Un mur contre les migrants

31 Mars 2016 , Rédigé par Laurence B Publié dans #Politique

A wall apart: divided families meet at a single, tiny spot on the US-Mexico border

In an election darkened by Cruz and Trump’s divisive rhetoric, the scene at a brief stretch of border fence known as Friendship Park paints an urgent picture

A wall apart = un mur de séparation
Single = unique
Tiny = minuscule
A border = une frontière
To darken = assombrir, obscurcir
A stretch of border fence = une portion de clôture

There are 1,954 miles of border separating the US and Mexico but only one tiny stretch, measuring no more than 15 meters wide, where families are sanctioned to touch fingertips through a steel-mesh fence. This spot, where the Pacific ocean joins the sandy shoreline, and where San Diego becomes Tijuana, is where US Customs and Border Protection allows families torn apart by an unforgiving immigration system their own, fleeting connection. It is a wafer-thin and slowly shrinking no man’s land, where border agents will look the other way as Mexican-American families with mixed legal status convene in the baking sun.
Wide = de large
Sanctioned = toléré, autorisé
Fingertips = du bout des doigts
Steelmesh = du grillage en acier
The sandy shoreline = le littoral de sable
To allow = permettre
Torn apart = déchiré
Fleeting = bref, fugitif
Wafer-thin = « fin comme du papier à cigarette »
To shrink = rétrécir
To look the other way = regarder ailleurs
To convene = se réunir

In an election year which has been dominated by hardline anti-immigration and anti-Mexican rhetoric, the encounters along this tiny segment of border have been given a new sense of urgency. The Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and his main challenger Ted Cruz are both campaigning on the promise of turning the reinforced fence that separates the US from Mexico into a wall. Any such move would have very practical repercussions for people like Jonathan Magdaleno, a 25-year-old who was on the US side of the fence one recent Saturday, his palms against the warm metal grill.
Hardline = intransigeant, radical
The frontrunner = le favori, la tête de liste
Main = principal
To turn something into = transformer quelque chose en
His palms = ses paumes

On the other side, squinting through the fence, latticed shadows across their faces, were his boyfriend, mother and two sisters. Magdaleno was brought to the US aged just 13, walking for four days and five nights across the Arizona desert with his father and two younger brothers. All his family have since returned to Mexico, leaving him alone in San Diego, where he is studying to be a nurse. Magdaleno’s family recently moved from Mexico City to Tijuana to be closer to him, in part after discovering there was a segment of the border where they could unite each week.
To squint = plisser les yeux
Latticed shadows = des ombres aux formes d’un treillage/ treillis
A nurse = un infirmier, une infirmière
To move to = déménager

He and his family all shook their heads in disapproval at the mention of the name of the Republican frontrunner. “A solid wall? I don’t think he knows the damage that would cause,” Magdaleno said. Dozens of families like this congregate weekly at this section of fence, known as Friendship Park. There are many more who come from further afield, for whom a visit to the fence is a special, even once-in-a-lifetime occasion. They come to be with relatives they have sometimes not seen in the flesh for years, sometimes decades.
To shake – I shook – shaken = secouer
To congregate = se réunir
Far afield = loin
A once-in-a-lifetime occasion = une occasion unique
Relatives = de la famille
To see someone in the flesh = voir en chair et en os
A decade = une décennie

Terminally ill or very old people have been known to be brought in wheelchairs for a chance to say goodbye to loved ones on the other side. Every weekend there are families introducing children to their relatives for the first time. María Cruz, 39, was wrapped in a blanket, wiping tears and weeping at what she called the “miracle”. Pressed against the fence on the other side were María’s mother, who she had not seen in 13 years, and an assortment of young nephews and nieces, some of whom she had never met before.
A wheelchair = un fauteuil roulant
To wrap in a blanket = envelopper dans une couverture
To wipe tears = essuyer des larmes
To weep = pleurer
Nephews and nieces = des neveux et nièces

Cruz, who lives in Sacramento, where she cleans offices, had driven 10 hours with her 20-year-old daughter Fatima. The Mexican side of the family had traveled all the way from La Barca, in the southern province of Jalisco. Cruz said the experience was “amargo y dulce” (bittersweet), a term several people used to describe a place that rewards visitors with rare encounters but reminds them of an unbridgeable divide. It can be especially perplexing for children. “Why can’t we pass?” one of María’s young nephews said when she was at the fence. “Why can’t we hug?” “We can’t,” María replied through sobs. “Because they are very strict.”
To clean offices = nettoyer / faire le ménage dans des bureaux
Bittersweet = amer et doux
To reward = récompenser
To remind = se souvenir
To hug = serrer dans ses bras
A sob = un sanglot

