Lajitas
A binational crowd of around 200 people gathered in the Rio Grande for the annual Voices from Both Sides gathering Saturday morning. Apart from a brief pandemic interruption, the festival has brought communities on both sides of the border in the Big Bend together for music, food and splashing in the river every Mothers’ Day weekend since 2013.
The festival was originally the brainchild of Ramon García, the former mayor of Manuel Benavides, a small town about 17 miles south of the border. Musicians on the American side, including Collie Ryan and the late Jeff Haislip, helped bring García’s vision to life—and sustain it for well over a decade. “For me, [Ryan], and [Haislip], this was a dream to be realized,” García told Saturday’s crowd in Spanish. “I’m really grateful, more than anything, to the people joining us here today that make this reunion possible.”
For many South Brewster County families, García’s description of the event as a “reunion” is literal. In 2002, the Bush administration closed numerous informal ports of entry across the Southwest, breaking the physical link between small, isolated communities that depended on cross-border traffic to survive. The commute between Lajitas, Texas, and Lajitas, Chihuahua, used to take about 30 seconds. Today, the nearest legal port of entry is in Presidio, making the same hop across the river a 3.5-hour, 120-mile odyssey.
Numerous regulars said that this year’s event was the best-attended Voices they’d ever seen—perhaps because it may be the last. As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) zeroes in on plans to build border barriers in the Big Bend region, it’s unclear whether or not the privately-owned boat launch that has traditionally played host to the event will be physically accessible.
At press time, the agency’s map showed a “vehicle barrier” cutting across the parking lot, but it’s unclear exactly what that vehicle barrier will look like. The agency has not responded to numerous FOIA requests filed by Big Bend Sentinel since February that would provide insight into the final design of the wall.
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has made similar events elsewhere on the border completely impossible. El Paso’s “Hugs Not Walls” event was canceled last year because much of the border in and around the city has become a “National Defense Area,” making it a federal trespassing crime for folks from both sides to embrace anywhere near the physical border.
For now, folks in the Big Bend have been doing their best to go about business as usual. Organizers on the American side for this year’s festival included committee members Katheran Crawford, Becky Kay, Sandi Turvan, Missy Walker and Tony Drewry. Terlingua Fire and EMS crewmembers were on scene to offer assistance, as was the Brewster County Sheriff’s Office. (Sheriff Dodson reported no trouble at the close of the event.)
Drewry said that this was one of his favorite iterations of Voices to date. “It just shows what we’re fighting for—this incredible community that spans both sides of the river,” he said. “Watching us all come together in the face of all this was something really beautiful.”