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
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