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Boquillas del Carmen

Coahuilla, Mexico

Across the Rio Grande via human-powered john boat to a frontier-mining town gone tourist.

The present, an odd mix of the past and the future:

solar power with electrical poles throughout town, water to individual adobe homes and places of business, preschool building and program, a public healthcare clinic

horses, burros and chickens, lots of small dogs on the lose, little kids hawking their parents tourist wares, kids walking home from school

two neighborhoods: one on the high ground and one on the twenty-year Rio Grande flood plain, one with the government backed improvements and one without, one the future and one the perpetual past

people at work: ferrying visitors, guiding visitors, selling their handcrafted wares to visitors, building homes and places of business, serving visitors in the two restaurants and craft stores, teaching, tending the small burro and horse herd, clerking the government office, crafting, trucking commercial goods between the interior town and Boquillas

cars on blocks, some on the road, dirt roads, some in front of residences, some young people just driving around, pickup trucks more often than not

many towns people without rudimentary English, a minority with some facility in English, the two restaurant proprietors spoke and could understand some English, enough to do business and interact with the visiting public who seemed to have no Spanish, I speak no Spanish: just enough to ask for the ‘bano’

a hardscrabble existence yet cell phones abound especially among the young people, stylish dress among the teenagers too, teenagers are teenagers where ever

after 9/11 this border crossing, all the border crossings on the mexican-american border were closed, boquillas dried up with no visitors and no mining, many people and families left town, after the reopening of the border crossing in 2013 the town and townspeople returned

there was a spoken fear of the future and trump’s border wall, more of the same in the town’s people’s minds, no drug dealers, rapists or criminals here from what we could see

go to the border, visit the border towns on both sides before you champion a border wall or build that wall

where would you put a border wall??

walking to town, while the mounted riders herd the burro back towards the river

the imposing mountain wall of the sierra del carmen on the horizonhard at work with a smile, a pickup truck, and a saddle – a later day vaquerothe outskirts of the high ground neighborhood looking to the flood-plain part of townhawking mom’s wares

took this little guy’s picture after asking permission and promptly tipped him a buck which he folded up put in his pocket and retrieved it countless times: pride, pride in self !! nice quality hand-crafted warespreschoolneighborhood pride

color and colorfulboquillas with the chisos mountains on the horizon adobethe rio grande with the chisos mountains on the horizonthe soul of boquillas (even if mom demanded that her daughter be paid for having her picture taken)looking towards the flood plain part of town again the soul and future of boquillas (this time without the demand) unafraid of work

is there a wall in the future in this image?? the chihuahuan desert not far from the rio grande with the chisos mountains in the distance

where would you put a border wall?

Expanded Boquillas del Carmen Image Gallery Link