“We are one city.”

The Borderlands Witness Drive has entered the upper Rio Grande valley. Here the national boundary meanders willy-nilly like the river it rides. A muggy lushness prevails, in sharp contrast to the arid Sonoran desert frontier of Arizona and New Mexico.

Cities along the Texas/Mexico stretch of the border appear seamless: El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña, Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. Each duo is a single community. The fabric of two cultures is interwoven with a rough tear down the middle. “We are one city,” is a frequent remark. Many families have members on both sides of the river. Commerce and students go back and forth across the Rio Grande, not unlike my friends back in the Twin Cities who cross the Mississippi each day.

The militarization of their homeland has angered many borderland residents: the round-the-clock check points, the National Guard maneuvers, the surveillance towers, the incessant drone of low flying helicopters, the coming wall. There is a sense of alienation alongside a state of siege deep in the heart of Texas. Policy decisions crafted inside the Washington, DC beltway have tidal wave impact by the time they reach the border.

We hear that local opposition to the wall is high. Word is that no sheriff, judge or mayor along the border (on either side) supports the wall. Lives will be more disrupted. Families more separated. Communities will be split in two. Paradoxically, the borderlands are less safe for all the security they now endure.

--John Heid