Listening from the Other Side
By Iván Sandoval-Cervantes
Borders that close and expand.
About a year ago, when the pandemic started, my mother crossed one of the international bridges connecting Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, and she mailed us a box of pan dulce (sweet bread). It took the pan dulce a couple of days to travel from El Paso to Las Vegas; when it arrived it was a little bit crumbly and a bit dry but it managed to keep its delicious taste. My partner, my daughter, and I savored the bread and, at that time, made plans in our heads about our upcoming trip to El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, and to Mexico City.
Of course, as time passed we realized that our plans for the summer and, for the entire year, had to change dramatically. Not only did we cancel summer plans that included a summer field school and research, we also stopped attending conferences and meeting with friends and family in Mexico and in the United States. Our daughter, less than two-years old at the time, had grown accustomed to attending academic events, and we didn’t envision this would be brought to a complete halt, as she would have to spend at least one whole year of her life with limited visits to a nearby park.
Neither did we envision that the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso border, a heavily trafficked border-crossing checkpoint, would close in March 2020 in response to the pandemic. Like most things that involve borders, the closure was not experienced by all of those who were affected in the same way. While Mexican citizens with a tourist’s visa were not allowed to cross into the United States, American residents and citizens could still come and go as they pleased. This resulted in a terrible disruption to many people inhabiting the El Paso de Norte region, especially to those who were used to conducting day-to-day activities on both sides of the border.
Although things like visiting relatives and attending school across the border were already complicated because of the pandemic, other things like grocery shopping became impossible. For the people in Ciudad Juarez who could no longer cross the border, it meant looking for new ways to send food and other things, both out of need and out of affection, to their friends and relatives in El Paso. The closure reshaped social networks as a way to maintain some sense of the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez community involving things like home cooked meals and holiday presents.
Though we have family on both sides of the border, my parents live in Mexico and cross to El Paso with a tourist visa. The closure of the Mexico-U.S. border meant that they could no longer send pan dulce or burritos. It also meant that we could not be sure when our next visit would take place. The uncertainty of not knowing when we could go back to Mexico and when we would be able to see our relatives living in Mexico was caused not only by this very real closure of the terrestrial border between Mexico and the United States. While you could still fly in and out of Mexico, the impossibility to cross the bridge represented something special for border dwellers, something tangible that could be felt almost immediately.
Living in Nevada, the closure of the international bridge did not necessarily transform our daily family life. Especially in those early days of the pandemic, when we thought that things would go back to normal during the summer. Still, as we settled into our new isolation—and we were trying to find life-work balance, and juggle academic and childcare activities—the closure of the international bridge, combined with the temporal distance from my last visit to Ciudad Juarez and to Mexico City, made me feel like the border was expanding.
Before proceeding with this personal narrative, I would like to clarify that I am aware that I write from a position of great privilege, both as a U.S. permanent resident and as someone who could be considered one of the “good migrants” (a narrative that is highly problematic). I am aware, too, that for many irregular migrants in the United States, the border continues to expand in violent ways, and continues to separate them from their loved one in ways that are both predictable and unpredictable.
Listening from the other side.
My partner and I have always traveled to Mexico whenever possible, both our personal and professional lives are intertwined with people there. Now, with our two-year old Mexican-American daughter, we were pretty much looking forward to taking her to Mexico City, introducing her to people who are eager to meet her, and showing her what life could be like in Mexico. Moreover, and because of my work and my own personal interests, I have always tried to “keep an ear to the ground” as much as possible when it comes to cultural happenings and popular culture in Mexico. How could I do this given the strain on time and the seemingly expanding border?
Early during the pandemic, I started listening to Mexican radio, especially to news shows that often mix entertainment with information. As closures started happening in the United States, and we were told not to return to campus in mid-March 2020, I remember vividly how the hosts of a morning news show based in Mexico City talked, while doing a show “on the road” in Acapulco, about the looming future of the pandemic. Two weeks later, the same hosts would have to start transmitting from their respective homes.
As plans to visit Mexico kept moving into the future, they also become blurrier. As I sought a way to keep some form of connection, I turned to the radio. Every day, during this pandemic I have listened to Mexican news, sometimes while I cook breakfast with my daughter or while my partner and I clean the house on the weekends. This aural connection has been a constant during this time of limited mobility and constrained “free time.”
As I have gotten to know the personalities of the radio hosts and become re-accustomed to their style of mixing jokes with serious news, I have also been able to see the United States from a different perspective and in a way to stay current with news and other cultural phenomena. At the same time, I have felt an ever-expanding separation between the United States and Mexico. As wealthy governments are hoarding vaccines, countries like Mexico are behind vaccine rollouts, which means that my parents and many of our friends and relatives will remain at risk of contracting the deadly virus.
As I try to imagine the day when we can visit Mexico again to see my parents, our friends, and our relatives, I keep trying to prevent the border from expanding. It is hard to say when or what will happen once we are able to resume that part of our lives, but for now I try to listen from across the border hoping that such a day is not too far away. When that day comes, I’ll be happy to go back to enjoying pan de dulce from the border, either in Las Vegas or in Ciudad Juarez.
Photo courtesy of Iván Sandoval-Cervantes.
Iván Sandoval-Cervantes is a cultural anthropologist from Ciudad Juarez, México. His research interests include migration, gender, multi-species ethnography, and social movements. He is currently an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Before living in Las Vegas, Ivan lived in El Paso, Texas, and Eugene, Oregon.
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