bajalta california: the border that divides brings us...

Bajalta California: The border that divides brings us togetherAuthor(s): Michael DearSource: Boom: A Journal of California, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 86-97Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/boom.2014.4.1.86 .

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The First Administrative Division of Baja and Alta California from Francisco Palou, Relacion Historica de la Vida y

Apostolicas Tareas del V.P. Fray Junıpero Serra, 1787. COURTESY OF THE BANCROFT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.


http://www.jstor.org/action/showImage?doi=10.1525/boom.2014.4.1.86&iName=master.img-000.jpg&w=777&h=578


michael dear

Bajalta California

The border that divides brings us together

T he United States–Mexico borderlands are among the most misunderstood

places on Earth. The communities along the line are far distant from the

centers of political power in the nations’ capitals. They are staunchly indepen-

dent and composed of many cultures with hybrid loyalties. Historically, since the

borderline was drawn between the two countries, Texas border counties have been

among the poorest regions in both countries. Those in New Mexico and Arizona were

sparsely populated agricultural and mining districts; and in the more affluent west,

Baja California was always more closely connected to California than to Mexico. Now-

adays, border states are among the fastest-growing regions in both countries. They are

places of economic dynamism, teeming contradiction, and vibrant political and cul-

tural change.

Mutual interdependence has always been the hallmark of cross-border lives. After

the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo settled the Mexican-American War, a series of

binational ‘‘twin towns’’ sprang up along the line, developing identities that are suffi-

ciently distinct as to warrant the collective title of a ‘‘third nation,’’ snugly slotted in the

space between the two host countries. At the western-most edge of this third nation is

the place I call ‘‘Bajalta California.’’1

The international boundary does not divide the third nation but instead acts as

a connective membrane uniting it. This way of seeing the borderlands runs counter to

received wisdom, which regards the border as the last line of national defense against

unfettered immigration, rapacious drug cartels, and runaway global terrorism. It is

a viewpoint that substitutes continuity and coexistence in place of sovereignty and

difference.

In 2002, I began traveling the entire length of the US-Mexico border, on both sides,

from Tijuana/San Diego on the Pacific Ocean, to Matamoros/Brownsville on the Gulf

BOOM | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 87

BOOM: The Journal of California, Vol. 4, Number 1, pps 86–97, ISSN 2153-8018, electronic ISSN 2153-764X.

© 2014 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for

permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and

Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/boom.2014.4.1.86.




of Mexico, a total of 4,000 miles. I voyaged in the footsteps

of giants. Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers Cabeza de

Vaca and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado came this

way. Generals Santa Anna and Zachary Taylor fought

important battles for these lands during the Mexican-

American War.

What began as an impulsive journey of discovery was

rapidly overtaken by events. I had the good (and bad) fortune

to begin before the United States undertook the fortification

of its southern boundary, and so I became an unintentional

witness to the border’s closure, an experience that altered

my understanding of the two countries. My experiences of

the in-between third nation provide a powerful rejoinder to

those who would relegate the borderlands to the status of

surrogate battlefield against migrants, narcotraficantes, and

terrorists.

In his 1787 biography of Fray Junıpero Serra, Francisco

Palou included a map of the first administrative division of

Baja and Alta California, indicating the Spanish allocation of

mission territories between Franciscans to the north and the

Dominicans to the south. That border was recognized on 2

February 1848, when a ‘‘Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits,

and Settlement’’ was signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby

terminating the Mexican-American War, which had begun

in 1846 and was regarded by many (including Ulysses S.

Grant) as a dishonorable action on the part of the United

States. Article V of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (as it

came to be called) required the designation of a ‘‘boundary

line with due precision, upon authoritative maps, and to

establish upon the ground landmarks which shall show the

limits of both republics.’’ The line would extend from the

mouth of the deepest channel of the Rio Grande (known in

Mexico as the Rıo Bravo del Norte); up river to ‘‘the town

called Paso’’ (present-day El Paso/Ciudad Juarez); from

thence overland to the Gila River, and down the channel

of the Colorado River; after which it would follow the

administrative division between Upper (Alta) California and

Lower (Baja) California to the Pacific Ocean.2

In a multivolume history of the American West, histo-

rian Carl Wheat refers disparagingly to the post-war bound-

ary survey as the stuff that ‘‘dime novels’’ are made of. To

justify this characterization, he invokes yarns about political

Survey plan for the first boundary point (punto inicial) between San Diego and Tijuana from Jose Salazar Ylarregiu.

