America and is written on a broad range of issues including river pirates in the amazon, paraguays guerilla insurgency and the shifting politics of antarctica. He was nyt Andean Bureau chief based in caracas, venezuela for the New York Times as bureau chief where he covered hugo chavez, the colombian war and politics in bolivia. Give a warm welcome to simon romero. Thanks for the kind introduction. I will introduce this wonderful panel i have the pleasure of moderating. Cecilia bailli is a journalist and cultural anthropologist and writer at texas monthly. Her work focuses on the u. S. Mexico border in the history and culture of south texas. Her writing has also appeared in harpers magazine and the New York Times. Angela kocherga is a multimedia journalist who has covered the u. S. Mexico border in mexicos interior for television, newspapers and radio and was mexico border chief for a major broadcasting group. She is currently the Southern New Mexico reporter for the albuquerque journal, and alfredo special contributor on public radio and television. And Alfredo Corchado is the mexico border correspondent for the dallas morning news, where he has covered u. S. Mexico issues since 1993. He has also reported for the El Paso Herald post and wall street journal and is the author of homelands and midnight in mexico. Diving right in, i want to ask you a question, cecilia, about the place you come from and the connection it has for you. Because you and i share something in that were both descendents of people who arrived a long time ago in what is now texas and the u. S. Southwest, and in fact, your family used to control padre island in south texas. The us about that and how it influences your coverage of the u. S. Mexico border. We dont have any of that land. I dont even own a condominium on padre island, unfortunately. There is a long history of dispossession of lands held by mexicans who became mexicanamerican citizens after the mexican war. But on my mother and fathers side, our families came to the area in the 1700s, in the middle of the 18th century and were part of these initial settlements that emerged along the rio grande. The river was a source of sustenance and life and these communities emerged that eventually were on either side of the river. When the river became our border after the u. S. Mexico war, the families ended up on either side. So i only have one grandmother who is from mexico, the interior, but my other three grandparents are all from this region. I dont have a lot of family in the interior of mexico or the u. S. People dont know my last name in either country, so really im from the border. Its a place that feels like home. And it doesnt feel like the edge of anything, it feels like the center of this long story, this long history of us being there. Well be discussing today how that has changed, but i grew up with a strong sense of rootedness in this place that is now under so much dispute. Angela, you grew up on both sides of the border, and so you had that ability to move between both worlds, in a way. How did that influenced you to moving into journalism and working on the border itself . Im grateful to my mother. She did raise me on both sides of the border. I was born in mexico city, raised in guadalajara, and at 10 years old moved back to the u. S. My mother is from the United States the same place where cecilia grew up, the rio grande valley, and as a 10yearold, it was confusing on the border, where people look mexican to me but dont speak spanish, and i had to understand this very unique language of spanglish and try to understand that. But over time, the border is the only place i feel truly at home. It is a place where i and many people go back and forth seamlessly, and im not talking about infrastructure, but the bilingual, bicultural, binational nature of the border, and i feel im fortunate to have that experience. It has shaped who i am and helped inform all the reporting. I tried to serve as a bridge of understanding and its a place i like to say at as, we dont think of ourselves as either or, but more. I love the border. Alfredo, tell us a little bit about el pasos history and especially its history of welcoming immigrants, and really functioning as a kind of ellis island for that part of the states. How did that emerge . I was born in durango mexico. My father talked about someday moving to the u. S, which was a sad conversation becuase none of us, my brothers and my mother, none of us wanted to come north. We came because of the landmark immigration and nationality act signed by president lyndon b. Johnson in 1965, so i remember coming to ciudad juarez, waiting for men with evergreen cards, staring at the mountains and seeing the big stars. It was the christmas season, so thats where we want to go and thats where they are forcing us to go, and looking back, we came through an El Paso Neighborhood which i would say millions of immigrants, especially mexicanamericans, that was our ellis island in the southwest. We came through their on the way to the california central valley, but i remember my mother as a kid would never really buy bedsheets or towels or anything. She would put all her money and look forward to moving back to the border. To us, the border at that time was like a holy land in a way, the annual pilgrimage where we would go back to el paso and ciudad juarez. And it was always counting the days to someday when we would make the permanent move. I was influenced and inspired by salazar, who later became a correspondent at the l. A. Times, by this notion that you could bring both sides to the reader through journalism, and even today i dont feel complete as a person or a journalist if im not reporting from both sides on the border. That is the ultimate feeling, when you know you can crisscross and hopefully try to make americans understand and mexicans understand what it is to be binational, bilingual and bicultural. I think as all of us in this room know, its been a very eventful year on the u. S. Mexico border. Weve all been covering