The shape of the neighborhood

I’m Mexican. That perspective shapes the way I see the United States.

Under any circumstance – from the deepest analytical approach to the most superficial one – the United States is that neighbor who permanently lives across the fence. You hear their music through the wall and fall in love with blues, jazz and rock. We coexist for so long that we end up creating rhythms together: salsa, urban music, reggaeton, norteña.

We fuse language. Truck becomes troca. OK becomes okei. Gringos and Mexicanos build businesses together, families together, entire communities together.

We transform food, too. Corn tastes different in New Orleans than it does in California, yet we all recognize the taste is as good.

We share Indigenous roots, ancestral customs, and cultural collisions. The roots that sustain our nations also connect us.

Beyond art, gastronomy and history, we have learned from one another. From the United States came the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., the image of a nation trying to reunite after 9/11, the legacy of Lincoln, Jefferson and Kennedy, the First Amendment, and the ground strong enough to host the United Nations, the Organization of American States and other institutions that shape the modern world.

The United States is, without question, the country that most strongly influences global development. But from my Mexico, it is also the brother I walk beside.

When violence intensified in Mexico, my family found refuge in the United States. During World War II, we stood alongside American troops. When the pandemic hit the United States, people from different cities crossed into Mexico searching for calm and relief.

That is the shape of the neighborhood: imperfect, noisy, unequal, deeply intertwined – and impossible to explain without both sides of the fence.