As mentioned in the final part of the three part series The Tale of the Bi-national Garden, the State of Baja California decided to offer El Grupo de los 12, the coalition on the Mexican side, the opportunity to adapt all the "green areas" in the park. This was kind of up in the air until the announcement the the First Lady of Mexico was coming to inaugurate the new design for the park on Feb 10th of 2011. El Grupo de los 12 took advantage of the fact that we were invited to the ceremony and sent out a press release asking that the First Lady put pressure on the state to go through with the process.
I gave a speech on behalf of El Grupo de los 12 and included a part that Ricardo Arana from Proyecto fronterizo de educacion ambiental wrote up that stated that the community is doing their part and we now ask the state to do theirs. The speech went well and the first lady walked up to the garden with kindergarten students and we all planted a row of seed balls up against the fence. It was a touching ceremony and there were more cameras in one spot than I had ever seen in my life. I really felt like a movie star as I walked up to the garden next to the first lady. The ironic thing was that there were construction vehicles and official people on the US side who had nothing to do with the 1st lady's presnence. She turned and waved to a couple people on the US side who waved back and the official people didn't wave and didn't even know who she was. This really pinpointed how DHS is in their own world and really wants to create a park that walls off Mexico and gives the impression to the US public as much as possible that Mexico doesn't exist or isn't worth paying attention to.
The line in the speech worked, because the very next day, the governor of Baja California called me. His office then called Ricardo Arana who is working with the Baja California Government to make the adaption happen. El grupo de los 12 had a meeting in which most of the orgs attended and we came up with some great ideas and a schedule to implement them through out the year by season in which we'd form teams of orgs that would be assigned to different seasons. The new format was somewhat successful. This, from the beginning, has been the biggest challenge that we've run into. It's never much of a challenge to get groups and individuals together to do a planting ceremony. It's often a challenge to find a system in which community members share responsabilities throughout the year to care for the garden.
Meanwhile, I had been contacted by local Border Patrol at Imperial Beech station to let me know that the "Explorers", a scout program that allows teenagers to explore different enforcement careers woud be assigned to maintain the garden. I was put in contact with Agent Rudy Zuniga at IB station who was in charge of the Explorers program. I was really encouraged by the opportunity to give the kids a different perspective than on the border emphasizing the importance of Native Flora and cross-border friendship. I was communicating with Agent Zuniga about what the Explorers would be doing in the garden and trying to coordinate their schedule with the Grupo de los 12 schedule in order work together. Agent Zuniga wasn´t necessarily aiming for that and had gone out to the garden with Explorers on a couple of occasions to clean it up already. In November of 2011, I managed to convince Agent Zuniga to let me come into the station and give a powerpoint presentation to the US Border Patrol Explorer youth on Border encuentro activities and native flora. During the hour long presentation, the 20 or so kids were relatively quiet, didn´t ask a lot of questions. I asked what they thought of Border encuentro and the idea of making friends across the border and I got a vibe of the feeling that I used to have in High School of I´m behaving and pretending like I care because I´ve been told to and don´t want to get in trouble but I´d much rather be hanging with my friends doing something fun. Agent Zuniga "encouraged" them to ask questions or they´d have to stay longer and one of them asked me if I was afraid I´d get in trouble with Border Patrol for what I did. This was a peculiar question because nothing I showed them that I did was against the law or Border Patrol rules that I know of. I realized that there was some type of precondtioning here and I answered by telling him that friendship and collaboration across the border creates an understanding and trust between people that contributes to the security of the region so we actually want to help Border Patrol reach their goal of creating security at the border.
I felt good about the presentation and I felt like the person that was influenced by it the most, unexpectedly, was Agent Zuniga. During the presentation he told me that he would figure out a way that the Exploreres could join us in the annual planting celebration on Nov. 20th even though his superiors had told him this wouldn't be possible. He wasn't able to convince them of it but did join us a couple weeks later with the kids for another outing where we were joined by Eli, a native plant activist who has been collecting seeds every year from native flora in the region in an effort to revegetate the region.
During the outing Agent Zuniga mentioned to me that the Exploreres would be coming out the first Sat of the month. Leading up to the 4th, I remember him and I almost developing an informal relationship, he asked me advice on how to teach his eleven year old Spanish and I when I dropped off some seed balls before an event, I noticed the way we talked to each other was starting to sound more like friends than a professional relationship. Shortly after the 4th, he informed me that he'd be moving to another department and put me in contact with three other agents who would be taking his place.
