Columbus/Palomas

Border shopping. Dental work. The economic advantages of the line in Palomas accrue to U.S. citizens. This is so obvious as to be almost not worth mention. That is the nature and purpose of traffic south. Going north every day is a bus that picks up Mexican children to be taken to and from their school and nowhere else. From kindergarten through high school, children born in the U.S. whose parents are not citizens are given an education north of the line. According to the Columbus librarian, this obligation developed from the practice of permitting Mexican mothers in labor to cross north to Deming, New Mexico as there is no hospital in close proximity to Palomas. Traffic north at this crossing also involves 120 semi-trucks and tanks exporting chilis and chili oil. "You cannot imagine all the things chilis are used for," muses the ranger at Pancho Villa State Park. I imagine one is certainly pepper spray. Pepper spray, one of the first non-lethal methods of discipline deployed in U.S. maximum security prisons where over 35% of the population is Hispanic. It is not irony when it is cruel. (December 9, 2017)