Paper mache sculptures of faces hang in front of the Nogales border wall. Photo: Todd Miller.

The man was sitting on a bench in front of the 20-foot rust-colored border wall, near where public buses pass. He was writing in a small notebook in the bustling center of Nogales, Sonora. It was Tuesday, election day in the United States, I approached him and told him that I was a journalist and that I was interested in what he thought about the elections in the United States, especially that the border – which I pointed out right in front of us – was one of the biggest issues of the election.

His response was laconic: “It’s another country. »

The man told me that he coordinated the buses and spent a lot of time on that bench. He preferred not to say her name. It was noon, the sun was rising on a clear blue sky and I had just crossed the border. Tensions were already high in the United States and it was a relief to be in Mexico.

At first I thought the bus coordinator was being dismissive and I would move on. But then he asked, “Who do you think will win?” Trump?” I told him that according to the polls it was 50/50. This was before we knew what we do now: that Donald Trump was about to win the election decisively.

The bus coordinator said, “I hope Harris wins.” » He paused. “Because she’s a woman.” Could this be the first female president of the United States? I nodded. “We also have our first female president in Mexico,” he said, referring to Claudia Sheinbaum, inaugurated on October 1.

My plan was to go along the wall and view the US elections from the Mexican side. Although our conversation was brief, the bus coordinator was exactly the person I was hoping to speak to. It was a place where American elections were going to affect people in blatant, visceral, palpable ways – as border politics have done for decades – and yet they had no say in the choice at all. . I wanted to capture people’s feelings.

I also wanted to converse with the wall itself. Let me explain: there is a marked difference between the wall on the Mexican side and the wall on the American side. On the American side, the two parties dominate the repressive apparatus, which has become the source and logic of presidential campaigns. In the American countryside and in national narratives, it was difficult to hear the frontier characterized in any other way. On the Mexican side, however, what was on offer was a more complex and alternative story, whether it was the graffiti and artwork on the walls, or simply the words of people like the bus coordinator, people who worked, lived, went to school and I went around the wall.

Just before crossing the border, I spoke to Gustavo Lozano about Border Beatz Music Collective in Nogales, Arizona. He told me, “None of the politicians, not Trump or Harris, not one of their cabinets – Republicans and Democrats – the very people who have influence over the direction we go as a country, none of them they do not know what border zones really are, that border zones are a deep source of riquezawealth.” Here, he told me, there is an exchange of culture, a sharing of culture, knowledge and skills. Lozano talked about revitalization projects in Nogales. He talked about creating a corridor of the arts He spoke from the galleries with thought-provoking art, art that created conversations about the border, that transcended the border, that subverted the border. I didn’t realize it at first. but walking along the border is this type of inspiration that I was looking for, the omitted or unheard stories.

As the great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano wrote: “Walls are the publishers of the poor,” and the Nogales border wall is no exception. On the terminals – the thick steel bars – was written in one section the message: “Nuestros sueños de justice no los detenienen ningún muro”. No wall can stop our dreams of justice. In another place, the prose expressed that “America es una sola casa”, “America” – in the Latin American sense of the word, that is, the whole of the North and South American continents. , “is one house”. Later, I stood mesmerized by an interpretation of the American flag made on the border wall, made up of clothes, T-shirts, children’s clothes, underwear, the same clothes that tear on the barbed wire or that are sometimes found thrown into the desert. And further down the wall are the papier-mâché sculpted faces near where three dogs were napping in the shade.

America is a unique home. Photo by Todd Miller.

I interviewed another man waiting for a bus in another area, named Manuel. He told me he wasn’t from here but from Ciudad Obregón, about five hours south. He told me he didn’t understand the American electoral process. He said, “Why Tuesday?” In Mexico, elections took place on Sunday. I agreed that it doesn’t make sense to have an election on a business day. But I told him that in many places people could vote early. He said: “Doesn’t this create more opportunities for vote manipulation? I told him I appreciated his skepticism. Like the bus coordinator, Manuel approached the electoral question cautiously. He said he “didn’t like” Trump. I told him he might not like it, I wouldn’t mind. He asked me: “What is this threat of mass deportation? » This threat will be repeated by Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on November 5 (the next day) after the announcement of his victory. She reiterated Trump’s comments promise undertake the “largest deportation in the country’s history” and declared that this operation to start the first day. There was an immediate tip in the stock price of private prison company Geo Group, a company that was also doing well under the Biden administration. Manuel believed that mass expulsions would be “mutually damaging”, especially since Mexico, he believed, would be forced to contribute to the expulsions. He said it would create a ripple effect of suffering.

I walked a block from the border to where two women were selling second-hand clothes, in front of the apartment they had rented together. As I approached, I noticed one of the T-shirts they were selling; it was black with white letters: “I don’t care what you think.” »

I asked the women about the elections and the border. Like other people, they looked at me warily and asked me who I wanted to win. I told them my thoughts, which seemed to put them more at ease. Their names were Bertha and Mariana. Bertha told me she had two children in the United States and they were voting for Trump. “Do you know why?” I asked. She shrugged her shoulders. Then she told me she wanted Harris to win. The women told me – like the bus coordinator – that Mexico had its first female president, whom they appreciated. They told me that his government would help them. They will particularly help, says Mariana, the “madres solteras”, single mothers, like them. There were “ayudas” for housing, for education, for health. We need all of this. “Would it be the same with Harris? they asked. I wasn’t sure.

“Would the wall fall? » asked one of them. I said I’m not so sure either. In fact, I admitted, Harris said she would build more. “Es muy sad,” Mariana said, “para el mexicano” (It’s very sad for the Mexican people). I once again wondered why Democrats chose a hard campaign line on the border. I’ve heard people justify this campaign strategy as practical, inevitable, and say they had to do it. I found this perplexing, especially since in 2020 Democrats ran a campaign on a more humane border and won.

Later, I discussed it with longtime Nogales organizer Marycruz Sandoval Pérez of Colonia Flores Magón. “They (by them, all politicians from all parties) always use us as an excuse when there are elections,” she said. “But they know perfectly well that we are a ‘bad necessity’ in the United States.” Because, she asked, who else would choose the food, wash the dishes, clean the hotel rooms? It is precisely this constrained perspective that Sandoval Pérez described, the constant commodification of people, from which I wanted to free myself during my walk.

A sculpture from an exhibition called Paseo de la Humanidad in Nogales, Sonora. Photo: Todd Miller.

But now I was on my way home. Near the DeConcini port of entry, I passed a man strumming a mandolin and singing “La Llorone” with the voice of an opera singer. The song stopped me in my tracks and I listened with complete attention. Then I began to write inspired notes about how hope lies not in politicians at the top but rather down below, in art, in conversation, in song, in graffiti, among ordinary people. I’ve heard “La Llorona” hundreds of times before, but this interpretation soared and I realized I was looking for something much more than an electoral assessment. I was looking for the source of change, how things really move, how they transform. It usually comes not from above, but from below, like passionate singing.

I realized that what I craved was the inspiration that came from the borderlands, not as a place of chaos and violence – as Trump now loudly describes it – but quite the opposite: a place of creativity, a fertile ground where solutions are found. Bertha and Mariana have them. Gustavo Lozano has them. Marycruz Sandoval Pérez has them. Now, as the Trump administration unveils its plans, it is more important than ever to listen.

This was first published on The Chronicle of the Border.