Apache woman, in odd twist, has key to new US border wall
Hulking border wall crosses her backyard, something she says feels like a ‘violation’
She does not identify as Mexican or American. Eloisa Tamez is Lipan Apache and her ancestors owned this land a century before the war that imposed the boundary between Mexico and Texas.
Now a hulking border wall crosses her backyard, something she says feels like a “violation.”
That part of her property, in the border town of El Calaboz in southeast Texas, is a vacant area split down the middle by the rusty iron fence, which stands 5.5 metres high.
Since it was impossible to build the wall in the middle of the Rio Grande River, which marks the natural border with Mexico, US federal authorities built it a couple of kilometres north of the riverbank.
That meant some of the lands through which the wall already passes — and will continue to be built, if President Donald Trump gets his way — are owned by native tribes and private farmers.
This is what happened almost 10 years ago to Tamez, a nursing professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and a tribal rights activist.
“It makes me very sad to see what happened to my property, which was valued by my parents not for the money, but for what the land produced for us, because my father was a farmer,” the 83-year-old told journalists.
Referring to the land, she said: “They violate it. It’s very sad to see that happening and I’m glad that my parents didn’t live to see it.”
When federal authorities installed their fence, they divided her land not exactly in half.
Then they gave her a key to open the gate that allows her to access the other side of her ancestral land, 1.2 hectares of desert dotted with cactus and mesquite.
‘Wall is a Band-Aid’
That is all that is left of the 5 hectares that once belonged to their Lipan Apache ancestors since the 18th century, thanks to a land grant from the Spanish crown. In 2009, after losing a US federal lawsuit, Tamez was forced to accept compensation of $56,000, which she donated to nursing scholarships on behalf of her parents.
Other farmers, whose lands were entirely to the south of the wall, also received access codes to their properties.
But most of the cases were settled with appropriations from the federal government for values that averaged $12,600, according to an investigation by National Public Radio.
More than half of the 310,531 illegal migrants detained by US Customs and Border Patrol in the fiscal year that ended on September 30 were captured in Texas, official figures show.
“The current migration crisis is the result of the inability of Congress to enforce the law for decades,” Tamez said.
“The loss of our lands to build a wall is a Band-Aid on the migration crisis, not the solution,” Tamez added.