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Walls and bridges
January 14, 2008
Down here in the Rio Grande Valley of deep south Texas there are at least three or four ways that people can distinguish themselves from each other, if they want to do that. The standard ethnic and racial divides are here often softened or accentuated by linguistic choices and they mingle with subtleties of nationality and immigration status. Trumping all that are glaring wealth/poverty gaps: lavish gated communities of giant McMansions a few minutes from the infamous neglected netherworld of the colonias where people subsist without utility services or building codes.
With so much that could come between us it‘s nice to know there‘s one issue that just about everyone can agree on, as evidenced by a popular bumper sticker seen on late-model Lexuses and beat-up old carcachas alike: its black background is dressed with coils of concertina wire over bold white letters that read NO BORDER WALL. Ranchers and other landowners along the river dislike the mega-wall idea, as do immigrant rights advocates, Border Patrol agents and aspirants, birdwatchers (this is the nation’s premier birding corridor), business owners, environmentalists, bleeding-heart liberals, small-government libertarians--almost everyone here hates the Secure Fence Act of 2006's planned 135 miles of fortification along the Rio Grande that aims to thwart migrants. Richard Cortez, the mayor of our town, likens it to a multi-billion dollar speed bump.“
The many Native Americans who could be affected have reason to smell yet another land grab in the works. Among the border property owners from Tijuana to Matamoros are members of 23 indigenous groups. Last summer brought government letters demanding that they consent to letting surveyors on the land. More than 100 landowners refused. A month ago they got a resistence-is-futile letter threatening seizure if they don‘t cooperate with Homeland Security. The deadline was last Monday.
It is impressive to see how people who might ordinarily think they have little in common can stand together so tightly and bravely when they know what’s at stake. Rarely do folks in America get to plainly see what our shared interests are: even the no-brainer ones like education, library services, and kids’ health seem complicated after the paid explainers work their divisive magic on us.
Michael Chertoff will be here in a few weeks to assess the whole fence situation along this part of the border. What he’ll find will be a lot of people lined up against the wall. And they won’t be just the usual suspects.
Posted by Bruce Jensen on January 14, 2008 | Comments (0)
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