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| U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Mexican Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Juan Elvira Decide to Strengthen Conservation Cooperation in Big Bend Area of the U.S. – Mexico Border |
| Washington, D.C. and Mexico, D.F.–In conjunction with the North American Leaders Summit held in Guadalajara, Mexico, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Mexican Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Juan Elvira announced today their commitment to strengthen conserva tion along the U.S. – Mexico border. The Secretary and the Minister will develop a plan to enhance coordination in the Big Bend and El Carmen area of the border and report to Presidents Barack Obama of the United States and Felipe Calderón of Mexico in six months. The proposed plan will take advantage of national parks and protected areas already designated in the Big Bend and El Carmen region, without prejudice to each country’s existing legislation, border security, and rights. “Building upon our shared history of ecosystem and species conservation, the plan will develop a model of bi-national cooperation for the conservation and enjoyment of shared ecosystems for current and future generations,” said Secretary Salazar. With more than 268 river miles and 3 million acres of contiguous parks and protected areas on both sides of the border benefitting under this proposal, 14 percent of the entire U.S.-Mexico border will enjoy strengthene d conservation coordination. The joint announcement marks the renewal of a bilateral process to develop one of the most significant conservation initiatives considered by Mexico and the United States at the border, while also taking into account border security. Sixty-five years ago, the Presidents of the United States and Mexico exchanged letters on the creation of the Big Bend National Park in the United States, wherein they envisioned the conservation of the shared ecosystems on both sides of the Rio Grande in the Big Bend region of Texas in the United State s and Chihuahua and Coahuila in Mexico. Mexico later established Cañon de Santa Elena and Maderas del Carmen protected areas in Chihuahua and Coahuila. Over the years, park rangers, scientists, volunteers, landowners and local communities on both sides of the border have diligently conserved the spectacular landscapes, wilderness, and habitats in both countries, in one of the most biologically diverse regions of the world. The June 2009 designation of Ocampo Protected Area by President Calderón completed a critical piece of this vision, forming a contiguous set of protected areas across from Big Bend National Park in the United States. Additional United States protected areas adjacent to Big Bend National Park include: Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and Black Gap Wildlife Management Area, all in Texas. “The U.S.-Mexico bilateral process is expected to highlight the biodiversity of the region, to consolidate environmental coo peration between the two countries, and could eventually20constitute a symbol of the new era of the relation between Mexico and the United States with respect to bilateral cooperation in the conservation area” commented Mexican Minister Elvira. He added that “the Secretaries of the Interior and of the Environment and Natural Resources recognize in this mandate the vision of the Governments and trust that a proposal can be developed soon for further consideration by the Presidents.” |
8 • Desert Candle – Spring 2005
THE RIO GRANDE
BORDER
By Tyrus G. Fain
______________________
The river has had many names. Paul
Horgan, in Great River, listed seventeen,
including P’Osoge, meaning great river in
Tewa, and Rio de Las Palmas, a name
bestowed in 1519 by the Spanish explorer
Pineda.
The Rio Grande I learned about in school was an
“American” river, our third longest. It began in the
Rocky Mountains of Colorado, flowed through New
Mexico and Texas and ended at the Gulf of Mexico. In
truth, the river needed help in reaching the sea,
counting on a hefty contribution from the Conchos
tributary – water generated by rains that fall in
Chihuahua and the Sierra Madre mountains of
Mexico.
The entire Rio Grande/Rio Bravo basin drains an
area of 182,215 miles extending across the jurisdic-
tion of two sovereign nations, three US and two
Mexican states, a number of Indian tribes and count-
less irrigation districts. That has produced a moun-
tain of treaties, minutes, laws, regulations, adjudica-
tions and claims affecting who owns what water, who
keeps it flowing clean and who speaks for the river.
To understand this river it helps to think in terms
of a series of “halves.” The first “half” (really a third)
runs from Colorado down to Elephant Butte reservoir
in New Mexico; it’s a beautiful western US river. Then
from El Paso and Cd. Juarez through the second
“half” of its run to the sea, this is the Rio Grande/Rio
Bravo, a shared resource and an international bound-
ary. Half the river is Mexico, the other half is the USA.
The big Elephant Butte Dam effectively truncates
the Rio Grande just it before it reaches Texas. When
the river leaves El Paso County there is virtually no
flow – usually only a trickle of treated urban run-off
and sewage plus “used” water returned by irrigators.
Unless there are rainstorms, there is no significant
water until the Conchos comes in a couple of hun-
dred miles downstream near Presidio and Ojinaga.
Through the Big Bend and the 196-mile stretch desig-
nated as one of the U.S. Wild and Scenic Rivers, virtu-
ally all of the water is from Mexico.
This river was indeed once great (grande) and wild
(bravo) but when it became a boundary everything
began to change. Its stewardship became highly frag-
mented, unaccountable and with no unified leader-
ship; it was not to be a conventional river.
