ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
The One Big Beautiful Bill that President Trump signed into law in July allocated more than $100 billion to immigration enforcement and border security. Almost half of those funds were set aside for the construction and maintenance of a border wall. While a wall has become a fixed part of the landscape along some parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, for decades there was no physical barrier at all between the two countries, until one critical battle at the border changed that. Anya Steinberg and Cristina Kim from NPR's history show Throughline brings us the story of one of the first border fences built by the U.S.
ANYA STEINBERG, BYLINE: There's a town on the U.S.-Mexico border called Ambos Nogales. Well, really, it's two towns - Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico. And back in the 1800s, these two towns were fluid, meaning you almost couldn't tell where one started and the other ended. That's how a lot of the border towns worked. But the Mexican Revolution brought big changes to the U.S.-Mexico border.
RACHEL ST JOHN: Border towns became particularly important because they had ports of entry where people pay their customs duties.
STEINBERG: That's historian Rachel St. John. She wrote "Line In The Sand: A History Of The Western U.S.-Mexico Border."
ST JOHN: So if someone can take over a border town, they can take that money.
STEINBERG: She says, as a result, violence increased across border towns. And then, when World War I began, it brought a whole new set of anxieties.
CRISTINA KIM, BYLINE: The U.S. feared that German spies could infiltrate through the border. All of a sudden, people who had long been neighbors were suspicious of each other.
ST JOHN: The U.S. government deploys the military to the border to protect people on the U.S. side.
STEINBERG: In Ambos Nogales, the situation had created a powder keg. And on August 27, 1918, the fuse was lit.
KIM: You might hear different versions of this story depending on who you ask. But any way you tell it, the story ends in violence.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KIM: It was just after 4 o'clock in the afternoon. A Mexican carpenter named Zeferino Gil Lamadrid was leaving the U.S. after finishing work. He was carrying a bulky package under his arm as he approached Mexico.
ST JOHN: He was ordered to halt by American officials.
KIM: They wanted to inspect the package.
ST JOHN: Mexican officials told him he should keep coming.
KIM: The U.S. customs official raised his rifle to force Gil Lamadrid to come back for an inspection. What happened next is still disputed today.
STEINBERG: Someone from either side of the border - it's unclear who - fired the first shot.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOT)
STEINBERG: Ambos Nogales descended into chaos.
(SOUNDBITE OF OSCAR GONZALEZ AND ROBERT LEE BENTON JR. SONG, "EL CORRIDO DE NOGALES")
STEINBERG: Mexican civilians grabbed guns and joined the fight.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EL CORRIDO DE NOGALES")
OSCAR GONZALEZ AND ROBERT LEE BENTON JR: (Singing in Spanish).
KIM: It's immortalized in this Mexican song. "El Corrido De Nogales" tells the Mexican version of the battle.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EL CORRIDO DE NOGALES")
GONZALEZ AND BENTON: (Singing in Spanish).
KIM: The song goes, when a Mexican crossed the border line, a gringo fired a shot at him. That was the beginning of the story. The corrido is all about the bravery of the Nogalenses. It says...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EL CORRIDO DE NOGALES")
GONZALEZ AND BENTON: (Singing in Spanish).
KIM: There were 1,500 gringos, all were federal troops. And the people of Nogales did not let them advance.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOT)
STEINBERG: But things were escalating. At some point, a Mexican consul tried to negotiate with an American soldier. If they both raised a white flag, it could all be over. The American replied...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Lieutenant) Go to hell. American troops don't carry white flags and don't use them. If the Mexicans don't hoist a white flag within 10 minutes, U.S. soldiers will march in and burn Nogales, Sonora.
STEINBERG: The Mexican side raised a white flag.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
STEINBERG: The battle lasted more than two hours. As many as four Americans and 129 Mexicans were dead, including the mayor of Mexico's Nogales. And hundreds of people were wounded.
KIM: After the battle of Ambos Nogales, people on both sides expressed regret.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (Reading) The shooting was an unfortunate affair, started by irresponsible persons under undue stress of excitement.
STEINBERG: But the damage was done.
ST JOHN: And that leads a lot of government officials along the border to say, we need a fence. We need to be really clear about marking this space.
KIM: And so one of the first U.S.-built fences meant to divide people was built through Ambos Nogales.
ST JOHN: Whenever I think about this, I think of the Robert Frost poem where he talks about how good fences make good neighbors, right? That these fences are built in a very different mindset than the border wall of today. This is not seen as an imposition by the U.S. government on Mexico, but rather a joint effort to better demarcate where Mexican and American space end.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KIM: The fence wasn't about keeping Mexican people out of the U.S.
ST JOHN: No one cared about immigration at all on the U.S.-Mexico border until the very late part of the 19th century.
KIM: And if people were concerned about who was coming through the southern border, that concern was mostly about Chinese immigrants, which isn't to say immigration wasn't a big issue in the U.S. It was.
STEINBERG: In 1924, Congress passed one of the most restrictive immigration laws in its history, setting strict quotas for who could enter the U.S. And it established the Border Patrol to control immigration. It was just a few years after the battle of Ambos Nogales, but the infrastructure of the modern border - the fences, the manpower and law enforcement - were starting to fall into place.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LIMBONG: That was Throughline's Anya Steinberg and Cristina Kim. You can hear this full episode and more wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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