Datos de los trabajos astronomicos y topograficos, dispuestos en forma de diario. (MEXICO: IMPRENTA DE JUAN R. NAVARRO, 1850).

88 B O O M C A L I F O R N I A . C O M




intrigue, deaths from starvation and yellow fever, struggles

for survival in the desert, and the constant threat of violent

attacks by Indians and filibusters. He also complained that

the US field surveys seem to have been plagued by acrimony

and personal vendetta: ‘‘if ever a mapping enterprise in the

American West was cursed by politics, interdepartmental

rivalries, and personal jealousies, it was the Mexican Bound-

ary Survey.’’3

It’s true that the letters, diaries, and official memoranda

by individuals on the US team portray just about every

American participant as a scoundrel or self-promoter. Yet

to me the boundary survey is a story of heroism, skill, and

endurance of epic proportions. It might lack the glamour of

war, or the grandeur of Lewis and Clark’s opening of the

lands west of the Mississippi in the early 1800s, but the

survey is one of the greatest episodes in US and Mexican

geopolitical history. It remains deeply etched in the everyday

lives of both nations. Dime novel it most certainly is not; it is

more a narrative of nation-building centered in American

President James K. Polk’s vision of territorial hegemony

extending as far as the Pacific Ocean, with all its momen-

tous consequences.

The really hard work on the post-treaty, joint boundary

commission was undertaken by Mexican Commissioner

Jose Salazar Ylarregui and his American counterpart, Wil-

liam H. Emory. Salazar was an accomplished civil servant,

described as ‘‘a charming person, active, intelligent and

polite.’’ Emory was a military man, already a famed explorer

who had just completed a reconnaissance of the lands

between Fort Leavenworth, Missouri, and San Diego, Cali-

fornia, with Kit Carson as one of his guides. Emory was

a dedicated professional, but he enjoyed savoring California

US-Mexico Boundary Survey Map, 1853, Tijuana section. IMAGE COURTESY OF LINEA DIVISORIA ENTRE MEXICO Y LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS,

Coleccion Lımites Mexico-EEUU, Carpeta No. 4, Lamina No. 54; Autor: Jose Salazar Ilarregui, Ano 1853. Mapoteca ‘Manuel Orozco y Berra’,

Servicio de Informacion Estadistica Agroalimentaria y Pesquera, SARGAPA. Digital restoration by Tyson Gaskill.

BOOM | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 89




wines at the end of his expedition (noting with admiration

that ‘‘Many bottles were drunk leaving no headache or acid-

ity on the stomach’’). He also observed that Californians

were excellent horsemen and enjoyed an unusual diet: ‘‘The

fresh meat of a bullock is all that is required by the Califor-

nian for breakfast, dinner, and supper.’’ Bread, tea, and

coffee they rarely used, he wrote, but their ‘‘white teeth’’

and blood ‘‘tingling’’ in their cheeks suggested that they

enjoyed a ‘‘very healthy diet.’’4

The boundary survey officially began on 6 July 1849.

Over the next two years the California survey from San

Diego to the Colorado River was the first to be completed.

Attention was understandably lavished on fixing the initial

points (puntos iniciales) of the line: the beginning marker

was to be one marine league south of the port of San Diego,

and the second at the confluence of the Gila and Colorado

Rivers (though this was later adjusted). A straight line con-

necting the two would mark the international boundary.

Disagreements arose immediately among the survey

teams because there was no standard measure for a marine

league. However, with a generous concordance that marked

their entire collaboration, Salazar and Emory agreed to split

the difference between their respective surveys. A location

for the initial point was fixed at the shoreline west of

present-day Tijuana, and a temporary monument was

erected. Surveying, marking, and mapping of the California

line could begin. After its completion in 1851, the boundary

commissioners subsequently turned attention to the Rio

Grande/Rıo Bravo and the interior surveys, both of which

presented stiffer challenges for the surveyors.5

As borderland settlements expanded during the nine-

teenth century, disputes over the exact location of the

Ancient boundary monument No. XVI was a simple pile of stones, early 1850s. From Jacobo Blanco’s Memoria de la Seccion Mexicana de la

Comision Internacional de Lımites entre Mexico y los Estados Unidos que Restablecio los Monumentos de El Paso al Pacıfico. 1901.





boundary line became more frequent. In the last decade of

the nineteenth century, a new boundary commission was

established to undertake a resurvey of the land portion of

the border. Commissioners John Whitney Barlow and

Jacobo Blanco met at El Paso in February 1892, with

instructions to resurvey the line, locate and rebuild the

old monuments, and install additional markers as

necessary.

