twin cities. Today, downtown Calexico is a dusty shell of its vibrant past, many of its customers discouraged by the increased border security that appeared in the wake of 9/11. The malls that sprawl to the north took some of downtown’s customers, many of them Mexicans crossing north to shop. But post-9/11 border security discouraged those Mexicans from bothering with the long wait to cross into the States, souring business both downtown and at the sprawling shopping centers. The pace of life is slow in Calexico. The mood is much like the stereotype of a 1950s America. Yet it is jammed up against a wall, and on the other side of that wall is vibrant and cosmopolitan Mexicali. xiv preface The small-town character of Calexico, with its warm, open populace, makes the border crises accessible and understandable in a person-toperson manner that is quick and easy to fathom. I used Calexico as a jumping-off point and a reference point. The stories I encountered in Calexico sent me to people and places all along the border and throughout North America. This work revolves around a central claim: the border has become a new type of geopolitical fraud. That fraud results in no less than the criminalization of Mexican and other migrants, the bloating of the mismanaged Immigration and Customs Enforcement sector of the Homeland Security Department, the deterioration of living standards along the frontier, and the enrichment of American employers. I look at specific examples of the border crises and try to humanize them by showing , through experiential reporting and intimate interviewing, how they affect individuals and our body politic. I take on the immigration issue with an explicit California focus. Throughout our nation’s history, Californian innovations have driven the national experience and influenced the national culture. In the case A sign missed by freeway travelers hurtling nonstop along The Eight between San Diego and Yuma. Preface xv of immigration, what seems to be a California problem is shared by the other forty-nine states, and I profess with the conceit of a Californian that they can learn from our examples. With typical California optimism , I examine the border in the context of its problems, but I also celebrate the vibrant borderlands culture. The overarching problems of the borderlands now extend throughout Mexico and up through all fifty of the United States. The voices I encounter on the border bring to the policy-making corridors of Sacramento and Washington (and Mexico City) potential solutions to the problems we face on our southern frontier, grassroots-originated solutions from those who know the border and its challenges better than most bureaucrats and lawmakers. My desire is to contextualize the region as emblematic of the immigration crises facing California and the nation even as I spotlight the too-little-known individuality of the borderlands, via an intensive look at Calexico and a lifetime of living on the extended California border. With an understanding of what makes the borderlands and its people unique, it may be easier to begin the process of fixing one of the most broken aspects...