Erin O’Brien

Book Review: Jefferson Morgenthaler; The River has Never Divided Us

I will begin this book review by saying that I am so fortunate to have found this book still available in the book pile in the Trail Blazer. The other book I had been struggling through contained muddled metaphors and lots and lots of extravagant vocabulary. The first thing I liked about this book was that it was exactly the opposite; it was about concrete historical facts and used plain language to tell the very interesting tale of the cities on the U.S. and Mexican side of the Rio Grande in an area called La Junta de los Rios. He begins with a modern border issue that had gained some attention for the area recently and then catalogues the history of the place beginning with its earliest contact by Europeans. All told, the adventures of the inhabitants are a thrill to read and Morgenthaler’s language doesn’t bog the story down with unnecessary descriptions or attempts to lead your opinions.

Much of the beginning of the story follows the lives of several of the town’s original inhabitants. This was an agricultural area on the frontier of Mexican and U.S. territory. It was frequently raided by Apache and Comanche tribes from the surrounding areas and never experienced much population growth. The area was affected primarily by those passing through; it served as a stop on the way to Ciudad Chihuahua from San Antonio but never saw a ton of traffic due to the more easily navigable route through El Paso. Ojinaga (the contemporary name for the town on the Mexican side) was the site of skirmishes and battles in the Mexican revolutions and counterrevolutions at the turn of the 20^th century, and many of the pueblos still bear the scars of bullets from this era. The wider community of La Junta includes towns such as El Polvo and Redford, not pictured on anything but the most regional maps.

The importance of this community has long been based on its strategic location, from the beginnings of agriculture at the delta of the Rio Conchos and the Rio Grande to the trade routes to the failed railroads and now highways that pass through it. The latter part of the book deals with more recent issues affecting the area, including drug smuggling. Pablo Acosta set up camp in Ojinaga and became one of the most successful drug traffickers dealing across the U.S.-Mexico border. His success eventually brought him down, but with it came increased surveillance and suspicion, especially from the U.S. side of the border.

It is this that ultimately resulted in the accidental shooting of a young goatherd from Redford, Texas. Junie Hernandez was out tending his goats. He had .22 caliber pistol on him that he used to scare of coyotes, but “mainly…for killing time while [his] goats forage[d]”. This boy was shot in the arm by a U.S. Marine who had been trailing him with several others, supposedly watching for drug traffickers. He bled to death.

Morgenthaler begins and ends his book with reflections of this event. In his conclusion, he uses the events in La Junta to illustrate his vision of a better border strategy, namely not to have a “checkpoint” border system in place. His solution is to address the problems at their points of origin and occurrence, as with drug smuggling, “rather than trying to dam them up somewhere in the middle”. The history of La Junta and the recent tragedy involving Junie Hernandez and one U.S. Marine serve as the perfect illustration for his points. Though he does not go into other important border issues such as migrant workers and population increases, Morgenthaler’s story is complete, succinct, and does convince the reader that at least on the grounds that the story of La Junta portrays, the border is a senseless thing.