Beginning the 19th of August, I spent four days in the town of Tziscao, Mexico. Jorge Luis (the professor I’m working with), has done extensive field work in this Tziscao, exploring the themes of identity and migration through in-depth interviews. He brought me to Tziscao so I could become familiar with the southern border and to help him get some interviews from women of the town regarding their experiences with migration.
Tziscao is situated right on the southern border between Chiapas and Guatemala. The town is fairly small, with modest houses interspaced with a few small stores and plots of land for harvest. There is a small tourist industry because of its proximity to the “Lagos of Montebello.” Tziscao is a town of “borders” in many respects. It abuts Guatemala, it receives flows of migrant Guatemalans (particularly during political violence of the 80s), and has in recent years become a major sending community to the United States.
When we arrived in the town, we first went to the home of don Angel, a friend of Jorge’s that he knew when he was doing his fieldwork in the town. We all got in the car Jorge had brought and drove the 5 minutes on a dirt road to Guatemala. We drove right into the town of Quetzal, Guatemala to say hello to another friend of Jorge’s. On the way back, we stopped on the “border,” to observe how it was delineated and so I could stand with one foot in Guatemala and one in Mexico.
The border was marked off by a series of white pillars and a line of cleared foliage. We could see the pillars extending into the distance, placed every 200 meters or so. There was a lake that we could see below, over which a suspended rope marked off the border.
Standing there, with feet in two different countries, having just driven from one to the next without noticing any difference in landscape or “feel” of the land and people, it was striking to me how arbitrary this border felt. Later on during my stay in Tziscao/Quetzal, this arbitrariness was reaffirmed when a woman I was interviewing on the Guatemala side kept referring to her family as “Mexicans.” Indeed, she had actually lived on the Mexican side of the border for many years. But to her, it hardly makes a difference that they are now living on the Guatemala side. They still have ties in Tziscao, they still go to Mexico for medical care, and, because the passage is so easy, they most likely go there to do some of their shopping as well.
In addition to this arbitrariness, it also was striking how unnatural the physical border felt. It was almost comical to see the little white monuments trying to delineate a boundary that both human nature and the environment seem to naturally resist.
It was also interesting to see how the border was being constructed before our very eyes. The first day we arrived, there were a group of men working near the monument right alongside the road. When we stopped right on the border, we asked them what they were doing. They told us that they were building a sign that would signal the Guatemalan and Mexican sides of the border. Sure enough, when I walked back to the line two days later, the sign had been raised and the men were just putting on the finishing touches. On one side, it proclaimed “Welcome to Guatemala” on the other “Welcome to Mexico.” I wondered who had commissioned this “public work.” Indeed, the physical border was being constructed before our very eyes.
Visiting the southern border of Mexico naturally caused me to think about the country’s northern border. When I visited the northern border a year and a half ago, I did notice to some extent a feeling of physical arbitrariness of the border. For example, the city of Nogales felt fairly similar on both sides of the border; it was just divided across the middle by a big, tall wall. Nevertheless, on the northern border, everyone was incredibly cognizant of which side of the border they were on and what it meant to be on one side or the other. And how could it be otherwise – to cross from one side to the other you had to go through a border checkpoint along the road and to cross from Mexico to the U.S. you had to have your vehicle inspected and your documents checked. There certainly wasn’t the same nonchalance about nationality and location that I noted on the southern border.
Nevertheless, I have read and been told that, at one point, this nonchalance and relative freedom did exist on the northern border, as social and economic ties that had existed for centuries in the region were maintained even as national boundaries moved around. It is only with increasing enforcement of the border, build-up of physical barriers, and militarization along the border-line that the distinct physical presence of the border has been distinctly felt. And of course, it is only with this build-up that the border has become a truly toxic zone, where danger, abuse, and death can come in the form of thieves and gangs, dehydration, sexual exploitation, dangerous wildlife, and corrupt officials.
So it made me nervous to see the group of men building the sign marking off Guatemala and Mexico, literally “constructing” the border. In recent years, Mexico has ramped up its own immigration enforcement, at least partially due to pressure from the U.S. to control South and Central American immigration before it arrives on the U.S./Mexico border. The abuses and extortion that many Central Americans experience at the hands of corrupt Mexican police “enforcing” immigration laws are well known; in some places it is almost expected. Some say that U.S. pressure is pushing the border further south, so it possible that enforcement along the southern border of Mexico will continue to increase, and that this border will become the new “war zone” of immigration enforcement.
Standing in the bright sunlight, hearing the slow chirping of birds, and watching the green hills around us reflected in the stillness of the turquoise lake below, it was hard to imagine that the peace and continuity of this border-line could ever be turned into the heavily controlled border we see in the north. But all things can change, I remember, as I hear the chink of the hammer behind me, steadily driving in the foundation for the new Guatemala/Mexico road sign.
Your description of the differences in the sense surrounding the northern and southern borders described in this post was really interesting. I love reading about your experiences in Mexico... and I miss you!
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