The Chamizal park marks the peaceful resolution of a US-Mexico border dispute.
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In 1848, the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War and surrendered around half of Mexico’s territory to the US. The new border was placed at the Rio Grande River, and since this river was shallow and meandering, and in some areas was broken into several parallel streams, the Treaty specified that the national boundary would be set in the middle of the deepest river channel. In 1884, a new agreement clarified this further: if the river course was altered by the slow natural process of erosion and silt deposition, the border would change along with it, but if the river were suddenly altered by a storm or flash flood, the border would remain with the old channel.
This seemed pretty straightforward, but it soon produced problems. Between 1852 and 1868, the portion of the Rio Grande that ran between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez had gradually shifted by ordinary erosion—but there had also been a significant change in the river course that was carved out by a storm flood in 1864. By 1871, some 600 acres of land that had once been on the Mexican side of the river was now on the other side, in two tracts known as El Chamizal and Cordova, and even though this land had always been owned by a Mexican farmer named Pedro Garcia, the American residents of El Paso began moving in and building houses, declaring that since it was now on the US side of the river, it was no longer Mexican territory or Garcia’s property.
So in 1895, Garcia filed a lawsuit in a Juarez court to reclaim the land. The Americans, in turn, refused to recognize Mexican jurisdiction. For the Mexican Government, which had already suffered defeat in what Mexico viewed as an unjust American war of conquest that had taken most of her national territory, the dispute became a microcosm of the resentments and hard feelings that still boiled between the two countries.
In 1899, both governments agreed to allow a channel to be dug across the base of the bend in the river that was at the center of the dispute, to allow for flood control. Since artificial changes to a river do not alter the borders, this did nothing to modify either side’s claim to ownership, but it did keep the issue on the front burner, as Mexico continued to ask for the return of what it claimed was its national territory, and the US continued to refuse.
Ten years later, the President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, and the President of the United States, William Howard Taft, agreed to a diplomatic summit, the first to be held between the two countries since the Mexican-American War. It was decided that some of their meetings would be held in El Paso, and some would be held across the border in Ciudad Juarez. But once again the Chamizal issue popped up: with both leaders still claiming ownership of the area that lay in between the two cities, there were delicate complications of diplomacy and protocol. In the end, it was decided that the disputed area would be considered “neutral” and neither country’s flag would be displayed there during the summit.
But there was an incident anyway. On October 16, as the two Presidents walked down the street in a procession to begin the visits, the security detail caught an American man in the crowd with a pistol and arrested him. Since he never explained his actions and was promptly judged insane, it remains unknown whether his apparent assassination attempt on Taft involved the Chamizal dispute.
Finally in 1911 the US and Mexico agreed to submit the Chamizal matter to arbitration. A three-man tribunal was set up with one representative from Mexico, one from the United States, and a third from Canada.
In the end, the arbitration ruling partially favored both sides. The portions of the area that had been slowly deposited by erosion between 1852 and 1864 were to be awarded to the United States, while those portions that had been altered by the floods of 1864 were to remain as part of Mexico. While Mexico promptly agreed to accept the ruling, the United States refused, arguing that the decision did not conform to the rules that both countries had agreed upon for the arbitration.
Now, Mexican resentment against the US skyrocketed: the Mexicans concluded that their claims had been properly recognized by the commission, and that the US refusal to accept the arbitration ruling was simply evidence of bad faith and a blatant desire to steal more Mexican land.
And so, even as the Mexican Revolution broke out and political chaos engulfed Mexico—with rebels and bandits swarming over the countryside and one President after another rising and falling—the issue of Chamizal was not forgotten. Between 1911 and 1964, Mexican officials made diplomatic protests to every American President who entered office, asking them to return what Mexico continued to view as her land. Every so often the US would respond with an offer: to trade the disputed land for another tract somewhere else along the border, to forgive a $1.4 million debt that Mexico owed to Washington in exchange for clear title to the Chamizal area, or even for the US to simply buy all the disputed land outright. But the one thing the Americans flatly refused to do was give back the land under the arbitration agreement. As one Texas Senator thundered, “Not one inch of Texas for Mexico!”
In 1961, President John F Kennedy assumed office. One of his major projects was the “Alliance for Progress”, a Cold War program of economic aid to South American countries which, after the Castro Revolution in Cuba, was largely intended to limit efforts by the Soviet Union to gain influence in the Western Hemisphere. One of the many sticking points causing friction between Washington DC and Latin America was Mexico’s dissatisfaction with the Chamizal, and in January 1963 Kennedy agreed to resolve the dispute along the terms set out by the arbitration of 1911. Some 440 acres would be returned to Mexico, and both countries agreed to split the costs of digging a new river channel that would run along the agreed-upon border. After Kennedy was assassinated, Vice President Lyndon Johnson took over, and in 1964 he met with Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos to formally sign the Chamizal Convention and end the dispute. It had lasted almost 100 years.
In June 1966, the US Congress voted to establish the Chamizal National Memorial, on a 55-acre tract of land inside the once-disputed area that had been awarded to the United States. At the same time, Mexico formed the Parque Publico Federal El Chamizal on a tract of land that had been returned to Mexico. The purpose of both parks was to commemorate the peaceful resolution of the dispute.
In 1974 the US memorial was turned over to the National Park Service. Today there is a Visitors Center and a small museum which interprets the history of the Chamizal issue.
Ironically, right across the highway from this monument to peaceful cooperation and coexistence, is the big ugly US-built border fence designed to keep “those people” out.
Some photos from a visit.