I Miss Mexico

It’s been there all my life, just across the Rio Grande. A good day’s drive from any town I’ve lived in, but a heck of a lot closer than New York or Washington, D.C.

Come to think of it, I’ve never been to D.C., and all I’ve seen of New York is the inside of an airport. But I’ve been to Mexico lots of times.

I’ve shopped and dined in border towns, built sand castles on a Yucatan beach, explored pyramids at Chichen Itza, ridden a train into the Copper Canyon, visited a Tarahumari village, taken my car on the hand-pulled ferry at Los Ebanos, and hung out in a cantina in Boquillas del Carmen, next door to Big Bend National Park. Have you heard Robert Earl Keen’s song, “Gringo Honeymoon”?  That’s exactly how it was.


I don’t go to Mexico any more. Don’t know when it’ll seem safe enough to travel there again. And I feel that my world has grown smaller and meaner.

Sure, there’s plenty to see in these United States. In my 50-odd years I’ve visited at least 25 states and two dozen national parks. I’ve danced in the surf on all three coasts, hiked through forests, deserts, and slickrock canyons. I’ve made three forays into Canada and two trips to Europe. But still, I miss Mexico.

For most of my life, living in a border state meant having interesting neighbors. You always knew there was another country just a few hours away. A country that was friendly, but different enough to be intriguing. A place that smelled different and spoke a different language, where people slept in the afternoon and worked until late at night. If you got past the border towns and took the trouble to learn more about it, you’d find that Mexico also had majestic mountains, amazing archeological sites, and factories that make enameled pots and dishes in a rainbow of colors.

Nowadays, it feels more like living next to a fenced-off demilitarized zone between two countries who are not exactly at war, but aren’t sure the other side isn’t. And I can’t quite figure out how we got here.

I could point a finger at the U.S. government, which decided – after 19 men from Middle Eastern countries hijacked planes and flew them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, killing several thousand people – that Mexico was somehow a threat.

• Not long after 9/11, they closed the unofficial border crossings in the Big Bend. No more rowboat ferries that would take you to Boquillas or Santa Elena for a dollar. If you wanted to go to Mexico, you had to drive to Presidio, an hour west of the park, and cross at the International Bridge.
• Border Patrol checkpoints on the northbound highways, ten or twenty miles inside the actual border, are nothing new. In recent years, however, the station on U.S. 281 has grown from a portable shed to a large installation with offices and multiple inspection bays. Banks of remote-controlled cameras ogle each vehicle that passes on both sides of the highway.
• And that travesty of a border wall, or fence, that several communities have tried in vain to stop? Don’t get me started!

So maybe the U.S. isn’t looking too neighborly these days. But Mexico has its own problems. If I think it’s too dangerous for tourists, it sure isn’t safe for the people who live there. I don’t believe U.S. policies are responsible for all the mayhem created by warring drug cartels (though I do have to ask myself who’s buying their drugs.)

And there is this: seven years before 9/11, before there was a Department of Homeland Security, when Bill Clinton was still president, we visited relatives in deep South Texas. A cousin-in-law invited us to spend the night at her new house, in a new suburb on the outskirts of town. Nice place, but the back yard looked like a fortress. There was an iron fence around the patio, with a gate that required a key. On the way home, my spouse reported on a talk he’d had with the cousin. “Apparently, those gates and things are considered normal precautions down here,” he said. Maybe the drug violence was starting to build even then.

Our last trip to Mexico was almost three years ago. Military trucks patrolled the streets of town with automatic rifles mounted in back. Somehow, this did not make me feel safe. As we headed down the road to visit friends -- six family members in a crew-cab pickup -- a troop of uniformed men motioned us to the side of the road and searched our truck. They patted down the men in our party and searched my 80-year-old mother-in-law’s purse. I suspect I got a taste that day of how it feels to be an undocumented alien in Arizona. Or anybody who just happens to look like one.

In the end, I don't know precisely who to blame for all these strained relations. I don't know what I can do to fix it. But I sure do miss Mexico.