Fences: From Either Side
The following reflection was contributed by Arizona’s Between Fences content scholar, Dr. Edward J. Williams, who is professor emeritus in Politics and Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona, a member of AHC’s Speakers Bureau, and an expert on Mexico and the borderlands.
Fences decorate or blight the land; they spark love-hate emotional responses; they touch the ambivalence of our minds; they symbolize the indecision that often haunts the human personality. They protect, but they separate. Fences define "ours," but they isolate "us." The Smithsonian’s Between Fences exhibition captures the meaning of those conflicting images in American history and culture.
We live between fences. They are always and everywhere with us. The Pilgrims’ palisades and presidios of the Spanish Southwest gave way to the forts of the American West and eventually inspired contemporary gated communities. The wooden worm fence festooned the fields of early America. Barbed wire barriers later took command of the rural landscape and chain link fences moved to urban America in the 20th Century. In the early years of the 21st Century, real and virtual walls and fences at the nation’s boundaryline rivet America’s attention.
Fences serve several splendid purposes. They protect us, define our property, and decorate our landscape. At a visceral level, fences, barricades, walls, and other barriers protect "us" from "them." "They" may be unfamiliar people, hostile enemies, or the neighbor’s ill-behaved kids. They are also hungry hogs, meandering cattle, or the neighbor’s untrained mutt. Our fences keep "them" in their place — and away from "our" place.
Beyond protecting life and limb, fences define our property. They nurture a fulfilling sense of ownership. They mark the end of our land and the beginning of our neighbors’. The surveyor’s calculations tell us where to water our cattle, plant our corn – or build our spite fence.
And, fences often look nice – they decorate our homes, they beautify our yards, gardens, or patios. It’s hard to believe that the fetching white picket fence descends from the forbidding, spiked palisade; or that a chainlink fence may buttress that lovely rose covered trellis.
All of those features enrich our lives – we’re safer, more comfortable, and esthetically enhanced. Then why the ambivalence; wherein lay the schizophrenic response; why are we offended by fences and walls? Was Robert Frost correct in claiming that "something there is that doesn’t love a wall. That wants it down." Well, I say: "yes and no; it depends." The upside entails security, convenience, and esthetic benefit. Let’s keep the walls and fences in good repair.
But the downside highlights the inconvenience, insult, and fear that motivates the erection of walls and fences. It’s a real pain to remove your shoes and to surrender your costly perfume at the airport security checkpoint. Worse yet, your neighbor’s spite fence offends you. Is the haughty and pretentious exclusivity of a gated community any less offensive to the millions who suffer their segregation? But, millions of those barriers symbolize, intensify, and nurture the class and ethnic separation, personal alienation, and the social and political isolation that haunts contemporary America. At the boundaryline, walls and fences separate us from others. Visitors from foreign lands feel less welcome. Fewer foreign students enrich our universities than in years past. At home, the loss of local and national community threatens our unity; divisions intensify across the land.
Those images symbolize the other side of the walls and fences that we build. And, they reflect part of the Between Fences exhibition soon to visit the museums of six Arizona communities.