There wasn't the same chance to develop a relationship with these agents and at our first meeting at the garden in January of 2011, between Agent Glance, Agent Correa, Visual Arts Professor Elizabether Chaney who had been a geat advocate and contributor to the garden effort, and I, I remember it showed. Agent Glance asked me what was to be done and gave the kids quick military like instructions on how to proceed. When telling me them to clean up the area around the garden he told them to look out for dangerous objects and picked up an inhaler and half jokingly said "I don't know what this is, probably a pipe bomb." It was a joke but kind of revealed how he had been briefed about the area. I should've answered "probably not." Anyway, despite the ignorance and the lack of relationship developed, the studentst did do some planting and I remember particularly a young girl really grilling Liz Chaney and I through the fence about the benefits of native flora and telling us how she wants to plant more in other places. Liz also noticed that one of the kids had previously arranged to meet a friend in Tijuana through the fence and they were able to talk to each other.
We talked about a major garden gathering at the end of March for the grand Salvemos La Playa cleanup day and agreed to meet one more time before then through the fence at the garden in order to prep the area. We met again at the beginning of March, again Liz Chaney and I plus a few other members of El Grupo de los 12, some younger members. At first it was just Liz and I and we met Agent Glance and another agent whom I hadn't met in person. The Explorers were back behind the secondary barrier cleaning the State Parks area and only the agents approached us. Agent Glance explained to me that from now on he can't make the decisions for the group any more and that I have to go through chain of command and talk to his superior in order to get things approved. This was actually ok with me because I had found that communication was a bit difficult and one Sat was already canceled at the last minute. On this day we had arranged to meet with the Grupo de los 12 members and the Explorers so I told Agent Glance, that I like the new plan and went ahead explaining the plan for the day. He explained to me that no adult is allowed to talk to the kids without being vetted through a background check as these are Scout rules. I told the rule makes sense but that I should've been informed of this before hand and that I'm ok with the new protocol but that I'm worried that things will change up again that I can work with just about anything, but I can't work with coming to an agreement, making a plan and then, on day of implementation of the plan, telling me that we have to change the protocol. He agreed, to bring the kids over in a bit when the G12 came and then just then, someone came up beside me and in a loud voice said "Hey man, talking to agent
Glance through the fence, how bout I jump over this fence and then you arrest me? Would we get on that Border Patrol show on TV?" He then went on to saying other idiotic things. I guess I should've guessed that talking to two uniformed Border Patrol agents through the fence might cause some type of reaction in some people. The agents reacted badly. The one that was accompanying Angent Glance called him a "Pendejo" and I saw her hand on her holster. The guy didn't notice that movement, and just made some snyde crack back to the pendejo remark and walked off.
Another guy that was standing behind the loud mouth started kind of civil conversation with Agent Glance saying something about how we're not all that different and that race shouldn't be used to divide us. Agent Glance was still riled up (which kind of took me aback as the worst reaction possible if your goal were to difuse a situation) from the loud mouth, and told the guy to go away and let us finsih our conversation or he would call the Mexican authorities and tell them he was harrassing us because he's friends with the guy that made the snyde comments.
I didn't understand why the agents would react this way. Agent Glance told me it seemed like there was an animosity toward me as well from them. I think the loud mouth had made some kind of comment to me as well, but I explained to Agent Glance, cause it didn't seem like he knew, that there's a pretty big "barrier" of annimosity between Border Patrol agents and a great deal of Mexicans and that it would be pretty natural for their to be a bit of intense feelings right here for some. His adreneline was still flowing and I don't think he was quite listening. He left with the other agent without waiting for the G12 members. I think partially because they were running late and partially because the indident scared him away.
I got a hold of the Agent in charge of the Explorers and he basically cut the program out of the Scouts routine completely. I pleaded with him and explained how beneficial the garden activities were to the Scouts education and sense of accomplishment to no avail.
A few summer months went by and started the process over again of bugging Border Patrol to let me do something about the garden, let there be public access. When I got a hold of the IB station in Early May of 2011, they told me that they were planning on contacting me to give me the chance to remove the plants temporarly because the primary barrier was to be replaced. I asked them if they had a date that they were going to replace teh primary barrier set yet and they didn´t so I asked instead if we could have permission to go in to the garden and maintain it on a regular basis and once they had a date we would remove the plants and this is exactly what happened. Throughout the summer Ricardo Arana with Proyecto fronterizo de educación ambiental and a key member of the Grupo de los 12 and some of his home gardening students in Tijuana along with a student environmental club at Point Loma Nazarene lead by Daniel Virden, and Jon Wreschensky from Friends of Friendship Park coalitiona as well as other volunteers joined me in regular outings throughout the summer and we rebuilt and expanded the garden on both sides.
