Border Unity Rally set for Saturday in Del Rio

SAN ANTONIO – Although several communities along the U.S.-Mexico border this weekend will stage protests against the plans for a border wall, organizers in Del Rio and Ciudad Acuna said they’ll hold a Border Unity Rally along the international bridge connecting the twin cities.

Gerardo Menchaca, a local immigration attorney who will serve as the rally’s emcee, said by joining hands over the Rio Grande they hope to send a message to Washington.

“Even if our leaders don’t always get along, that we get along. Mexico and the U.S., we’re not just dating. We’re married and we like it that way,” Menchaca said. 

Mark Lewis, a San Antonio businessman, said many people on both sides of the border don’t agree with President Donald Trump’s promise to build a 30-foot-high concrete barrier as a means of extending the fencing already in place along portions of the nation’s southern border.

“That’s not the way we feel, especially a lot of us here in South Texas,” Lewis said.

Lewis said he’s leased ranches for hunting in Mexico for 30 years, so he knows the area and its people well.

“The reason I’m so passionate about this is because this is not the way to go about this, building a wall and dividing our two countries,” Lewis said.

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Menchaca said he agrees: “You want communities to be united, and walls show division.”

They said that’s why the organizers decided to highlight the unity between Mexico and the United States.

“We do business together. We speak each other’s languages. We raise each other’s families,” Menchaca said.

Menchaca said beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday, he expects to see citizens, grassroots activists, elected officials and business leaders from both sides of the border.

He said it will be a binational, bicultural and bipartisan event.

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Menchaca said he expects congressmen Joaquin Castro and Will Hurd to take part in the show of unity.

Lewis said the rest of the country doesn’t see the how the cultures and lives intermingle on the border.

When the moment comes to clasp hands from one end of the bridge to the other, he said, “I think it’s going to be powerful. I think it’s going to send a message, ‘Look, we all get along down here.’”