ONE CITY, TWO COUNTRIES, COMMON GROUND
People divided by a political boundary share culture, language and history ... and sometimes even hugs through the bars of a wall
‘Please don’t write another story about drugs,” Sigrid Maitrejean, a volunteer guide at the Pimeria Alta Museum inside the old city hall in Nogales, Arizona, beseeched me in a playful tone. It was not the only time during my three-day visit to the region that people would make a similar plea: enough of the endless rhetoric about the supposedly dangerous US-Mexico border, which only serve to keep visitors away.
Residents of this town of 20,000 wanted me to see the Nogales they see: a place steeped in layers of rich history and culture, which maintains a special relationship with its namesake and sister city across the border, Nogales, Sonora. And indeed, in the two Nogaleses — or Ambos Nogales, as locals refer to them — I found the most quintessential of all the border cities.
There are 16 sets of sister cities that line the 3,600km US-Mexico border, and as a journalist who has focused on the region, I’ve experienced all but two of them. Calling Ambos Nogales “one town in two countries” may be a slight exaggeration, but it’s a very apt metaphor.
“This is one city,” Ms Maitrejean said. “This is one place that was cut in half.”
That explanation is more or less true.
THE WALL
In 1841, when the territory was still part of Mexico, a family by the last name of Elías received a land grant from the government to establish Los Nogales de Elias, a name derived from the walnut trees that blanketed the Santa Cruz River Valley.
The Spaniards had used that mountain pass in the previous two centuries when they explored the Pimeria Alta, as northern Sonora and southern Arizona were known, west to California, and it’s believed indigenous groups had travelled the same path for millennia. Nogales, then, formed part of an important northern migratory route long before the US became concerned with walls.
The land, not part of the original territory gained by the Americans at the end of the Mexican War, was acquired in 1853, through the Gadsden Purchase, to build the southern transcontinental railway line. Foreseeing the boon in international commerce that intersecting railroads could bring, Russian brothers Jacob and Isaac Isaacson set up a trading post in 1880, which was renamed Nogales by the US. Postal Service soon thereafter.
To support the new trade, a community emerged on the Mexican side of the line that people also referred to as Nogales. Unlike the Texas border, however, where the boundary is defined by the Rio Grande, Arizona’s is a land border, and in Nogales, the border was an unobstructed street called International, half of it which technically lay in one country, half in another. Around it, a seemingly singular town spread north and south.
Today, Jessy Zamorano, the owner and operator of Baja Arizona Tours, is struck by how her clients, many of whom are from the Northeast or Midwest, react when she takes them to the fence. “Women are very much more sympathetic,” she said. “They will look at it, and some find it quite shocking and obtuse. But many of the men say, ‘Build it higher.’”
When they spot some of the families reaching between steel bars to hug each other, or holding up a newborn baby for their relatives on the other side to meet, she said, “women will frequently cry”.
ON THE ARIZONA SIDE
Driving south the 100km from Tucson, where the closest commercial airport is, the highway rises hundreds of metres as the scrublands of the lower Sonoran desert give way to hilly terrain ringed by the Santa Rita, San Cayetano and Tumacacori mountains.
The region nurtures some of the best birdwatching in North America and an abundance of wildlife, such as javelinas, rattlesnakes and hawks. There are many activities in the region that can be paired with a visit to the two Nogaleses, including hunting, fishing, wine tasting, hiking and golf.
A worthwhile stop is the artists’ colony of Tubac, where you can learn about the Spaniards who first explored the region at the Tubac Presidio State Historic Park and nearby Tumacacori National Historical Park, as well as hike or ride a horse along the same trail that Juan Bautista de Anza travelled by foot with 240 women, men and children on his journey to establish the first nonindigenous settlement at San Francisco Bay.
But in my view, as a lifelong student of the border, the cultural treasure is Nogales itself. Here, the kind of tourism you’re doing changes, and you train your eye and ear to catch things you wouldn’t see or hear in other parts of the country. Almost everything is bilingual and international. Twice, I assumed that individuals with fair skin and Anglo last names were white, only to learn they had at least one Mexican parent. I met Mexicans who had dual citizenship and owned homes on both sides of the border, and white residents who spoke excellent Spanish. The Paul Bond Boots shop that has made the traditional custom boots of classic Western films is staffed by Mexican craftsmen.
“I sit here every day and I marvel at it. I totally do,” said Nils Urman, the executive director of the Nogales Community Development Corp. A native of Germany, he married into a local family in the late 1970s. “I think it’s the most fascinating thing I’ve seen in my life.”
ON THE SONORAN SIDE
On the other side, the steel fence gives way to a protest of walls and borders. The government has permitted some artists to put up creative works that make bold statements, while others have informally drawn on it with spray paint.
The border and its themes naturally infuse some of the artistic production of Nogales, Sonora, because of the way it shapes the artists’ daily lives, said Elena Vega, a local poet and photographer who also experiments through painting, dance, music and spoken word. “In the art world, it’s always like that — some people live over there and come play here, or else we go and present our work over there,” she said. “So, it’s a coming-and-going. Maybe my work has that essence, but it’s not that I’m looking for it. It happens, it emerges from the work.”
While Mexico, like the US, sometimes looks down upon its border cities, Ms Vega said it is creative precisely because it’s a fluid, heavily traversed zone. “I think it’s the border environment. There’s more openness, it’s more diverse.”
Even as downtown Nogales, Sonora, also struggles to remain vibrant as fewer Americans cross over, the rest of the city thrives and gows, producing not just art, but a new gastronomic culture, said Alex La Pierre, the program director for the Border Community Alliance.
The alliance works with organisations in both nations to increase social investment and improve Americans’ understanding of the border; it offers tours for Americans who prefer a guide. One of the tours introduces them to nonprofits, including a migrant shelter. Another takes them to a craft brewery and to Calle Hermosillo, a long street that is home to many new restaurants and bars. “Sonora, in addition to having the best beef in all of Mexico,” Mr La Pierre said, “also has some of the best seafood in Mexico, because they’re adjacent to the Gulf of California, which Jacques Cousteau called ‘the aquarium of the world.’ What I tell our guests is that Sonora really has the best of surf and turf.”
On a warm Saturday, in the downtown zone, averting my eyes to avoid the vendors, I felt the energy change immediately. Mexican border cities are always a little busier, more alive than their US counterparts. Cars backed out of parking spots from every direction, and people moved briskly along the sidewalks. Amid endless pharmacies and dental offices catering to mostlygone Americans, local life pulsed and thrived.
As I made my way toward Calle Internacional, the street that once singularly marked the border, to view the wall art, I glimpsed a young woman on the US side of the fence who was reaching through it as she lovingly stroked the head of a teenage boy squatting on the other side. And I remembered Ms Zamorano’s comment about tourists reacting when they witness these displays of humanity.
It seems something fantastic happens when you draw a line on the ground: People almost instinctively reach out across it toward each other.