Summary

“Why We Cross the Border in El Paso” begins with the author, Victoria Blanco, remembering the border crossings made from El Paso, Texas into Juarez, Mexico where her extended family lived. She wishes she could cross the Rio Grande on a raft to get to her aunt’s house quicker and avoid being searched at the border. Blanco witnesses many crossings of the Rio Grande in her life, even surges of people trying to escape poverty and political violence in their countries. She recounts her own family’s move to the United States in the 1950s and the dangers of crossing the unpredictable Rio Grande. She expresses that now, due to climate change and the irrigation canals extending from the river, the water is drained before it reaches the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mexican farmers, who now lack fertile land, must take...