for testing when spaghetti is properly cooked.
“We construct borders, literally and figuratively,” Frances Stonor Saunders explained in a 2016 lecture at the British Museum (before Brexit recreated a border), “to fortify our sense of who we are. And we cross them,” said the journalist and historian, “in search of who we might become.”12
All this wall thought brings me back to the Mexican border with California and the slabs of steel and concrete soaring into the desert air as examples of a future American dream wall—the Hollywood stage set of samples built in 2017 to show the world examples of what Trump envisioned for his dream of a fortress America. Or an American nightmare, depending on one’s point of view. “These prototypes,” Border Patrol officer Olmos told me approvingly as we stood in their shadow, “are going to make our job efficient.” His piercing eyes glinted against the bright sunlight as he looked along the border wall toward where it disappears into the Pacific. Much of the pre-Trump wall is made from surplus Vietnam War-era landing mats—steel mesh that’s relatively easy to compromise with a Sawzall or an axe. “They use whatever tools they can get their hands on,” Olmos said about his nemeses who break through the barrier. The risk of capture is worth taking because the wall crashers know Eduardo Olmos and his patrolling colleagues—despite their fast trucks and sophisticated surveillance tools—cannot be everywhere. The wall is vulnerable.
“We humans are resourceful,” I suggested to the patrolman, “especially if we’re trying to get somewhere.”
“Very resourceful,” he agreed. “We have video of a smuggler making a cut in the wall with an axe in a minute and twenty seconds.”
Barely Touching through the Wall
We drove in the patrol wagon along the north side of the wall down toward the Pacific and Friendship Park. There, for a few hours on weekends, family and friends separated by the border can meet and communicate through the wall that separates the Tijuana and San Diego sides of the park. The wire mesh is too tight to touch anything other than finger tips.
At the gathering place I met Sergio Bautista. Smiling, he was talking through the tiny holes in the wall with a woman on the Mexican side, a woman who appeared only as a shadowy outline through the dense mesh barrier between them. Bautista had flown across the States from Chicago to spend just over an hour with his friend, their first visit in thirteen years. The park opening hours are severely restricted on the California side by U.S. border authorities. I did not want to infringe on their limited time together, but after their visit Bautista and I talked. “It’s just so difficult,” his emotions were mixed: happy for their time together, frustrated by the strained circumstances. “It’s pretty hard just to be able to touch the tips of your fingers, your little fingers” (Figure 1.3).
Heading back to the airport for his flight home, Bautista was conflicted. There are problems in Mexico he’s happy to keep far from Chicago. “Drugs and cartels and all the killing.” But not his friends and family. “We just want to be with the ones we love.” His brilliant smile flashed and his brown eyes sparkled, despite the dire circumstances.
Don’t Fence Me In—or Out
Across cultures and time, we humans have built barriers in vain attempts to keep the Other away from us. The good news is that such fortifications eventually fail. Survival often requires migration. And in today’s world of easy jet travel and the Internet jumping borders it’s increasingly difficult for arbitrary authorities to wall us off from one another.
Looking back at the wall on the Mexican border as I drove north I found myself singing the old Cole Porter song that speaks to a mythos of the Wild West, legends all but lost in densely urbanized and fearful Southern California.
“Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above/Don’t fence me in!”
Trump’s dream of a wall is a monstrosity that never will be built from the Pacific to the Gulf, if for no other reason than its ludicrous expense.
“Let me ride through the wide-open country that I love/Don’t fence me in!”
Instead of a wall, billboards facing south should line the border calling out “¡Bienvenidos!” because the U.S. southern border, like San Gimignano in Italy, is on a pilgrimage route. Pilgrims head north seeking asylum from crime and failed states. They head north hoping for a better life. They find safety and security. They find good jobs with good pay, jobs that need workers.
So it’s always been, as it always should be. And so it will be in the future, regardless of walls—or no walls.
ILLEGAL ALIEN OR CLEVER NEW AMERICAN
Let me introduce you to that friend of mine who crossed into the United States from Ciudad Juárez over to El Paso. When she recounts her migration story to me, Juana María is a bright and bubbly woman in her late thirties. Her toddler daughter is in the living room learning English from a television program when we sit down in her kitchen to talk about her trip across the border over thirteen years before. Her two boys are in school. She offers me a cup of tea.
“Do you have anything decaffeinated?” I ask.
She does. Her bi-cultural kitchen cupboards include mola, tortillas and decaffeinated mint tea. I’ve heard Juana María’s1 border crossing story often, but in bits and pieces. Today she’s taking time out of her schedule to recount it from start to finish.
It was 1990 when Juana María first came to the United States. She had waited patiently in line at the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara and applied for a tourist visa, which she received. Eight months earlier her husband had crossed into California, looking for work. A hardworking mechanic, he found a job easily—on a ranch where his pay included living quarters in an old mobile home.
She remembers all the dates precisely. “I came on May 27th in 1990. That’s the first time I came to the United States.” Juana María speaks English with a thick Mexican accent, and only rarely drops a Spanish word into the conversation. Her English vocabulary is more than adequate for her story. She’s spent the last several years studying English, working with a volunteer tutor, and her boys bring English home from school and into the household. “I flew from Guadalajara here to California.” In addition to her 3-month-old first son, she traveled north with her mother-in-law and her 13-year-old brother. She was 23. Stamped into her Mexican passport was her prized tourist visa.
When she reached the immigration officer at the airport she was asked a few key questions. “He asked, ‘How much money do you have to spend in the United States?’ I had only five hundred dollars. My mother-in-law didn’t have anything. He said, ‘That is not enough money for three people to visit
