The border is often talked about with very little personal experience involved. It seems as though every politicians and person understands what is best here and what needs to be done to better it. What people often overlook is reality. Sure watching the news can give insight and ideas about what is occurring, but truly submersing oneself in the lifestyle and culture that comes with the border seems to be insignificant on being an expert.
I spent the first 18 years of my life living on the border. This place is my heritage, my home, and an essential element in who I am today. Often times my family and I would take drives into the abandon areas of the border that have generated such fear in the masses. To me, these places offered tranquility and peace of mind. The drive out there was unsettling to the stomach with a lack of paved roads or direction. Sometimes I feared my dad was driving aimlessly in the desert getting us lost with few resources. But really, I have been exposed to many fascist of the Arizona/ Mexico border that are untouched.
My favorite place takes about an hour of off road driving to find. The journey takes me on imaginary roads that wind round and round leaving me nauseous. I know we’re approaching when we see that massive white cross that seems to appear out of no where. It’s placed in the middle of the desert near the border. The exact location is unsure to me, but I can sense that place so distinctly in my mind. We always stop to not only feel our feet on the ground but to also explore the massive cross. There air is dry as the heat radiates through our feet. I can sense something familiarly unfamiliar to me. This place has generated so much chaos in the world and yet it is still so close to home to me. It beams of the Hispanic culture and the journey in which it takes to cross from one side to the other. As I travel a bit down the road I am faced with the metal rods that separate one country from another.
These rods seems pathetic once I encounter them face to face. I can’t quite understand how this “fence” that barely exists can bring upon death, tragedy, and political uproar. It’s not even a fence as it doesn’t even go past my waist. The scattered signs yield political warning of the trouble you may cause if you simply crawl under. A task so simple, yet somehow I don’t dare because of the fear that’s been instilled in my mind. Making the border tangible and real as opposed to a political agenda changes my understanding of it. It seems so silly to have created such fear and intimidation over something so simple standing in front of me.
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