Last week, my friend Terri Caldwell and her friend flew to Phoenix, rented a car and drove down to Nogales, Arizona. She wanted to see the Mexican border fence from both sides. She told me that she went just because she’s one of those curious people who want the facts. Terri rented a room in Nogales, Ariz., population 35,000 and right across the border from Nogales, Mexico, population 350,000.
The fence goes through most of the Nogales border, but there is a crossing area, supervised by the U.S. Border Patrol, where people come and go all day long on foot or by auto. U.S. rental cars are not permitted to cross, and it closes at 6 p.m.
“One doesn’t recognize the fence at the border crossing,” Terri says. “We thought we’d go to the edge of town in Arizona, and I envisioned this big fence with vigilantes out there and it would be really noticeable and militant. What we found is that the town is friendly on both sides and it’s very peaceful at the border crossing.”
Crossing into Mexico was easy; coming back into the U.S. was not. The lines were long — an hour or two wait to get through. Then Terri and her friend found a shorter option, and went through within minutes, a new ceramic Mexican sink in tow. They asked if she had purchased any medications (she had not) and to show her passport.
The issue of medications was obvious on the Mexican side of the border. As soon as you leave the crossing area into Mexico, the whole first block is a strip of pharmacies, Terri said.
“It’s that way in other Mexican towns like Puerto Vallarta, Tijuana and Juarez,” she said. “Years ago, some travelers might remember (especially during war years when sailors were tourists) the first thing that greeted the tourist was rows of prostitution and strip joints. Vendors were yelling out bargains about ‘take a free look’ and, ‘get married, get a divorce — quick!’ But this week we heard, ‘Hey, come in, come in! We have Valium, Oxycontin, Viagra — whatever you want!’ Some of these are really hard-core pain killers and anti-depressants, but they were yelling, ‘Free samples! No prescriptions needed.’”
Men stood in the streets with signs for free samples of Paxil, Dennex, Alprozolna, Lipator, pain pills, antibiotics and more.
“Of course the sex business still thrives, but it’s down a few streets,” Terri said. The aggressive approach is evidently in response to the popularity of these products. Obviously people from the states are flocking to the Mexican border towns for the availability and bargain prices of pharmaceuticals that are costing more than they can afford to pay at the U.S. pharmacies.”
Terri compared the U.S. cost to the Mexican bargain prices for some of the prescription anxiety drugs that her friends had inquired about. Actually, if the insurance coverage is good, the co-pay in the U.S. might be less. For instance the U.S. cost might be only $11. But if someone doesn’t have good coverage, and can’t really afford to go to the doctor (pay an office exam fee) and get the appropriate prescription, the U.S. cost could add up to $30 or $40. So in Mexico, it might be only $12 to $15 and even be a little bit stronger dose (which is just a bit more than a fully insured person might pay), but the price is less than half for other folks. You could get Valium for one or two dollars a pill, and you don’t need a prescription.
What they really came to see, however, was the fence.
“We were driving around in Arizona, trying to find the fence. We hadn’t found it yet, but we saw a shack or a bunker up on the hill and we guessed that might be where we’d find the vigilantes. So we were trying to get up there and we went up one dirt road, then we found a junk heap where maybe someone had spent the night. There was a fire pit and some stuff that was left behind, shoes and whatnot. So we drove back around and got to the road where we might actually get up to see these people, but the road was too steep to get up — it was all rock. But then we saw the fence. It was really in a residential area. Coming down the road we didn’t see it, so we went around the block and, ‘Aha! There it is!’”
It’s a brown steel fence, about 12 feet high, and at the top it tips towards the Mexican side so people can’t climb up and over easily.
“It is not fancy or high security with barbed wire or electric shock devices or any of that James Bond stuff that we expected. Some people are able to dig their way under it. It seemed kind of funny because Nogales, Ariz., is a small town on one side and it’s nothing but the desert and easy-going residential dwellings — homes, apartments, backyards, almost a suburban feeling. But on the Mexico side is an active, vibrant city with many people and houses close together and business everywhere.”
They took pictures.
“I went up near the fence and I was going to kind of pretend like I was going to try to climb it, and I thought I heard something. But why would anyone try to get across right there when there’s Border Patrol right up there watching everything that goes on? So I thought maybe I must have heard an animal or whatever. We were just there looking around and if either of us had any fears we had been covering them with laughs and jokes during the whole trip. So I got into my pose for ‘I’m going to climb over the wall’ and a security patrol car drove up.”
The laughing mood turned into a scary situation.
“We didn’t really know what to expect. The Bush gang has us believing that with the U.S. Patriot Act, we could be accused of being terrorists and locked up somewhere nobody knows about for five years. Of course we knew we weren’t doing anything wrong, and in Amerika truth and justice will prevail. The guy got out and spoke to us like sort of a ‘concerned father’ and said ‘Girls, this is really a very dangerous area to be. Illegal aliens are trying to get across the border all the time. There was one trying to come across just a minute ago and, you know, the guys over there are on them. The Homeland Security is up on the top of the hill and they radioed us and told us you were down here.’ And we said, ‘Oh! Are we doing something wrong?’”
The patrolman said it was dangerous there because people on the Mexican side that are coming across will throw big heavy rocks over because they don’t know who’s on the other side.
“You know when they throw those big rocks over, you could get hit on the head and die,” the patrolman told them.
“It made me think about when I heard that noise coming through,” Terri said. “Maybe it really was someone. Then again, maybe this guy is just helping the Bush gang carry out their policy of keeping us scared. We weren’t even sure if the noise was from the U.S. side or the Mexican side of the wall. We had just laughed the whole thing off.”
Watch for Part 2, when Terri tells about conversations with local folks and her encounter at a roadblock. She went to see for herself and shares more about her experience with Street Roots readers.
