Good fences don't always make for good neighbors

Stretching hundreds of miles, the Rio Grande creeps through the brush country of deep South Texas and northeastern Mexico. To some people, the great river forms an artificial dividing line through a unified culture, while others feel it defines distinct differences between two groups of people within that culture.

The federal government’s plan to build a fence along this border has stirred strong and spirited tensions among locals, causing them to question the very idea of a border and its implications for their culture. (View multimedia "The Border Fence: Day 4")

Tony Knopp, emeritus professor at University of Texas-Brownsville, said he’s not sure the fence would have any “appreciable direct impact” on the Rio Grande Valley’s culture.

“The problem is, I think it would have a tremendous impact on Valley aesthetics and on environmental factors,” said Knopp, who is also a board member of the Brownsville Historical Association.

“If they put up a fence,” he said, “the visual impact is undeniably obnoxious. It would be so visual right there at the border for people in Matamoros, they would see this as evidence of some kind of unfriendliness. Not hostility, just unfriendliness.”

While Brownsville and Matamoros may seem to some like one big city divided by a border, Knopp disagreed.

“Several of us who have been studying the border for years have come to the determination that while there are some very strong cultural ties that do exist, there are some distinctive national interests that show up even here on the border,” he said. “In other words, people who are Mexican know they are Mexican, and people who are Americans know they are Americans. While there are people who go back and forth on a daily basis and whose cultural and social and family interests lie on both sides, there are an awful lot of people who don’t have that, on both sides.”

But Andres Cuellar, historical archivist at Museo Casamata in Matamoros, is one of those who do have that — he has traveled back and forth to Brownsville his whole life.

“When I am in Brownsville or Rio Grande Valley, I am not in another country,” said Cuellar. “I have a lot of relatives living there. Most of my dead relatives are buried there.”

These days, every time he crosses the border, immigration officials question him as though he were a terrorist, he said.

“I think that the U.S. government must ask the Chinese people, ‘How useful was the Great Wall?’” he said. “The Great Wall was very expensive and needed the work of too much people, but the result was useless.”

Comparisons to the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall come up frequently among Valley residents on both sides of the Rio Grande.

R.C. Salinas, a Rio Grande City educator, said if the fence is constructed, he will feel as though he had gone back in time.

“I am going to feel that I am back in East Berlin and West Berlin,” said Salinas, 67. “I intend to fight this thing by every legal way I can.”

In fact, some law enforcement officials along the north bank fear it could hinder police work. Starr County Sheriff Rey Guerra said he has an excellent working relationship with the district attorney across the border in Miguel Aleman and Camargo, and the fence would hurt that relationship. He recalled a case in December in which someone stole a vehicle in Rio Grande City, unaware that a 2-year-old child was in the back seat.

“Immediately we called the Mexican authorities,” he said. “They were there for us. They gave us the vehicle and the kid and the suspect.”

The fence, he said, would send the wrong message.

“It’s an old cliché,” he said. “If you don’t want to see your neighbors, build a fence. That’s not the message we want to send to our neighbors. Let’s try something else before we do something as drastic as a fence and destroy the local working relationship that we do have with the local authorities across the Rio Grande.”

Some people, however, had a more favorable — or at least a more laissez-faire — view of the proposed barrier.

Eduardo Garcia Avendano, general director of the Best Western Gran Hotel in Matamoros, doesn’t feel personally offended by the fence plans.

“The U.S. is a free country. It can do whatever it pleases on its own base,” he said. “If the fence is to be built, it’s up to the U.S. of A.”

In Nuevo Progreso, Carlos Garcia, a pharmacist at Farmacia Progreso, said the United States has the right to do whatever it chooses on its own land.

“It’s in your house — whatever you want to do,” he said. “If I want to build a fence in my house, it’s my house. It’s not other people’s business.”

He said he hasn’t heard too many people around Nuevo Progreso, a popular shopping destination for American tourists, talking about the fence. He appeared unconcerned about its affect on the culture of the Valley.

“I really don’t care too much about it,” he said nonchalantly. He stepped away to speak to other employees in a meeting, then came out chuckling to himself.

“They said as long as they need Mexican workers to build it, they thought it’s OK,” he said.

A couple of doors down at Mustre Dental Clinic, Robert Briseño, manager, said the fence is “embarrassing.”

“I mean, they are still going to cross, so I don’t see any use to it,” he said. “It’s just a waste of money and time.”

He didn’t feel, however, that it would have any noticeable impact on the Valley’s cultural life.

“A lot of people that live here in Mexico have families over there,” he said. “I don’t think there should be any problem.”

Mauro Villarreal, coordinator of the Rio Grande City Main Street Program, said, “It would be kind of strange to have something there that divides two countries that have been at peace with each other. I think both countries should come and address their immigration issues on both sides so that we can curtail that.”

How will people perceive the fence?

“I think they might perceive the wall as a sense of isolation, the United States trying to isolate itself, but I think Mexicans already view that as a slap in the face,” he said. “Why not have one in Canada, for example? So you have that, and I think Mexicans will feel a little bit offended by it.”

Tony Jasso, owner of Jose’s Cafecito in Weslaco, said the fence would have negative effects on both countries.

“When they were talking about free trade, it was supposed to unify the two countries. Now they are doing their best to divide it. They talk about a wall. It’s like splitting two families apart.”

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Travis Whitehead covers features and entertainment for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4452. For this and more local stories, visit www.themonitor.com.