The second survey team faced nothing like the hardships

of the first. Barlow and Blanco had the original survey maps

and existing monuments as guides, possessed superior

instrumentation, and enjoyed the conveniences of tele-

graphic communication and the Southern Pacific Railway,

which ran just north of the border. However, many of the

original monuments were difficult to find especially in

mountainous terrain, and errors in the first survey meant

that some monuments were incorrectly positioned. Such

mistakes were either quietly adjusted or left unchallenged

so as to avoid the need for renegotiating treaties. Some stone

markers had been deliberately destroyed by Indians as an

expression of antipathy toward US territorial claims. Others

had been dismantled for use as building materials. Also to

blame were ranchers and miners who destroyed or moved

markers in order to gain control over nearby land, water, or

mineral resources.

The work of the resurvey commission was completed

relatively quickly by June 1894, increasing the number of

boundary monuments from 52 to 258. The eighteen maps

produced by the resurvey commission are precise and

workmanlike renderings, though there is nothing of the

artistry and panache of the scribes employed by Emory and

Salazar.

This marble monument marks the first point established by the boundary survey following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In the late

nineteenth century the original marble monument was renovated and fenced to prevent vandalism. From Jacobo Blanco’s Vistas de los

Monumentos a lo Largo de la Lınea Divisoria entre Mexico y los Estados Unidos de El Paso al Pacıfico. 1901.

BOOM | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 91




Around the turn of the century, a further eighteen monu-

ments were erected to ‘‘more perfectly mark’’ the line in

congested towns and on new rail bridges or to repair dam-

age. For instance, the International Boundary Commission

erected a new monument to clarify the division between

Calexico and Mexicali, and restored monument 220-A after

the damage occasioned by the human-induced flood of 1905

when the Colorado River burst its banks at Yuma and flowed

north for two years, creating the Salton Sea and destroying

much of Mexicali.

With the completion of 276 monuments, the Boundary

Commission’s official monumentation program ended. Both

countries agreed that any further delimitation would consist of

smaller ‘‘markers’’ (monojeras) of concrete. By 1975, another

442 such markers had been added, principally in and around

sprawling border towns, and another 51 were added in 1984.

For most of the twentieth century, the international

boundary line between Mexico and the United States

remained loosely marked, haphazardly maintained, and

casually observed. Outside the cities, the boundary line

remained a nondescript affair. And in many places the

divide was left unmarked. People in rural areas crossed it

without hindrance. Virtually everyone I met on my border

peregrination had childhood memories of going over to el

otro lado (the other side) to shop, attend school, graze live-

stock, or join a weekend softball game.

All this has now changed. Beginning in the mid-1990s,

in response to increased waves of undocumented crossings

from Mexico, large fences sprouted opposite major border

cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. They were con-

structed from metal plates that had originally been manu-

factured to serve as temporary landing strips for aircraft

Border fencing from 1990s Operation Gatekeeper era, Tijuana, Baja California. ©2005 BY MICHAEL DEAR.





during the Vietnam War and were recycled by turning the

panels upright and clipping them together to form a barrier.

Anyone could easily get fingers and toes into their grooves

and hoist themselves up and over the fence, and it was

common at this time to see people perched atop the fence

awaiting the right moment to cross.

Following the attacks of 9/11, the United States unilat-

erally adopted an aggressive program of fortifying the

entire southern border. About 700 miles of new fencing

were constructed along the land boundary at a cost of over

$2 billion. The new barriers are policed by a much-

expanded US Border Patrol. And there is now a ‘‘virtual

border’’ of high-tech surveillance in the borderlands. These

unprecedented fortifications are no longer confined to

major cities, but extend into suburbs and deserts through-

out California, Arizona, and New Mexico, as well as parts

of the Texas river boundary. And they are strangling the

arteries and capillaries that once carried the lifeblood of

this third nation of the borderlands. Even the monuments,

which I came to love as signs of a deeper history of relation-

ships along the border, are now encased in steel or caged

behind fences, inaccessible and often hidden from the

American side.

