A largely unknown place at
the knees of North America, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands region stands at
political crossroads. The development of the border wall dividing this region
-- a sprawling landscape that has seen the birth of jaguars, the budding of
saguaro cactus and the footsteps of a million migrants -- has sparked hot
debate, as it relates to illegal immigration, international politics, and the
drug war.
In her new book Continental Divide: Wildlife, People, andthe Border Wall (Texas
A&M University Press, 2012) author and photographer Krista Schlyer gives
voice to a lesser-known aspect of the debate ─ the wall’s destructive impact on
wildlife.
Schlyer explains in
unforgettable images and evocative text how the wall has not only disrupted the
ancestral routes of wildlife; it has also rerouted human traffic through the
most pristine and sensitive of wildlands, causing additional destruction,
conflict and death ─ all without solving the original problem.
Here, Schlyer – whose
previous work has appeared in National Parks, Defenders, National Geographic,
and many other publications – explains why experiences in the borderlands
region prompted her to devote “most of her working and waking hours to documenting,
researching, understanding and communicating the ecological underpinnings of a
decades-long failure to craft smart, realistic border and immigration policy.”
For more information on
Continental Divide: Wildlife, People, and the Border Wall, visit www.tamupress.com or view the book trailer
here.
By Krista Schlyer
A dusty trail meanders along the Rio Grande into Boquillas
Canyon, a cleft carved by the river between land that is now Texas on one side,
and Chihuahua on the other. On that trail there sits a scratched-up old plastic
jar beside a note weighed to the ground by a rock. The note reads, “The Singing
Jesus. Donations, please.”
In late October
I came across this curious note and jar in Big Bend National Park. Intrigued but having no money in my pockets,
I walked on down the trail and set up my camera to capture the light as it
stole into the canyon corridor. While I was working, out of the silence came a
voice singing from the other side of the river, near the small village of
Boquillas in Mexico. My eyes followed the singing voice to the figure of a man,
Jesus I immediately assumed, who was crooning a Spanish song I knew well, “Ay,
Ay, Ay, Ay. Canta y no llores.” I considered his distant figure briefly and continued
working while he sang.
After a moment,
I stopped suddenly and listened more intently. Jesus’ voice had begun
reverberating off the canyon walls. It traveled to the north side of the canyon
in the US and back again to Mexico. Once this symphonic loop was started, it
continued as long as Jesus continued singing. And I was riveted, enveloped and
arrested, as I so often am in the
borderlands, by the music of two worlds coming together and alive within the
landscape.
It was this convergence
of cultures--both wild and human since this international border also spans a
natural north-south transition between the temperate and tropical zones--that
had first drawn me to the US-Mexico border. On this most recent trip to the
borderlands I encountered some old friends and made some new ones, including
Jesus, all of them reminding me why I started this work five years ago, and why
I wrote Continental Divide: Wildlife,
People, and the Border Wall.
It all began
with a couple of bison bulls who serendipitously crossed the international
border at the exact moment I was flying a few hundred feet above them in a
small twin-engine Cessna research plane. Wildlife scientist Rurik List, who I
had been trailing for a story about a long-lost herd of wild bison found in the
arid grasslands spanning New Mexico and Chihuahua, had explained to me the dire
predicament a border wall would pose for transboundary wildlife species. But
seeing these bison cross the international border en route to their main food resources
in New Mexico changed my theoretical understanding of migration pathways, and
changed my life. Since that day most of my working and waking hours have been
devoted to documenting, researching, understanding and communicating the
ecological underpinnings of a decades-long failure to craft smart, realistic
border and immigration policy. About the waste of taxpayer money on endless
enforcement and infrastructure; about the wildlife who will die if they cannot
reach food and water resources on both sides of the border; about the jaguar,
ocelot and other imperiled wildlife, whose trajectory toward extinction within
our borders will be hastened by choked-off migration corridors; about the more
than 5,000 human migrants who have died traversing the borderlands since the
1990s.
My work in the
borderlands has unearthed countless stories and images of heroics and
heartbreak along the border, many of them contained in the pages of Continental
Divide, published last month by Texas A&M University Press. Some of those stories I am just now learning
or will continue to learn in the future, like that of the Jesus and the people
of Boquillas.
This trip to Big Bend was my fourth in 10 years to one of the
nation’s most isolated national parks, indeed one of the most isolated regions
of any sort, in the United States. The trip was going to be short, just a brief
stop to observe and document any changes that had taken place since the last
time I visited in 2011. As is always the case when I travel to the US-Mexico borderlands,
I found much more than I was looking for.
