2023-09-03 09:06:02
SAN DIEGO (AP) — As the US government built its latest stretch of border fencing, Mexico sent its own message by placing remnants of the Berlin Wall a few steps away.
A porous 3-ton stretch of concrete lies between a bullring, a lighthouse and the border wall, which stretches to the Pacific Ocean.
“Let this be a lesson to build a society that breaks down walls and builds bridges of solidarity and understanding, always seeking the common good, social justice, freedom and brotherhood,” reads under the relic of the Cold War, a phrase Attributed to the mayoress of Tijuana Montserrat Caballero under the title: “A World Without Walls.”
For Caballero, like the 2 million inhabitants of Tijuana, the border wall with the United States is something personal as well as political, it is part of the essence of the city… and of life. She considers herself a migrant after having to move from the city of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, with her mother when she was 2 years old, fleeing the “vicious circle of poverty, beatings, and illiteracy.” ”.
The facility was inaugurated on August 13 in a ceremony with Caballero and Marcelo Ebrard, the former foreign secretary who is now a leading presidential candidate.
Caballero, 41, is married to an Iranian who became a US citizen and lives in the United States. She and her 9-year-old son used to cross the border between Tijuana and San Diego.
Since last June, Caballero has lived in a military barracks in Tijuana on the grounds that he took action in the face of credible threats against him that US intelligence officials brought to his attention and on the recommendation of the Mexican federal government. Weeks ago, his bodyguard survived an assassination attempt.
Caballero said she doesn’t know who wants to kill her, but suspects retaliation after seizing weapons from violent criminals besieging her city.
Pieces of the Berlin Wall are found all over the world after it fell in 1989, as collectors have placed them in hotels, schools, transit stations and parks. Marcus Cline, who makes commercials and other digital productions in Los Angeles, needed a place for his stuff and found an ally in the mayor of Tijuana.
“What is happening in Tijuana particularly?” Caballero wondered. “How many families have left blood, effort and their own lives to cross the wall? The social and political conflict is different from that related to the Berlin Wall, but it is a wall after all. And a wall will always be a sphinx that divides and bleeds the nations”.
President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to halt construction of the border wall, ending a landmark effort by his predecessor Donald Trump. But his administration has continued with small projects that had already been awarded contracts, including replacing an 18-foot (5.5-meter) high double-layer wall in San Diego with a 9.1-meter barrier ( 30 feet) and an extension of 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) towards the sea.
The wall runs through Friendship Park, a cross-border site opened by then-First Lady Pat Nixon in 1971 to symbolize binational ties. For decades, families separated by immigration status found themselves on the other side of a fence of barbed wire and cyclone mesh. It is a precious and festive destination for tourists and residents in Mexico.
During a festival in 2005, David “Human Cannonball” Smith Jr. flashed his passport in Tijuana as he was lowered down a barrel and shot over the wall into a beach net as US border agents watched. In 2019, artist Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana covered the Tijuana side of the wall with paintings of adults who came to the United States illegally as children and were deported. Visitors who pointed their phones at the barcodes were taken to a website where they told their stories in the first person.
Cline said he was turned away at the White House when he tried to deliver the Berlin Wall relic to Trump and then took it across the country to find a suitable location. He said the fragment has found a “second life” in a Tijuana park near colorful border paintings expressing his stance on politics and immigration.
The US government has gradually restricted access to the park from San Diego over the past 15 years at a state park that once hosted cross-border yoga classes, masses and music festivals. After lengthy consideration, the Biden administration has agreed to keep the wall 18 feet (5.5 meters) high for a small section where some access will be allowed.
Dan Watman of the Friends of Friendship Park, a body that advocates for cross-border access to the park, said the 60-foot (18.3-meter) stretch that will remain at a lower elevation is just a symbolic gesture. “The park on the Mexican side has become something of a one-sided thing,” he stated.
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it anticipates replacing the two-layer barrier by November and that the taller wall under construction “will provide much-needed improvements.”
The installation of the Berlin wall has been the subject of different reactions.
Sandra Flores, a tourist from the port of Mazatlán, compared the Berlin wall to the border fence.
“Here it is a little less strong than in Germany, but it is a wall that divides nations, lives, social, economic and other life related to the United States.”
Lydia Vanasse, who works in finance in San Diego and lives in Tijuana, said the relic took her back to when she was 20, when the Soviet empire fell and the Germans were finally allowed to move freely.
“San Diego and Tijuana are sister cities,” he commented. “The wall separates us, but we are closer in many ways. If there weren’t the wall, it would be prettier”.
Direct criticism of any American policy or president is rare.
The Tijuana mayor said the need for the United States to reinforce its borders is undeniable and she has close relationships with US officials, such as Ken Salazar, the ambassador to Mexico. She said Salazar asked her to evict migrants who set up camp hoping to gain asylum on US soil and blocked access to a border crossing into the United States in 2022. She followed her recommendations.
Any failure at the border is the collective responsibility of nations, he said.
“We are not against the border. We are against violence, we are against the disunity of families, we are against division, and the wall represents this, ”he declared.
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Associated Press writer Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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