From the Bookshelf of Words Between Worlds…

The rancher explained how he used to get calls from men who said they wanted to buy land to

The rancher explained how he used to get calls from men who said they wanted to buy land to ranch on. They would buy up property but they wouldn’t ranch it, he said, they knew nothing about ranching. They wanted the land so that they could hunt people along the border. They moved in and welcomed other men to join them, men with assault rifles and night-vision goggles and bullet-proof vests.

What brings you to El Paso? he asked. My mother smiled. My son is researching the border, she said. The border? The man looked at us over the top of his glasses. I’ll tell you about the border. He pointed beyond the glass doors of the motel to a grassy hillside at the parking lot’s edge. You see out there? Used to be I would watch that grass move every night. Wasn’t long before I realized it wasn’t wind moving the grass, it was wetbacks sneaking across the line. The man smirked. But the grass hardly moves anymore, if you know what I mean. You don’t see wets in people’s yards these days.

The number of border deaths, just like the number of drug war homicides, or the numbers that measure the death toll of the Mexican Revolution or the War of Independence, do little to account for all the ways that violence rips and ripples through a society, through the lives and minds of its inhabitants.

What cowardice has caused you to retreat from the ragged heart of the desert? Why not return to the border’s smoldering edges, why not inhabit the quiet chaos churning in your mind? [...] I’m afraid to come any closer, I wanted to whisper. I’m afraid the violence will no longer shake me.