For border walkers, past is present

OLD MILITARY HWY. - March 14 found "No Border Wall Walk" protesters sun burned and slightly limping in an unincorporated section of Hidalgo County, crossing over the Cameron County line with the Texas-Mexico border to their right.

They had been walking for nearly 80 miles since March 8, when they departed from Roma and began a peaceful protest of the planned border fence that would cut through the land along the northern length of the Rio Grande levee.

Participants to date numbered 200. Blisters were another story.

The walk's organizers are primarily from out of state. Matthew Webster, Elizabeth Stephens, Matt Smith, John Moore, and Kiel Harell joined with native Rio Grande Valley activists Jay Johnson-Castro and Domingo Gonzalez in logistical planning.

But once on the ground, passing by blazing green cabbage patches, sun-dappled orange groves, solitary roadside crosses and families who anticipated letters from the federal government soliciting rights to build on their property, planning quickly gave way to the unwritten histories of place.

In Rio Grande City, locals joined the walkers in a mini-parade through downtown. Sheriffs from Santa Maria to Las Milpas drove carefully behind them, shepherding the travelers.

Moore grabbed a stick to use as a cane and continued limping eastward. Smith carried a small stereo and blasted Beatles classics with a sign that read "Menos Muros, Mas Bailando" - Less Walls, More Dancing

Moore, Harell, Webster and Stephens are all Teach for America volunteers in Brownsville schools and have come to regard Martin Luther King's nonviolent activism as a historic guide to change - part spiritual, part political. Stephens teaches U.S. government and says that the civil rights era is one of her favorite periods to bring to her students.

"It's important for students to realize that this happened very recently," Stephens said. "Knowing about history inspires me to be part of it. It motivates me to create history."

For every minute of the nine-day, 126-mile walk, the past is reincarnated as the present.

Nat Stone, who canoed down the Rio Grande from its mouth in Creede, Colo., in 2004 and arrived at Boca Chica Beach in 2007, has joined the walkers to distill each day into a short film that he posts on the Internet.

"When there's a negative effect on a place, it's that much easier to place another negative effect on it," Stone said. "This river is a case of the cumulative effect of environmental, economic, and political (problems). It's easier to just put up a fence to hide all of those problems than to acknowledge them."

Smith, another of the walk's young organizers, has been working with Brownsville activist Domingo Gonzalez on some of these environmental issues in Matamoros.

"During this walk I've been shedding my cynicism," Smith said. "At the border, life is about community and family, and I think if people from far away could understand that, if they saw what we saw, they'd know that putting up a wall is actually tearing down community, family, and cultural pride."

Stone said that during his time paddling down the river, he found the migrants he encountered to be some of the most family-oriented, spiritual people he had ever met.

"In those years I spent meeting migrants crossing the river, even those with tattered clothes and just a small plastic bag were always, always carrying a Bible."

Eloisa Tamez, who has been fighting to keep her family's historic land in El Calaboz, stopped to offer her support to the walkers and talk to residents of other border communities who may face a similar battle.

"We're fighting for democracy in our own land," Tamez told Isaura Guzman, whose family has owned property along the border for three generations. "Now with just a strike of a pen, we're at the risk of losing that democracy."

On March 16 at 4 p.m., a rally at the University of Texas Brownsville and Texas Southmost College will welcome the walkers. Under the proposed plan of the border fence, 10 acres of the UTB-TSC campus would end up on the south side of the fence.

"We are hoping and expecting a large turnout for this rally," Webster said. "We will be singing from the moment we hit the city limits to the time we arrive at the campus. Our hope is that along our route we will pick up a lot of walkers. It will definitely be an event worth walking nine days for."

Local politicians and poets will speak at the rally, as well as some of the walkers themselves.

After all of the planning, the walkers say that their understanding of the border fence has been transformed. The long hours walking through the towns has given them both a macro and microscopic perspective of the region few others can claim.

"Towns in the Valley don't recognize towns right beside them," Stephens said. "Walking all of the border, we've seen how interconnected these stories are. We've seen how strong these communities could be if they were unified."

ltillman@brownsvilleherald.com