Border Expat

Expat: A person who lives outside their native country.

Border Expat: A person who lives in a zone between countries that feels like another country yet is their own.

                                          Photo: Meredith Linsky

No stranger to expatriation, I was born in Mexico City to Gringo parents who were living in Chiapas, near the border of Guatemala. By my early twenties  I had lived, worked, studied or spent significant time in Mexico, Colombia, Indonesia, Switzerland, Spain, Costa Rica and Peru. Yet somehow I landed in Texas. The Rio Grande Valley,Texas. Brownsville to be exact. "On the Border, by the Sea" as the Brownsville Visitor and Convention Bureau likes to advertise, hoping somehow to erase the daily bad press about drug wars, kidnappings, poverty, teen pregnancy, obesity, dengue fever and hurricanes.

I am very much at home on the border, having lived here now for 20 years, longer than I have lived anywhere else. I love the biculturalism, the warm humidity and wildlife, the beach, and being able to walk to Mexico from my office, which is a block from the Rio Grande. I love the unique oddities that make this place special--and quirky. Like elote trucks with speakers blaring Christmas carols in the summer, raspa stands, tortillerias, ropa usada housed in crumbling historic buildings, resacas, wrinkled men riding 3 wheeled bikes strapped with rakes and shovels, Charro Days, hierberias, curanderas,  parteras, and quinceneras. Some of these things are not unique to this region at all, but the way they play out here is always a little "Valley" as they say. That is, different than in, say, LA where there are also many influences from Mexico, yet there is still much cultural segregation. I know this you see, because I mostly grew up in Southern California. To really mix things up, the aspects of culture here that are not influenced by Mexico, are totally Texas. Which is, according to the State motto, and my personal experience, "A Whole Other Country" in itself.

I met my husband here, had my babies here, bought my first home here--yet I will never really be from here. I know my offspring feel at home, yet they are daily aware of their "differentness". They are Third Culture Kids in a way. Having endured hundreds of curious hands running through their blonde hair and comments about their "colored" eyes, "hey white boy!",they are often cornered by local abuelas trying to fatten up their skinny, white bodies with pozole, champurrado and homemade flour tortillas. At home they hear their parents rant against Texans worship of football and guns, and then go to school and speak Spanglish with their Mexican, football playing, hunting rifle carrying friends.

As for me, I will always be a Border Expat, because, as is true of many provincial places in the world, unless your family has lived here at least a few generations, you are forever an outsider. But not in a bad way really. Anyone who has ever been around Mexicanos knows you are welcome, at the table, in the kitchen, on the porch, on the fishing boat and at the carne asada, even if you are a stranger, and especially if you like Micheladas. It's actually harder to break in with the few native Anglos and wealthy Mexicanos, whose families have ruled the roost for generations by getting rich off of inherited ranch land and by exploiting hardworking Mexican labor.

When I arrived in the dusty, blistering heat of Harlingen, Texas that August day back in 1991, I planned to stay for exactly one year. I'm not sure I even knew where I was on the map and I most certainly never intended to live in Texas. I was a young, idealistic twenty-something volunteer coming to "help" the thousands of Central American refugees camped out on the border to escape wars the U.S. created in their home countries. I left for a few years, came back, one thing led to another and here I still am, living, learning and thriving each day, finding my place in this curious culture. An out of town guest recently suggested that I should write about the uniqueness of the Valley. When I asked what she meant by unique, she replied, "Are you kidding? We're in the United States yet a war rages literally blocks away from tranquil downtown Brownsville, tropical birds converge on your yard everyday, your grocery stores have taquerias and sell gorditas and people have the border wall in their backyards. Bombs, grenades and burning sugar cane fields fill the air with smoke and everyone always starts conversations in Spanish. People live without plumbing, roads, adequate shelter, literacy, jobs, or healthcare literally down the street from upscale country club neighborhoods with opulent mansions." I guess she is right. For a "first world country", the dichotomies around here are huge; poverty juxtaposed with great wealth, flowing now more than ever from Mexico as violence drives people with money to resettle here on this side of the border.

So this is my home and it is truly an imperfect but beautiful place. And writing about it makes me grin.