I gave a speech on behalf of El Grupo de los 12 and included a part that Ricardo Arana from Proyecto fronterizo de educacion ambiental wrote up that stated that the community is doing their part and we now ask the state to do theirs. The speech went well and the first lady walked up to the garden with kindergarten students and we all planted a row of seed balls up against the fence. It was a touching ceremony and there were more cameras in one spot than I had ever seen in my life. I really felt like a movie star as I walked up to the garden next to the first lady. The ironic thing was that there were construction vehicles and official people on the US side who had nothing to do with the 1st lady's presnence. She turned and waved to a couple people on the US side who waved back and the official people didn't wave and didn't even know who she was. This really pinpointed how DHS is in their own world and really wants to create a park that walls off Mexico and gives the impression to the US public as much as possible that Mexico doesn't exist or isn't worth paying attention to.
The line in the speech worked, because the very next day, the governor of Baja California called me. His office then called Ricardo Arana who is working with the Baja California Government to make the adaption happen. El grupo de los 12 had a meeting in which most of the orgs attended and we came up with some great ideas and a schedule to implement them through out the year by season in which we'd form teams of orgs that would be assigned to different seasons. The new format was somewhat successful. This, from the beginning, has been the biggest challenge that we've run into. It's never much of a challenge to get groups and individuals together to do a planting ceremony. It's often a challenge to find a system in which community members share responsabilities throughout the year to care for the garden.
Meanwhile, I had been contacted by local Border Patrol at Imperial Beech station to let me know that the "Explorers", a scout program that allows teenagers to explore different enforcement careers woud be assigned to maintain the garden. I was put in contact with Agent Rudy Zuniga at IB station who was in charge of the Explorers program. I was really encouraged by the opportunity to give the kids a different perspective than on the border emphasizing the importance of Native Flora and cross-border friendship. I was communicating with Agent Zuniga about what the Explorers would be doing in the garden and trying to coordinate their schedule with the Grupo de los 12 schedule in order work together. Agent Zuniga wasn´t necessarily aiming for that and had gone out to the garden with Explorers on a couple of occasions to clean it up already. In November of 2011, I managed to convince Agent Zuniga to let me come into the station and give a powerpoint presentation to the US Border Patrol Explorer youth on Border encuentro activities and native flora. During the hour long presentation, the 20 or so kids were relatively quiet, didn´t ask a lot of questions. I asked what they thought of Border encuentro and the idea of making friends across the border and I got a vibe of the feeling that I used to have in High School of I´m behaving and pretending like I care because I´ve been told to and don´t want to get in trouble but I´d much rather be hanging with my friends doing something fun. Agent Zuniga "encouraged" them to ask questions or they´d have to stay longer and one of them asked me if I was afraid I´d get in trouble with Border Patrol for what I did. This was a peculiar question because nothing I showed them that I did was against the law or Border Patrol rules that I know of. I realized that there was some type of precondtioning here and I answered by telling him that friendship and collaboration across the border creates an understanding and trust between people that contributes to the security of the region so we actually want to help Border Patrol reach their goal of creating security at the border.
I felt good about the presentation and I felt like the person that was influenced by it the most, unexpectedly, was Agent Zuniga. During the presentation he told me that he would figure out a way that the Exploreres could join us in the annual planting celebration on Nov. 20th even though his superiors had told him this wouldn't be possible. He wasn't able to convince them of it but did join us a couple weeks later with the kids for another outing where we were joined by Eli, a native plant activist who has been collecting seeds every year from native flora in the region in an effort to revegetate the region.
Eli passing a native seed ball to a Border Patrol Explorer at the outing on December 4th 2010.
There wasn't the same chance to develop a relationship with these agents and at our first meeting at the garden in January of 2011, between Agent Glance, Agent Correa, Visual Arts Professor Elizabether Chaney who had been a geat advocate and contributor to the garden effort, and I, I remember it showed. Agent Glance asked me what was to be done and gave the kids quick military like instructions on how to proceed. When telling me them to clean up the area around the garden he told them to look out for dangerous objects and picked up an inhaler and half jokingly said "I don't know what this is, probably a pipe bomb." It was a joke but kind of revealed how he had been briefed about the area. I should've answered "probably not." Anyway, despite the ignorance and the lack of relationship developed, the studentst did do some planting and I remember particularly a young girl really grilling Liz Chaney and I through the fence about the benefits of native flora and telling us how she wants to plant more in other places. Liz also noticed that one of the kids had previously arranged to meet a friend in Tijuana through the fence and they were able to talk to each other.
