Los Algodones MX (#0934)

Back on the U.S. side of the border. If you look at a large version of the picture, you can see dental and optical stores facing the fence from the Mexican side.

In this time of strong rhetoric about borders and immigrants, going to visit Los Algodones provided a valuable reminder about borders. The border here doesn’t have nearly the traffic of many other border points, but still there are probably 500 parking spaces on the American side (see the satellite view). I saw people in the parking lot and at the crossing who clearly had just run over for some quick shopping – I was in Mexico for less than an hour myself. It’s thus easy to see how even this small crossing had 800,000+ pedestrians and close to 400,000 vehicles processed in 2011 (see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrade_Port_of_Entry).

Considering the volume of traffic in this remote part of the state, and the extent the economy of the towns are connected to cross-border traffic, the rhetoric of tighter borders quickly becomes either: a) laughably unrealistic, or b) a prescription for economic and cultural disaster.