As border towns grew into cities and Mexico indus-
trialized, we began to see water demand outstrip sup-
ply and problems overwhelm a US-Mexico Boundary
and Water Commission that had virtually no authori-
ty over water matters. Because of so many claims on
the river from so many jurisdictions, its waters have
been over allocated, meaning there is not enough to
go around. Stream flow is so weak the river some-
times can’t reach the sea. Salt cedar (tamarisk) and
giant cane (arundo) are choking out the cottonwood
and willow. Around cities the river has become foul
and in recreational areas where the river runs weak
but still clean (like Big Bend), there is apprehension.
The US and Mexico are in an escalating war of fin-
ger pointing; New Mexico and Texas are surly and
litigious; farmers in Chihuahua and the Lower Rio
Grande Valley are rebellious. We can call it by two
names, but the US can’t care for just half the river; and
neither can Mexico. The approach we are following is
not working.
The Growth of a “Borderland”
Through history, like everywhere on earth, the
rivers of North America were unifiers; they attracted
settlers, watered farmlands, powered mills and nur-
tured communities as they grew and became towns
and cities. Before there were highways there were
waterways. But history dealt our Rio Grande a most
peculiar fate; its lower stretch was made an interna-
tional boundary — split in half.
In 1848, after a fierce and bitter war, a treaty of sur-
render formally moved the Texas border south, mak-
ing Mexico’s Rio Bravo the new international bound-
ary, to be known henceforth (at least in the US) as the
Rio Grande. A stretch of river roughly 1000 miles long
was to define the outer limits of each nation’s sover-
eignty. Legal authority, control, ownership – all that
sovereignty suggests – was to begin and end at mid-
stream.
Then, after peace was restored and for most of the
next 150 years not much happened to provoke any
strict assertion of border sovereignty by either gov-
ernment. Border clampdowns during the Mexican
revolution didn’t endure; enforcement of border
security was sporadic on both sides, aimed mainly at
smuggling and banditry.
Vast numbers of people living and working along
the river crossed freely back and forth every day with
easily obtained papers and sometimes just a figura-
tive nod and a wink from immigration authorities on
either side. Determined migrants with destinations
deeper into the US found their way across the river
and through immigration restrictions best described
as “porous.” For millions of Mexican-Americans,
crossing the Rio Grande became a symbolic highlight
in their migration – an “Ellis Island” experience repre-
senting the last obstacle and the first “American”
place in the journey.
All along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo where the
human interaction that goes with work, family,
friends and faith has become a routine of life, a
unique “borderlands” culture has taken root. It is
deeply appreciated by those who live in it but misun-
derstood and distrusted by those plagued with fear
and prejudice. In rural areas along the river there has
always been an easy interaction across the border – it
is part of being a neighbor in any remote place and
has little to do with nationality or ethnicity. A sense of
identity comes from it, as does trust and camaraderie.
Over the past fifty years or so commerce and
industry have turned little border towns into big cities
- transportation hubs where the products of NAFTA
are carried on millions of truck trips and local
economies are sustained by millions who work in the
maquiladoras, warehouses, shops and stores. Some
are cross-border commuters who display a sense of
shared experience and fraternal identity with the bor-
der. You find them in growing numbers in the sister
cities: often bilingual, bicultural, well to do, imbued
with a border “hipness”.
The notions that a “borderland” culture is rooted
in the regional psyche or that rivers produce some
kind of social cement doesn’t always hold up and can
bog down in sappy hands-across-the-border babble.
I know people in Mexico and the US who don’t dream
of crossing that border; they are victims of prejudice
or carry emotional wounds they don’t want
reopened. Still, there is a “borderness” phenomenon
that sociologists, cultural anthropologists and market
researchers see emerging.
Of course cultural conflict is a companion of
diversity, so naturally some incidents that involve
Anglo-Hispanic-Native American ethnic divisions get
violent. But civility and neighborliness is the norm
among law abiding borderland folks, even among
those who can’t understand everything the neighbor
says.
Terror Threatens the Borderland
There is a growing fear that prospects for a closely-
knit “borderland” are in danger. The US has asserted
its sovereignty at the Rio Grande and hardened its
border like never before. Those of us who live on the
border have sometimes thought we are on some kind
of battleground when drug gangs fought or aggres-
sive enforcement inconvenienced us at a border stop.
Then, with the horrors of 9/11 and what followed we
got a glimpse of a real battleground and began seeing
just how far a government can go to assert authority
and control over its borders. Necessary or not, it has
not been fun.
There is another threat to the borderland and it is
using the war on terror as a pretext. As the US and
Mexico try to deal with the dilemmas involved in
immigration policy, there is a growing and often uni-
formed popular outcry for “control of our borders”.
That public concern is being exploited by dema-
gogues in politics and tabloid journalism, leading to
useless posturing by government or the vigilantes.
Fain is President of Rio Grande Institute. Contact him at: tfain@riogrande.org
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