{"id":464788,"date":"2017-11-17T13:56:01","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T20:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=464788"},"modified":"2017-11-21T14:03:10","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T21:03:10","slug":"the-border-as-a-weaponized-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/11\/the-border-as-a-weaponized-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"The border as a ‘weaponized’ landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Border

Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>

A scene from the U.S.\/Mexico border. In the foreground, behind a barbed-wire fence, U.S. Border Patrol agents speak with each other in El Paso, Texas. Across the Rio Grande, in the background, is Cuidad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico.<\/p><\/div>\n

The tacos dorados<\/em>,<\/strong> Francisco Cant\u00fa tells me as we push through the turnstiles into Nogales, Mexico, are some of the best he\u2019s ever had. So we beeline through the bustling streets toward the small metal cart in search of the paper-wrapped stacks of crispy chicken tacos dripping spicy red salsa.<\/p>\n

Cant\u00fa is the author of The Line Becomes A River,<\/em> forthcoming this February from Riverhead Books. The book is a beautiful and brutal chronicle of the four years he spent working as a Border Patrol agent, and the years afterward, in which an immigrant friend, Jos\u00e9, is deported to Mexico, and Cant\u00fa finds himself navigating border policy from the other end. The book \u2014 his first \u2014 is already generating buzz; this year Cant\u00fa has received a Whiting Award in Nonfiction and a Pushcart Prize, and a section of the book recently aired on This American Life<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

On this Monday, we\u2019ve driven the 45 minutes from Tucson to Nogales, leaving my red pickup on the U.S. side, under the shadow of the 30-foot-tall wall that cuts through the city. We eat our tacos in a little city park. Cars stream around us, but the park itself is calm: Big cottonwoods with white-painted trunks arch over us. A few fallen leaves tick around us in the wind, as we talk about what a relief it is to slip into Mexico for the afternoon \u2014 feeling the slight shift in the rhythm of life, the tilt of our perspective.<\/p>\n