issues like family separation, the imprisonment of migrant children, on their own in certain facilities and of course the rather shocking shattering massacre in el paso in august, when a gunman went into the walmart and targeted people because of their ethnicity. How did that reflect, angela, with the other coverage you have done of difficult events on the border . What made this year stand out for you . These have been some dark days on the border, especially el paso, for all the reasons you said. The shooting stunned people. It was clear once the alleged gunman was taken into custody, that el paso was chosen for the attack because of who we are and where we live. So every mass shooting is horrible, but that one in particular hit so close to home. I covered so much violence in juarez, drug violence, which unfortunately is spikng again, and thats been heartbreaking. But i think what was stunning to some people was that it happened in this everyday place where people from both sides of the border were doing normal backtoschool shopping, so that, combined with other heartbreaking stories, it has been topped, but i have been inspired by the resilience of border residents on both sides, especially el paso, setting a real example, and also this idea of tolerance of people really thats a place of tolerance, so there are things we can learn from the el paso experience. Cecilia, the border plays such a huge it occupies a big place in public imagination and especially in policymaking right now. There is antiimmigration rhetoric. The border is portrayed as this incredibly dangerous place, and of course there have been calls to build more of a wall and barriers along the border. What does that feel like in south texas these days . Whats the reaction to the wall and possibly a portion of private wall coming to south texas . We already have a good bit of border fencing built in 2008 to 2010 and back then, the communities along south texas were highly opposed to the wall. We called it a fence then, now we are openly admitting that the function of it is a wall. There is a researcher in texas who did data crunching that shows there is a perfect relationship between how close you are to the border and whether you support the wall. We know the wall is symbolic. The further they are from the border, the more they want it. That is not to say border residents dont want different kinds of enforcement, but the wall itself is the climax of the political theater. And i think people in south texas are tired of that. They know it is a place where politicians come for photo ops and then they leave and folks are not investing in the region, and the communities are having to step in and providing in difficult moments for migrant families. I would say there has been a buildup of this in the past 30 years, and really throughout history. This is an explosion of a number of trends we have been living through on the border, and the thickedning of the border, the buildup of border enforcement began a long time ago, but in the 1990s we started having this deterrence strategy that focused on Border Agents and particular cities, and under president george w. Bush the wall was approved, but then it was built under president obama. I dont live there anymore but i spend a lot of time there. We have been used to being subjected to more and more stops and searches on the u. S. Side. I think since after 9 11, the stakes were raised, and people started talking about the border differently and using the term Border Security, which correlated with national security, and so the implication was that the threat to the country was at the border, and so i see a lot of change, even during that time, and so we have to be very attentive to the language we use, because it was changing into that language of Border Security because both Political Parties take for granted that there is some type of persistent threat on the border that needs to be addressed. A question, alfredo, about el paso and juarez and far as el paso and juarez. And when i was there there was a band playing Creedence Clearwater revival songs, and english. In english. Tell us about the cultural life between these two cities. Where is the center of vibrancy, juarez or el paso, and is there crosspollination going on between artists and singers and people on both sides . It is on both sides. Obviously there is a history there. Juan gabriel plays a huge role. Juan gabriel, his last hit was a Creedence Clearwater song in spanish. I forget the name. The rain song. It will come back to me. But the song explains the bicultural part of it. And also, it is an area in south texas where accordion music, mariachis, is being taught in high schools and colleges and it just makes people feel a sense of confidence. Youre confident about belonging on both sides of the border. That helps that side of you. I mean, when we lived in california, my mother would say we want to go to el paso because it was a place where people wore ties. We grew up in the jan joquin valley and there were usually people working in fields, but years later i understood that to be that people can be themselves and can claim both sides of the border. And as angela said, you dont feel like you have to choose one side or the other. And that goes with music and food and drinks. Angela, you mentioned that when you were growing up that you had to decipher this new language called spanglish, which has experienced a huge amount of growth and evolution. You walk around los angeles and it is fantastic, the spanglish you we are all the time. What does that mean to you on a daytoday basis, workwise . Do you do interviews in english, spanish, spanglish . Do you know when to mix and when not to . Really, both. And it is frowned on in mexico city, people dont want to hear spanglish, necessarily. But on the border we are seeing this real blending of cultures and languages across the u. S. , and i look at the border as a peek into the future. It is young, majority latino, mexicanamerican or american mexican, so these are communities