Debbie Nathan

Miss Teen Mexico US Latina’s gown is aqua, shiny, liquid and long. Just like the Rio Grande River, and surely you wouldn’t want it — or her — trussed up and blocked by ugly old concrete or girders. Miss TMUSL (her name is Breeana Shaw) doesn’t like that idea. Lovely Miss Texas Latina, Martha Barraza, is also displeased. So is Miss Teen US Latina, 15-year-old Nicole Karrody. Recently the three endorsed an upcoming, extended protest against erecting walls to divide border cities on the Texas-Mexico line. The young women even promised to attend some of the many events that will take place. Envisioning these gatherings — scheduled August 25 to September 9 (calendar here) — people are thinking mostly about the kayakers poised to row the river to show unity between both countries, and the binational mayors who plan to shake hands across bridges. These things will happen, and they’ll be well and good. But wow, Beauty Queens against Border Walls! Could anything be more mainstream? More “It’s so, like, OK to have progressive politics”?

Come to think of it, kayaks and mayors are pretty OK, too. This All-American cultural centrism is a far cry from border militarization protests I’ve attended (and — full disclosure — helped organize) over the past 20 years. Mostly they’ve featured angry signs, indignant chants, and scents (like copal and patchouli) emanating from Chicano indigenistas and Anglo desert pagans — people who’ve moved their lifestyles as far as possible from the marketing world of Outside magazine and ingenue contests. Other attendees are beyond the market not from choice but due to sheer border poverty: farm workers, house maids, laid-off blue-jean stitchers. Occasionally, out-of-town reporters show up. They wade into the crowd with facial expressions suggesting this is more anthropology than journalism. Militant fronterizos – the local word for border residents: to most interior-eros they’re a little weird and scary.

Now comes unweird and unscary, thanks to Jay Johnson-Castro. He lives in Del Rio, a Texas town bordering the Mexican city Acuña. Weeks ago, he started sending out calls to kayakers and rowboaters up and down the Rio Grande’s long stretch, from dry, mountainous El Paso/Juárez to the swamps of McAllen/Matamoros, on the Gulf. Johnson-Castro suggests mass paddling as a way to organize against border walls, which he obviously is pissed about. But his emails and PR material also sound laid back and inviting. He makes protest sound like picnic. It often seems so anyway, even on those “La gente! Unida! Jamás será vencida!” marches, tromping around in the sun and breeze, sniffing the incense, greeting the friends’ newborn baby — though few talk about these pleasures.

The second part of Johnson-Castro’s name comes, he told me recently, from a father with European ancestry who he never met. “I was raised Johnson!” he said. He’s from the West Coast, and came to the border in the 1980s because that’s where he wanted to live and have his family. For the past several years he’s run a Bed and Breakfast out of a big mansion in Del Rio. He’s spent time there trying to make others comfortable.

That must be how he managed to recruit not just beauty queens to his “Border Ambassadors” anti-wall movement, but also the mayors of some cities, including El Paso; and even Silvestre Reyes, the US Congressman who used to be a Border Patrol official. Granted, the pols know it’s a safe bet among their constituents to oppose border walls in the middle of cities. They’re unsightly, hard to maintain, and not so necessary anyhow. It was Reyes who stationed hundreds of Border Patrol agents in downtown El Paso in 1993 to keep Mexicans out without a wall. His innovation was the opening salvo in a fatter, meaner US immigration policy that drove crossers from cities to the desert, where they now die in droves in places like Arizona. Meanwhile, there’s a border wall only a few miles from downtown El Paso. It’s ugly and restrictive, but it’s out of sight out of mind. The pols don’t complain.

Still, downtown walls are symbols, just like beauty queens are. If you can get mayors and a Congressman to kiss pretty babes for the cameras and diss a potent sign of xenophobia, that’s not bad. And the girls — sure, their gown and swimsuit stuff is cheesy and objectifying. Still, these young, Latina pageant winners are icons to their people’s sense of its beautiful self. And that self will be out on the river over the next several days, smiling and strutting and signing autographs against paranoia, hate — and maybe even neo-liberalism.

Rich people take note: Border Ambassadors wants you! Throw some real money at this movement and you can march, chant, and be righteous, sure — but you can also chill out at Johnson-Castro’s B&B and eat tasty Mexican food near where filming was done for Like Water for Chocolate. For your donation of $500 or $1,000, Johnson-Castro offers complimentary weekends at his mansion, and a guided tour of Del Rio/Acuña with dinner at a good Mexican restaurant.

“I’ll order them cebollada, he says. “That’s steak with onions, a local favorite. Or if they’re vegetarian, we’ll get chiles rellenos with Oaxaca cheese. This is a great place. We  want to show the world we get along fine here. We’re against walls because we’re a community. We don’t want Washington messing with that.”

For more information on Border Ambassadors and its upcoming events, click here.

(Wolfman Jack got his broadcasting start in Del Rio/Acuña. His radio station still exists there.)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 1:13 pm and is filed under MexUSA: Border Crossing Words & Photos, Uncategorized, photos, sexual politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.