Desdibujar la Frontera
Year
Location
Status
Advisor
2023
MEX - US Border
Research Project
Peter Rowe
“Pobre de México. Tan lejos de Dios,
y tan cerca de Estados Unidos”
“Poor Mexico. So far from God, and so close to the United States.”
Nemesio García Naranjo (wrongly attributed to Porfirio Díaz, 33rd President of Mexico)
“Entre un fuerte y un débil,
el desierto”
“Between the strong and the weak, the desert.”
Sebastián Lerdo de Tejado, 31st President of Mexico
I have yet to find an accurate translation to the Spanish word
“desdibujar”. Sometimes it is translated as “blur”. The
closest approach in meaning for me would be something like
“un-draw”. It is important to note that it would never be
“erase” as this conjures a destructive act. “Desdibujar” is
proactive, creative – from the word creation – purposeful. If
we are to find a solution for the issues that affect the
US-Mexico Border we need to come up with a solution that
builds instead of destroying the social, economic, and
cultural bonds between both nations.
In response to the foolish Trump proposal to have Mexico
pay for the Wall he wanted to build, former Mexican
president Vicente Fox famously tweeted in response in no
uncertain terms that Mexico would not pay for that Wall. If,
as Lindsey Graham proposed, we think of this Wall as a
metaphor, recent developments in Nearshoring indicate that
it might be China who ends up paying for the Wall, not
unlike the global infrastructure project they are carrying out
throughout the “Global South”. And even though Trump
claimed he would build a “great, great wall”, he might rest
assured as China knows a thing or two about building great
walls.