that reflect the future. I know that can be confusing and even create fear for a lot of people away from the border, but we have learned something in this blending of cultures. The economy, we depend on each other, on the u. S. Side we depend heavily on mexico. We are family ties, we have all sorts of ties that bind, and we dont we dontalways get along or even like each other, but we learned a long time ago that is critical, which is that we need each other. So that is something that on the border we need to learn beyond the border and except that fact and think about it and figure out a way to make this new reality work. Because its here. You cant turn back time. If i can jump in, its like what san diego and tijuana went through at the height of the violence, san diego was going to turn its back on tijuana, and later realized that economically, the dependency all along the u. S. Mexico border, the mexican cities are larger, economically more vibrant, so you now have tijuana and san diego in that region, it is a symbol that we need each other, we need to work this out together. But what happened in tijuana was interesting, because tijuana said, we have to kind of reinvent ourselves reinvent ourselves. We cant just depend on the coming down. So they got into culture, they got into the Wine Industry and the food industry, and it has become a much more vibrant region. I think a lot of border communities have a lot to learn from that, and see the in juarez and of el paso. If you think of a border as one Big Community where a borderline was imposed, but at the end of the day you talk about walls and fences, we are really the same people, one community, and people go back and forth all the time. You dont talk about, we want to go to mexico, we want to go to the United States. Its speaking spanish . One fact of life for people in the border, or as much as 100 miles from the border, are checkpoints. It almost becomes natural, you have to stop and declare your citizenship and youre gazed at by a Border Patrol officer and they determine whether you are a risk or not. What is that do you think that the rest of the country, cecilia, has a grasp on what that means on a daytoday basis, to be viewed by your own government as someone who is not entirely trustworthy perhaps . No, i dont think the rest of the country can imagine what that is like, and i dont think the rest of the country would be ok with that happening in new york or almost any other part of the country. We do have interior checkpoints that have been there since the 1970s, maybe, and if you grew up crossing the border itself, like i did to visit my grandmother on the mexican side, every time you come back in, you are questions by you are questioned by the customs officer. We were kids and they would check to see if we were lying, and we didnt have to show our passports back then but they would say, are you a citizen, where you live, what school do you go to . I have been doing a Research Study on latino voters and nonvoters throughout texas, and i think that when youre subjected to that constant questioning of who you are and whether you belong it leads to disempowerment and people not participating in the political system, and having all kinds of fears. And this doubt or fear any time you are around any kind of law enforcement. But thats where we were talking about culture, the other thing we had at the same time was real deep sense of who we were because of the deep cultural immersion and traditions we had. That problem continues and we have to think about whether we would allow this to happen to all americans, to be constantly questioned. To be not innocent until proven guilty, almost. Yeah, and it is hard to know at those checkpoints, you dont have as many rights as you do in the interior of the u. S. And you never know exactly what rights you have, so they take advantage of that, and it is a life of questioning. Especially when you talk about so Much Technology nowadays, they pretty much know who is going in and going out, but they still subject you constantly and Border Patrol agents can get your phone and look at your contacts and what websites you have been visiting, who youve been texting, what sources you have been communicating with. Thats become more prevalent in the last two and a half years with this administration. It is almost like the federal agents feel much more empowered to sort of invade your privacy. Related to that point, and this is a question for anyone on the panel who want to jump in, one thing that strikes me about Security Forces on the Border Patrol is that it is largely a Latino Organization made up of, i think it is easily half of the workforce now. That creates difficult and perhaps conflicted loyalties. These are people who may be arresting relatives of their neighbors, or Something Like that, in a lot of small towns. Angela, what its what is it like dealing on a daytoday basis with the Border Patrol and trying to get information out of them . There are two things, the Border Patrol agents in the field, and they do a very good, federal job of people who would like to stay in their home communities. It is wellpaying at a lot of people get to stay at home and in a lot of these communities there arent a lot of great jobs and there is a juge brain drain. So it is a great opportunity and does create some issues, but its very common for people to have Border Patrol agents or customs and Border Protection members in their families are in the community. Getting information has become increasingly difficult from actual official agencies. Just little bits and pieces, and we cannot find out certain things like how much detention space, why are people being forced to wait in mexico if numbers have gone down, they have camped out in border cities when we are told there arent as many migrants coming, so this should be some space to allow people in to go through the asylum process. I will harken back to a story i did earlier this year. The Border Patrol agents were first to sound the alarm about horrible conditions in