Hugh Fitzsimmons is a rancher in Dimmit County, Texas, part of an area once known as the Wild Horse Desert. He offers his perspective on the current situation on the U.S.-Mexico border. Unlike most people, Mr. Fitzsimmons has seen what’s going on firsthand. He describes how fear and compassion can go hand-in-hand.
Not pictured: Mexico, but it’s close by.
One incident sparked this fear, which has since wormed its way into my psyche. In the spring of 2005, three members of a gang accosted me while attempting to break into my home. I stopped them, but I feared for my life.
Then he moves on to the merely notable:
Not every encounter has been so unnerving. Early one morning at daybreak, as I was walking across the courtyard to the cookhouse, the door to the kitchen flew open and a tall, well-dressed young man vaulted off the front porch. As he leapt over the fence, he turned his head and in perfect English shouted, “Excuse me, sir!” as he disappeared into the brush with some stolen food. There’s nothing like a polite thief to give you some perspective on the plight of those less fortunate.
Another encounter, however, shows the importance of compassion throughout all of this.
[I]t was another incident last year that shook my views completely. It was a cold and rainy January night — pitch dark, no moon and close to midnight. We were all in bed, the doors were locked and the lights were turned out. We heard a knock at the door.
The one hard-and-fast rule in the brush country is that you never come unannounced to someone’s home after dark, because you risk being shot.
I hoped to see my foreman, Freddy, when I parted the blinds. What I saw instead was a middle-aged man dressed in dark clothing, sopping wet from the rain and favoring one leg. I opened the door, leveled my shotgun at him and asked him in Spanish what he wanted. He told me he wanted water, food and some pliers so he could pull the tasajillo thorns from his swollen knee. I looked in his eyes and then lowered my shotgun. When I did, he fell to the ground and started sobbing uncontrollably. For it was at that moment that he realized that I was not going to kill him.
After a bowl of chili and many glasses of water, I drove him to the front gate and showed him the road to Carrizo.
Perhaps it is unfair that Mr. Fitzsimmons must bear such a disproportionate share of this burden, or perhaps it’s just the reality of living so close to an international border in a county with a total population of less than 10,000, where help is likely to be far away. I really couldn’t say which it is. All I can say is that I am grateful for people like Mr. Fitzsimmons, who help us understand a part of the country that is so often mired in politics and fear. Thousands of people like Mr. Fitzsimmons—or not like him at all—are trying to tell us about the reality of the situation, if only we would listen.
