Border wall is a threat to natural areas and historic sites.
Border wall a threat to natural areas and historic sites
RIO GRANDE VALLEY — Amber Salinas, her husband and daughter Sienna, 5, were lost and late to Sienna’s school field trip at the National Butterfly Center.
As they came around a bend near the Mexican border — an impatient Sienna asking, “Are we there yet?” — a large piece of yellow machinery loomed into view.
“Are they putting in a playground?” Sienna asked, thinking they had arrived at the butterfly center.
“I said no, they’re not putting in a playground, they’re putting in a wall, like the one we saw close to where we see the Christmas lights,” Amber said, referring to the Hidalgo Festival of Lights, which lies near an existing border wall.
The prospect of more border fencing in the Rio Grande Valley has roiled the region since President Donald Trump, as a candidate in 2016, first promised a “big, beautiful wall” that would cut through parks, churches, cemeteries and other sites.
The budget deal reached last week has spared the butterfly center, Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, La Lomita Chapel and the site of the SpaceX spaceport from new wall construction.
But the deal includes $1.4 billion for new barriers, with 55 miles designated for the Valley.
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who was on the bipartisan House-Senate conference committee that wrote the bill, said at least 11 miles will be on Rio Grande levees, but the precise location isn’t known.
On Friday, Trump declared a national emergency to bypass Congress and divert more than $6 billion toward border wall construction. It is feared his move
could override the new protections. The wall will include a 150foot “enforcement zone” on the side facing Mexico, with a road, bright lights and cameras.
“We were spared for what, maybe six months until the next budget battle?” said Marianna Wright, executive director of the butterfly center. “The equipment is advancing with the state of emergency. They’re just going to roll right over us.”
Bulldozers started clearing land last week in another natural area that wasn’t protected in the deal, the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
More sensitive sites also could be threatened. Last year, the Texas Historical Commission alerted Customs and Border Protection to the presence of 16 designated historic sites in Hidalgo and Starr counties in the path of the border wall. Only one of them, La Lomita Chapel, was included in the budget deal’s protections.
Sections of steel bollard fencing have been in place for years near cities along the Rio Grande. But there are multiple gaps, and it’s feared an unbroken stretch of 18foot-high fencing will destroy historic sites and threaten the patchwork of natural areas along the river that protect habitat for endangered species and plants.
“Imagine a string of pearls. The river is the necklace and each little tract of land is like the pearl of the river,” said Tiffany Kersten, a leader in the Valley chapter of the Sierra Club.
Endangered animals depend on this string of pearls. The last remaining ocelots in the U.S. are in the Rio Grande Valley; biologists estimate there are only a few dozen left. The small, spotted wildcats have been boxed in by existing walls, limiting their genetic diversity and population.
This four-county region is a unique ecological space where four to 11 climates and habitats overlap — what’s called a biotic province. Temperate, southern tropical, desert and coastal zones exist here.
The Valley is home to more than 520 bird species, 300 butterfly species and 1,200 plant species, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Biologists say nearly 30 species of bird are found only in this region.
Tens of thousands of wildlife watchers across the country flock to the Valley every year, pumping more than $436 million into the economy, according to a 2012 study by Texas A&M University.
“We are the funnel for the major migratory route for the entire Western Hemisphere, so we have all these birds that go right to our area before they go down to Central or South America for the winter,” said Nancy Miller, head of McAllen city’s tourism department. “It’s a tremendous place.”
She said bird-watchers make up the third largest tourist group, behind Mexicans who come to shop and “winter Texans” visiting from northerly climes.
At the Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen, a city-owned nature preserve and estate, a rare sighting of a Blue Bunting triggered 2,300 visits to the 14-acre site in 2 1⁄2 months last year. It was more than 17 times the number of visitors over the same period the year before, said John Brush, the preserve’s urban ecologist.
“You can see more bird species here in a relatively small area than you can anywhere else in the country,” Miller said.
During a stroll through Bentsen State Park, bird-watcher Mary Beth Stowe sighted a Couches king bird, a brick belly hummingbird and a golden-fronted woodpecker clinging to a tree.
She also found chachalacas by listening for their “raucus and rhythmic” song, the Altamira oriole with the “happy whistle,” an olive sparrow with its “bouncing ball sound” and a white-tipped dove that sounds like “blowing over a Coke bottle” — all unique to South Texas.
