Guest Column
Border Texans sing, “Don’t fence me in”
EAGLE PASS, Texas – (AP) – January 8, 2007 - It´s nearly midnight and shoppers at the cavernous Wal-Mart are lined up 10 deep at the checkout counters.
U.S. and Texas flags hang under the harsh fluorescent lights, but there should probably be a third: the tricolor of Mexico, the country whose shoppers sustain this store and much of the border city of Eagle Pass.
In part because of huge economic gains of the last five years enjoyed on both sides of the border, this stretch of Texas-Mexico frontier has become a focal point of protest against the 700-mile border wall signed into U.S. law in October.
Manufacturing job growth across the border in the state of Coahuila has created a class of shoppers eager for cheaper and higher quality U.S. goods. And the once chronically unemployed Texas border towns are prospering.
Five years ago, Eagle Pass suffered a 25 percent unemployment rate and one of the lowest per capita incomes in the state.
But sales tax revenues jumped 35 percent between 2000 and 2005. The value of new construction has soared from US$16 million in 2000 to just under US$50 million in 2005. In a sign of the times, the city will get its first Starbucks later this year.
Eagle Pass and nearby Del Rio are connected to their Mexican sister cities across the Río Grande by long family histories and the shared economic success.
Mayors of the two cities are leading the charge to convince U.S. officials to change their minds on the wall, which made its way into legislation late summer amid the debate over border security and immigration reform.
The last thing border politicians want is an unpopular wall that could alienate Mexican shoppers.
"Why would we shoot ourselves in the foot?" said Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster. "I´m going to put a wall up between my house and my sister´s house? That doesn´t make any sense."
The border mayors are optimistic that a Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress won´t vote to build the US$6 billion wall, which hasn´t been funded yet. Instead, many local officials hope to convince Congress to use the money to build a virtual wall of sensors and cameras and increase funding for the U.S. Border Patrol.
On the other side of the river, mayors of Mexican towns have staged several protests, including a 55-mile march through the desert.
This part of southwestern Texas is far removed from the drug violence wreaking havoc on the economies of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo.
A middle-aged Mexican couple, Alejandro Ocaña and his wife María del Refugio, cross the border from their home in Piedras Negras about once a week, enduring hours-long bridge lines to shop at Wal-Mart and H.E.B. supermarket in Eagle Pass.
They are lured by cheaper prices on things like bathroom tissue, soap and soda. But should the border wall be built they say they might not come across, even though they both have visas.
"We´d have to re-think coming because it would be like they don´t accept us here," she said. "We´d change our habits. It´s discrimination."
Across the street from the new Wal-Mart Supercenter, license plates from Coahuila dominate the crowded parking lot at the Mall de las Aguilas. Mexican shoppers represent 57 percent of the mall´s business, which has shot up 30 percent in the last two years, said marketing manager Juan Rodríguez.
"The worry here is not the physical wall itself - our shoppers aren´t (crossing illegally)," he said. "But rather that the sentiment will change. On the Mexican side they might be a lot less cooperative in our efforts to attract shoppers. There´s a lot riding on this decision."
The retail explosion has transformed Eagle Pass, creating hundreds of new jobs and increasing land values. Where stubborn brush once covered the landscape, neat suburban-style subdivisions are sprouting up at a clip of nearly 400 new houses a year, a significant increase in a city of about 35,000.
Eagle Pass isn´t the only area along the border enjoying some long-awaited good times.
Fortune magazine recently named the Rio Grande Valley city of McAllen as the best real estate investment opportunity in the nation for 2007. Another border city, El Paso, was second.
Del Rio Mayor Efrain Valdez said the Texas reality is far different than in places like Arizona and California, where the border slices through open desert.
"Here we have the Rio Grande, we already have a natural boundary," he said. "We´ve said (to federal officials), ´Before you appropriate the money, let us on the border give you input.´ "
PART OF EVERY-DAY LIFE
For border residents, crossing the river is an every day part of life. In Del Rio´s sister city of Ciudad Acuña, Nicolás López and his family lead a binational existence: his two daughters wake up early each morning to attend school across the bridge in Del Rio. The 34-year-old shoe shiner, who lived for several years in Round Rock, Texas, as a carpenter and has family in Atlanta, warns the wall could have some unintended consequences.
"It could create a kind of racism - Mexicans will think bad about Americans," he said. "The wall tells us: we don´t want you Mexicans."
Ciudad Acuña Mayor Evaristo Lenin Pérez, who walked 55 miles through the desert to protest the wall, called for a boycott of his sister city in May to demonstrate the economic power of Mexican shoppers. He said about 3,000 carloads participated in his one-day boycott, costing Del Rio nearly US$300,000 in sales.
"The United States depends on Mexico just as much as Mexico depends on the United States," he said.
On the Texas side, the economic growth has allowed the region to begin stemming a decades-long exodus of educated young people, who have traditionally fled the Eagle Pass for places like Austin and San Antonio.
"Before they would say, ´What am I going to do, be a cowboy?´ " Foster said. "Now there is some real opportunity here."
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed by HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com) without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)