Today, I got to see the US-Mexico border wall in person. At a far distance, it was already a pretty insidious landmark in the distance, a neat and orderly scar across the chaparral of southeastern San Diego county. It got taller and taller as we approached, leaving the pavement of Campo for the dirt road leading right to the wall. I got a picture with the Pacific Crest Trail Southern Terminus, I’d consider a landmark of American freedom and purpose, with that monolithic wall in the background.
I was surprised that you can just walk right up to the wall- with the exception of some Border Patrol agents who cruised by us to see what we were up to, access to the wall is open, you can stand next to it, touch it, stick your arm through it, heck, one person said they even scaled 10-15 feet of it once before sliding back to the ground just to show they could for a (cringey in my mind) photo op. How many people actually climbed that 40 foot or so wall, went over, and fell to the hard packed gravel ground, and are seriously injured or even killed? We as Americans have the freedom to jokingly climb the wall- other people do it because they have to, no matter the consequences.
I kept my comments to myself- one of the people in attendance had a husband who worked for the Border Patrol and it didn’t seem to be the right time or place for that kind of discussion- but it did stick with me, the sadness of seeing that huge, ugly wall. It did not make me feel safe, it made me feel a lot of other things though- angry that the money spent on that eyesore could have been used for dozens of other things, like improving the immigration process so people in danger and seeking asylum didn’t have feel their only option was to immigrate illegally. The wall made me feel sadness for the animals that could no longer migrate across these fake lines in the sand. This wall makes some people feel safe, but it doesn’t protect us from the violence already here from white nationalists, Neo-nazi, incels, and the like, and I feel fear of the continuing onslaught of violence perpetrated by those groups. I thought about the communities split by the fence, communities that have moved freely across the border long, long before the ideas of borders even existed, and I reflected on their efforts taking place with this iron curtain as a backdrop.
The permanence of that wall makes me think of a poem we once read in high school titled “Ozymandius” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The gist of the poem is that the narrator heard a story from a traveler about a half buried and rather decrepit looking statue in the desert of a former king named Ozymandius. At the base of the statue is the text:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
“Ozymandius” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
One interpretation of the poem can be summed up in another quote or adage I guess:
Man Plans, God Laughs
Yiddish proverb, but also sometimes attributed to various sections of the Bible.
I wonder if in a couple hundred years, the border wall will go the way of Ozymandius- forgotten and abandoned posts in the desert. However, it’d probably be even better if it came down before then, and this country began to lead with compassion instead of fear.
One can dream (and fight).
Katie Buesch 