They will dismantle the wall of containers that mutilates a beautiful valley on the border of the United States with Mexico

A wall built with shipping containers on the border between USA Y Mexico that crosses a beautiful valley of Arizonaone of the most biodiverse regions in North America, will be dismantled after a court battle.

The wall, which required 915 containers and some 90 million dollars, was erected in the Coronado National Forestin the southwestern United States, home to threatened species such as ocelots and jaguars.

SIGHT: Arizona builds a border wall by stacking containers in defiance of a federal order that prohibits it

The Republican Governor of Arizona, Doug Duceywho ordered to build the wall that cuts the valley along 6.4 kilometersshould have agreed with the United States government, which had intimidated him to remove it, since it was built on federal land.

Duceywho will leave the governor’s office on January 2, argued that the work was necessary to control the arrival of migrants through this plain of low shrubs and cacti, framed to the north by the Huachuca mountains, and from which no urban signs can be seen for several kilometers around.

But under legal pressure, the governor reached a judicial agreement with the federal government on Wednesday, which grants a deadline until January 4 to remove the containers, “so as not to cause damage to the lands and resources of the National Forest System.”

A large gap in steep terrain ends the barbed wire-topped shipping container wall, built on federal land by Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. (PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP).

“No migrant”

The wall, which looks like a colorful freight train from a distance and a clumsy wall of giant Legos up close, was also the subject of two lawsuits from the Center for Biological Diversity.a, an environmental organization that has been active in the region for three decades.

“The biodiversity of this region is off the charts”, told AFP Russ McSpadden, a member of the organization.

before the wall of Duceythe border between EUnited States and Mexico it was demarcated in this valley of towering slopes by coils of wire held together by wooden crosses, a physical barrier less than two meters high that could go unnoticed from a not-so-far distance.

Now two rows of containers block waterways and ruin the breathtaking landscape. The only migration that interrupts, say environmentalists, is that of animals that need to circulate to survive.

“I put up cameras to monitor wildlife in this area. I have detected a jaguar, and I have worked with a group that has detected ocelots here. But I have never recorded the passage of migrants in any of the remote cameras”explains Russ McSpadden, who has been working there for a decade.

Arizona shares 595 kilometers of border with Mexicoincluding environmental preservation areas, national parks, military zones and indigenous reserves.

A steel plate partially covers a large gap in a border wall made of shipping containers and topped with barbed wire. (PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP).

“Not Trump”

Most of the line lacked a large physical barrier until the arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2017.

The republicanwhich focused its electoral campaign on the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico, altered several sectors, raising up to nine meters the fence that winds between the two countries, but not in the Coronado National Forest, which can only be reached by traveling several kilometers of dirt roads.

“This is a wild valley. There are no urban populations nearby. It is a very difficult border region for a migrant. As far as I know, there is not much activity in this area. That’s why they didn’t even build a wall here during the Trump administration.”McSpadden said.

Calls Ducey’s wall “a political stunt”, which not only earns him points in his anti-immigration agenda, but also places his successor, Democrat Katie Hobbs, in the difficult economic and rhetorical task of “reopening the border.” “A double victory”, sums up the activist.

At the foot of the wall, McSpadden’s words make sense. The containers are misaligned in several places due to the uneven terrain, leaving gaps through which a person would cross unhindered.

On the steeper slopes, there is no way to place the containers, several of which are rusted or have holes. Protest posters were placed in several of them. A graffiti warns in Spanish and English that the material can burn when there are high temperatures.

On the US side, a dirt road through which the containers were transported opened a scar in the splendid valley whose silence is only interrupted by the song of the birds.

A person demonstrated, in a video that went viral, how the almost six meters high can be scaled by a person in a few seconds due to the texture of the containers.

Jaguars, without opposable thumbs, have it harder.

“Jaguars know no borders,” says a frustrated McSpadden. “South of Arizonanorthern Mexico, it’s the same for them”, a statement that seems as obvious as it is necessary.

The activist explains that the male jaguars move towards Arizona in search of more land, and that the containers “imprison them kilometers away”.

“They can live for years in the lands of Arizona, and then they will go to mate on the other side of the border. They will come back to hunt, and they will want to come back, they will want to move freely. This is their home,” says McSpadden. “That wall has broken the home of the jaguars in two.”

Source: Elcomercio