The border is out of whack with geography

This picture of a lone border guard in San Diego simply watching all of the batos going along on their merry way across the boundary wall with Mexico prompts me to write, again, about the unnaturalness of the current U.S.-Mexico border.

The current border is the result of aggressive warfare and territorial conquest by military means and does not match up well with the overall north-south alignments of mountain ranges, valleys, river systems and land routes that characterize this part of North America. The cutting off of Mexico at the California line is an unsustainable proposition given the natural flows of people and commerce which regularly course through this territory.

The same is true of Texas where the Rio Grande might be grand for those who live in a desert region, but in fact is little more than a glorified creek for the purposes of erecting an international boundary. It was never geographically suited to be more than the southern boundary of Texas with Coahuila, Chihuaua and Nuevo Leon. The same goes for that irrational series of straight lines from the Pacific to El Paso through barren empty desert. Sitting astride the natural flow of things the border becomes vunerable to the force of a raging current.



If we look at this map of Mexico, from the time of the Mexican War, we can see that the country possessed more natural boundaries that were shaped by the contours of the continent. Very neatly the Sabine and Red Rivers formed the eastern frontier which then arcs to the west right along the edge of the prairies with the Arkansas River as the far northern boundary right on up to the Rockies. From there it continues on over to California along the line of 42 degrees N, which today is the border with Oregon.

Who ever thought that this artificial, militarily imposed, east-west boundary across the natural flow of geography would be able to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune forever? The disintegration has begun and it will not take much longer to see the righting of a historical wrong from the mid-19th century, much to the benefit of all.