The note written
by Jesus was one of dozens that dotted the trail along the Rio Grande. Most of
them were written by Mexican artisans and were accompanied by small craft
works, caricatures of local flora and fauna fabricated from wire and beads.
Beautiful works of art, these scorpions, roadrunners and flower sculptures were
accompanied by notes that asked for donations to be placed in plastic cups and
coffee tins. This wasn’t always the entrepreneurial approach of the local
artists. Prior to 9-11, the town of Boquillas had a thriving trade with the
many tourists that came to Big Bend and across the river to Mexico. I myself
had walked across the river in 2001 and eaten dinner, prior to the closing of
the border later that year. I have often considered the cultural loss for both
sides of this border, when the government shut down access, and I remember that
first crossing as one of my favorite moments in life. But it wasn’t until this
most recent trip that I came to understand the grave economic consequences of
that decision by the US government. Boquillas is a small village, hours from
the nearest city or border crossing. The lives of people here, the education of
their children, their health and well-being depended on tourists and a passable
border. One decision made two-thousand miles away cleaved their connection to
the United States and eviscerated their economy.
Today, Mexican
people cross the river at night or when the coast seems clear, they place their
work, and their donation jars, and hope that visitors will engage in trade that
was commonplace and essential to their lives. The US Border Patrol calls the
craftwork ‘contraband’ and forbids US visitors to buy it. But the artisans keep
coming, keep leaving their work, keep checking their plastic jars.
The Singing
Jesus has taken a different approach. It would be a hard case to make for the
border patrol to call a song contraband--though not unthinkable in the current
reality. Jesus sings and hopes people will hear him and his endless echoes and
place some money in the jar.
Having no money
in my pockets, I was all set to bypass his jar but he stopped singing and made
the ask.
“Will you leave
some money for the Singing Jesus?”
“I’m sorry,” I
said. “I don’t have any money with me.”
He paused for a
moment and asked, “Do you have food?”
I looked through
all my pockets and my camera bag and all I could find was a piece of candy. I
held it up to him, still standing across the river.
“Will you put it
in my jar,” he asked.
I did.
“Do you have
more food in your car?”
I said I did and
watched as he jumped with quick desperation into his canoe and paddled across
the river. His demeanor changed as he approached the US shore, his eyes darting
about looking for border patrol or park police. I followed him quickly toward
the parking lot, on the way he told me how the closing of the border had
crushed the village economy, and how he had heard and kept hoping that the
border would soon reopen. When we reached the parking lot, he hid behind a
rock--getting caught would have serious consequences for him. When border
patrol catches crossers from Mexico here, they don’t just allow them to cross
back, they arrest them and cart them to a city crossing hours away. Most have
no money to get back home.
I grabbed a bag
of food and a jug of water from my car, and walked back to the trail, handing
it to Jesus. I thanked him for his song and watched him disappear quickly into
the canyon.
The story of the
people of Boquillas is one that our policy makers and many members of the public
need to hear. It is one of many thousands of stories about human and wild
communities all along the border that are at the mercy of a federal policy that
seems to serve no constituency but continues to be fueled by a politics of
misinformation and fear. In hopes of getting these stories to those who need to
hear them most, I am seeking funding to purchase a book for every member of
Congress and key people in the White House. For the bison, the artisans and
visitors to Big Bend, and the Singing Jesus of Boquillas Canyon.
Click on the Krista Schlyer's fundraising link here!
Dr. Richard Wainerdi has
experienced a lot during his 28 years as President of the Texas Medical Center.
However, he not foregoing everything he loves. In an interview with Houston
Chronicle medical reporter Todd Ackerman, Dr. Wainerdi admitted he is “going to
keep [his] hand in a lot of different things…but at 81 years of age and 28
years as president, [he thinks] it’s time to turn the reins over to someone
else.” 
Texas A&M University Press
author, Frederick C. Elliott, documents many of the changes TMC has experienced
over the years in his book The Birth of the Texas Medical Center: A Personal
Account (Texas A&M University, 2004). His book reveals the human side to
this dynamic organization. Dr. Wainerdi said “Dr. Elliot’s book provides a
unique perspective of the creation of the Texas Medical Center. His insight
into this historically significant process is of great value to all of those
who want to understand how what is now the largest medical center in the world
came into being. He was more than simply an observer, he was a vital participant
and leader in all that occurred.”
