Depending on where you sit, the U.S.-Mexico border is: a) a dangerous frontier that allows drug traffickers and illegal immigrants to cross freely into the U.S. or b) a familiar frontier that is navigated as a regular part of everyday life. For people who live along the border in the twinned cities of Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Mexico, it's nearly always the latter. The sister cities are known collectively as Ambos Nogales, or "Both Nogales." Nogales, Ariz., is less than a tenth of the size of its Mexican counterpart: about 20,000 people compared with 250,000 on the Mexican side. In both directions, cross-border excursions are a normal thing. If you live on the Arizona side, you just take a short walk to the crossing, follow the small sign with the red arrow that says "TO MEXICO," pass through a turnstile, and there you are in another country. One of the first things you'll see is the border wall stretching between the two countries. In Nogales, it looms 18 to 30 feet tall. It's made
↧