The new fences, surveillance towers, interior check-

points, and (most recently) drones may have rudely inter-

rupted the lives of third-nation border dwellers, but not

stifled them. Cross-border trade continues to grow, and

the US government is opening up new and expanded bor-

der crossing facilities (known as ports of entry) at record

levels. Many formal and informal interdependencies

between the two countries cannot be undone by American

belligerence.

The ‘‘caged fence’’ outside Mexicali/Calexico is built on US soil to ensure ease of access and maintenance, but prevents access by the general public.

©2008 BY MICHAEL DEAR.

BOOM | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 93




The space between Mexico and the United States is not

recognized as a ‘‘nation’’ even though it evinces character-

istics that typically warrant the appellation, such as shared

identity, common history, and joint traditions. Border dwell-

ers in San Diego and Tijuana readily assert that they have

more in common with each other than with their host

nations, describing themselves as ‘‘transborder citizens.’’

One man who crossed daily, living and working on both

sides, told me: ‘‘I forget which side of the border I’m on.’’

In response to fortification and militarization, border

dwellers have made what adjustments they can, demonstrat-

ing a remarkable durability and adaptability based in a long

history of coexistence. The third nation endures under

duress.

One of the earliest imaginings of a shared future for the

twin cities of San Diego and Tijuana appeared in a 1974

report that Donald Appleyard and Kevin Lynch prepared for

the City of San Diego. In it, they identified eight city-

planning principles, one of which was: ‘‘Reach across the

border. Treat San Diego/Tijuana as one unified metropo-

lis.’’6 Their recommendation was based on how residents

perceived themselves and each other, as well as ways in

which they utilized cross-border urban resources. Circum-

stances have changed dramatically since 1974, and the spe-

cifics of the Appleyard/Lynch proposal may have been

forgotten. Nevertheless, their vision of a ‘‘unified metropo-

lis’’ remains firmly ensconced in regional imaginations on

both sides of the line.

From the long perspective of history, the wall (a term

used here as a collective noun for the entire suite of

fortification and police apparatuses along the borderline)

is an unprecedented aberration. The principal reason why

nowadays barriers exist and border tensions are so intense

is that immigration, drugs, and national security are

international problems that do not originate in the bor-

derlands. Yet at a national level, the United States and

Mexico treat the borderlands as the place where these pro-

blems will be confronted, and each nation stands to gain

from the sacrifices of that small minority of their citizens

who reside in border zones. Border communities have

no choice but to bear the burden of shouldering

national responsibilities. They have no capacity for self-

determination in this matter, and suffer the imposition

with limited assistance from their national and local gov-

ernments that rarely extends beyond military and police

intervention.

The borderland dilemma, in a nutshell, is of distributed

benefits versus concentrated costs. That is, an entire

nation benefits from control over national security threats,

illicit drugs, and undocumented migration; but a small

swath of border communities suffer the costs of the

wall—disruptions and delays, the onerous practices of secu-

rity forces, their ubiquitous infrastructure, a pervasive cli-

mate of lawlessness, and a growing distrust of public life

and institutions. Far-distant politicians in Washington,

D.C., and Mexico City seem to pay little heed to the voices

of border dwellers.

My Mexican friends along the border have no good words

for the wall, describing it simply as ‘‘stupid and offensive.’’

On the American side, border dwellers’ demands are clear,

and different from the national conversation about the wall:

provide more ports of entry to reduce crossing times, end

the ‘‘police state’’ conditions along the border, follow the

lead of Tijuana and San Diego mayors in forging a joint

future for twin cities along the border, and take down the

walls.

The future of Bajalta California—and the rest of the bor-

derlands—will depend on altering a mind-set that is pre-

pared to sacrifice this nation in-between on the altar of

geopolitical obsession. The vigor and prosperity of the third

nation may yet prove to be the most important guarantors of

national security. Instead of more walls, why not invest in

The future of Bajalta California will depend on

altering a mind-set that is prepared to sacrifice

this nation in-between on the altar of

geopolitical obsession.




infrastructure that consolidates the collaboration between

the two nations?

