My home is not a place that rapists, drug lords, and serial killers travel through to take over the United States. From my house to the border is a 15 minute drive, so I’m very familiar with the people who cross the border. The environment at the border has been deeply mischaracterized by the mainstream media; they have failed to show the culture that has developed around this unique place.
Mainstream media, both conservative and liberal, have failed to tell the stories of the people like me living near or on the border.
Growing up, the border was never something seen as negative. Crossing the border was a weekly or daily activity for a lot of my friends and family. The San Diego and Tijuana border entrance, or the San Ysidro Port of Entry, has been, according to Forbes the busiest boarding crossing in the United States. My family and I take our dogs to the vet in Tijuana, we have attended birthday parties and funerals in Tijuana, and we have gone shopping in Tijuana. Crossing the border is fluid and living so near to the border has created a sense of identity not only for me, but for anyone living in a border town.
Lauryn Arce, a second year Parsons illustration major from Chula Vista, a town located in the South Bay of San Diego, said, “Living so close I know people that cross it every weekend, it’s something just casual. It’s never been anything scary or dangerous that a lot of people think it is, it’s something just casual and normal to do.” This sentiment is shared throughout those who occupy border spaces. Esme Topp, a third year Global Studies and Philosophy double major at Lang from El Paso said, “The border has always been fluid to me and my experience. Growing up I used to go to Juarez all the time when I was younger. My friends would go to hair appointments, the dentist, or to get medication because it’s cheaper.”
Sumita Chakravarty, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Lang who is currently teaching a course titled “Borders/Lands/Identities,” discussed how the media portray the border as a space that is untouchable. “I think “popular media” or in particular interested media, for instance the “conservative media,” portrays the border as in some ways this sacred line or space that you cannot cross. So, concepts of legality and illegality are associated with the border.” The angle used by conservative media creates a negative narrative for those who have no other understanding of life on the border.
However, Professor Chakravarty asserts that the liberal media is also to blame for obscuring how people interact with the border. “I find that the liberal media is also problematic, but in a different way because what we are constantly getting is the humanitarian story. But victimization or casting people as victims is also a form of “othering.” So, we don’t really get to understand some of the complexities on both sides,” said Chakravarty.
Press coverage focuses mainly on these two lenses: the influx of immigrants coming into the country and the humanitarian perspective that highlights the morality of these immigrants, they fail to cover the people who exist around the border.
The election of Donald Trump, who has used hateful language when discussing immigrants, was very discouraging for people who live on the border. “For the people that live in Chula Vista we know what’s true, because we live in it and that’s like our life, so to us it seems so absurd and unbelievable,” Lauryn Arce said.“But to the outside world, they might believe it, because they don’t know and they didn’t grow up so close to Mexico or the border.”
Esme Topp describes a similar feeling in El Paso.“When Trump came to El Paso and had a rally a lot of people went to counter protest, but everyone was constantly reminded not to act out because that’s what he wants. We would just be proving him right,” she said. President Trump’s statements have made me have to defend where I am from and justify the identity that exists within my community.
The border is people’s home. The border is part of people’s everyday lives. The border has an identity of its own. I remember waking up and seeing the day after President Trump was elected, the day after my 16th birthday, and crying seeing the headlines. Now, three years later, seeing the Halloween party at the White House with children being told to “build the wall,” I cry again.
Do not discount places because you don’t understand the culture there, every place is a home and every home belongs to someone.