Mexico

In his essay, Mexican author and poet Eduardo Hurtado Montalvo examines the increasingly fortified border between Mexico and the USA and the effects it has on the people on both sides.

The first thing that strikes you when you leave the airport after landing in Tijuana is the presence of the wall. A double wall to be precise: the thin metal wall nearly three metres high is situated directly opposite the airport; behind it, on US territory, a metal fence twice as high rises up out of the dry and dusty ground like a challenge.
Border patrol cars regularly and incessantly patrol the corridor between the two walls. The wall extends along the city’s entire boundary line. It becomes a little less threatening right at the coast: mesh wire fencing allows immigrants to chat for a few minutes now and again to their relatives or friends on the Mexican side.

Seen from a distance, the wall highlights the difference between two utterly conflicting realities: on one side, people wait for the right moment to overcome the obstacle that still separates them from their dream of having enough to eat, having a roof over their heads, having a few dollars in their pockets and being able to help their families back home. The poorest districts of the city sprawl up into the surrounding hills and are criss-crossed by winding unsealed roads. They continue almost right up to the dividing wall; on the other side the cities and neighbouring communities of San Ysidro, Chula Vista, Coronado and San Diego exude an ambience of security and a neat, well-groomed appearance. It is here that the American dream manifests itself in broad, tarmacked streets, perfectly painted zebra crossings and, wafting out of the restaurants, the characteristic smell of frying fat that has been used once too often. Immigrants who succeed in crossing the border at Tijuana and make it “to the other side” leave behind them a chaotic city lined with pharmacies, hospitals, bars and shabby taco bars. Very few reach their destination, however. Most remain, at the end of the day, on “this side”, in the shadow of the wall, and accept work for a pittance in one of the more than 700 maquiladoras (beauty salons) that have settled here in the area around Tijuana.

No border in the world is crossed by as many people as the one in Tijuana: every year, nearly 100 million people traverse this border in one direction or the other. In all this toing and froing, however, the inequality between Mexico and the USA that characterizes the relationship between the two countries becomes only too clear: US citizens can travel to Mexico without any restriction. Mexicans, on the other hand, have to produce a passport and a visa to enter the “land of opportunity”, and often have to put up with lengthy checks. Since 1993, these checks have become more and more degrading. This was the year in which the American government decided to erect a metal boundary fence on this piece of land, as part of the so-called “Guardian Operation” that was launched with the aim of sealing the borders and as far as possible preventing illegal immigrants from entering the US. The fortifications comprise metal slats that were left over from the first Gulf War and had been used at the time by American troops. Ever since, this has been regarded as an extremely dubious symbol of an imperial power.

At the beginning, this wall – the symbol of absolute and self-justifying control – was 17 kilometres long. On 10 February 2005, however, the US Congress approved its extension to 23 kilometres. It now runs from Imperial Beach all the way to the Pacific. The fence meanders across a wide plain, and then climbs several mountains; the final part is a palisade that reaches down several metres into the water – just far enough to ensure that a person trying to cross the fence will run the risk of drowning. All this is part of a hair-raising and absurd project that was authorized in 2006 by the American Senate: the construction of a border wall some 600 kilometres in length (equivalent to nearly a fifth of the entire length of the US-Mexican border) in addition to 800 kilometres of barriers to prevent cars from driving through.



Naturally the USA is perfectly entitled to protect its national territory. Ultimately, however, one ends up asking oneself what purpose the wall actually serves. It has achieved everything apart from stopping the endless stream of illegal immigrants. All the high-security fence with its alarm systems, night-vision monitors and high-performance reflectors has managed to do is force them into ever more hostile regions. Every year, hundreds of immigrants die on their journey through steep mountainous landscapes and deserts with uncertain ways out, weakened by hunger and thirst, threatened by the risk of being shot or falling into one of the traps set by people who hunt intruders and form organized groups along the entire border between Mexico and the US.

Every time a migrant dies in this way, the hope invested in him by his nearest and dearest dies too: his family, friends, village, community. Another phenomenon that occurs increasingly frequently are the deportations – their number has risen immeasurably since the wall was built. This is proof once again that the wall’s presence does not have any deterrent effect. On the contrary – in the poorest regions of Mexico and Central America it has succeeded only in inciting in people a kind of ambition to risk everything and, through some tiny crack in this impenetrable wall of poverty and deprivation, to perhaps find some way to escape it. The alternative for these people is clear: they can starve to death in their own country, or risk their lives in an attempt to enter the promised land. Those who survive this challenge spread a message that motivates thousands of migrants to overcome ever tougher obstacles: there, on the other side, a large number of Americans is crying out for Mexican labour. In 2008, approximately three million Mexicans and people from Central American countries attempted to enter US national territory; more than three quarters of them were arrested and deported, yet 750,000 people managed nonetheless to stay, having overcome countless obstacles. At the present time, close to twelve million Mexicans are living illegally in the United States.

The wall between the USA and Mexico was built at almost exactly the same time as the one between Israel and Palestine. The lesson for history, however, would appear to have been very quickly forgotten: even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the idea still exists of this negative utopia – the idea that fences can be used to block out a reality that cannot be denied: the excessive growth of hunger and injustice. Here and there the walls remain in place: in the western Sahara, in Ceuta and Melilla, the physical segregation in Cyprus, the wall between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the wall in Kashmir, walls that divide entire cities in Northern Ireland … Over the centuries, however, all these walls have shown themselves to be powerless against the strength and vitality of imagination.