In the meantime, even the wall’s makers have lost faith

in their creation. Confronted by criticism of the fortifica-

tions’ effectiveness, the US Department of Homeland Secu-

rity long ago conceded that the wall was never intended to

stop migrants, merely to slow their progress so that they

could be apprehended more easily.

During the peak fence-building frenzy, I met a Border

Patrol agent and project engineer at Smuggler’s Gulch,

a deep canyon west of Tijuana where 1.6 million cubic yards

of landfill had been dumped to block a well-traveled path for

people avoiding the official border crossings nearby. A tun-

nel had been incorporated under the landfill to permit a can-

yon stream to continue flowing north across the border. The

agent gazed at the passageway opened up by the tunnel and

grumbled that migrants undoubtedly would soon start

using the tunnel as a crossing route. The engineer turned

his back on the massive earthworks, sighing: ‘‘Ninety per-

cent of this is politics.’’

We do not have to look far to find places without walls

along the border, where people live amicably and securely.

In 2011, I revisited El Paso/Ciudad Juarez after most of the

fortifications along the land boundary had been completed.

Accustomed by now to the wall’s shadows, I was surprised

and delighted to discover that there was no fence in the

vicinity of Monument #1, where the land boundary meets

the Rio Grande/Rıo Bravo. Instead, the border is marked

only by a shallow earthen berm with a sign announcing the

international boundary. The ambience during my visit that

day was relaxed. Nothing impeded communication across

the line, and I exchanged courtesies in Spanish and English

with people on both sides. Things were as they should be.

Of course, I knew from past experience that someone,

somewhere was observing us. But electronic surveillance

actually may be preferable to more fences. A virtual border

could be the price of border security and amicability without

fences.

Bajalta California is a place of being and becoming

between two nations, where binational lives and values are

being created—organically, readily, and without artifice. It

deserves nurturing. This third nation has strong connecting

tissue that will outlast partition, and, eventually, the wall

separating Mexico and the United States will come down.

Walls always do. B

The vertical stacking of border infrastucture at monument

122-A, viewed from the Avenida Internacional in

Nogales, Sonora, recalls the ‘‘deep archeology’’ of the line.

The top panel reveals present-day electronic surveillance

apparatus; below this is the 1990-era Operation Hold-the-Line

fencing; in the third horizon is a monument from the late

nineteenth-century boundary resurvey; and at its base lies

a concrete retaining wall that has been spray-painted with

symbols of birth and death characteristic of ancient

Mesoamerican cultures.

©2003 BY MICHAEL DEAR.

BOOM | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 95




Notes

1 The toponym is my amalgam of the territorial names adopted

by the Spanish colonialists for Baja (Lower) and Alta (Upper)

California. Parts of this essay are adapted from Michael Dear,

Why Walls Won’t Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide (Oxford

University Press, 2013), where more complete citations may be

found.2 Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo:

A Legacy of Conflict (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,

1990), 187–188.3 Carl I. Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West, 1540–1861. vol.

3, From the Mexican War to the Boundary Surveys, 1846–1854 (San

Francisco: Institute of Historical Cartography, 1959), 208–209.4 William H. Emory, Notes of a Military Reconnoissance from Fort

Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San Diego, in California (Washing-

ton, D.C.: US Senate, Thirtieth Congress, 1848), 122–124.5 There are remarkably few historical studies of the joint bound-

ary commissions. The key sources on the post-1848 boundary

survey are Paula Rebert, La Gran Lınea: Mapping the United

States–Mexico Boundary, 1849–1857 (Austin: University of Texas

Press, 2001); and Joseph R. Werne, The Imaginary Line: A His-

tory of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1848–1857

(Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2007). For cov-

erage of the first and 1892–1894 boundary surveys undertaken

in the West, see Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the

Western US-Mexico Border (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 2011).6 Donald Appleyard and Kevin Lynch: ‘‘Temporary Paradise?

A Look at the Special Landscape of the San Diego Region,’’

A Report to the City of San Diego, September 1974, 45.





The present-day boundary at El Paso and Ciudad Juarez is noteworthy for the absence of fortifications. From the left, panel 1 shows the

Casa de Adobe, the recently restored headquarters of Mexican Revolution leader Francisco Madero; panel 2, a bust of Madero; panel 3, a berm

topped with a sign marking the boundary between the two nations; and panel 4, the ancient monument number 1. ©2011 BY MICHAEL DEAR.

BOOM | S P R I N G 2 0 1 4 97




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