I remember back in the days when the border in the Big Bend was a safe place to visit and a friendly place to hang out. The small towns along the border were international communities. Friends and families lived on both sides of the border, and we could cross freely without any concerns.
I believe those days living on the border were safer than anytime within the past 50 years. It was 1981. I had moved to Alpine to get a degree in biology at Sul Ross State University. I would spend just about every other weekend driving down south exploring Big Bend National Park and learning to boat on the Rio Grande. I told my professors I was doing field work, but in reality, the border was my playground.
Small colonials such as Candelaria in the United States and San Antonio del Bravo across the Rio in Mexico had a K-6 one-room schoolhouse that taught children from both sides of the river. The same with Lajitas and Paso Lajitas. Our children were educated at the same school in Terlingua. This was not only for the advantage of the children but helped increase the enrollment for the Terlingua schools and helped to keep the doors open.
At one time Terlingua was known to have had the longest school bus ride in the U.S., 100 miles one way to Alpine. These communities were known to have Class B ports of entry. If any goods or products were to be crossed over you were supposed to call CBP, and they would meet you at the border so you could make your declarations and pay any taxes.
Other than that, people could cross freely on foot or pay $1 for the row boat. You could even drive across the river if you had 4-wheel drive and high clearance. I did it several times. I remember asking a Border Patrol agent if I could get in trouble crossing over in my vehicle at Lajitas and he said, “If you are not carrying drugs or contraband or transporting a UDA (undocumented alien) and you can prove you are a U.S. citizen, there is no reason to detain you.” We would still ask the locals if “la frontera es tranquillo?” just to avoid getting hassled by the Border Patrol. In those days many of the river guides would help our neighbors in Mexico with construction projects in Boquillas or Paso Lajitas and vice versa. We shared meals together either in Mexico or the U.S. We were an international community in every sense of the word. Life was good.
Every October, the National Park would sponsor a fiesta in Rio Grande Village to celebrate the partnership between the U.S. and Mexico. They called it Good Neighbor Day. Vendors from both sides would set up booths, and there would be folklorico performances and music from both sides. It was one of my favorite events to attend. There was pretty much an open dialog between the two countries. It was easy to find out what was going on in Mexico, good or bad. We would help each other out.
It was law enforcement from both sides of the border working with each other that finally took down the border drug lord, Pablo Acosta. Of course there was a fair amount of drug smuggling going on, still is and always will be as long as the U.S. needs to feed its addiction to drugs and money is to be made. No wall will protect us from that.
Then the 9-11 terrorist attacks happened. The terrorists that hijacked and flew the planes into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon came to the U.S. on travel and student visas and some crossed the port of entry from Canada. None of them came from the Mexican border. The order came from George W. Bush to close the borders. On April 10, 2002, a van pulled into the parking lot at the Lajitas Trading Post. It had the name and logo of a river guide company on the side. People were thinking that there must be a new river tour company in town. The Lajitas employees were waiting in line to cash their pay checks, buy supplies and head across the river to Paso Lajitas where they lived.
Border Patrol agents poured out of the vans demanding identification. Many were U.S. citizens but preferred to live in Paso Lajitas, and the ones that were not were hauled off. At the river crossing the row boat was parked on the Mexican side. A Hispanic woman was urging the young boatman to come to the American side to give her a ride across the river. The boatman had heard about the chaos at the trading post and told her he couldn’t come get her. She pleaded with him and he begrudgingly crossed the river. When he reached the other side, she handcuffed him and confiscated his boat. His mother watched from the Mexican side of the river and broke down crying. It was Mother’s Day in Mexico.
From that day on the border was no longer safe nor a friendly place to hang out. People moved out of these small Mexican border towns like Santa Elena, since there was no money flow from tourism. The cartels began to fill the void. I lost touch with many of my friends in Mexico. Every once in a while, I see them when I visit Ojinaga, but what was will never be again.
This is why I worry so much about what will happen when they put up a border wall. It will not make us safer; it will not slow down the flow of immigrants. As former President of Mexico Vicente Fox said, all it takes is a $25 ladder to defeat a multi-billion-dollar border wall. The damage the border wall will do can never be justified.
Washington is a long way from the border, and it will never understand the problems that it will introduce to our communities on the border. If the Trump administration and Congress could pass a comprehensive immigration policy, it will go a lot further than a mult-billion-dollar border wall that taxpayers are footing the bill for. I would love to see the Good Neighbor Day event return, but it seems we are going in the opposite direction.
David F. Long
Shafter