Border Odyssey: Travels along the U.S./Mexico Divide

by Charles D. Thompson Jr.

Overview

This blend of travelogue and reportage from the US-Mexico border is “an exploration of 2,000 miles of fraught, rugged and deeply contested territory” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
 
In a quest to capture a real-life, close-up view of the land where so many have been kicked, cussed, spit on, arrested, detained, trafficked, or killed—and the subject that has been debated for decades by politicians and commentators—Charles D. Thompson records his journey from Boca Chica to Tijuana, and his conversations with everyone from border officials to migrant workers to local residents. Along the journey, five centuries of cultural history (indigenous, French, Spanish, Mexican, African American, colonist, and US), wars, and legislation unfold.
 
Among the terrain traversed: walls and more walls, unexpected roadblocks, and patrol officers; a golf course (you could drive a ball across the border); a Civil War battlefield (you could camp there); the southernmost plantation in the US; a hand-drawn ferry, a road-runner tracked desert and a breathtaking national park; barbed wire, bridges, and a trucking-trade thoroughfare; ghosts with guns; obscured, unmarked, and unpaved roads; a Catholic priest and his dogs, artwork, icons, and political cartoons; a sheriff and a chain-smoking mayor; a Tex-Mex eatery empty of customers and a B&B shuttering its doors; murder-laden newspaper headlines at breakfast; the kindness of the border-crossing underground; and too many elderly, impoverished, ex-U.S. farmworkers, braceros, who lined up to have Thompson take their photograph.
 
“A firsthand look at how modern U.S. border policy has affected the people in the region, from migrant workers to indigenous people to border patrol agents to residents of economically stagnant towns just north of the boundary. The result is a travel memoir with a conscience, an extension of Thompson’s ongoing work to humanize the hotly debated region.” —The News & Observer

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292772007
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	02/24/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	329
File size:	24 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Farmer-turned-activist and Duke University professor Charles D. Thompson’s compelling books and films intertwine agriculture and immigration, culture and philosophy.

Table of Contents

1. Evidence of Things Not Seen

2. The Border Etched in Bones

3. Traveling the Valley of the Shadow

4. Two Kinds of Flight

5. Of Roads, Fences, and Neighbors

6. Boca Chica Sunset

7. The Ghosts of Palmito Ranch

8. El Ranchero

9. Border Guards

10. Brownsville Raids

11. Rio Grande Guardians

12. Progress?

13. World’s Most Honest Man

14. Cowboy Priests

15. The Hand-Drawn Ferry

16. Prohibition Bar

17. Border Walker

18. The Road to Eagle Pass

19. Border Ambassador

20. The Last Stay at Del Rio

21. Seminole Canyon

22. Braceros in Murder City

23. Fort Davis and the Buffalo Soldiers

24. National Park on the Line

25. Pancho Villa and the Pink Store

26. Smoke on the Apacheria

27. A Grandmother Mourns at the Wall

28. Fences and Neighbors

29. Ground Zero of the Border Crisis

30. Altar and Sacrifice

31. Phoenix Rising

32. Tohono Sacred Peak and Desert Deaths

33. Campesinos Sin Fronteras

34. The Wall of Shame and Entrepreneurship

35. Graves of Unknown Farmworkers

36. Desert View Tower and the X-Men

37. Walking Alone through Friendship Park

38. As If It Were Not There

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Louis G. Mendoza

Breathes life into contemporary debates on immigration that often flatten the human implications of national policy by letting us hear from those whose voices may not otherwise be heard, and so allowing us to better understand this complex contact zone that cannot be contained by a wall of any size.

Julia Alvarez

We need these stories that bring us together, the travel that makes us realize that the only borders that really exist between us are the ones that come of ignorance and fear.

Editorial Reviews

[Thompson] sought a firsthand look at how modern U.S. border policy has affected the people in the region, from migrant workers to indigenous people to border patrol agents to residents of economically stagnant towns just north of the boundary. The result is a travel memoir with a conscience, an extension of Thompson’s ongoing work to humanize the hotly debated region.

The News & Observer - Corbie Hill

Thompson uses his travels to share his passion for the welfare of hard-working, good people, and to persuade his readers that such people have been trapped and exploited by a flawed immigration system.

Winston-Salem Journal - D.G. Martin

Does Border Odyssey bring us any closer to dissolving entrenched divisions and ingrained attitudes about the border? In presenting the struggles and strife of this place and its people with honesty and hope, Thompson shows the possibility and potential of such a beautiful dream.

The Texas Observer - Yvette Benavides

"Does Border Odyssey bring us any closer to dissolving entrenched divisions and ingrained attitudes about the border? In presenting the struggles and strife of this place and its people with honesty and hope, Thompson shows the possibility and potential of such a beautiful dream."

The Texas Observer

"Thompson uses his travels to share his passion for the welfare of hard-working, good people, and to persuade his readers that such people have been trapped and exploited by a flawed immigration system.
"

Winston-Salem Journal

"[Thompson] sought a firsthand look at how modern U.S. border policy has affected the people in the region, from migrant workers to indigenous people to border patrol agents to residents of economically stagnant towns just north of the boundary. The result is a travel memoir with a conscience, an extension of Thompson’s ongoing work to humanize the hotly debated region."

The News & Observer

★ 2015-01-28
An exploration of 2,000 miles of fraught, rugged and deeply contested territory.Thompson (Documentary Studies and Cultural Anthropology/Duke Univ.; Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World, 2011, etc.), a former farmer, is a self-professed activist on United States-Mexico border issues. He has published scholarship on issues of immigration, agriculture and border politics and has brought groups of students to borderland regions for experiential learning, and this book represents a combination of reportage, travelogue, memoir and jeremiad. In 2010, Thompson and his wife undertook an ambitious trip in which they followed the path of the border from the Texas Gulf Coast to the Pacific Ocean, crossing nearly 2,000 miles through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. They tried their best not to simply follow the interstates and other major highways but to hew as closely to the border as possible throughout the trip. They explored little towns and larger communities on both sides of the border, communities that in many cases are dying due to the construction of the border wall, which has provided a concrete example of the politics of separation that have dominated conservative politics and largely won out in the current debates over immigration. Thompson chronicles his discussions with ordinary folks, activists, border officials and just about anyone who would answer his questions. Although the author tries to be fair, his sympathies for immigrants and understandable frustrations with the wall and what it represents ring clearly throughout. He writes engagingly and elucidates both major issues as well as the subtle losses that have taken place over the years. The narrative cries out for a map or series of maps, but Thompson's own photographs enhance his impassioned prose. A potent cri de coeur for a more compassionate, sane and humane border policy.

Kirkus Reviews