The border, the U.S. - Mexico border that is, to me is sad. It is Mexico playing by the U.S. rules at its height. It is casa de cambios, enticing people from the American side (but wait, how easily we forget that "Americans" is a descriptions Mexicanos fit as well, for we are both on the North American continent) to change in their dollars for constantly increasing amounts of pesos. And then what? Millions of opportunities to spend those pesos. Cheap haircuts, dental work, valium, over-the-counte prozac, liquor, hand-crafted folk-art, meals, beer . . . . Hell, why not cross the border for a cheap meal, rack up the souvenirs, and turn right back around? The border greeted me with insistent market-vendors-- that, I was used to-- but these accosted me with a barrage of English phrases, almost insulting after having spent five weeks in the depths of Mexico and Guatemala. I wanted to confront them, say, I understand Spanish, but even so I realized that their English was for their own livelihood, to eal with the Gringos on their own terms. Even yet, It's embarrassing to be dealt this border Mexico. The Mexico that the U.S. has infiltrated. What does the border delineate? Different cash system. The Anglos have set up their factories and stores for miles into northern Mexico, starting right past the border. They can take advantage of the low-overhead cost, set up factories in the barren desert regions the U.S. allowed Mexico . . . . it's painfully obvious why the border was set where it was. Half the length down into Mexico is all desert. Texas and New Mexico and Colorado and California, once Mexican territory, were relinquished from Mexico-- anywhere green or with any valuable minerals in the ground.

The U.S. greed is grand. It sets itself apart from Mexico, when we in Texas (we're "Americans") are in land formerly Mexico's. Gloria Anzaldua is right. Until we acknowledge our common ground no progress can be made. And we must struggle to understand the history of our neighbors, acknowledge that our cultures and boundaries can not follow a simple border, for they overlap. Learn inclusion rather than exclusion. Arrogance and ignorance are dangerously linked, and the U.S. is indeed killing the Chicano culture with its ignorance.

Sadly, ignorance is not the Anglo's deadliest weapon. The dollar is a powerful drive in Mexico's economy, and Mexicans will play by the U.S.'s rules to get those little green pieces of paper much more stable and comforting than their own colorful pieces. Money is often motivation for border crossing on either side-- into Mexico for cheap goods, or into the U.S. for work that, however "lowly", will provide stable money with which to provide for one's family and on which to live.

"The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds" states Gloria Anzaldua in "The Homeland, Aztlan" (Anzaldua, 3). Her image of the wound created by the clash of the two countries at the border is prevalent throughout her essay, and serves her radical point well. Hostility of the two sides does indeed wound, the physical line of the border being just the simplest of the scars to attest to this. For Anzaldua's assertation that the border is "in a constant state of transition" (Anzaldua, 3) is right-on-the-mark. There is much blending that goes on on either side, and an agreeable relationship between U.S. and Mexico would bring about less friction, less "grating", and wounds less deep. For, as Anzaldua later points out in "Towards a New Consciousness", " . . . all blood is intricately woven together, . . . we are spawned out of similar souls" (Anzaldua, 85).

Despite and beyond all this, there is something else. I am reminded of how two harmless enough old borachos came up to the table my companion and I were sitting at in a bar in Mexico, where we were passing the time until our bus was to leave. "Mexico y la Estados Unidos son hermanas", one of them kept insisting to me. "Necesitan abrazar", he repeated, while motioning his arms around his own shoulders, demonstrating the sisterhood that the United States and Mexico need display, perhaps in his sober opinion as well as his then-drunken state. "Entiendo?", he kept asking, and I nodded, but it really wasn't until later that I began to understand. What a drunk man accosting you in a bar says can stick with you. It has with me. I think of his words (and his flailing motions) whenever I see a U.S. license plate in Mexico (more often than not it is a Texas plate), and also when I see a Mexico plate on the U.S. side of the border. For it always strikes me as a little out of place, like: "how did that car get so far out of its territory?", until I realize that they are in familiar territory. It is not such a strange dislocation when one remembers how close the two are. The border then becomes an unnatural boundary that is not much more than a bureaucratic hassle to cross. But the people on either side belong in both territories.

There are Anglos with a better mastery of Spanish than some people of Mexican blood . . . these are border-created situations, for some Mexican Americans want so much to stay on the U.S. side of the border that they lose touch with the Mexico in them, even though it is only minutes away. Anzaldua writes, " . . . I gather the splintered and disowned parts of la gente mexicana and hold them in my arms. Todos las partes de nosotros valen." (Anzaldua, 88). The image she creates is as strong as her point-- all the parts have worth, indeed, and what the border creates, at least partially, is a mix. Not a pure blend, no, and that is not necessarily something to strive for. Homogeneity, no, but it is vital to acknowledge the existence of both, lest neither retain herself well. Anzaldua acknowledges the mixing when she says, "I have missed the TV shows where the hosts speak in half and half, . . ." (Anzaldua, 89).

Not only does she miss these shows, but her own essay is teemed in the interweaving of Spanish and English. One gets the feeling from reading her work that there is not just one side; she uses both languages, she is a part of both sides. Her sentences would be reduced to incomplete phrases with the exclusion of one of the languages, just as the border (and its surroundings) would be incomplete without the presence of both sides. Both sides of identity and culture, for the border is not simply a physical border, but a barrier of mentality as well. It transgresses the simple physical delineation marked too confidently by a big sign reading "Welcome to Texas", for the border is much more blurred than what a sign can mark.