Down Mexico way
Harry Eyres
BORDER LIFE by Simon Courtauld Elliott & Thompson, £12.99, pp. 223, ISBN 1904027083 Crossing a footbridge from El Paso, Texas to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Simon Courtauld is stopped by a US customs officer who asks, 'You from England? What the hell do you think you're doing in a place like this?' This is an unavoidable question for every travel writer, or any traveller, and it can be mulled over in a variety of modes, from the genially insouciant to the existentially anguished (see Rimbaud or Bruce Chatwin). Courtauld inclines more to the former. In a self-deprecating preface he disclaims any long-standing relationship with Mexico; his intention is to use his journey along the Mexico-US frontier as a way of exploring the history of a unique borderland and investigating the contemporary issues of illegal immigration and drugs.
It may be unfair to invoke the immortal William Boot, but at first one suspects that the ex-editor of the Field, who might be happiest out with a 12-bore or fly-fishing in some well-stocked stream, has pitched up in unsuitable territory. The landscape at the eastern end of the border where Courtauld starts his westward journey, though well described, seems peculiarly devoid of dramatic possibility. There is a whiff of anti-climax before the journey has really begun.
The Rio Grande, for a start, is not grand at all, but, even very close to its mouth, a mere 50 yards across — a feeble trickle you could clear with a sand-wedge. The bemused traveller meets a US border patrol and finds the guards have a pretty relaxed attitude towards illegal immigration — 'we normally allow them ... 15 hits [arrests] before taking them to court'. He goes to a maquiladora (where goods destined for the US are assembled by poorly paid Mexican workers) and finds that working conditions are perfectly tolerable, though the thought does cross his mind that there may exist less salubrious maquiladoras not on the visiting-list for journalists. He spends ten minutes watching a Union Pacific train crossing a bridge.
Of course the initially bewildered Boot turned out to be a rather effective foreign correspondent, cannily scooping his colleagues when they were sent off on a wild goose chase by that father of spin, Doctor Benito. Courtauld's relaxed and unegotistical approach becomes more engaging as the book progresses, and both the landscape and the social drama of the border gain in intensity. He is shocked and concerned at the evidence of human misery be uncovers — the sheer numbers of the immigrants who die every year attempting to cross the parching deserts, or the seemingly endless series of murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez, to which the law agencies turn a blind eye.
As with any piece of travel writing, the final test concerns the writer's relation to his material. Courtauld's relationship with Mexico seems somewhat tentative. He clearly has a genuine liking for the country to the south of the Rio Grande, its culture, people and especially history, whose more colourful episodes are evoked at consider
able length, but seems (paradoxically) a little too ready to believe the old myth that Mexico is inferior to the US. The deep cultural differences between Mexico and the US explored by Octavio Paz in The Labyrinth of Solitude — Mexico's embracing of fiestas, masks and death — come to light less than the obvious economic inequalities. And surprisingly for a writer devoted to country matters, Courtauld hardly conveys the sense that Mexico, one of the world's most biologically rich countries, is currently undergoing a tragic ecological despoliation. One is left with the impression that Simon Courtauld finds the past history of the Mexico-US border much more interesting and vivid than its rather tawdry present.
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