All Along the Ramparts- Gary Younge travels the US-Mexican border

[undeterred]

In the imminent US midterm elections, immigration is a critical issue. Gary Younge travels the length of the US-Mexican border to test the water

Back in 1840, two teenage Spaniards, Valentin and Manuel Gavito, set sail for the New World. They stopped first in Cuba, then sailed up the Gulf coast and settled just north of the Rio Grande in Texas, where they became ranchers. Quite which country Texas belonged to then, if any, was an open question. Until 1836, when it declared itself an independent republic, it had been part of Mexico. The Mexicans still claimed it. But then came the battle of Palo Alto in May 1846 - the first skirmish in the Mexican-American war. By 1848 the United States had claimed Texas for its own. The Gavito brothers didn't cross the border; the border crossed them.

More than a century and a half later, Jose Gavito, one of Manuel's direct descendants, describes himself as "Texican". His pioneering forebears settled in what later became Brownsville. Gavito is still there. The Mexican border is just four blocks away from his desk in the heritage centre. It is a unique city, he says - bilingual, bicultural, with a bi-heritage. "Every day there are new immigrants coming in. Whether legally or illegally, the flow has never stopped."

But while the people keep coming as ever, the politics of their arrival has changed. This year President Bush stationed 6,000 National Guardsmen along the border and the US Congress vowed to build a 700-mile wall to keep illegal immigrants out. Meanwhile, in spring, the country saw the biggest demonstrations since Vietnam in protest against anti-immigrant legislation many believe could lead to mass deportations. Immigration could well be one of the deciding factors in the midterm elections in two weeks' time.

It took me two weeks to drive the 2,000 miles along the border. My journey began at Brownsville - one of the poorest cities of its size in the country, standing at the mouth of the Rio Grande, at the most south-easterly point of the Mexican-US border - and ends with metal posts running into the Pacific Ocean dividing San Diego from Tijuana. In between come the honky-tonk towns of Texas, the cactus-studded desert of New Mexico and Arizona, and the dunes and mountain passes of California.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1926234,00.html

[Kali]

1. This sums it up for me:

"On any one day some young Americans will cross the border so they can legally drink alcohol and some Mexicans will die of thirst trying to cross it illegally so they can work. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and central and South Americans will pay millions of dollars to cross the border at its most porous points. The US government will pay billions of dollars and employ tens of thousands of people to try to stop them. The border may be an economic barrier, but maintaining it is an industry."