The Border Patrol officer asked:

“Are you both American citizens?” sticking his own Latino face into the car to get a look at mine.“Yes,” I said emphatically. We were not crossing any borders. We were on a good old American road trip. Hardly anyone else was on that winding mountain road hugging the Rio Grande River. My heart was not in my throat when I clearly spoke up, “Yes, I am an American.” What exactly does that mean these days? On that, I am not so clear.

The sheer beauty and magnitude of these vast valley plateaus, buttes and mesas shone crimson at sunrise and golden at sundown. No other than the hand of the Creator could have carved such magnificence. The opposite side of the Rio Grande looked identical. Yes, I am an American citizen who lays claim to this side of God’s creation. A river separates “us” from “them.” Yes, I am an American citizen, but for the grace of God, I would be over on the other border road. If asked that same question there, my answer would have entirely different implications. Who of us asks to be the citizen of the country of our birth? We simply become citizens immediately. Then at some time, someone asks, “Are you a citizen?”

There is only one answer.

Later that day, standing before a large flat boulder completely covered with handmade trinkets, I stared across the Rio Grande River. Within a stone’s throw, on the opposite bank, in the border town of Boquillas, there were Mexicans with voices loud enough to be heard. Both a rowboat and a burro were tied up at the water’s edge. When we look across at the Mexicans, I want to wave a “Hello.” Words on the white plastic jug read, “Boquillas no wall. 10 dollars. Good bless you.” I bend over to pick up one of the wiry figurines of that silly roadrunner bird. “It is illegal for us to buy these,” says a woman holding a chihuahua like a baby in her arms. “It’s illegal for them to sell things to us. As soon as you put money in that jar, they’ll jump in that boat and come to get it. They’ve set up camp over there and are watching us.” She and her husband, she says, are volunteers, training for work with the Border Patrol. “They’d risk getting arrested for ten bucks?” I ask, looking across the river, where the laughter is getting louder. “Yes, sometimes they row over. If the river is low, they walk across. Border Patrol warned us against interacting in any way with them. They come with others to get the money, but you never know how many of them will come.

Listening to her speaking of “them,” who appear to be a couple of young men wearing white cowboy hats, I decide I am not willing to take the risk for me or them. Just then, a Border Patrol truck appears and slowly comes toward us. As I walk away, the truck makes a U-turn. I wonder: “Who is the alien? ‘Me’ on my borderland, or ‘them’ on their borderland with the Border Patrol in between?” A river running through the two is a natural border if not a deterrent.

On the U.S. side, the Governor of the state with the most borderland is polluting the river with razor-sharp barbed wire as a means of torturing anyone who is trying to come across. He fails to understand that those who dare already know about torture from their homeland making it merely a calculated risk to remain or leave. Torture is torture no matter which side of the river you find yourself.

Some years ago, a U.S.Human Rights Commission in Guatemala worked to bring to light the disproportionately growing number of womens' bodies (often decapitated) left in the road for dogs to find, unless children found their mother's bodies first. At that time the number of murdered women had risen to 3,000 in a short few years* Nobody was named in these murders, no punishment was meted out because law enforecemt, of which there is plenty including young boys with machine guns strapped over their shoulders, turned away from these heinous crimes committed with total impunity.

In 2005, I traveled to Guatemala to join up with the group who worked to try to bring the pandemic of femicide** to the international news headlines. Within 24-hours of my arrival, the group had packed up and moved to an undisclosed location because their apartment and office had been ransacked. It was a warning to cease and desist. I never got to join them, all things considered, perhaps that was just as well. However, the question that burned in my mind remained: Why were so many women brutally murdered and by whom? I figured I would never find that answer as a white woman from America. Then, one day in a private conversation with a woman from the Habitat for Humanity office, she said in a whisper what could never be said out loud: "We do not talk about our husbands that way." Domestic violence! That I was taken by surprise says something about me, but it is not surprising to any woman living in a macho culture. These women breaking their backs daily over looms, or cooking over hotplates in the piazza before returning home to violence, have stayed with me the past twenty years. I am reminded of them whenever I see the latest nameless, almost faceless, migrants at the edge of the Rio Grande. These women with their small children trying to cross the Mexican-U.S. border have every reason and right to try.

*Guatemalan Humans Rights Commission/USA Annual Report, 2007.

**unwomen.org