In a city like Tucson, just sixty miles north of Mexico, most families had deep binational ties. They switched easily between English and Spanish, speaking both with a lilting border accent. The two countries weren’t separated by an enforceable dividing line so much as linked by a revolving door, crossed unthinkingly and often, in both directions, for work, school, shopping, and family visits. Physically there was little separating the two countries or marking the border itself, beyond some bands of concertina wire that local authorities had fastened to wooden posts next to the port of entry
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