Surreal exuberance in the jungle
By Arturo Morales Tirado August 15, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

North Looking South
By John Barham August 15, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

El muro odio: The hateful wall

As a child in the post-World War II era, I regularly questioned my father about his military career in the European Theater.

 Near the end of the forties, through a newsreel, I learned of the Berlin Airlift and later, as a teenager, the fact that the communist regime in Berlin had erected a wall to keep East Berliners from deserting the “workers’ paradise” of East Germany made a strong impression on me.

Huntley and Brinkley and Cronkite regularly ran stories on East Germans dying at the wall, literally giving their lives for a chance to exchange tyranny for the freedom that most in the West had come to take for granted. Later, young people of my generation were rallied by the stirring words of John F. Kennedy’s Ich bin ein Berliner speech. And then, in the eighties, there was Ronald Reagan’s demand to “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev!”

As the curtain came down on the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, pieces of the dismantled Berlin Wall became highly prized souvenirs and I and many of my contemporaries were utterly astonished that a Cold War fixture which stood for a generation existed no more.

Not surprisingly, to many Americans such as myself, walls constructed between nations for political and economic reasons have bad connotations. And even today as I cross the international bridge from Matamoros to my home in Brownsville, Texas, the sight of razor-wire in front of the US customs station arouses feelings within me that somehow this is not appropriate for the country that led the way to victory over fascist dictatorships and engineered the demise of the Soviet Union.

Over the two decades from the Reagan years to the close of the disastrous George W. Bush administration, ill-considered political decisions have taken my country from being a dismantler of walls to an initiator of a multibillion dollar construction project, which will wall off in five segments approximately 700 miles of territory between the US and Mexico.

Following the approval of legislation in Congress, the Department of Homeland Security has actively moved to condemn both private and public domains along the border to facilitate the building of the monstrosity that, in northern Mexico and the American southwest, is known simply as “the wall.”

On the US side, DHS is universally reviled for its cavalier attitude toward private property, and farmers and ranchers who have long depended on open access to the Rio Grande have awakened to the fact that irrigating crops and watering livestock will be adversely affected.

When plans for the location of the wall in south Texas were released by DHS, the University of Texas at Brownsville discovered that a major part of its campus would wind up on the side of the wall facing Mexico, thus isolating it from the rest of the university.

Environmentalists have pointed out that the wall will negatively affect the migratory routes of wildlife, such as javalina, coyote, deer and ocelot, while near Brownsville, if the original plans are adhered to, the Audubon Society’s Sabal Palm Refuge, which contains the last of the original sabal palms in south Texas, will find itself out of business and confined to the south side of the wall. Likewise, kayakers and canoeists in south Texas who have been used to shooting the rapids below Falcon Dam will no longer be able to enjoy this access point for their sport.

Meanwhile, construction of the 130 miles of the wall slated for Texas in 2008 proceeds as planned. At Granajero, a hamlet located in Hidalgo County, local residents complain of the noise, dust, fumes and traffic caused by the onslaught of heavy earth-moving equipment. Several families have been so inconvenienced that they have temporarily left their homes to reside with relatives in more peaceful surroundings.

The cost of the wall was originally pegged at US$2.2 billion, but with probable cost over-runs, this figure could easily double. Nevertheless, if one sticks to the original estimate, US$2.2 billion would be sufficient to employ approximately 2,500 new Border Patrol officers and to furnish them with the latest in high-tech surveillance equipment. Looked at another way, US$2.2 billion could increase by 15 times the amount spent annually by the US Agency for International Development on economic development in Mexico over a period of five years.

From Brownsville to El Paso, border mayors and county commissioners are united in their opposition to the wall, which is seen as wasteful, inefficient and an unnecessary slap at America’s second largest trading partner.

Many border towns are similar to California’s Calexico, which is strongly tied economically and culturally to its neighbor, Mexicali, in Baja California. Without Mexico, Calexico, like scores of towns on the border, would find its tax base shriveled and its retail economy virtually nonexistent, a possibility that appears distinctly more probable with the advent of the wall.

In Mexico, the wall has occasioned an emotional response. Why, ask many Mexicans, is the US so paranoid that it needs to build an ugly symbol of exclusion rather than arriving at a workable and enforceable immigration policy? And why, if there is no need for more Mexican labor, are undocumented workers still in great demand in cities throughout the US?

With DHS roaring full steam ahead and construction crews fully engaged in building various segments, perhaps it is too late at this point to totally derail the wall. Nevertheless, with the strong possibility of a new, more progressive administration in Washington in 2009, there is hope that forward-looking official will be present to formulate pragmatic policies and solutions for long-standing and pressing border issues. Hopefully, a new administration will bring with it a grasp of history that will enable it to realize that old solutions applied to new challenges will inevitably lead to decline and that the border wall will ultimately find itself confined to the dustbin of history alongside such other unlamented relics as the Berlin Wall.

John Barham, formerly a dean at the University of Texas at Brownsville, retired from the University of Missouri in 2006. He divides his time between San Miguel and Brownsville and lectures in International Elderhostel programs on the history, culture and politics of Mexico.

Letters



Editor,

In recent weeks I have been saddened by reports from New York City Health Department and the Center for Disease Control that state that the number of AIDS cases is again on the rise and numerous other sexual diseases are dramatically increasing. The NYC Health Department and CDC now report that one in every four adults, aged 18 to 28, living in New York City are infected with a sexually transmitted disease.

In your August 1st edition you place an ad featuring Barbara Porter, a woman by all appearances who could be a grandmother, dressed in condoms(!). I cannot tell you how depressing it is to see a woman degrade herself in such a manner. Porter seems determined to portray not only herself, but others as well, as out-of-control sexual extremists.

Does the homosexual and lesbian community really believe that such behavior as this and other actions to which they exposed the Mexican/American community during the past week will further their cause to be seen as normal? Far from it! It will only further show that their behavior and actions are extreme at best and certainly not normal.

It seems to me after decades, since the early eighties, of thousands of young adults dying of AIDS that the entire community would be wise enough to see that such lifestyles as displayed in the gay festival are not only detrimental to the individuals participating but to the general community as well.

As one who sat by their bedsides in hospitals in New York City and watched dozens of young homosexual men die, it deeply grieves me to see individuals pursue a lifestyle that is so dangerous, particularly to themselves.

Jack Driscoll