Omar Nevarez lives in Warm Springs and works as a laborer for Bashista Construction.
By OMAR NEVAREZ
I have been living in valley for the last seven years. I am not from this country, but I was raised in Idaho. I was born in Mexico. I have lived in Mexico, and I know the lifestyle, and I also know the lifestyle of this country. I love both nations. People ask me all the time what I think about the U.S.-Mexican border issues. When I reflect on this question the only way I can answer is with the words of a Mexican author, Carlos Fuentes.
The most famous saying about Mexico and the United States has been attributed to Porfirio Diaz, the old dictator who ruled my country with an iron hand from 1877 to the outbreak of Revolution in 1910.
"Poor Mexico! So far from God but so close to the United States!" In present circumstances, we would be well advised to change this celebrated saying and exclaim instead, "Poor Mexico and the United States! So far from God and so close to each other!"
Our two countries have become extremely interdependent, yet also have an extremely lopsided power relationship (the Untied States is strong while Mexico is weak) and both elements are dramatically heightened by the fact that we share a common border, one of the longest, most conflictive, and most challenging borders in the world. It's 3,000 kilometers long, from Diego-Tijuana to Brownsville-Matamoras.
It's not an easy border because its significance is unique. It is the visible border between a developed post-industrial state and an emerging, developing nation, between the first and the third worlds. All the frictions, all the lessons, all the opportunities of the north-south relationship in this century are bound to manifest along this line between the Pacific and the Gulf.
This is not only a border between Mexico and the United States, or even between a developed and an undeveloped nation. It's also a border between the United States and all of Latin America, which begins south of the river you call the Rio Grande and we call the Rio Bravo.
What happens on the line between Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora, is bound to affect the relationship between the United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere. "Is it more then a border?" asks a character in Fuentes' novel, "The Old Gringo." "Is it a scar? Will it heal? Will it bleed again?"
This will depend, of course, on our policies with regard to the main issues on the U.S.-Mexico agenda, beginning with trade and migration, but including many other areas of the increasing interdependence of the two countries.
