Separate Crossings

Stephen Henighan

Dr. Portillo, a Mexican physi­cian, lives with her hus­band and son in a balcony-festooned six-bedroom house in a gated sub­urb. The adobe walls that enclose the gar­den, the coloured tiles embed­ded in the walls and the ser­vants’ gar­den house are all typ­i­cal of the home of a pros­per­ous Mexican fam­ily. The multi-generational col­lec­tion of rel­a­tives who occupy the spare bed­rooms also reflect Mexican tra­di­tion. Dr. Portillo receives her patients in an office located in a tower in the north­ern Mexican city of Tijuana; since many of the patients are American, much of her work­ing day takes place in English. When she goes home at night, she relaxes by speak­ing to her hus­band and son in Spanish. Her son, how­ever, often responds in English because Dr. Portillo’s typ­i­cal Mexican home is located in sub­ur­ban California. 

Dr. Portillo’s hus­band is an American, born in the south­west­ern United States into a fam­ily that immi­grated from Mexico two gen­er­a­tions ago. Until he met his wife, then a young med­ical school grad­u­ate newly arrived in California, Spanish was a lan­guage of which he had only a pas­sive under­stand­ing. As a result of his mar­riage, he has recov­ered his flu­ency. While Dr. Portillo’s son, who was spo­ken to in Spanish as an infant, is drawn toward English, her hus­band, who grew up speak­ing English, has moved in the direc­tion of Spanish. Dr. Portillo, who dis­cov­ered after immi­grat­ing that she would not be allowed to prac­tise med­i­cine in the United States, has achieved her American dream home, built in a dis­tinc­tively Mexican style, by treat­ing American patients, who pay her in U.S. dol­lars, in Mexico.

Contradictions such as these make the San Diego-Tijuana region one of the most per­plex­ing places in the Americas. The inter­na­tional bound­ary line at the heart of these two cities, which are creep­ing toward each other across low brown hills, is a blem­ish on the land­scape, at first glance an insur­mount­able bar­rier; yet by estab­lish­ing dif­fer­ent ground rules on either side of the line, the bor­der inspires the cre­ative evo­lu­tion of forms of life that could not exist either in a purely American or a purely Mexican con­text. The region is evolv­ing toward a com­plex inte­grated cul­ture that belongs to nei­ther Mexico nor the United States. In spite of this, U.S. politi­cians con­tinue to win votes by promis­ing to keep immi­grants out. The U.S.-Mexican bor­der is an ugly, depress­ing place where, each year for the past ten years, between 370 and 400 peo­ple have died try­ing to enter the United States with­out doc­u­ments. The old head-high red metal fence is rust­ing. Separated by an arid no man’s land from this relic stands The Wall: the blank con­crete bar­ri­cade, as tall as a three-storey build­ing, that the United States threat­ens to extend along the length of its bor­der with Mexico.

This Berlin Wall for the twenty-first cen­tury reflects the ironic era of its con­struc­tion. Built to pro­tect a ter­ri­tory defined in terms of cul­ture rather than ide­ol­ogy, it is breached thou­sands of times a day by clean­ing ladies and man­ual labour­ers who turn its mean­ing on its head. Indeed, the United States gov­ern­ment encour­ages cer­tain cat­e­gories of peo­ple to ignore the bor­der. In this, as in other areas, the eco­nom­ics of glob­al­iza­tion height­ens social strat­i­fi­ca­tion. Mexicans who live close to the bor­der can receive a visa that autho­rizes them to work in U.S. bor­der towns but for­bids them from pen­e­trat­ing deeper into the U.S. or resid­ing there. Many Mexicans take advan­tage of this sys­tem to travel at dawn every day to San Diego, where they clean houses or work in gar­dens. Unlike mil­lions of other poor Mexicans — those who risk their lives try­ing to cross The Wall — these work­ers earn cash dol­lars and pay taxes to nei­ther the U.S. nor Mexico. Professionals like Dr. Portillo, who do pay taxes, can apply for a sen­tri (Secure Electronic Network for Travellers’ Rapid Inspection) pass for their car wind­shields. This allows them to take the express lane at the bor­der, sweep­ing past the two-hour lineup of cars wait­ing to reach U.S. Immigration, with no ques­tions asked.

As the case of Dr. Portillo illus­trates, many of the Mexicans mov­ing to the United States are not poor. The most dra­matic impact of nafta in Mexico has been to debil­i­tate the pow­er­ful mid­dle class, which, through most of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, gave the coun­try a polit­i­cal sta­bil­ity enjoyed by no other Latin American nation except Costa Rica. Now, as edu­cated Mexicans emi­grate in order to sal­vage their middle-class sta­tus, California is awash in Mexican engi­neers, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, teach­ers, com­puter pro­gram­mers and graphic design­ers. Many of the peo­ple park­ing suvs in the shop­ping malls of San Diego are eth­ni­cally Mexican, iden­tify them­selves as American and speak both lan­guages. On the south­bound trip, enter­ing Mexico from the United States, there is no bor­der con­trol unless one is unfor­tu­nate enough to receive a rare red light at the immi­gra­tion post. Americans drive into Tijuana with no ques­tions asked, warned only by a sign inform­ing them ungram­mat­i­cally that “Guns Illegal in Mexico.” Mexico’s aver­sion to pri­vate cit­i­zens pack­ing pri­vate armour may be the sole cul­tural dif­fer­ence between San Diego and Tijuana that is des­tined to survive.

South of Tijuana, con­do­minium tow­ers cling to the cliffs of the rough coast­line. A view of the Pacific costs less here than it does in pricey south­ern California, and the signs adver­tis­ing the con­dos, like those in the nearby shops, are in English. The only words in Spanish are sin enganche—“no down­pay­ment required” — a phrase that is excluded from the English ver­sions and that lets Mexicans know that they, too, can aspire to own con­dos in Mexico. In an ocean­front restau­rant fifty kilo­me­tres down the coast, every­one is speak­ing Spanish, yet no one blinks at the English-only menu. In the adja­cent mar­ket Anglo-Californians speak halt­ing Spanish with Mexican women who have woven the logos of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco 49ers into tra­di­tional pon­chos. On my return trip to San Diego, I cross the bor­der on foot to avoid the backed-up traf­fic. The bor­der guard asks me for my visa, unaware that Canadians don’t need visas to enter the U.S. The only coun­try he deals with, he says apolo­get­i­cally, is Mexico. In the dark­ness out­side, cars in the express lanes hum past the two-hour traf­fic jam. It is a sta­tis­ti­cal cer­tainty that dur­ing the night a Mexican with­out doc­u­ments will die try­ing to cross the bor­der. Along this selec­tive fron­tier, two cul­tures are merg­ing in a way that con­sol­i­dates the social strat­i­fi­ca­tion com­mon to both. Cultures may blend as glob­al­iza­tion pro­ceeds, but the poor and the rich will con­tinue to make sep­a­rate crossings.