A Cautionary Tale

Given all the news about released funding for the Wall, I thought I'd put up a very short story I wrote a couple of months ago. Regular broadcasting to resume shortly.

La Barrera

Mexico did end up paying for the wall. Looking back, it was inevitable. After only twenty years, the wall that the U.S. had finally managed to cobble together through a variety of governmental and not so governmental schemes had already begun to fall apart. Mexico had hoped to defray expenses by rehabilitating this structure, or at least salvaging some of its parts, but most of the wall had been put together with a truly inferior grade of concrete. The Mexican work force that demolished it enjoyed filming each other punching through the wall with their bare fists and laughing as they did it. Some cost cutting officials then looked into at least using the supporting structures within, but water had gotten in at many locations. The wood had rotted, the iron rusted. There was little they could do but just haul it all away.

For a brief period, Mexico considered returning to the whole open border concept again. There were people who still felt some compassion for U.S. citizens, reasoning that you couldn’t tar them all with the same brush. But there were a lot more who thought you could. Should. Kids in cages, after all. No one was going to forget that, much less forgive it.

The new wall, la barrera, the one Mexico had paid for, was gorgeous. Some parts were marble, and many famous Mexican muralists had contributed art to the less costly surfaces. It was popular for honeymooners to spend a few days traveling along its southern face, posing for photos with the various artworks. As part of the original design, viewing platforms (later enclosed in bulletproof plastic) had been installed at certain scenic lookout points. Gazing off into that once great country to the north—now known ironically as ‘Los Estados Who Need Us’—could be exhilarating. But at first, so many people were afraid to climb up to these ramparts, having heard such terrifying stories of los gringos by now, that the government launched a campaign to assure its citizens that it was quite safe to take a look from these secure positions. Gradually, people grew less fearful. Some even had the thrilling if petrifying experience of spotting wild bands of los gabachos scavenging in the desert. Everyone agreed that with a good camera you could catch some amazing shots of these brutes, even from such a distance.

For a time after the wall went up, U.S. citizens could sneak down across the border quite easily. Many of them still had good clothes that spoke of former affluence and, with the help of forged passports, could usually pass for Canadians. But as time went by, it became easier to pick them out. Their clothes were no longer new or in fashion, and los ilegales were thinner than other people. Their teeth, too, got steadily worse. For a while, some Mexican communities would turn a blind eye, because they had made a tidy profit on giving these people medical care in the past. The Americans’ own doctors, at least the more successful ones, had largely managed to flee to better climes, even if people had been able to afford them. To Mexico, it became obvious that the future now lay south of it, with younger and growing markets in newly affluent Centroamérica and even further south. Gradually, Mexican doctors stopped accepting American patients altogether. It just wasn’t worth the hassle or the risk of penalties and public censure if they were caught.

And in fact, they might have forgotten about the U.S. entirely in time, turning their backs on it and looking resolutely south, if it hadn’t been for Canada. The Canadians and Mexicans had become good friends, bonding in the way people often do when they share a disagreeable neighbor and have to work together to figure out what to do about it. Los Canadienses had eventually built their own border wall against the U.S. Even they admitted that it was more serviceable than aesthetically pleasing, but then, they’d had a lot more of it to build than Mexico had.

Canadians and Mexicans loved to visit each other’s lands, but what to do about the big no-fly zone in between? During the U.S. coup, insurrection and the following chaos, people had been justifiably afraid to fly over that great intervening landmass. They’d had to travel around it, which was time-consuming and irksome. Cruise lines had attempted to seize the opportunity to connect the two democracies, but it came as a nasty surprise how quickly the disbanded Coast Guard had turned to piracy—marauding their own former coastlines, to be sure, but happy enough to take a foreign tourist vessel as booty if one was foolish enough to cruise into these now ungoverned waters.

After a time, braver souls in single engine planes would risk a flyover. Occasionally there were shots fired from below, but not powerful enough to hit a plane at any great altitude. And soon enough, even the yahoos on the ground must have realized that they might need to save their ammunition for something a little more practical, like food. For by now the great agricultural holdings had withered away, due to lack of migrant labor for the harvest.

Cautiously, the major Mexican and Canadian airlines began to fly over the country again. At first people were genuinely curious, peering down and trying to see signs of its vaunted former greatness—but often failing to see any evidence of human life at all. Although now there was a wide variety of birds in vast flocks that the pilots had to be careful to maneuver around. And everyone agreed that the buffaloes were making a comeback. But after a time, even the children grew bored with peering out to look when there was actually so little to observe, and people pulled down the shades on the small plane windows, returning to their in-flight approved games and films, or otherwise passed the time until they reached their more exciting destinations.

                                                                    --Seana Graham