“It’s hard to imagine life without them,” Kersten said of the parks. “We’re human beings, we evolved in nature. This is what’s reminding us to our connection to the land. To take that from us is to remove our human heritage.”
‘A big investment’
Only a fraction of land in the Rio Grande Valley is untouched by urban sprawl or farmland. In an area suffering from a childhood obesity crisis and a high poverty rate, the few parks and sanctuaries it does have are vital to the communities.
“It’s a big investment,” Kersten said as she walked through Bentsen State Park. “The irony of doing so much, living right here and then having the first section of wall go up 3 miles from my house is heartbreaking.”
Though the park got a reprieve in the budget deal, activists, environmentalists and wildlife watchers worry natural areas nearby will be divided by border fencing.
Under the Secure Fence Act in 2006, border fencing was built through a family burial plot in Cameron County, a golf course, a monument to Fort Brown in Brownsville, the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse Museum and Brownsville’s 557-acre Sabal Palm Sanctuary.
The sanctuary’s website warns visitors about the barrier.
“Please be aware that the Department of Homeland Security’s Border Wall runs along the northern periphery of the property and entry into the Sanctuary requires passing through the wall.
“This does not mean you are leaving the country, entering disputed territory, or putting yourself at risk,” it continues.
‘No other place to go’
They call it “campo santo,” or holy ground; this cemetery is tucked into the base of a hulking levee, like a village in the shadow a mountain.
More than a dozen protesters, most members of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, have been camped here for over a month, cleaning the Eli Jackson Cemetery, filling it with flowers and trying to draw attention to their cause.
The tribe has named its encampment here “yalui,” or butterfly. The protesters have joined forces with the National Butterfly Center and other allies to oppose the wall.
“What we’re trying to do is extend the butterfly corridor, so people don’t think they’re just at the center. They have no borders,” said Juan Mancias, chairman of the tribe, which isn’t federally recognized.
Plans for a wall and its 150-foot enforcement zone pose a threat to the cemetery, which includes more than 60 chipped and faded headstones marking the graves of Europeans and native people.
The Texas Historic Commission designated the place a historic site in 2005.
It was not protected in the budget deal.
“All of this land is historic, and they’re not seeing that, not even the congressman,” said Mancias, referring to Cuellar. “He’s making compromises about letting these larger entities go about their way, and the ones that are suffering are the little people.”
Markers with orange-red ties were placed around the cemetery, evidence that contractors have already surveyed and staked out the land.
The Eli Jackson Cemetery was started by an interracial couple: Nathaniel Jackson, the son of a plantation owner, and Matilda Hicks, a freed slave.
They started a small community here, and it became a stop on the underground railroad. As the multiracial community flourished, many native peoples, including ancestors of Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe members, were buried here.
“It’s important for people to know there’s a history here. From the first contact with our tribe, to the present, we’re still here hundreds of years later,” Mancias said as he stood among the graves, wearing a T-shirt that said “Defend the sacred.”
Just down the road is another chapel with a small cemetery called Jackson Ranch. The chapel is recognized by the Texas Historical Commission.
Both cemeteries are about a mile and a half from the river. All around the cemeteries are huisache and retama trees.
“That’s what we made baskets out of,” Mancias said, alluding to his ancestors.
Hackberry trees abound, too. They attract northern flickers, a type of woodpecker that winters in South Texas.
A neighbor, Cesar Ortiz, 70, stopped by and greeted Macias. He and Arturo and Rebecca Hernandez have homes next door, also butting up against the levee.
Ortiz and the Hernandezes said they hadn’t heard from the government about a potential wall.
The Hernandez couple have large orange trees in their yards, with several bird houses hanging from them. There’s a wagon in their yard with “Los ilegales” painted on its side, as a joke.
They moved here from Mexico in 1972 and raised their seven kids in the home, shaping their acre of land with an outdoor fireplace, an outdoor seating area, and an abundance of plants.
Now, they’re worried about the wall.
“Mortified,” said Rebecca Hernandez, 63.
“We don’t have anywhere else to go. To a day care?” her husband said, joking.
“But really, after all this time, where does one go?” Rebecca said. “Without money, without anything?”
They both grew silent, letting the chatter of birds in their orange trees fill the air.
‘No wall between amigos’
In the quiet before dawn, amid acres of empty farmland near the Rio Grande, the low sound of song and whispers emerged from a small, adobe church.
