Historic division of ‘the two Laredos’ ends with border reopening

Laredo, Texas – For nearly 20 months, Lilia Brava had not seen her elderly mother, who lived a few miles away across the US-Mexico border, who was approved by US officials for non-essential travel at the start of COVID-19 in March 2020 was closed. global pandemic.

Brava, a non-resident cleaning worker in Laredo, Texas, would not be allowed to return if she went to Mexico to visit her family across the river. Even when her brother died of COVID-19 in Nuevo Laredo last year, she could not attend the funeral with her mother.

“Those were the most difficult times in my life,” Brava said Monday at the central plaza in downtown Laredo. “He needed me the most to not be able to see my mom at that moment.”

Beatriz Mercado, 73, hugged her 49-year-old daughter, Lilia Brava, at a taqueria near the US-Mexico border on Monday morning when the two reunited [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

When the border reopened on Monday, Brava’s mother, 73-year-old Beatriz Mercado, left her home in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and crossed a pedestrian bridge in Texas to meet her daughter. In Downton Laredo’s Central Square, they hugged for the first time in a year and a half. Across the square, dozens of people who had just crossed the nearby border bridge were waiting for family members they hadn’t seen for more than a year and a half.

There was much hope of a reopening on Monday, with Customs and Border Protection agents warning of an estimated six-hour wait time for crossings and Laredo’s strangling economy awaiting the return of hordes of Mexican shoppers, Who once made this place a success. But when dawn struck, only a handful of people were crossing the bridge, a sign that life in this bi-national community along both sides of the Rio Grande will not be immediately back as it used to be.

“I was surprised that there was no line—nothing,” Mercado said as he hugged his daughter in the plaza.

The reopening ended a historic disruption known as the “two Laredos” for this metro area, where about 450,000 people live on the Mexican side and 250,000 on the Texas side.

While the border remained open to US citizens during that time, it was closed across the river to nearly all Mexican citizens, and to the thousands of Mexican citizens who lived on the Texas side without a residency permit. Few essential workers – mostly related to the vast and thriving inland port of Laredo – were allowed to cross. The barrier tore families apart, cut thousands of people from their livelihoods and forced two sister cities, which, before the border, fell apart in 18 months.

Sister Rosemary Welsh, executive director of Mercy Ministries in Laredo, said, “Laredo and Nuevo Laredo are like a city flowing along a river, who have done humanitarian work here since 1993. It used to be Mexico until we got it. Didn’t steal it.”

The two sister cities were one until the US annexed the region in 1848, turning the Rio Grande into an international border. After that, the limit was barely enforced until the 1980s, said 75-year-old Ernesto Canch, who has worked in the city of Laredo since the age of 15.

For Kanche, the closure of the border was the biggest disaster the city had ever seen.

He survived through the devaluation of the Mexican peso in 1994 and the introduction of border security after September 11, 2001. They faced the outbreak of war in northern Mexico, which has cast a grim mood in this vibrant region since 2006.

“None of it affected us like that,” he said during his shift to a downtown clothing store. “It was terrible.”

A few city blocks from the Rio Grande, which divides the city, the city of Laredo has long been the central commercial district of the sister cities. People came here every day from all parts of Nuevo Laredo and northern Mexico to shop. The region was more oriented towards customers on the Mexican side than customers from the US.

“People with money don’t come here, they go north to big stores and malls,” said Jose Alvarado, manager of a T-shirt printing shop called Jericho in front of Laredo’s old city hall.

Jose Alvarado, manager of a T-shirt printing shop in the city of Laredo, said his business had barely survived the border closures [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

He said the sector had been in decline for a decade. Then, with abandoned buildings on nearly every city block, half of the stores were closed or closed by the extent of the pandemic. Even the expensive malls of North Laredo lost a major customer base—holiday shoppers from across Mexico who flocked in the hundreds every day to buy American clothing brands and electronic goods. Susie Torres, marketing director at CBL Properties, which owns Mall del Norte in northern Laredo, said shoppers in Mexico accounted for up to 40 percent of sales there.

According to data from Texas A&M International University’s Texas Center, the border closure saw a nearly 60 percent drop in northbound crossings on the area’s main pedestrian bridge, from about 1,834,000 in the first half of 2019 this year. 1,482,000 in the first half of the year. .

Non-commercial northbound vehicle crossings fell about 43 percent from about 2,133,000 to 1,209,000 during the same time frame.

Many buildings in the city of Laredo were toppled, closed or abandoned due to border closure [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

Thousands traveled daily or weekly from the less affluent South to work in America. The economies on both sides of the river are dependent on the daily flow of workers between the two Laredos, which represents low-income clients at no cost, said Israel Reyna, attorney for Texas Riogrande Legal Aid.

In Nuevo Laredo, many people working in the north have struggled to transplant their businesses.

“It’s been a really tough time,” said 70-year-old Joel Arroyo, who pushed a buggy selling homemade sweets around the central area of ​​the Mexican city. “Not just me, everyone was affected.”

Joel Arroyo lives in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and used to sell sweets in Laredo, Texas. [Dylan Baddour/Al Jazeera]

He came to Laredo every day to sell sweets in the summer and popsicles in the winter on the busy city streets. After that, he would take home at least $12 a day. Since closing, he has tried to sell on the Mexican side, but he rarely makes more than $5 a day.

He said others like him have started taco businesses from their home kitchens or have sold their personal possessions.

On Monday, public officials gathered for a news conference at the sister cities’ main pedestrian bridge to celebrate the reopening. US Representative Henry Kueller, a congressman from the Laredo region, said the US lost about $30 billion to Mexican consumers who spent in the US.

Nuevo Laredo Mayor Carmen Lilia Canturos acknowledged that the past 18 months were a difficult time for the community.

“I know better times are coming for the two Laredos,” he told the crowd of journalists and city leaders gathered near the bridge.