It is already known that there was a time when the border did not exist. There was another one that was further north, with the Nueces River. And it is already known that what is now New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado and Texas, passed from Mexico to the United States through the signing of an infamous treaty a few years ago. What I did not know is that there are places where the eye deceives and it seems that the border does not yet exist.
The first time I went, I was working as a reporter for the local Telemundo channel in Los Angeles. We drove three hours down the 5 Freeway in Southern California traffic. We went to do an interview between Tijuana and San Diego. Thus we arrive at Playas de Tijuana, the westernmost corner of Mexico. There I was impressed to see how the metal fence that defines the border authoritatively crosses these two cities that could be one and, when it reaches the ocean, it sinks and disappears. It is as if the sea swallowed it. On the water, the border has nothing left but to be imaginary.
The same is true in some inhospitable regions of the New Mexico desert: there are no sheet metal fences or rusty bars dividing Mexico from the United States. Not even a barbed wire. With a single step it is possible to make an international trip and not realize it. You can even be in both countries at the same time, with one foot on each side.
Same as in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Here the wall stands tall and imposing. But a couple of years ago they took me to a point worthy of photography where, suddenly and suddenly, the wall ends. Suddenly there is a wall and suddenly there is no more. A few kilometers ahead, the fence appears again, but the void remains in the middle: a giant hole in our border.
This line that divides us, so porous and so complex, was at the center of the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City. The meeting between Mexico, the United States and Canada starts from an essential foundation in the region: prosperity and common security are intertwined. Opportunities on one side of the border inevitably impact the other side. The same goes for threats. That is why migration, fentanyl trafficking from south to north, and the flow of arms from north to south, dominated the agenda. What moves in the shadows, what makes a pilgrimage in hiding and crosses our border without permission.
The border has its things. Those who live on one side and on the other side, too. The late Los Angeles Times editor Frank del Olmo once wrote that the border is the meeting point between two great cultures: the Anglo-American tradition of the United States and Canada to the north, and the Iberian-Indian tradition of Latin America to the south. And the Latinos who live in that region are the bridge between the two cultures and the two languages.
The other day my five-year-old son asked me: “Hey, dad, am I from Mexico or from the United States?” I told him that of both, but I still don’t know how to live that belonging to both countries. There are many who do know and share my son’s experience. For this reason, although sometimes it seems that it is only diplomacy, a photograph and good intentions, the Summit is important. What do our leaders say to each other behind closed doors? The dialogue between them should help us to live better, even though we are divided by the border.