The beginnings of a bonfire were outside, sending smoke swirling into the pews. About 40 parishioners cast long shadows on the aging walls. Father Roy Snipes, his cowboy hat resting on the corner of the pew nearest the altar, raised his arms and called on the Virgin Mary to protect La Lomita Chapel.
“Hatred is always clenched by love,” he proclaimed. “And darkness is always disappearing by the light.”
There is a clash, he said, of both earthly and spiritual importance, “about what we care about and what we hope for, and what the federal government wants to do.”
This was the ninth and final Friday of their “novena,” a Catholic ritual to petition a spirit to help with a particular cause or ailment. In this case, Snipes and the congregation were asking for the church to be spared from the border wall.
Missionaries built La Lomita in 1865. The city of Mission, near McAllen, was founded later and named for the chapel.
Snipes, a San Antonio native, remembers when he saw La Lomita for the first time — in 1968.
“It really engaged my heart and my imagination,” he said.
In recent years, the humble place that hosts weddings, baptisms and Palm Sundays has become an emblem of resistance against the Trump administration. Snipes isn’t shy about his defiance — a large sticker on the side of his Chevy Suburban says “No wall between amigos,” with a likeness of the Virgin Mary.
“‘Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people,’” he said, quoting humorist Garrison Keillor, as he rearranged the altar of his church.
La Lomita, with its “viejitas” who come every Friday to sweep the floors and its three crosses marking the graves of donkeys that took part in processions and rituals, is the home of these gentle people, he said.
On a guest book splayed across the altar were notes from visitors.
‘Build bridges not walls. Love thy neighbor,” wrote one visitor.
“Build the wall. … Sell the church,” wrote another.
“I am surprised. I am hurt,” Snipes said, reading that entry. “Why would you come out here, this place to pray, and say you hate this place?”
Although the chapel won a reprieve last week, it could be only temporary.
“As the wind whispers through the ancient mesquites, and the Rio Grande flows faithfully to the Gulf of Mexico, the light force of our loving creator calls us, to those who were long before us, to be humble and kind,” Snipes said at the novena service. “He tells us to listen in our hearts and to speak to him. And so we pray.”
‘Fly away’
Jeffrey Glassberg noticed a small section of brush near the levee at the National Butterfly Center and paused. He climbed out of his car.
“You really ought to see these butterflies here,” he said.
Glassberg, the president of the North American Butterfly Association and a biologist who was a pioneer in the field of DNA fingerprinting, squinted at quarter-size butterflies, fluttering between shrubs at the butterfly center.
“There’s two males harassing a female — so they’re nothing like human beings,” he chuckled.
A checkered white, a female southern dogface and a hairstreak flew in and out of the leaves and stems.
“There’s a bunch of skippers around. That’s probably a fiery skipper,” he said, his voice growing soft at the sight of a burnt-orange butterfly. “If you take a photo and blow them up, they’re stunningly beautiful.”
The butterfly center hosts educational trips and programs and serves as a nature park for kids and families. It has plants for monarchs, an outlook post for kids, bird watching blinds and gardens designed to attract butterflies, hummingbirds and other wildlife.
Sienna Salinas, the 5-year-old whose mother got lost trying to find the butterfly center, eventually made it. She was on a field trip with other children from the Pharr Oratory of St. Philip Neri School.
After meeting Spike the tortoise, checking out rabbit holes, petting snakes and learning about the birds of the Valley, the kids gathered in the butterfly garden to learn about the insect’s development from a caterpillar to butterfly.
“We’re going to pretend days and days have passed and I want you to wiggle and wiggle,” said Patricia Rubio, the center’s environmental educator, as the 4- and 5-year-olds shook and danced. “Now we’re a caterpillar, so let’s go over there and find some plants to eat. Don’t put it in your mouth for real, though!”
Sienna had her father hold her up to see a yellow bird “dancing” in the leaves. She knows about the wildlife in the Valley — her school’s mascot is an ocelot.
Her parents smiled as their daughter bounced around the bushes. Salinas said she knows its important to talk to her daughter about the wall, but she wishes she didn’t have to.
“And now you’re a butterfly!” Rubio exclaimed. “Fly! Fly, you’re free!”
The children lifted their arms, gleefully flapping, pretending to fly away.