All my life, I have lived around liminal spaces. If a liminal space is to be understood as a place between spaces, then I can confidently say that I have been living in liminal spaces since the day I was born.

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I come from a region of the world characterized by its refusal to be categorized, despite what outsiders might want to think. The border between Mexico and the United States is a strange place with a complicated history spanning over centuries. That history made its way to my identity in ways I still entirely understand. 

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I was born in El Paso, on the American side. However, the ink on my birth certificate had barely dried by the time my parents were getting ready to leave the hospital and return to Ciudad Juarez, on the Mexican side. I grew up Mexican, had Mexican nationality and was, a citizen of the republic of Mexico (my voting ID and the amount of taxes I paid to the Servicio Aduanal Tributario) are indefatigable proof of that. All my friends and family lived in Mexico. I didn’t properly meet anyone that was “properly” American until Highschool. Yet I never felt that I fit properly. 

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Most of the people I grew up with didn’t cross over to the other side often. Some of them came from families that were connected to the Mexican government or had relatives involved in multinational enterprises. Yet, they considered me privileged for not needing a special visa to cross over. I used to think they were jealous, but now I think that they were confused kids trying to make sense of the world, just like me. I kept their comments in mind when I had to wake up at 4 in the morning to catch a bus to cross to arrive at the border checkpoint, then wait for hours to cross over on foot, then wait for a bus to arrive. Every morning, I had to endure the inclement weather, the smog clogging my nose or the indifferent cruelty of the border officers. Their voice followed me around, making me feel lucky to take on something that I didn’t entirely understand at the time. 

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Crossing itself was a weird experience. Because of the way the bridge was built, I crossed over a gigantic line that was marked by the cadaver of what once was a giant, mighty river, and the adapted to a new place. There were no more street entertainers nor vendors looking for any car that was willing to give them a few coins so they could avoid starvation. There weren’t any other musicians going onto the bus, asking for money in exchange for a song. Yet there were similar faces, similar experiences, and at points the same language. Yet everyone was acting differently. I didn’t make sense of this when I was a little kid, so I imagined the border was some kind of portal that made the people around me magically start acting differently. They also had the annoying habit of completely changing their perspectives on the other side of the border. For all their similarities, both sides of the border always dissociate about each other’s perspectives. One side sees the other as an indelible ray of hope and an aspiration that always seems near, but somehow out of reach, whereas the other side sees its sister city with a mix of pride and disgust. Yet both sometimes like to pretend that the other doesn’t exist. 

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Whenever there is a bilateral crisis or tragedy, there is some sympathy from the people living on the other side, but not much else. Climate is a perfect example; for some reason, people from both sides blame each other for their problems. “El Paso takes too much water” Juarez pollutes the air much more than we do”. Yet, I have rarely seen much collaboration. I’ve always thought that this is partly due to the conditions that divide us. Juarez is Mexico, El Paso is the United States. Yet neither are at the same time. The idea that we are more different than alike comes from the ties of the government in Mexico City and Washington D.C. who only care about what we can provide to them instead of who we are. It’s a strife that few are willing to call out head on, and fewer are willing to combat, mostly because it’s not just about policy or political ownership. It’s about identity. Being a Fronterizo is not the same as being a “border native” and it never will be. The border serves as a mirror for people of both sides, and just like in a regular mirror, you see a familiar face, one you live with daily, but there will always be a small detail that will never allow it to be your true reflection. In other words, the meaning of living on this border is an even flow of experiences that acknowledge each other across a fence, screaming Te quiero mi Hermano, “I love you my brother”, but you are over there, and I am over here, Y quizas sea mejor asi. 

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This cognitive dissonance lives in the minds of many people who live here, and I can’t blame them. I can’t make sense of it either, or I fear I will never. Here is an example: UTEP overlooks a region known as Anapra, a poor neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez.  My uncle used to live there. He used to take me and my cousins to a nearby park to see the lights coming from the other side. He’d told me that he always wanted to move over to the other side to escape the violence that had cost him so much and start anew. He always reminded me that I never lost my way and made something of myself the way he couldn’t. His words rattle inside my skull whenever I stare down at that park from the top of Sunbowl garage. When I talk about this with someone who lived their whole life here, they don’t really understand what I say.

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This always baffled me. How disconnected could you be from the world around you to not understand a struggle that is so unique to us? I didn’t understand their perspective until last year, in 2024.

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Last summer was one of the most important times of my life. I travelled outside of the US and Mexico for the first time. I had the opportunity to study abroad in Madrid for a few days, and I was eager to leave the border for a while. At first, I didn’t think that the trip itself would teach me much about myself other than just amuse me, until I decided to do something that surprised me. I decided to visit the town of Irun, situated on the northeast end of Spain, on the border with France. I decided to make the trip on my own for no reason other than to investigate and experience what is it like to cross the border into France. 

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When I arrived there, I was greeted with a view completely unlike anything I’ve ever personally seen before; a small bay area with no sand whatsoever, surrounded by luscious green hills and covered under a completely blackout sky. It was always raining as well, but never to the point of danger or worry. A scene I had only dreamt about up to that point. And it broke me.

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The Irun-Hendaye border (Hendaye is the French city next to Irun) is a place that exists as a space that is three things at the same time. It is the border between Spain and France, a bay area, and the coast of the Basque country. Given the fact that it was a border, I immediately drew a mental parallel to Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, an area that is also more than one place at a time. However, this border was nothing like home. There is no clear sign or distinction between what is France and what is Spain except for a small walkable bridge that prevents passersby from falling into the water. The only way you could understand that it was not the same place was by paying attention that the language (which also didn’t help as much, since the whole region speaks a language known as Euskadi) and the position of the flags. At one point the Spanish flag disappears from all buildings, and the French flag appears, but the flag of the Basque people was always present regardless of whatever area I found myself in. 

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When I arrived at the town I saw a small bay, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and a small bridge that divided Spain from France. No checkpoints. No barbed wire. No Wall. My mind didn’t let me comprehend that all the way through. I had become accustomed to the dichotomy of living among borders. A straight line drawn in a map personified in iron stretching from coast to coast, standing tall. Crossing over is a challenge engraved in my identity. It electrifies the blood within my veins. 

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I stood here, in a liminal place within three worlds; three separate answers to the same question, all different from one another and correct at the same time. There is no dichotomy here, only the clouds meant to shroud my judgement, keeping this place hidden from the world. Something is missing here. There is a separation of language, but where are the barricades? And the barbed wire? Where is the incandescent heat of a summer morning burning the scalps of all who form the line to cross? Where is the facility? Where are the guards? And the dogs? And the interrogation rooms?

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In the name of all that is decent and proper, where is the suffering? The alienation from one’s neighbor? The clear and defined principle that we are fundamentally different from one another, the very name of the play I have been acting in for all my life. 

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How can you ask me to witness how people come together regardless of whatever sovereignty they were born into, when all I know is the opposite? What do you mean by foreign? How is it possible that instead of a wall, there is a bridge? To this day, I think something broke into me, but I still can’t figure out what it was.

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I came back less than a week after letting my soul scream out by the water. When my mom asked me what I had learned, I didn’t tell her about this stuff. I had no words back then, and I’m surprised I have now. 

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The border is, and always will be, a space between history, politics, and the crushing weight of human action. I am very proud to say that I belong here, even if I don’t understand it entirely, and sometimes I wonder what lies beyond its setting sun.