Perspective: The U.S. shut the border – We made our bi-national relationship work

By Lauren Villagran, Puente News Collaborative 

EL PASO, Texas -- I keep a candy in my fridge that I can't stand. 

It’s a chewy, chocolate-covered marshmallow-and-strawberry thing called a Bubu Lubu. Its shiny blue wrapper crinkles every time I shift bottles in the fridge door ― soy sauce, ketchup, clamato ― and I’m reminded that the person who loves this candy can’t come over to eat it. 

My partner Omar, who is Mexican and lives in Juárez, hasn’t been to my house in a year. 

At midnight on March 21, 2020, the U.S. government closed its land ports of entry to “non-essential” travel, effectively slamming the door on tens of thousands of Mexican nationals who had spent a lifetime legally crossing back and forth. 

The collective grief that we have all shared in this yearlong pandemic ― the death of loved ones, the loss of normalcy ― has been compounded in the Borderland by a border closure that has kept families apart. 

So many families in El Paso and Juárez and Las Cruces are a jumble of nationalities and residencies. We are accustomed to carrying passports in our purses, laser visas tucked inside wallets, birth certificates in plastic envelopes, always ready to cross the U.S.-Mexico border to visit family and friends, to go shopping, to go home. 

For so many of us, home is here and there. 

The border restrictions wiped away half of our bi-national life, like a school teacher erasing part of a map on a chalkboard. Mental health professionals say the pain of that loss, and the powerlessness to change it, has a name. 

“What we are feeling is grief,” Dr. Fabrizzio Delgado, a psychiatrist with the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, told me. There are five stages of grief, he said: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. 

“It is usually described as a circle,” he told me, “but sometimes you have denial and bargaining and the same time, or depression and anger. It’s not always a cycle.” 

Criss-crossing the border 

The news came in a Reuters headline on March 19, 2020: “U.S. expected to announce restrictions on travel across Mexico border — sources.” 

Journalist that I am, I texted Omar the two-paragraph story, told him Reuters was trustworthy and added a panicked venganse ya, advising (no, begging) him to come with his daughter as soon as possible to have at least one last weekend together. 

Grief set in faster than either of us recognized or understood at the time. 

Estamos comiendo calmada. 

He typed fast, without punctuation. We’re eating, he said. Stay calm. 

As we chatted, he briefly contemplated not crossing at all, in denial that anything would change. 

But he came for dinner that evening, after all, and we tried to act normal. Nothing was official, we reasoned. It would all work out, wouldn’t it? Even if the news was true, the restrictions couldn’t last long. We had survived a year of two- and three- and four-hour bridge lines, hadn't we?  

The border had never closed before, not in modern memory. Not even after 9/11. 

Born in Juárez, Omar had been crossing to El Paso since he was kid. He had fond memories of watching pay-per-view boxing matches with his late father at a relative's house on the Westside, of shopping at Cielo Vista or Sunland Park mall with his mother or skateboarding to McDonald's for a burger and fries as a teenager. He saw the Cowboys play in Dallas and the Chicago Bulls in Phoenix. There were road trips to Disney and to see family in Oklahoma. 

We had made memories in El Paso, too. On one of our first dates we met at The Tap, a dive bar Downtown where the nachos and cheap beer are legendary. 

As we got to know each other, we reveled in criss-crossing the border, of nights out at our neighborhood bar in Juárez and long hikes in the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, of grilling carne asada at the home of his abuelita in Juárez or making pasta at my house. 

I have a life and a job in El Paso, my daughter and her school, friends I have known for 20 years and a home for my reporting at the El Paso Times. 

He has a life and a job in Juárez, two children whom he co-parents and an extended family that is close-knit and so obsessed with baseball that they have their own team in a city league. 

After dinner, Omar went home to Juárez as he would any weeknight, his alarm set to start a workday at 5:30 a.m. at a maquila assembly factory where he manages a cafeteria that feeds some 2,000 people per shift. He has worked for the same company for 18 years, climbing his way up from dishwasher to chef. 

