2,000 Miles Along the Us-mexican Border

“Back in 1840, two teenage Spaniards, Valentin and Manuel Gavito, set sail for the New World. They stopped first in Cuba, then sailed up the Gulf coast and settled just north of the Rio Grande in Texas, where they became ranchers. Quite which country Texas belonged to then, if any, was an open question. Until 1836, when it declared itself an independent republic, it had been part of Mexico. The Mexicans still claimed it. But then came the battle of Palo Alto in May 1846 - the first skirmish in the Mexican-American war. By 1848 the United States had claimed Texas for its own. The Gavito brothers didn’t cross the border; the border crossed them.

More than a century and a half later, Jose Gavito, one of Manuel’s direct descendants, describes himself as “Texican”. His pioneering forebears settled in what later became Brownsville. Gavito is still there. The Mexican border is just four blocks away from his desk in the heritage centre. It is a unique city, he says - bilingual, bicultural, with a bi-heritage. “Every day there are new immigrants coming in. Whether legally or illegally, the flow has never stopped.”
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