I grew up along the border, La Frontera, and I spent over 50 years of my life there, living first in Arizona and then New Mexico, with occasional visits to southern Texas and California, as well as a number of forays into Mexico itself from the Mexican border states of Baja California Norte to Tamaulipas and further south. In some ways, although I was not born there, it is more my home than any place I have lived. Unfortunately it is being threatened by political maneuvering and drug wars and may never be the same. It was always a bit dangerous, but not as much so for many years as it has been in recent times. You have to go back to the days of Pancho Villa to get the same level of danger, at least from my impression. However I still love the area and its people and am very saddened by how immigrants, both legal and illegal, and the environment are now being treated.
Most of the people who live on either side of the border are decent human beings who are trying to survive. It is also obvious that humans have affected the borderlands negatively. This includes overgrazing, mining, water depletion, increasing population pressures, and construction of barriers to wildlife. The proposed wall is a case in point. The remnant population of jaguars in Sonora may find their hunting range reduced. Other species may have trouble entering the United States or Mexico, unless they can fly like birds and bats. Along the border in the Peloncillo, Animas, Santa Rita, Huachuca, and Chiricahua Mountains, as well as Big Bend and the Camino del Diablo the biota, which has no political allegiance, could well be damaged. In addition, the human suffering caused by our policies toward Hispanic immigrants especially in treating people who are seeking asylum or work and a better life for their children is both short-sighted and evil.
When I was growing up in Yuma County, Arizona, I would often see Mexican agricultural workers who were then working under the Bracero program. They were often treated badly and robbed of their wages. One farmer was actually discovered to be making sure the workers never left his employ with any money, as they owed it all back to him for room and board. There was a legal mess over this, but such activities were probably more common and rarely reported. Although my family was for a time dirt poor, these people were even poorer. In general the workers were treated much like the people in Arlo Guthrie’s song “Deportee,” written by his father, Woody.
The way that we have often treated minorities (actually in New Mexico close to majorities in some areas) along the border is very depressing and this applies to Mexican-Americans, Native Americans and people of color generally. I find the rich cultural tapestry to be exciting and interesting. The art alone is unique and beautiful. I have not had as much contact with certain aspects as I would have liked, but what I have encountered will always be with me. I was moved to the Southwest when I was five years old and because of that I consider myself a Southwesterner. For a short time my parents and I lived in a barrio in Arizona and I have taken part in Dia de Los Muertos in New Mexico, so I have at least a smattering of what the Hispanic culture meant to the Southwest. I have also had a smattering of association with Native Americans along the border but I cannot pretend to be knowledgeable. Attending a kachina dance at Acoma is not the same thing as knowing the culture, though it is a start if one is open to the experience. I wish I had been more involved.
However, I am what I am, a white male in my 70s and I cannot speak for Hispanics, Native Americans or African Americans. All I can do, as a white male, is disavow any ideas that separate us from each other. We are all in this together and anybody is a self-serving fool to preach racial superiority. We should instead drink in the rich cultural heritages of all peoples, while not appropriating them. We waste valuable time in fighting each other when we should be on a crash program to save the earth for everybody and for the biota of the planet.
I have hiked through a fairly good section of the border, from the Davis Mountains of Texas to the Animas, Peloncillo and Organ Mountains in New Mexico to the Laguna Mountains in California and a number of ranges in addition (I have written about the Chiricahuas, the Organs and the Pajarito Mountains here.) I have walked into the edges of the Gran Desierto in Yuma County, Arizona, and have been driven into the the Camino del Diablo and camped in the Tule Mountains. I know the area well and I consider these hours and days well spent. There is something quite stimulating and at the same time humbling in facing the wilderness along the border. I spent some of my best times on the planet there and it grieves me much to see the land being lost to racist political hacks, drug dealers and crooks.
I have to admit that, scientist though I am, I love the borderland with its sky islands, deep canyons, vast silent deserts, expansive skies, violent thunderstorms that carry the smell of creosote, mountain forests, and for me as a biologist, its complex biodiversity. I love the human arts, books and poetry and the varied traditions that go with La Frontera. It makes me very sad to hear of walls that would separate the Tohono O’odom from the relatives to the South, as it does to think of those walls restricting jaguars and other large animals that may not be able to cross them. The femicides in Juarez and the following drug war are cause for much grief. We who live or have lived along the border are all of La Frontera, and its destruction (and it is slowly being destroyed by the current political paradigm, as well as the global warming being denied in that paradigm) causes a deep wound that will take decades to heal, if it does heal at all.
As usual all photos are by me.
Some Books on La Frontera (There are many more, but this is a good sample.)
Boye, Alan. 2006. Tales from the Journey of the Dead. University of Nebraska Press. (An area that I know very well!)
Childs, Craig, 2001. The Secret Knowledge of Water. Back Bay Books.
Klett, Mark. 2016. Camino del Diablo. Radius Books.
Phillips, Steven J., Patricia W. Comus, Mart A. Dimmitt and Linda M. Brewer (Eds.) 2015. A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert, Second Edition. University of California Press (Full disclosure, I know several of the authors included.)
Tweit, Susan. 2003. Barren, Wild and Worthless. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. (Full disclosure, I know the author — she is a friend of the family.)
Wauer, Roland H., and Carl M. Fleming. 2001. Naturalist's Big Bend: An Introduction to the Trees and Shrubs, Wildflowers, Cacti, Mammals, Birds, Reptiles and Amphibians, Fish, and Insects. Revised Edition. Texas A. & M University Press.