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August 27, 1918 - US Begins First Border Fence with Mexico
Pictured - No new thing under the sun.
The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 and had been going on since, but the gringos up north had mostly stopped paying attention. The worst violence in Mexico had burned out; Pancho Villa had been defeated, Zapata’s peasant army could not seriously threaten Mexico City, and beyond a few turn-coat generals the new Constitutionalist government of Venustiano Carranza had no further enemies. Better yet, Carranza had the support of the Americans. Although they were still slightly miffed about the revolution (US businesses had done pretty well in Mexico with former dictator Porfirio Diaz), the Yanks were content to have a liberal neighbor down south who looked likely to keep the status quo.
But some Americans still had their concerns about Mexico. For people who lived on the border, Mexico seemed a great deal more important than the war in Europe. Moreover, violence had poured across the border before, as in 1916 when Pancho Villa’s men attacked the town of Columbus, NM. And the Germans had, albeit farcically, tried to induce Mexico into a war with America with the promise of taking back the Mexican Cession. Americans on the border remained jumpy, but perhaps understandably.
Yet still healthy precaution does not seem to have justified the firefight which broke out in the cross-border town of Nogales on August 27, 1918. The border ran through the town, and those who crossed it were supposed to have packages inspected by customs. A carpenter named Zeferino Gil Lamadrid forgot when he ambled into Mexico that afternoon. The American at the crossing told Lamadrid to halt; the Mexican guard told him to keep going. A nearby American soldier fired his rifle into the air to try and get Lamadrid to stop, which he did, diving for cover, but the Mexican customs man thought he was the target, and shot down his American counterpart. A gun battle erupted out of a fatal misunderstanding.
American infantry and cavalrymen attacked across the border, assaulting a hilltop where Mexican Carrancista soldiers had dug trenches. Civilians from both sides of the border took to the roofs and started shooting at the other part of town. Eventually, when the Americans got a machine-gun into a dangerous flanking position, Mexican officials asked for a ceasefire. A score of people had died.
The bullet-ridden town closed the border for the day and re-opened it the next. But the battle prompted tension between the American and Mexican sides, and the Americans decided on a permanent solution. Starting that August a two-mile fence was erected, six-feet high. It was the first permanent border fence along the US-Mexico border and lasted into the 1920s, costing the government $5,000.
Razor wire was added to the fence this week, resolution calls on federal government to remove it immediately.
“It’s a public nuisance, it’s lethal," said Sherrie Nixon. "If someone gets tangled up in that, they could be killed.”
The razor wire, which was added to the 14-foot fence this week, has drawn criticism from the city’s business people, saying it is bad for business.
“It’s ruining our economy on Morley Avenue. It’s destroying it," said councilman Marcelino Varona, Jr.
One businessman, who also serves as the Chair of the Port Authority, thinks the city must fight back against the negative images created by the razor wire.
“Nobody asked us, what do we think of this or what do you think we should be doing to secure the border,” Guillermo Valencia said. “It’s just people 2,000 miles away saying this is what you need.”
The U.S.-Mexico border wasn’t always so closely tied to immigration control. In fact, the border at Otay Mesa, San Diego, the first federally funded border fence, was built by the Bureau of Animal Industry to stop the movement of cattle ticks that had been responsible for a widespread cattle disease in the United States. It wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that border fences became a tool to regulate and restrict human migration.
Exploring the U.S.-Mexico border from an environmental perspective, the below collection of articles from Environmental History sheds light on the far-reaching impact of this international boundary.
“Treacherous Terrain: Racial Exclusion and Environmental Control at the U.S.-Mexico Border” by Mary E. Mendoza
“Neighbors by Nature: Rethinking Region, Nation, and Environmental History in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” by Samuel Truett
“Border Chasm: International Boundary Parks and Mexican Conservation, 1935–1945” by Emily Wakild
Image credit: Algodones sand-dune fence by US Border Patrol. Public domain via Wikipedia.
An Ode to Wire.
