From One End to the Other
Tijuana, Mexico from the U.S. Pacific coastline
It suddenly hit me. We were actually there.
A week ago, I had found a potent, impactful short film on Vimeo chronicling a woman and her young baby boy’s journey from their residential neighborhood in San Diego, CA to an area in the Mexican-American wall along the Pacific shoreline. There, they met with her husband and his father. He had been deported and was now living in Tijuana, alone, and each passing day, having his son grow up without him. They hadn’t hugged for over 2 years. Hunching over my glowing computer screen in my dorm room, I cried while watching it.
It hit me when I saw the waves. The whole 45 minute trek through the dirt and mud, I had little-to-no idea where we were heading. I just gladly followed the class, up for the adventure and ready to get my shoes (quite literally) dirty. And then when we arrived, I realized we had just recreated the trek.
I was confronted with the weightiness of this place.
This was the END.
It was the end of the over 2,000 miles of border that stretches across the southern part of the United States and northern Mexico.
If felt surreal to me, not only because I was beginning to better understand just how powerful this piece of metal was, but because I realized I was now seeing the other end. My hometown, Brownsville, Texas, is home to the beginning of the border wall. “The Wall,” though completely un-walled in major sections along the U.S.-Mexico border, starts in my city and ends in San Diego. In fact, it ends in the exact place where we went as a class, as it edged off into the Pacific Ocean.
My hometown, Brownsville, TX, and Tijuana, CA bookend the U.S./Mexico border.
I can’t tell you how surreal if felt to see just how easy it is to go from one end to the other, yet so difficult to go from one side to the next.
And that’s the thing. This wasn’t the end: the end of separation of families, the end of injustices, the end of talking before you listen, or the end of complacency.
But here’s to hoping that it will be soon. Here’s to hoping that we are taking one step in the right direction, one genuine, compassionate, yet (maybe sometimes quite literally) messy step at a time.