Karina Moreno: Borders

With so much conflict over borders, you can forget they’re manmade. Karina Moreno has this Perspective.

A few years ago, I sat atop Ryan Mountain in Joshua Tree National Park. All the guidebooks say you can see clear to Mexico from up there, but I remember struggling to find a line. Mexican and American terrain melded together in a beautiful desert bounty of rust and gold.

That view was a stark contrast to a recent experience crossing the southern border for a family quinceñera.

There, the razor wire and 30-foot steel wall don’t let you forget there’s a line.

I have traveled from the Bay to the border all my life. I grew up in Oakland, but the Calexico-Mexicali border was where I spent my childhood summers.

My papi would pile us in the back of a two-toned Suburban for the long drive down the hot and dusty I-5 freeway, turning east through the Laguna mountains.

“Welcome to Calexico, Gateway to Mexico” was the sign that greeted us in the heart of the Imperial Valley. The border was more porous back then, bicultural families like mine crisscrossing back and forth to visit cousins, run errands, and eat world-class Chinese food, brought to Mexicali by Chinese railroad workers.

But the border is different now.

Gone are the pithy welcome signs or any ease of going back and forth. Instead, an imposing wall snakes for miles amidst barricades, endless lines and men with guns. What used to feel culturally vibrant is now suffocated by angst.

The familial touchstone of my childhood turned into a gut punch.

The immigration discourse is maddening because it largely fails to recognize the humanity and contributions of migrants.

We need only glance at the headlines for a painful reminder that so much conflict around the world is rooted in arbitrary, man-made borders.

Atop a mountain, you can’t see a line. But up close, nowadays, it becomes all you can see.

With a Perspective, I’m Karina Moreno.

Karina Moreno works for a charitable foundation in San Francisco.