Border’s Friendship Park between California and México celebrates 50 years

Friendship Park, right where California meets México and the Pacific, turned 50 but five decades after its inauguration, the park, which was intended to unite the cities of San Diego and Tijuana, has been fenced off from the public by three parallel walls.

On the 50th anniversary of the park that was inaugurated by former First Lady Patricia Nixon in August 1971, various organizations on both sides of the border held a week of acts and events, many of them held in other parts of the iconic place due to restrictions.

A small meeting was held last Sunday in the park, but the U.S. Border Patrol, in charge of the surveillance of the place, only allowed participants from the U.S. side to reach the park located 1,500 feet from the border, behind two parallel walls.

In this sense, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria urged that his city council and that of Tijuana (Mexico) together propose the reopening of the park.

“United we are better,” Gloria stressed.

For his part, Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Defina recalled the time when, to cross the border from one side to the other, he once only needed to jump a wire.

Another commemoration event was held at Chicano Park in the heavily Laitno neighborhood of Logan in San Diego, where activists and officials gathered to remember the intention of Friendship Park.

In this commemoration, a special mention was made to immigrants who served with the U.S. Armed Forces and were deported.

San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Nathan Fletcher said he was outraged that they deported “comrades in arms who have always been willing to give their lives for the United States because it is their country, and to whom they not only offered, rather, they deserve U.S. citizenship. “

The deported veterans movement has advocated for the reopening of this area. For decades Friendship Park was the meeting place for families who could not cross the border, there the new baby was presented on either side of the family, university degrees, birthdays were celebrated, and weddings were held.

People came from as far away as Chile and Argentina to see relatives who lived in Seattle, Los Angeles or New York.

For the past 10 years it was also the site where communities on both sides of the border held a cross-border Christian church service of the Border Church, led by Pastors John Fanestil and Guillermo Navarrete, simultaneously.

But the Border Patrol has had the park’s access from the U.S. side closed for more than a year, first for security reasons and then as part of infection prevention measures during the pandemic.

Esta historia fue publicada originalmente el 24 de agosto de 2021, 5:16 p. m..