EAGLE PASS/ PIEDRAS NEGRAS

FM 1472 (farm-­to-­market road) wheels us northwest from Laredo along the state’s ventral fin. We feel the moisture leaving the air, the varied vegetation of the gulf a distant dream now. Before us the dust-­blown desert highway rolls out like the dead gray tongue. The sky a hard bowl of blue. This is the beginning of shrubland, the foothold of the country’s xeric southern range that runs from here to San Diego, showing all the different faces of dryness.

Planning our day begins with a keen suspicion that Google is lying. GPS says that the only way to Eagle Pass is via the circuitous 125-­mile route north to Carrizo Springs and then south again to our destination. But the atlas shows a thin, translucent line of road the that would take us straight Eagle Pass, cutting out fifty unnecessary miles, and most importantly, it would keep us within a mile’s eyeshot of the border. When we tell the GPS to adjust to this remote route, it reverts us back north.

Soon it doesn’t matter though, because on Eagle Pass Road (1022), there is no service, no GPS to tell you what to do. We drive twenty miles through the barrens. There are no other cars on the road until we approach the distinct white-­and-­green SUV of the border patrol perched on a high shoulder dune, facing us. We slow our speed as we pass them, but they flip quickly around and flash their lights on.

Two border patrol officers, a man and a woman in their early forties, approach the car from both sides, slowly, we assume, so as to tally the number of bodies in the car, to eye up the backseat inventory. Our nerves are on full alert, but they don’t even ask for our passports. They’re polite and courteous, employing no accusatory language or raised eyebrows when we say we’re doing research, we’re journalists and students. No, we don’t represent a particular institution or publication. We’d like to continue along this here stretch of American road.

“Okay,” the female officer says kindly. “But I want to let you know this road ends just ahead.”

But the map, we insist.

“Oh it goes through to Eagle Pass,” the female agent informs us, “But the road, the asphalt, it drops off about a few miles ahead, and it’s a long, long dirt road from there, with many crags and bumps. Your car will take a beating.”

We ask if we’re free to drive on anyway, at least to see.

“What phone service do you have?” the male agent asks, and when we tell them, adding that our service had already died miles back, they both say “good luck.”

“Not to scare you,” the female agent adds before they return to their patrol. “But you will definitely be pulled over again if you continue ahead.”

We continue to the edge of the pavement and park the car where the dirt road begins. Now, without 4-­wheel drive, we would be forced to return to FM1472 and take the roundabout way to Eagle Pass, lest we risk a breakdown in the 100+ degree heat, waiting for border patrol to save us.

Chicken wire fence stretches down the southern side of the road—the only partition separating Mexico and the US beyond the waning stream of the rio just a mile beyond it. In both

directions we are alone, but there are signs of others who have stood here before: shredded tires, an empty case of Bud Light, a crumpled black tarp, empty bags of chips, a torn piece of cloth. For a moment, through what’s left behind, we can imagine what might have lead others to come this way. Had Google subtly deceived us or simply given us the path of least resistance?

The end of the road

*

The town of Eagle Pass, TX, border motto: “Where Yee-­Hah Meets Olé,” was the first American settlement along the Rio Grande. Originally Camp Eagle Pass, the site served as an outpost for Texas militia, which was stationed in the area to stop illegal trade with Mexico during the Mexican-­American War. Throughout the course of the Secure Fence Act of 2006—a $1.2 billion project of the Department of Homeland Security—Eagle Pass asserted itself as one of many regions in Southern Texas that opposed the construction of 700+ miles of new border fence. In 2008 the US government sued the city for land access along the Rio Grande, where a new and reinforced wall was soon erected. The general opposition to border expansion initiatives, in Eagle Pass and elsewhere, generated around the notion that the individuals and interests at the helm of them lacked any real understanding of life in the border towns, and more explicitly, that a physical fence along the border itself provided little more than an illusion of security to the national public.

