of fences, cops, and imagination

so, something that i havent been mentioning at all is the border control. the fence. the checkpoints. i havent been mentioning it by design, i felt that it would deserve its own post and a bit of a spotlight.

when i came back from tijuana the line to get into the united states was about two hours long. there wasnt a line to get in. the line for cars looked to be about the same, again, no line to get in. the fence at the tijuana border was monstrous. it was about twenty feet high, and had barbed wire at the top...just in case someone made it there.

after leaving san diego, on the two lane highways as close to the border as possible, i started seeing a lot of cops. at least i thought they were cops. the cars looked like them, the pickup trucks looked like mini-jails. it was the border patrol. they dont pull you over for speeding, i learned that quickly, and it doesnt seem they do much of anything else but stir up dust and congregate at local businesses.

i mean that literally. some of the pick-up jails were towing behind them four old tires chained together, and it seemed that the only reason was to stir up dust and shake anyone from their migration path. at random points i would see congregation of ten or so vehicles just sitting on the side of the road, whenever i went through little towns all of the restaurants had congregations of border patrol vehicles outside. randomly in the middle of nowhere a border patrol vehicle would just be sitting empty, as a deterrent.

i also had to go through a "checkpoint" somewhere along the way. it wasnt much, the idea had me on edge. i am alone in a pickup truck and you cant see well into the back, and what you can see is a bed and other living things. i felt for sure coming up to it i was going to be searched. but when i got there, i was just waved on through, with barely a second look.

all of this smoke, the dusting, empty vehicles, congregating, and at the one point where the border patrol people can actually check the vehicles, they are just waved through, everyone that i could see was just waved through. what a job.

and then there is the fence. i wanted to travel as close to the border to see it, i was sure it had been built and i wanted to see the monstrosity, i wanted to write about the new wall, the new symbol of fascism. but i didnt see it for a long time, i was expecting the twenty foot high tijuana wall, but when i did see it, it was just off it the distance, it looked like a low lying snake. from the road it looked to be about two feet thick, black, and about six feet tall.

but i wasnt very close. the road is far from the border, and i think that is strategic. the southwest is all desert. constructing the road twenty miles from the border makes it that much harder for anyone trying to cross. there is probably some official only access road right along the fence, but i didnt see that either. i did see, dotted along the side of the road, blue bins with large flags that apparently held bottles of water for migrants. i thought that was nice. later i found that the border patrol doesnt pay for those, border activists provide those for the people that need water.

when i did actually see the fence, when the road was closest to the border, it was high desert. it was sand dune desert that you see on the planet tattooine. and i am sure it is epicly hot. once when i was visiting indiana in the summer, i walked on a lake michigan beach barefoot for about 200 feet. when i was done i had huge blisters all across my feet and i couldnt walk for two days. first degree burns for such a small place far from the desert.

i couldnt imagine the hell that a person must endure to make it across the border. but there are alot of people that try. and that just makes me wonder about the hell that exists just across the border.

and it makes me wonder about the border in general. it is just an imaginary line, something that doesnt really exist. it was created in 1853, it is barely 150 years old, and what purpose does it serve? american companies have been moving factories to mexico for cheap labor, and mexicans have been migrating to the us for better jobs. it is a paradigm, something that fences and border patrol will never solve.