Reunion
on the Border
Photo by: Anna Oakley
Children frolic in the shallow water while both
communities enjoy food, music and each
other’s company at Lajitas during the Voices
from Both Sides reunion.
People not Politics by Cynta de Narvaez
T
wo wonderful things happened
the other day: first, a Border
Patrol officer in the Big Bend
National Park Port of Entry to
Boquillas, Coahuila, Mexico mentioned
that he wanted a passport for the first
time in his life; he wanted to meet this
man, Philippe, whom he had been
speaking with across the Rio Grande
for some time. “I just want to know who
he is, what his house looks like, spend
some time with him…” The second,
which happened on the same day, came
from the Mexican Immigration Officer
in the Boquillas Immigration Station.
He put his digital visa on the desk and
said, “I want to see what is on the other
side of this river but I don’t have a car.
22
Will you take me?” These are just two
examples of the cross-border interest
generated by the opening of Boquillas,
the small town on the other side of the
border on the east end of Big Bend
National Park. No one would have
expected that federal men in uniform,
from either side, would be so personally
interested in what could be learned and
experienced on the other side of a small
river. But this is an amazing place and
an amazing time; a time of people, not
politics.
The informal border crossings along
the Rio Grande in the Big Bend were
closed without warning on May 10th,
2002. It was a shock that reverberated
on both sides of the river; in this remote
Cenizo
Third Quarter 2013
and sparsely populated desert, the Rio
Grande was not really regarded as a
border. Narrow, shallow and even
intermittent in some places, to us it was
never a dividing line between peoples
but a unifying blessing of nature, the
thing that allowed us all to live here.
The little villages that dotted its banks
were almost always built in pairs: Santa
Elena and Castolon, Lajitas and Paso
Lajitas, La Linda spreading to both
banks, Boquillas del Carmen and
Boquillas, Texas, then later Rio
Grande Village. Families lived on both
sides and one’s nationality was deter-
mined by where one’s mother hap-
pened to be when she went into labor.
When the U.S. government closed
the border, cutting the ties between
these villages, it severed families down
the middle, destroyed commerce and
communication and endangered the
survival of multiple Mexican towns.
With few unpaved roads and the near-
est cities a day’s drive or more away,
the Mexican villagers were suddenly
stranded in the desert without steady
access to food, medicine, gasoline or
employment. When the government
started talking about reopening the
Boquillas crossing a few years ago, we
held our breath in anticipation—and
we waited. And waited. And waited.
In the meantime, Jeff Haislip, a local
musician and bartender at the Starlight
Theatre in Terlingua, decided he