Experts on border security are divided over whether walls make the best barriers. Concrete is no less penetrable than highly-fortified steel. The 650-mile stretch of the US-Mexico border not already made impassible by mountains and rivers is one of the most surveilled places on earth. Motion sensors, radars, drones, closed-circuit cameras and an army of border agents have waged a largely successful war on unlawful border crossing. With their proposed wall, Trump and Cruz are calling for an enormous infrastructure project at a point in US history when unauthorized border crossings from Mexico appear to be at a historic low.
Concrete = le béton
On earth = sur terre
Motion sensors = des détecteurs de mouvement
Unlawful = illégal
A historic low = une baisse historique

It would do nothing to resolve the problem of visa overstayers, who comprise as many as half the undocumented migrants in the US, and would make no difference to the drug smugglers who build cross-border tunnels such as the one discovered in the California desert last week. Trump’s wall – which he has said would be between 30 and 50 feet tall, and which he claims Mexico will pay for – would however be a potent symbol, transforming the border into one that more closely resembles the old Berlin Wall, or the concrete that separates Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank.
An overstayer = une personne ayant dépassé l’autorisation du visa
Undocumented = sans papiers
Drug smugglers = des trafiquants de drogue
Cross-border tunnels = des tunnels pour traverser la frontière
To claim = prétendre
Potent = puissant, fort

A hardening divide

If that happens, it would mark the natural culmination of a decades-long process that has seen the border incrementally fortified. Over the years those changes have transformed Friendship Park, which was inaugurated as a California state park by then first lady Pat Nixon. In those days the border was marked by barbed wire, but even that was too much for Nixon. When she visited the park in 1971 she ordered the wire cut so she could cross into Mexico to meet a large crowd of locals.
Incrementally = croissant, pas à pas
Barbed wire = du fil barbelé
The wire = le fil de fer
A crowd = une foule

“I hope there won’t be a fence here too much longer,” she said. The fence has grown and hardened ever since, reflecting the toughening of immigration policies in Washington. The barbed wire was upgraded to a ragged chain link fence in 1979, under President Jimmy Carter. That much-maligned structure, which rusted and bent, survived Ronald Reagan’s administration, when an amnesty was granted to millions of undocumented Mexicans, but was upgraded around 1994.
To harden = durcir
The toughening = le durcissement, la radicalisation
To upgrade = la mise à jour/ à niveau
A ragged chain link fence = une chaine irrégulière en guise de barrière
To rust = rouiller
To bend- I bent - bent = se tordre

The new version was a 10ft wall made of hard-wire mesh. The holes were large enough to pass through food, and down on the beach, where the gaps between separated steel girders were even wider still, couples could kiss and small children could slip through for a quick embrace with relatives. Another decade passed and extended families gathered on the sand, as they had done for generations, sharing picnics and looking out to the ocean. But that changed in the post-9/11 era, when the George W Bush administration ushered in the major reinforcement to the border that exists today, and which enabled the federal government to forcefully reclaim Friendship Park from California.
A hole = un trou
Steel girders = les poutres métalliques
Wider = plus large
To slip = glisser
To gather = se rassembler
To share = partager
To usher = inaugurer, conduire
To enable = permettre, rendre possible
To reclaim = reprendre possession, récupérer

The park was declared a construction zone in 2008, and a year later families arrived to discover the two fortified steel fences, some 90 feet apart(27 mètres entre les deux), in what looked like a quasi-militarized zone. It was not until four years ago that border patrol, under intense pressure from local churches and humanitarian groups, finally allowed families past the first fence to the second, where they could once again meet with relatives. The park is open only between 10am and 2pm on Saturdays and Sundays, and most visitors only know about the openings through word of mouth.
To allow = permettre
Through word of mouth = par bouche à oreille

It is a safe space, but not one the border patrol encourages people to visit. The only reference to Friendship Park on the border patrol’s website warns of people smuggling, drug trafficking and the trade in false documents. “Though it has long become a gathering spot for families separated by the border, all activity is not considered innocent,” it states. The border guards who monitor the park are specially trained in community liaison techniques, and are mostly courteous to visitors, but still very much view themselves as law enforcement. “To us, this is a wall,” said border patrol agent Payam Tanoami, who was recently on duty at the park. “It is an obstacle to get over.”
Law enforcement = la police
On duty = en service

