YESTERDAY... TIJUANA ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE BORDER FENCE; TODAY... JUST TWENTY MILES TO THE NORTH... BALBOA PARK IN SAN DIEGO.

The border fence between South San Diego county and Baja California delineates much more than a political and geographic separation of two countries. The wall that separates San Ysidro and Tijuana is as offensive to anyone who values equity and justice in the global community of nations as the old Berlin Wall was on that day when President Ronald Reagan chided Michail Gorbachev with his famous plea for the Russian president to “tear down this wall.” While it would hardly be reasonable to expect the poorer south side and the affluent north side of the border to be congruent, the stark contrast between life in the United States and life in Mexican along the border is jarring.
Of course, the situation between the U.S. and Mexico is different from the separation of Western Europe from Eastern Europe; but there are similarities that should not be ignored. On one side of the hated Berlin Wall restrained citizens lived in constant fear and poverty, and on the other side people enjoyed comfort and freedom. A difference between the two has something to do with who was inflicting the pain. The horrible conditions on Soviet side of the Berlin wall were caused by political forces in the Eastern Bloc. Nobody blamed Western European nations for the suffering in the East. In our hemisphere there is little doubt that the pervasive terror inflicted on people living on the Mexican side of the border fence is the direct result of illicit, unlawful drug and gun trade in the United States. There is some irony in the fact that Ronald Reagan is venerated by the very same people who insist on building higher and securing the wall between Mexico and the United States. The California Assembly will hear a proposal this week to create an official Ronald Reagan Day in the state calendar. The state Senate has already unanimously passed a bill designating the 6th of February as Ronald Reagan Day. If the bill passes in the Assembly, school teachers in California will be required to commemorate former Governor and President Reagan’s life on that day every year.