Two international bridges and one railroad crossing connect Eagle Pass, TX to the city of Piedras Negras, in the Mexican state of Coahuila. Its name, meaning “black stones,” comes from the discovery of coal deposits along the Rio Grande. This led quickly to the construction

of a railroad track, which led to a flourishing regional economy—such flourish, in fact, that it granted Piedras Negras its status as a city. Today it boasts a stunning number of tourist attractions, from museums and arts/culture houses, to national and regional monuments, to foreigner-­friendly markets and main drags, to pristine and architecturally modern public plazas.

A storefront in Eagle Pass

We park the car on a quiet neighborhood street in Eagle Pass and walk down the hill to the border fence. It is tall and black with skinny bars that reach over the top and slope down like an awning at points. Beyond the wall is a freshly mowed lawn that leads into the Rio Grande, with parking lots and soccer goals and baseball diamonds. Wide, paved streets run through regular gaps in the wall on its course to the bridge just east of us. To our west, the border disappears into a line of trees.

Main Street in Eagle Pass intersecting with the border fence

We walk the length of the wall up to the international bridge, passing the remnants of an outdoor market, its vendors packing their trucks up. Another paved road runs through an opening in the fence right alongside the bridge, and a border patrol truck sits at the end of it facing the river. On the eastern side of the bridge the lawn is a golf course, and a golf cart cruises along in the distance, over the neatly trimmed knolls in the landscape.

International Bridge 1 into Piedras Negras consists of two lanes of traffic and paralleling pedestrian sidewalks. As usual, a line of cars sits waiting to reenter the States, while the occasional car into Mexico zooms past. There are signs posted along the sidewalk in Spanish, prohibiting vendors and car washers along the bridge and threatening arrest for anyone who tries. This is the first (and ultimately, only) bridge we’ve crossed in which any kind of signage

like this exists, and it looks to be effective, although later crossing back we do see a man with a car wash bucket and cloth weaving his way around the long line of cars.

On the US side of the Piedras Negras international bridge, a golf course, a soccer field, and a baseball diamond lie along the river.

At the end of the bridge is a small inspection room before entering into Mexico. There is a security belt where we drop our bags and wait for them to pass through to the other end. A guard at a long metal table has stopped a woman and watches while she and her companion empty out her suitcases—two of them, huge, and stocked full of groceries. We pass through the doors and find ourselves in an open, empty public square—La Gran Plaza, a sign reads. A tiered and palm tree lined display proclaims PIEDRAS NEGRAS in big red letters. There is a sculpture of wrought iron birds in flight framed by glittering glass-­paneled walls, and a colorful, tiled mural leading down to benches that overlook the river. A few men are gathered at the base of a flagpole, but the square is largely vacant. It is immaculately clean.

Flagpole in the pristinely well-­kept plaza just beyond the bridge crossing.

We get taquitos to go from a small orange restaurant where an air conditioner blasts mercifully into the dining room. Between two tables in front of the register a baby lies sleeping in a playpen, spread eagle and surrounded by plush, worn toys. Outside the restaurant a line of traffic sits waiting to cross the bridge, backed up a good ¾ miles from the entry point. We eat our hot taquitos on a bench in the shade then walk down to look over the river. The golf course rolls out smoothly across from us;; beyond it the border dips into the hills.

A man sleeps on a bench beneath the international bridge crossing.

Approaching the entrance point back into the US there’s a painted statue of the globe with an eagle poised fiercely atop it, its talons gripping the rims of the north pole. At the inspection booth the CBP guard checks our passports then asks, “Why were you taking pictures of the primary?” The what? our faces say. “The primary,” he repeats, and nods his head toward the rows of entering cars, each staggered with four or five cameras all pointing in different directions. “We’re doing research on the border,” we say, exercising the bold new approach we’ve decided to take when we’re questioned. The guard looks tired, he says “step over here please,” and ushers us into the secondary inspection room. Patrol officers in a line of separate booths call people forward like the waiting room in a bank. A young woman beckons us ahead and takes our camera to her supervisor. While we wait, the officer in the booth next to us, an older woman, pokes her head up and says, “Research huh, what for?” “We’re just curious.” “So you’re not doing research.” “Well…we don’t work for anybody.”

“Oh, so you’re just…curious.” The young woman returns with our camera, tells us the pictures are fine and to have a nice day, and just like that, we’re free to go.

The primary inspection point at Piedras Negras.