Border odyssey : travels along the US/Mexico divide / Charles D. Thompson, Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thompson, Charles D., Jr. (Charles Dillard), 1956- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thompson, Charles D., Jr. (Charles Dillard), 1956---Travel.

Thompson, Charles D.

Mexican-American Border Region.

United States--Foreign relations--Mexico.

United States.

Mexico--Foreign relations--United States.

Mexico.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (329 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin, Texas : University of Texas Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"We were trying to change the vision and the conversation about border fears." Border Odyssey takes us on a drive toward understanding the U.S./Mexico divide: all 1,969 miles--from Boca Chica to Tijuana--pressing on with the useful fiction of a map. "We needed to go to the place where countless innocent people had been kicked, cussed, spit on, arrested, detained, trafficked, and killed. It would become clear that the border, la frontera , was more multifaceted and profound than anything we could have invented about it from afar." Along the journey, five centuries of cultural history (indigenous, French, Spanish, Mexican, African American, colonist, and U.S.), wars, and legislation unfold. And through observation, conversation, and meditation, Border Odyssey scopes the stories of the people and towns on both sides. "Stories are the opposite of walls: they demand release, retelling, showing, connecting, each image chipping away at boundaries. Walls are full stops. But stories are like commas, always making possible the next clause." Among the terrain traversed: walls and more walls, unexpected roadblocks and patrol officers; a golf course (you could drive a ball across the border); a Civil War battlefield (you could camp there); the southernmost plantation in the United States; a hand-drawn ferry, a road-runner tracked desert, and a breathtaking national park; barbed wire, bridges, and a trucking-trade thoroughfare; ghosts with guns; obscured, unmarked, and unpaved roads; a Catholic priest and his dogs, artwork, icons, and political cartoons; a sheriff and a chain-smoking mayor; a Tex-Mex eatery empty of customers and a B&B shuttering its doors; murder-laden newspaper headlines at breakfast; the kindness of the border-crossing underground; and too many elderly, impoverished, ex-U.S. farmworkers, braceros , lined up to have Thompson take their photograph.

Contents:

""1. Evidence of Things Not Seen""; ""contents""; ""2. The Border Etched in Bones""; ""3. Traveling the Valley of the Shadow""; ""4. Two Kinds of Flight""; ""5. Of Roads, Fences, and Neighbors""; ""6. Boca Chica Sunset""; ""7. The Ghosts of Palmito Ranch""; ""8. El Ranchero""; ""9. Border Guards""; ""10. Brownsville Raids""; ""11. Rio Grande Guardians""; ""12. Progress?""; ""13. World's Most Honest Man""; ""14. Cowboy Priests""; ""15. The Hand-Drawn Ferry""; ""16. Prohibition Bar""; ""17. Border Walker""; ""18. The Road to Eagle Pass""; ""19. Border Ambassador""

""20. The Last Stay at Del Rio""""21. Seminole Canyon""; ""22. Braceros in Murder City""; ""23. Fort Davis and the Buffalo Soldiers""; ""24. National Park on the Line""; ""25. Pancho Villa and the Pink Store""; ""26. Smoke on the Apachería""; ""27. A Grandmother Mourns at the Wall""; ""28. Fences and Neighbors""; ""29. Ground Zero of the Border Crisis""; ""30. Altar and Sacrifice""; ""31. Phoenix Rising""; ""32. Tohono Sacred Peak and Desert Deaths""; ""33. Campesinos Sin Fronteras""; ""34. The Wall of Shame and Entrepreneurship""; ""35. Graves of Unknown Farmworkers""

""36. Desert View Tower and the X-Men""""37. Walking Alone through Friendship Park""; ""38. As If It Were Not There""; ""Acknowledgments""; ""Bibliography""; ""Index""

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-292-77199-1

OCLC:

903584689