Local community groups say there is an unofficial understanding with the border patrol, who agree not to questions park visitors about their immigrations status when they are inside the park. (The border patrol denies any such agreement exists, and its officers have been known to pester people outside the park gates.) Despite the restrictive access, locals on both sides have made Friendship Park a focal point for cross-border cultural exchanges. Across the fence on weekends, in addition to the family meetings, there are religious ceremonies, yoga lessons, language classes, pro-bono legal clinics, art workshops, solidarity protests and even music concerts.
To deny = démentir
An agreement = un accord
To pester = harceler, embêter
Despite = malgré
Pro-bono = gratuit, bénévole
A workshop = un atelier

Remarkably one local activist, Enrique Morones, persuaded border officials to agree to lift a steel girder that locks a solitary gate in the fence for a ceremony that allows children separated from their mothers to briefly embrace. The gate opened in this way in 2013 and 2015, for two-minute reunions between pre-screened mothers and children, to mark Children’s Day, a Mexican holiday celebrated in April. The gate is scheduled to open again for a few minutes this April. Lourdes Barraza, 43, who lives in Tijuana, was one of the handful of mothers afforded the chance last year to embrace her two boys, Giovani, 13, and Alexis, 11, who live in Fresno.
To lift = lever
A girder = une poutre métallique
To lock = fermer
A gate = une porte
To schedule = programmer
A handful of = une poignée de
To afford = se permettre, avoir les moyens de

When the gate opened her boys rushed forward, unaware they had to wait in line behind other families. She recalled how difficult it was to have to shoo them away, to tell them to wait their turn. “The border patrol said if we didn’t obey the rules they would close the gate,” she said. Barraza, originally from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, crossed the border – sharing the trunk of a car with other stowaways – in 1996, in the hope of giving a better life to the children she hopes she would one day have.
To rush = se précipiter
Unaware = pas conscient
To wait in line = faire la queue
To shoo someone away = chasser quelqu’un, faire partir
To obey the rules = obéir aux règles/ lois
The trunk = le coffre
A stowaway = un passager clandestin

She survived by picking grapes in the Central Valley of California until, in 2013, she was deported along with her infant daughter, leaving her two sons with an estranged partner. Barraza was sitting on a bench on the Mexican side of the fence when she told that story, just a few yards from the gate in the fence. “It was something wonderful, lovely,” she said, replaying the memory. “But also very sad.” The Tijuana side of Friendship Park is much more befitting of its name than the US side, which feels like a highly-secure prison.
To pick the grapes = faire les vendanges
An infant = un nourisson
Estranged = dont on est séparé

The Mexican side is open to anyone, anytime, and the rusting girders have been transformed into a colorful mural, adorned with artwork and graffiti that testifies to solidarity, empathy and friendship with the country to the north. The 38-year-old was deported two years ago, after spending his entire life in the US and serving in the US Navy. During the weekend hours when the US border patrol allows access, the Mexican side becomes a carnival of activity, with mariachi bands, coconut stands and tamales stalls. It all felt like a foreign land to the man conducting a meeting through the mesh fence on a recent Sunday. In his US navy T-shirt, wraparound sunglasses and backpack, Alex Murillo looked like a tourist. “My ties to Mexico are slim to none, other than the fact I was born here,” he said in an American accent that was indistinguishable from that of the border agents on the other side. “All my family is in Phoenix. I love my country, I just can’t believe it did this to me.”
Foreign = étranger
A backpack = un sac à dos
My ties = mes attaches

The 38-year-old was deported two years ago, after spending his entire life in the US. He was taken there as a baby, attended kindergarten, fathered four American children and served in the US navy between 1996 and 2000. Murillo had assumed he was automatically granted US citizenship when he enrolled in the military but had no reason to check. He discovered otherwise after he completed a 37-month sentence for transporting marijuana in Arizona and was transferred to a detention facility.
Citizenship = la citoyenneté
To enroll = s’engager dans l’armée
To check = vérifier
A sentence = une peine de prison

He was deported three months later, in 2012. Ever since Murillo has tried to scrape together a life in Rosarito, a small coastal town 10 miles south of the border, where he coaches Mexican children how to play American football. On Sundays he goes to the fence for meetings through the steel mesh with campaigners who are trying to get him and other deported veterans re-admitted to the country they were prepared to die for. “What can be more American than a US soldier?” Murillo said, a perplexed look on his face, as though he had just disembarked from a plane and discovered himself at the wrong airport. He pressed his face against the mesh. “Imagine what it would feel like to be kicked out of your country?”
To scrape = réussir à rassembler
To die = mourir
To kick out = exclure, renvoyer

Paul Lewis in San Diego and Tijuana
Tuesday 29 March 2016