Re-Design Friendship Park

In our day the U.S.-Mexico border is commonly portrayed as a place traumatized by criminality and violence. This portrayal is inaccurate U.S. border communities are among the safest in the nation * and it betrays a profound misunderstanding of what life on the border is really like.

In fact the border is marked most profoundly by peaceful human encounter. More goods and people cross the US-Mexico border each day than any other border in the world. And millions celebrate relationships of family and friendship that span the international boundary.

Sadly, recent U.S. administrations Republican and Democratic alike have failed to challenge the caricatured portrayal of the border as a sinister place. Succumbing to political pressure, they have embraced heavy-handed policies of enforcement that direct resources away from our nations genuine security needs and impose human suffering, environmental degradation, and cultural devastation on the borderlands.

These injustices are nowhere more dramatically on display than at Friendship Park, an historic location overlooking the Pacific Ocean. From the time the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Commission first met at this location in 1849, at the end of the US-Mexico War, people have met at Friendship Park to visit across the international boundary, even if through a fence. Across this expanse of time, the park has been free of violence, and criminal activity has been easily managed through conventional law enforcement practices, as it is at thousands of public parks across the United States.

Still, in February, 2009 officials at the San Diego Sector of the United States Border Patrol eliminated public access to Friendship Park. In late 2009 they created a holding pen inside the park, and created restrictive rules for access to it. This arrangement makes a mockery of the notion of international friendship to which the park is dedicated.

The Friends of Friendship Park a broad coalition of community-based organizations remains committed to promoting routine public access to Friendship Park. Toward this end we have been meeting with U.S. Border Patrol and other officials of the U.S. Government. We have listened to their concerns and have taken them seriously.

As a culmination to this process of constructive dialogue, we have submitted to San Diego Border Patrol a proposal developed by the celebrated San Diego architect James Brown. This design accomplishes everything that San Diego Border Patrol desires during hours when Friendship Park is closed to the public. And it restores much of the original feel of Friendship Park during the parks open hours, by allowing for full access to three locations on the international boundary: the historic monument at the center of the park, the bi-national garden located to the east of the monument, and the beach below the monument to the west.

This proposal offers a glimpse of a new vision for the future of the US-Mexico borderlands. We envision a border that defines the geographic boundaries of Mexico and the United States, but does not prevent the peoples of these two great nations from establishing and celebrating harmonious relationships with one another. We envision a border built on the understanding that the goals of security and friendship are mutually reinforcing.

With this proposal we commit ourselves to the work of re-making the US-Mexico border. Let us begin this work where the border first began at Friendship Park.

(To learn more about the proposed re-design of Friendship Park, visit: http://friendshippark.org)

*US-Mexico border isn't so dangerous, by Martha Mendoza, AP Impact, Thursday, June 3, 2010.