During spring break, I made the nonchalant decision to visit my partner’s hometown: Laredo, Texas.
“Laredo? Where’s that?”
Laredo is a city of about 261,000 people on the U.S.–Mexico border. In fact, the border splits the city in two, with the U.S. half known as Laredo, and the Mexico half known as Nuevo Laredo. Laredo’s area code is 956, though some argue that the city is too far up north to be considered a part of the Rio Grande Valley.
Choosing peace, my partner and I flew from Houston to Laredo, avoiding a nearly five-hour drive. Our plane’s cabin was smaller than a school bus, and upon landing, the pilot didn’t really know what to say after the usual welcome. “There’s, uh … good Mexican food here.”
This is where my unusual taste in traveling comes in — I hate touristy places. Like, completely loathe them. The more touristy, the worse. I can’t shake that feeling of “this isn’t actually real,” that “people don’t live like this, you’re being sold something,” and “there’s some cultural erasure something-something going on.” So, when my partner’s mom picked us up from the airport, I was refreshingly enchanted.
Palm trees stood intertwined with powerlines amidst grass that stayed burnt year-round. Every store was its own building, free from sad, beige zoning laws. The architecture looked Mexican, but not quite, and American, but not quite. The compelling liminality of Laredo made the border city feel like its own third place — a stable, easily discernible point within a transition. Ice in beverages seemed non-negotiable under the dry, scorching heat. It was an indulgent surprise as someone from a culture that’s partial to warm drinks.
Then came the fun part: discount beauty products!
On day two—or three, I don’t know — they all started to blend together. We visited the downtown area of Laredo — a historic town square right by one of the bridges you could drive across to Mexico. The deals were unbelievable. A detangling brush for $3.29? A 10-pack of foam hair rollers for $1.40? I just bought the best plumping gloss of my life for 99 cents— pH-changing too! Discounted Tirtir and Beauty of Joseon, 50 cent matching earring-bracelet packs, Yardley Lavender Hand Cream at a third of its lowest online listings—how are these brick-and-mortar stores selling these goods at such low prices?
Migration.
Being right on the border, these discount stores sell in both retail and wholesale to visiting Mexican buyers. Since the Mexican peso is weaker than the dollar, they mark down their goods so Mexican buyers can resell them in Mexico at a profit. Mexican buyers get access to American goods, and American buyers can enjoy deals that even make Miss A look overpriced. (Don’t worry Miss A, I still love you. Just not when I’m in Laredo.)
But no one would be able to enjoy any of this — the liminality, the fusion, the unbeatable deals — without the thinness of the border. Right across that bridge by the town square, you could see a building with “MEXICO” in big green, white, and red letters without squinting. At the Father Charles M. McNaboe Park, the Rio Grande is right there, skinny and unfenced, with the Mexican side plainly in view across. Current media rhetoric often positions the U.S. and Mexico as easily divisible. That, anyone who migrates or immigrates through the Southern border is hailing from such a rhetorically distant land; it’s a classic “us v.s. them.”
However, you don’t even have to know the rich, pre-Texas revolution history of Laredo to see that in communities bound by love, political borders become meaningless if they can be crossed. As my partner heard from many folks back home, “apparently, at one point [when regulations weren’t as strict], people would cross the border just to party…[there was] no hassle, no restrictions — just as easy as crossing a bridge.”
Before visiting Laredo, I only knew the statement, “borders are manmade”, on an intellectual basis, like it was something you could still argue (if you were pugnacious enough). Now, though, it’s like a total “duh” statement. Of course borders are manmade. If Mexico was able to get the border up to the Nueces River, then the Rio Grande wouldn’t seem so sacred anymore, and all our Texas-shaped waffles would just look like sloppily-shaped waffles.
Nonetheless, borders remain as the most divisive lines in the sand. They rip communities apart, create new ones, and upon becoming more restrictive, rip them apart again. You can “strengthen” a border all you want, but what of the strength of its communities? What of the people who actually call that place home — the true patriots?
There’s nothing quite like racism and xenophobia when it comes to dehumanization on a political scale. Especially now, we must insist, over and over again, that there is no “them”, only “us.” That someone will only seem “weird” if you’re yet to understand them. That you don’t need conformity for unity—you just need love. We are all human.
And we all love a good deal.
(P.S. if anyone is in Laredo again, could you get me another roll-on dupe of Delina from the GMD store pretty please? I dropped mine at the Madam Mam’s on 26th and it shattered into a million pieces; my heart shattered into a billion. It was only $2. I will Venmo you $5.)