Imagine the First Lady of the United States punching a hole in the fence on the U.S.-Mexico border. Imagine her publicly lamenting that there was a border fence at all.
In fact this scenario doesn’t need to be imagined … because it happened forty years ago right here in San Diego County. The date was August 18, 1971 and the location was “Friendship Park,” the small cement plaza on the U.S.-Mexico border, at the southwest-most corner of the continental United States.
The First Lady was Pat Nixon, who had been a prominent champion of our state’s public parks when her husband Richard Nixon was Governor of California, before being elected President of the United States. She came to Friendship Park to inaugurate the surrounding area as California’s Border Field State Park.
After planting a tree as part of the inauguration ceremony, Mrs. Nixon approached the large stone monument which sits at the heart of Friendship Park. The monument commemorates the first meeting of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Commission in 1849, at the end of the U.S.-Mexico War. Its base sits half in the United States and half in Mexico and bears bold inscriptions on either side: “Boundary of the United States;” “Punto Límite de la República de México.”
Overcome by the welcome she received from the people gathered in Mexico, Mrs. Nixon ordered her security detail to cut what was then just a barbed wire fence beside the monument. She then stepped into Mexico and was thronged by the adoring crowd. “I hope there won’t be a fence here much longer,” she told the press.
Mrs. Nixon was not the first person to catch the spirit of international friendship at this unique location. Across the generations, people from around the world have visited Monument Mesa, both for its historic significance and for the spectacular ocean view. For generations, especially on weekends and holidays, locals from San Diego and Tijuana could be found clustered around the monument, and on the beach below, visiting with family and friends “across the wire” or “through the fence.”
In 2008, as part of a Congressional mandate to create double and triple barriers along 670 miles of the border, Department of Homeland Security officials built a second barrier across Friendship Park, the new wall running parallel to the border fence at a distance of some 90 feet. Since January, 2009 U.S. citizens have been forcibly prevented by San Diego Border Patrol from approaching the border fence at Friendship Park.
Across recent years, community leaders have come together as the Friends of Friendship Park coalition, and have taken up negotiations with San Diego Border Patrol, seeking to re-establish routine public access to this unique and historic venue. I am proud to be a part of this coalition, whose members have dedicated thousands of hours of volunteer time to the effort. This Saturday members of our coalition will lead a celebration at Friendship Park, marking the 40th anniversary of Mrs. Nixon’s visit.
In our day most of us have come to think of the U.S.-Mexico border as somehow “natural.” To most the massive wall we have built along it seems an unfortunate, but perhaps necessary, curiosity. And in the current political environment, the idea that there might not be a border fence someday seems laughably implausible.
But the anniversary of Pat Nixon’s visit to Friendship Park reminds us that times change, and it should inspire us to consider the border in a different light.
After all, the globe is scattered with the ruins and remnants of walls that other nations have built across the years, trying to protect their own privilege and keep their neighbors at bay. Each ruin is a testament to the fact that the basic human aspirations – freedom of movement, economic opportunity – are more powerful than any barrier we are able to devise.
If you think that our wall is somehow fundamentally different from all these others – well, I’d suggest you’d pay a visit to Friendship Park. It’s time to start taking your imagination out to get a little more exercise.
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