Culture of Fear

Last week I found myself kissing the feet of my merciless cell phone company once more, as I was coerced into paying high rates and fees for international phone service. My dad had been bugging me for weeks on end to “check into it” and encouraged me to spend a portion of my summer stipend on 50 cent text messages and $1.00 per minute phone conversations. All of his bickering, bugging, constant phone conversations, and multiple texts culminated in my reluctant agreement to the plan. I was to call every other day at precisely 4:30pm, text my dad every night, and give morning updates of my activity. I felt as if I was being sent to war, deployed to some place far, far away with constant attempts on my life. My mom maternally justified his actions with a, “He just loves you.” In reality I was not getting shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan, I was merely traveling an hour away – to the Mexican border.

All of my father’s insistence on cell phone service made me wonder why he was so worried and if I should be worried too. Should I be fearful? Nervous? Anxious? Doubtful? I was questioning whether going to Mexico was worth what I would learn by being there. Perhaps I really was embarking on a trip to Nogales, Mexico because, as a friend once exclaimed, “it is the cool thing to do,” cool to travel to a dangerous foreign country. I felt myself overcome by an inexplicable fear. Yes, Nogales had been home to some questionable drug related activity in the past months, but so had my hometown, Durham, and even Tucson. I was struggling with extreme nervousness, but I was also struggling to justify my anxiety. Was Nogales even more dangerous than living in a big city in the US?

We loaded a 15 passenger van Sunday evening to head down to the border. Some of us were grappling with the same nerves I was, others were imagining it like casual as a trip to Grandma’s. We easily slipped through Mexican customs and met our Mexican leader, Polita, on the other side of the border. Nogales appeared to be a midsized city, comparable to Durham or Chapel Hill. I was afraid of this. I was afraid of crowded highway overpasses, a downtown full of tiendas, historical statues and, of course, Wal-Mart and Burger King. There was no apparent danger. Everyone seemed to notice I was a gringa but nobody wanted to harm me.

We spent the week being shuttled around town, to and from grocery stores and appointments with non-profits. We also worked at a local community center running a kids’ camp. These kids were latchkey kids. Nogales has experienced such an influx in population from the internal immigration that ensued after NAFTA passed that they do not have enough schools and teachers to accommodate all of the children who live in the city. Thus, each kid can only attend public school for half a day (either the morning or afternoon) and spends the rest of the day at home alone while their parents work.

Many of the kids lived in squatter homes surrounding the community center with minimal plumbing and very little water supplied to them throughout the day. The kids often arrived without water bottles for after futbol refreshments, and many times a seven year-old would show up babysitting her three year-old brother. These kids, however, did show up wearing the biggest smiles you have ever seen. I have spent the past few summers as a camp counselor, and holding a day camp for these kids was nothing compared to watching middle class American children. They were happy with minimalist supplies and materials, a half broken playground, bean soup for lunch every day, paper plate masks, and makeshift maracas. In fact, I even befriended TWO seven year-olds in the course of a few days.

Throughout the week I found myself thinking even harder about my fear upon entering Nogales. Every overpriced phone call and text message was rather mundane and told of no surprise kidnappings or killings. Where did my fear come from? Why are Americans so afraid of Mexico, so afraid of the border? Why has our media, government, and society created such a culture of fear toward Mexico? I spent the week pondering these questions and came up with subpar answers. Mexican life is more dangerous than life in America, but only marginally so. They have drugs, gangs, and corruption – but what city in the U.S. doesn’t? If I could tell everyone one thing about my experience in Mexico it would be this: Our fear of the Mexican border is partly real, but mostly imagined. The people in Mexico hold more life, gratitude, and love than most of our American counterparts.