Politics

"El Paso As Prologue"

The National Journal takes an insightful look at the border from -- importantly -- a border perspective. Click below for the whole text.

EL PASO, Texas -- The Homeland Security Department's plan to build 153 miles of border fencing along the lower Rio Grande is only the latest installment in the local immigration debate. Such barriers have been tried before -- and have failed.

Delineating 1,255 miles of the 1,954-mile southern U.S. boundary, the Rio Grande was first fenced in 1978, between the sibling cities of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. Here in the Chihuahuan Desert, the combined populations of 700,000 Texans and 1.3 million Mexicans make up the largest border community in the world. The chain-link fence, which the Immigration and Naturalization Service touted as impassable, was soon dubbed the "Tortilla Curtain" for the holes that wire-snipping migrants ate through it on their way north.

El Paso's fence has long stood against the tide of immigrants from Mexico and war-torn Central American countries farther south. Its evolution provides a case study of the merits and demerits of border fencing, and perhaps some insight into what other communities along the Rio Grande might expect as the federal government prepares ground for a total of 700 miles of fencing, another 500 miles of vehicle barriers, and 105 electronic surveillance towers spread across more than half of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Nearly three decades after the first fence hemmed in Chihuahuita, El Paso's oldest neighborhood that is characterized by adobe structures built long ago by the river's edge, 77-year-old Ruben Contreras speaks for a group of older men gathered in the shade. Born and raised in Chihuahuita, Contreras served as an El Paso police officer in the 1950s, and now helps his wife at her restaurant. "The politicians in Washington don't know what they're talking about!" he exclaims. Speaking of the recent crackdown on unauthorized immigrants, Contreras insists, "These guys don't want to cause problems. They just want to work to support their families." But Contreras's 44-year-old niece, Mary Ann Contreras, a radiologist, disagrees, citing a recent incident that landed two Border Patrol agents in a U.S. prison for shooting a suspected drug smuggler. "People should stay on their sides," she argues.

Continued below the fold:

Full post as published by Silvestre Reyes Blog on September 07, 2007 (boomark / email).