Border Stories

Clara, Sophia, Ben, and John from the new group Border Stories are doing important work for la frontera. They are humanizing this entire border region one video clip, one interview, one face at a time. Their work could not have come at a better time.

The border region has always been misunderstood. There are some who write it off as a dangerous area, others as a poor region not worth visiting on vacation. Some have deemed it “no-man’s land,” since it is south of the real border checkpoints some 40 miles north. Some look at the border region and see only the line which separates two countries, or a river which snakes back and forth until finally emptying into the sea. Some hear the Spanish and Spanglish and are threatened by this budding culture shift in parts of America.

Few look at the border region, either in Las Cruces, NM, and Del Rio, TX, or Brownsville, and see the people whose lives are planted here. The border is shrimp fisherman, factory workers, offshore oil-rig engineers, carpenters, educators. The border is families, bi-lingual tongues, bi-national histories, and bi-cultural futures. The border is a family who cannot leave the la frontera because old Abuela cannot legally cross and they would never dream of leaving grandma. The border is new immigrants, old land-grant families. The border holds the future of the United States.

Please visit http://www.borderstories.org/ to witness these stories for yourself.

Tags: Arizona, border stories, Brownsville, del rio, frontera, las cruces, New Mexico, oil, shrimp, Spanglish, Spanish, Texas