The next day, at 2:20 p.m., while we were both still at work, the acting chief of the Department of Homeland Security tweeted an official statement that looked like a party invitation, with cute U.S. and Mexican flags as a background. 

The ports of entry would close to non-essential travel in fewer than 10 hours. 

The last normal day 

The weekend before, Omar and I had celebrated our one-year anniversary on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Downtown El Paso, drinking a beer (him) and a mezcal cocktail (me) and musing how few people were outside on such a gorgeous day. 

Anyone who has ever dated across cultures ― or borders ― will understand how that first year together came with enormous challenges as we wrestled to understand and learn from one another. We were celebrating what felt like an unlikely love that had taken us both by surprise. 

We took a sweet photo of ourselves reflected in a mirror, him kissing my cheek. 

It would be the last normal day we would have together in El Paso. 

That Monday, March 16, the El Paso Times instructed staff to work from home. Then came the border closure on March 21. Chihuahua state and El Paso County issued stay-at-home orders on March 23 and 24, respectively. By the end of the month, his maquila would shut down operations indefinitely. 

Like everyone else in separate households at the time, our relationship was reduced to video calls and text messages. 

We bucked up. We had hope that this, too, would pass. 

About three weeks into the quarantine, I sent him a photo of a beer I poured michelada style with salt and spicy tajin around the rim ― the way we like it ― with a note “To your health, my love.” He snapped a photo of chicharron en salsa verde bubbling on his stove, with the note “wacha” ― a Borderland way of saying “watch this.” 

But as the weeks wore on, grief scratched at our resolve like a dog at a closed door. 

Once I realized I could cross the border as a U.S. citizen and sanctioned essential worker ― what immense privilege ― I began reporting half the week from Juárez. It was a way to combine households and spend time together, but my freedom of movement must have darkened in the terrible limits on his own. 

The grief cycle set in. 

I skipped straight from denial to bargaining: Look at the bright side! I’ll learn my way around Juárez! Omar went directly from denial to anger. It came in waves over things that we never would have fought over before, then crashed, for both of us, into depression ― a pattern that is only visible to us now that we have distance from it. 

“It’s like when someone dies: There is nothing you can do about it,” El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, who previously directed mental health services in the Borderland, told me one day. “The U.S. government is saying the border is closed. There can be good reasons or bad reasons. That is irrelevant. Whoever is suffering the consequences is powerless in this situation.” 

My partner was powerless to cross. I was powerless to do anything about it. 

Delgado, the psychiatrist, explained more: “When the border was closed for a week, there was a hope that next week it was going to be reopened. 

"Now, the Covid-19 cases go up or the cases go down. The president changes. The border is still closed. There is more vaccine. Still the border is closed. What happens then is ‘learned helplessness.’ It’s a psychological response.” 

If we've learned anything in the past year, it's just how important our closest relationships are to our mental and emotional health — and how a video call is no substitute for a warm embrace, for being there for one other in tangible ways. 

My situation isn't unique. 

I know people whose marriages and partnerships span the border; or whose work life is on one side and whose family life is on the other; whose aging parents are on the south side and whose growing children are on the north. The combinations may be diverse, but for those whose lives bridge the line, the grief and frustration are nearly universal. 

Texas, Chihuahua and many other U.S. and Mexican states have fully reopened for business. Every day, nearly 2 million people in the U.S. are getting a shot in the arm. Around the country, people finally have hope they'll soon have their lives back. 

But a year into the border restrictions, the White House hasn't offered a guidepost to let us know, here on the border, when the restrictions might be lifted and we'll get our binational lives back.  

My partner and I have found our rhythm, happiness even. I have learned my way around Juárez, and I think he is proud of me for that. We play softball together on a co-ed team once a week in his hometown and take our kids to the park on weekends.  

But neither of us has transitioned to real acceptance. 

We may accept that things are the way they are now ― ni modo, nothing we can do about it ― but not that they will stay this way. How could we? 

Acceptance would mean giving up hope. 

So I keep the Bubu Lubu in my fridge, waiting for him. 

Lauren Villagran can be reached at lvillagran@elpasotimes.com.