In the Shadow of the Wall

For the last 61 years, Pamela Taylor’s home on Nogales Road has been hidden behind the city’s 15-foot-levee and rows of Southmost’s citrus trees.

This seclusion has charmed Taylor’s life in Brownsville. But the peacefulness of life along the Rio Grande has been tenuous—tempered by bandits, drug runners and now the prospect that her home will be on the south side of the proposed U.S. border fence.

The federal fence’s intrusion onto private land in Cameron County has been well-documented in the nearly 30 lawsuits by the U.S. government against local property owners. But of those who will be directly affected by the barrier, few will find themselves in Taylor’s position—on the wrong side of a barricade intended to maintain domestic security.

Like her neighbors along the Rio Grande, the story of Taylor’s life in Brownsville began long before she was approached by representatives of the Department of Homeland Security in August 2007.

Instead, Taylor’s story begins near a U.S. Army barracks in Birmingham, England, during World War II. There, the English native worked as a nurse during the war and met her husband, John Garza Taylor, a G.I. from Brownsville.

Two years after marrying John, Taylor took a 15-day trip on the Liberty Boat, where she crammed into a tiny bunk for the 6,000-mile journey to South Texas.

When she left England, 15 feet of snow covered the ground. On her first day in Brownsville, the temperature was more than 100 degrees.

“It was quite a change,” she said. “And then there was the language and the food. But you know the British, we’re adaptable.”

Taylor and her husband cleared a lot on Nogales Road and built their house by hand. One by one, they put together pieces of Brazilian Pine, until they had completed four small rooms.

“As the kids came along, we added on and added on,” said Taylor. Four children later, the home is a sizeable relic to the Victorian architecture Taylor knew as a child.

Now 79, she delicately articulates her concerns in a faded British accent. But unlike some of her friends, Taylor doesn’t staunchly oppose the fence: She opposes its proposed placement.

“It’s bothersome because we ask people, ‘How are going to get emergency services? How are we going to get out?’ ”Taylor said. “We have been told, ‘Well, I guess you’ll just have to follow the border patrol.’ Which means we’ll have to go through the fields, 10 miles down the street or something.”

Although only four homes on Nogales Road would be south of the proposed fence, Taylor’s daughter, Michelle Moncivaiz, says that she’s met nearly 20 people in the same situation. They’ve written to U.S. Senators, Congressman and City Commissioners, but with little luck. At an open house in December, Taylor tried to enter a meeting with DHS officials, but she was turned away.

“This meeting is for important people,” an official told her. “What do I look like,” Taylor replied, “chop liver?”

Personal Politics, Bolstered by a Personal History

During more than a half century in Southmost, Taylor has seen the changing face of immigration to South Texas.

She remembers the peacefulness with which people crossed the river during the days of the Bracero Program, during and after World War II. The program provided temporary labor contracts to Mexicans who would fill jobs vacated by American soldiers.

“We would get up in the morning, and there would be a whole slew of people in the yard making tortillas,” she said. “And they fed me tortillas.”

For years, she recalls, families would cross through the Garza Taylor’s property as they headed north. Every few days, strangers would bring Taylor sugar they had carried across the Rio Grande. She never locked her doors, and she never had any problems.

“You didn’t feel threatened because you knew they were here, and they wanted to work.”

Since then, she said, things have changed.

Her car has been stripped. Her horses have been stolen. Kilos of drugs have been abandoned in her front yard.

Two years ago, she walked into her living room to find a man who had just crossed the river and was sitting in her rocking chair. When he saw her 180-pound Alaskan Malamute, he fled. Taylor remembers the intrusion as an important wake-up call.

“There are two different kinds of people crossing now,” she said, “and some of them are dangerous.”

She thanks God everyday for the U.S. Border Patrol. “We would just be lost without them.”

For Taylor—and most of her neighbors along the Rio Grande—border security isn’t about politics or culture or American jobs. It’s about personal protection. The sound of border patrol trucks on Nogales Road puts her at ease. But the proposal to build a fence north of her home in the name of security, Taylor says, is nothing less than malicious.

“If they want the fence, build the fence,” she said. “That’s not what it’s all about. It’s where it’s being built. They need to help all Americans along the river.”

The current plan, she says, is based on false perceptions. “People up north don’t know what’s going on here. They have absolutely no idea. But you know they just make assumptions.

“I’ll give them a bedroom, they can come down and live with me for a month and see what’s going on.”

Taylor refused to give consent to federal surveyors from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who are doing preliminary work on land along the Rio Grande. Although legal action has been taken against many Cameron County landowners who have refused to cooperate with federal officials, Taylor has not yet been sued.

If she does receive a suit, she’ll face a dilemma. “I don’t have the money for a lawyer,” she said.

Lawyers from Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law are offering free services, but Taylor isn’t sure if she wants to embark on the long and uncertain road of legal defense.

As an landowner along the fence’s proposed path, she has been informally invited to add her name to a class action countersuit filed last week against the federal government. The case has yet to be heard, and all parties involved acknowledge that the battle will be a long one.

For Taylor, getting involved might just be too laborious.

In October, just after her 79th birthday, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Unable to endure aggressive chemotherapy, she now spends long, quiet days in her home’s makeshift pottery studio.

But the disease hasn’t quelled Taylor’s vehement opposition to the current fence plans. Her last letter to Congressman Solomon Ortiz stretched several thousand words.

“I don’t have much to give my children,” Taylor said. “But they know they will always have this house to come back to. Now I’m not so sure about that.”

In the Shadow of the Wall

Sixty-one years after boarding the Liberty Boat for the United States, she still flies a British flag in her front yard.

For Taylor, it’s a reminder of her youth, of the war, and of the country where she met her husband. For border patrolmen who patrol the Southmost area in a small helicopter, it has become a landmark. And for good reason: there are only so many British flags flying along the Rio Grande.

In the house that lies between the British flag and the Rio Grande, Taylor wakes long before the sun rises. She moves slowly through the narrow corridor without turning on a light. During World War II, her family was warned against using lights at night, out of fear that it would draw attention from German pilots.

“Something like that,” she said, “it really toughens you up.”

Taylor still doesn’t touch a lightswitch until the sun appears over Southmost’s sprawling farmland. Instead, she does simple tasks in total darkness. She folds clothes. She dusts between picture frames.

It is the quintessential portrait of one of Southmost’s oldest residents: a woman moving almost imperceptibly, in the shadow of a wall that has not yet been built.