Disappearing Walls and Shared Horizons

I arrived at Pancho Villa State Park, in Columbus, NM after dark the other evening.  I had spent the previous nite enjoying the thunder rumble through the canyons in the Chiricauhuas, and so a flat, exposed campsite next to roads was hardly appealing.

One of the big questions I have is how to "see" or recognize state violence in the landscape.  On this trip I have been focused on documenting the US border wall to Mexico and historical struggles over the spaces and boundaries of freedom.  First, I'm grappling with questions of interpretation (if that's the word) - some "see" safety where I see harm - so it's a question of recognizing or not recognizing violence.  But this is only part of it because there are many who recognize, accept, and champion the deployment of state violence.  So then it's a question of how the visible and invisible harms of this violence can be recognized and understood in relation to the source of the harms, rather than placed on the people who've been harmed.  In turn, this is all too obviously about hegemony and violence.  And being concrete about these relations is what's important.  Ultimately, this is related to anti-violence, and how organizing against systemic violence is necessary for and a product of building movements of/for freedom and self-determination.

I arrived after dark at Pancho Villa State Park, in Columbus, NM just across from Puerto Palomas, Chihuahau.  The campground was exposed and made even more unpleasant by the lights dotting the southern horizon.  This horizon would be visible only with the illumination of the border wall.  The moon bridged the eery divide in the distance, making a shared reality for neighbors. 

Disappearing Border Wall
Columbus, NM-Puerto Palomas, Chihuahua

In the morning I wanted to document the sun rising to blanch the deeper blues of the sky.  But the wall disappeared before I could set up the tripod.  It was still there, of course, but no longer visible, and the horizon appeared to be united.  It's hard to capture how visceral watching the state horizon appear and disappear was.  Part of it's the violence of dividing the big sky, the possibility of sharing spaces.  Part of it's the fleetingness and strength of perception of state power.  Part of it speaks to the less marked practices and power relations that make and support these state infrastructures. 

Mexico viewed from Villa Hill, Columbus, NM

When the Pancho Villa State Park was founded in 1959, the governors of New Mexico and Chihuaha were on hand to mark this place as an international monument to friendly neighbors.  There is now, as then, heavy irony to this, but they also tried to make this claim a reality by planting a row of sycamore trees stretching between the two nations.  This line of sight could also create a shared horizon.