We talked about a major garden gathering at the end of March for the grand Salvemos La Playa cleanup day and agreed to meet one more time before then through the fence at the garden in order to prep the area. We met again at the beginning of March, again Liz Chaney and I plus a few other members of El Grupo de los 12, some younger members. At first it was just Liz and I and we met Agent Glance and another agent whom I hadn't met in person. The Explorers were back behind the secondary barrier cleaning the State Parks area and only the agents approached us. Agent Glance explained to me that from now on he can't make the decisions for the group any more and that I have to go through chain of command and talk to his superior in order to get things approved. This was actually ok with me because I had found that communication was a bit difficult and one Sat was already canceled at the last minute. On this day we had arranged to meet with the Grupo de los 12 members and the Explorers so I told Agent Glance, that I like the new plan and went ahead explaining the plan for the day. He explained to me that no adult is allowed to talk to the kids without being vetted through a background check as these are Scout rules. I told the rule makes sense but that I should've been informed of this before hand and that I'm ok with the new protocol but that I'm worried that things will change up again that I can work with just about anything, but I can't work with coming to an agreement, making a plan and then, on day of implementation of the plan, telling me that we have to change the protocol. He agreed, to bring the kids over in a bit when the G12 came and then just then, someone came up beside me and in a loud voice said "Hey man, talking to agent
Glance through the fence, how bout I jump over this fence and then you arrest me? Would we get on that Border Patrol show on TV?" He then went on to saying other idiotic things. I guess I should've guessed that talking to two uniformed Border Patrol agents through the fence might cause some type of reaction in some people. The agents reacted badly. The one that was accompanying Angent Glance called him a "Pendejo" and I saw her hand on her holster. The guy didn't notice that movement, and just made some snyde crack back to the pendejo remark and walked off.
Another guy that was standing behind the loud mouth started kind of civil conversation with Agent Glance saying something about how we're not all that different and that race shouldn't be used to divide us. Agent Glance was still riled up (which kind of took me aback as the worst reaction possible if your goal were to difuse a situation) from the loud mouth, and told the guy to go away and let us finsih our conversation or he would call the Mexican authorities and tell them he was harrassing us because he's friends with the guy that made the snyde comments.
I didn't understand why the agents would react this way. Agent Glance told me it seemed like there was an animosity toward me as well from them. I think the loud mouth had made some kind of comment to me as well, but I explained to Agent Glance, cause it didn't seem like he knew, that there's a pretty big "barrier" of annimosity between Border Patrol agents and a great deal of Mexicans and that it would be pretty natural for their to be a bit of intense feelings right here for some. His adreneline was still flowing and I don't think he was quite listening. He left with the other agent without waiting for the G12 members. I think partially because they were running late and partially because the indident scared him away.
I got a hold of the Agent in charge of the Explorers and he basically cut the program out of the Scouts routine completely. I pleaded with him and explained how beneficial the garden activities were to the Scouts education and sense of accomplishment to no avail.
A few summer months went by and started the process over again of bugging Border Patrol to let me do something about the garden, let there be public access. When I got a hold of the IB station in Early May of 2011, they told me that they were planning on contacting me to give me the chance to remove the plants temporarly because the primary barrier was to be replaced. I asked them if they had a date that they were going to replace teh primary barrier set yet and they didn´t so I asked instead if we could have permission to go in to the garden and maintain it on a regular basis and once they had a date we would remove the plants and this is exactly what happened. Throughout the summer Ricardo Arana with Proyecto fronterizo de educación ambiental and a key member of the Grupo de los 12 and some of his home gardening students in Tijuana along with a student environmental club at Point Loma Nazarene lead by Daniel Virden, and Jon Wreschensky from Friends of Friendship Park coalitiona as well as other volunteers joined me in regular outings throughout the summer and we rebuilt and expanded the garden on both sides.
Planting on May 25th, 2011
We continued throughout the summer around once or twice a month and I developed a relationship with Chris Young the new Assistant Patrol chief in charge at Imperial Beach station. It was the first time that I had ever arranged an outing previously with Border Patrol and upon arriving the agents had received the message and knew the plan almost every time. They often allowed us to use the border patrol roads to get out to the park to carry our tools and rock decorations.
At the end of the summer, we put on a public tour of the garden as part of State Parks Tijuana Estuary involvement day. It was on a Saturday at time when visitors were allowed into the restricted area around the binational monument about 100 ft west of the garden to visit with family and/see the monument. A friend of mine Alex who´s passion is taking videos and especially of border related and immigration themes, tagged along that September day. We both noticed that there were a couple of families talking acorss the border inside the restricted area. They were separated by the primary fence along with a chest high railing that kept them about 5 ft away from their relatives on the Mexican side. We were told by BP that there was a limit of 6 people in the garden at a time and so invited them to come over to the garden where, close by there was a gapping hole in the fence. It allowed them to stand and talk, hold hands, hug, and kiss through the fence. One mother hadn´t seen her son in a year and a 1/2. Alex really captured the moment beautifully.
