Illegal immigration goes beyond borders. It is made up of human will, desire and sacrifice, all bound together by politics and struggle. Immigration affects every one of us. Those who get caught up in the line of fire have stories of incredible journeys all charged by the basic human need of survival.

The Río Grande, or Río Bravo del Norte as they call it in Mexico, begins in the picturesque snow-capped San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. As the snow melts and pure water courses through the valleys, it enters New Mexico and passes through historic ranches, rural country, Native American reservations and old New Mexican towns and cities, giving life to the land, animals and people.

The Spaniards arrived in this area in the first half of the 16th century, when the Pueblo Indians, who had already been in North America for about 20,000 years, used the waters of the old Río Grande for drinking, bathing, fishing and irrigation of crops. New converts to Christianity were baptized in these waters, and the “old person” washed away with the silt and the red tint of the river.

By the time the Río Grande arrives in Laredo in South Texas, once the capital of the independent Republic of the Río Grande, she is a slimy green color and has trickled down into what seems more like a large stream. The river no longer tells her stories of Indian
ceremonies, baptisms, fiestas and battles. Once a life-giver, the Río Grande is now known to cause sickness and heartache. It is here, in the lower Río Grande region that more babies are born with missing limbs and organs because of water  contamination.

In the end, the river passes through 16 dams and diversions before it reaches the Río Grande Valley at the southernmost point of Texas. The people are forced to use whatever is left of the once pure water to irrigate their many fields of watermelon, citrus and melon.
In the 1990s, the people in the Valley saw that the river no longer emptied into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Dammed by Texas and Mexican farmers, the Río Grande no longer flows freely.

South Texas, primarily the land between the Nueces River and the Río Grande, was long disputed territory for Texas, the U.S. and Mexico.

During the land dispute, U.S. troops were stationed on the north banks of the Río Grande.
Dr. Eloísa Taméz, director of the Master of Science and Nursing program at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, is a landowner in the Texas ranching community of El Calaboz, near Brownsville. The land she owns has been in her family for more than 260 years and, until recently, her property abutted the Río Grande.

Taméz has become a popular figure in the border security debate because she, like many landowners on the U.S. southern border, has recently been asked to give up her land for construction of a border fence.

This project, under the auspices of the U.S. Department of  Homeland Security, is an attempt to decrease illegal immigration into the U.S. from Latin America. Taméz has declined the request and refuses to give up her land to the government.

The construction of a wall or fence between Mexico and the U.S. represents the “erosion of democracy,” she said. “We are being watched by the whole world as we build walls and violate the rights of poor, simple people who live along the river, who still farm the same way they did years ago and who are still working and living off the land.”

Taméz said she is not an advocate of illegal immigration, but she does believe in upholding human rights. “[Illegal immigration] has been going on for generations,” she said. “I do not believe in illegal immigration, but it is something the governments have to take care of. They are staying very quiet about it. We shouldn’t have to pay the price for that.”

According to Taméz, this is not the first time the U.S. government has seized land along the border.

“People here remember when they took land for the levees,” she said. “Either they lived it like my mother who is 90 years old, or the stories have been passed down. I’m not going to be here to see the long-term effects if they build this wall, but my children and their children – my grandchildren – will be here. The impact is not just for us here at the border, it’s for all of America.”

The people on the border in South Texas have had a long, shared history with their neighbors to the south. Until recently, it has been of mutual respect and co-existence. The immigration debate has proven increasingly complex.

“It is a very, very difficult situation, but everybody has a little part in it,” she said. “If illegal immigrants come here and find jobs, there are some people here in America who hire them.”
A large part of this intertwining of Mexican and American economics is traceable to the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA was instituted in 1994, thanks to heavy pressure on Congress on the part of President Clinton, though Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has been a critic of NAFTA this campaign season.

NAFTA has had a significant role in Mexico’s outward migration. Dr. Luís R. Matías-Cruz, lecturer in modern foreign languages at Baylor and a Zapotec Indian from Mexico, is an expert on NAFTA.

“I think one of the forces for changes that NAFTA has brought to Mexico has been changes in the constitution and the framework of law,” he said.

Article XXVII was modified in the constitution of Mexico because of the NAFTA agreement. The Mexican government was willing to do this in exchange for signing the agreement.

“The social contract between peasants and the government was modified. So now the land is not protected by law. Now the land can be sold with individual titles. What used to be communal property now becomes individual property. So the government started issuing titles of land.”

“The Mexican government viewed NAFTA as something that “would save our lives – but actually, it made it worse,” Matías-Cruz said.

What Matías-Cruz also saw while doing his research were intentional relocation programs for rural and mostly indigenous families into urban areas of Mexico in order to increase employment and increase the integration of the national economy.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

“Mexico has some of the worst-paid workers on this planet,” Matías-Cruz said.
Security and access to justice must also be taken into account when looking at the immigration debate, Matías-Cruz said. Because of political instability, in 2007 Mexicans made up the largest group of applicants for refugee status.

Immigration greatly affects families and communities in Mexico. Although the men send back money to provide for their families while thousands of miles away, many children grow up without their fathers, the culture is forced to adapt to the current situation, and the roles of women change.

“There are towns that are only women,” Matías-Cruz said. He knows of one community where life-size statues replace fathers, brothers and sons who have left to work. Those who stay behind, in most cases women, receive the income that has been sent to their homes in Mexico.

With that, they buy seeds and hire people to farm and invest in water systems, wells and other needs.

“They are rebuilding their communities,” Matías-Cruz said. “The community still practices community. It just happens to be that 50 percent of the population is not in the same territory.”

The Mexican-American border doesn’t just separate two countries – it marks a boundary between the industrialized world and the developing world. It divides the rich from the poor and marks the conflict between  safety and struggle, life and death.