Border regions conspire across continents seeking solutions to common problems
by George Lewinski and Peter LauferThe severe communist-era decor of the main meeting room in the Frankfurt-an-der-Oder city hall failed to dampen the enthusiasm of a group of marginalized Germans, Poles, Mexicans, and Arizonans gathering to share information in this dismal east European border community. Far from the notice of news reporters or their own state and federal governments, these representatives of border towns are here comparing common cross-border complaints and challenges -- from cultural and trade issues to drug and immigration crises. The conferences, lunches, and tours this week along the Oder river in Germany and Poland follow a first such grass roots get together last year on the Arizona-Sonora border.
The result -- as much as the participants may try to whitewash their terminology -- is a direct challenge to their respective central governments in Washington, Warsaw, Mexico City, and Bonn. These meetings in somber Frankfurt-on-der-Oder and dirty, dusty Slubice may well lead these frustrated pioneers to the creation of semi-autonamous border regions, borderlands making up their own pragmatic rules and regulations for cross border interaction that their national governments will feel forced to accept.
"We need to move, we can't just sit," says the energetic mayor of Yuma, Marilyn Young. Mayor Young is passing out Yuma-boosting lapel pins and celebrating the official establishment of a sister city relationship with Frankfurt. "We're both becoming sophisticated," she says about the two cities, both suffering from some 25 percent regional unemployment and both convinced that their strategic locations ought to translate into success stories. Her new-found awareness of the global economy translates into ideas that bubble out of her with American enthusiasm. "They grow the white asparagus here," she says, "and it's very popular."
Late spring is asperagus season in central Europe. Restaurants promote asparagus soup, asparagus and potato main courses, roadside stands are packed with the stuff. "They can only grow it in about a three month period. In Yuma we grow three crops a year." Mayor Young smiles and sees hope for Yuma unemployment as she ponders, "Why can't we grow it there and ship it here?"
Nogales, Mexico businessman Jorge Sandoval Mazon is here studying the similarities along the borders, such as the struggle to create a working cross-border relationship in spite of the meddling interference of central governments. "A lot of times what is considered unrealistic by a government is not unrealistic for a community," he says. "They have to understand that the health of a border region is also the health of a central government."
The Polish vice governor for the Slubice region, Boguslaw Bil, agrees with his Mexican colleague that their two emerging economies can learn lessons from each other about dealing with big, powerful neighbors. Cross-border businesses are forcing some de facto autonomy along his border with Germany, says Governor Bil, despite the centralized natured of Polish government. "They are one step ahead," he says gesturing to the floushing outdoor market and shopping district in his border town. "We have the signal from people who want to do business that we must change laws."
Even Governor Bil, an official appointed to his job by the Prime Minister in Warsaw, sees decentralization as the future. "Ruling from Warsaw is quite difficult. One cannot see everything that's happening on the border regions. We have done a lot already to decentralize and we are still working on it."
But not fast enough for some border dwellers. Polish activist Edmund Rzadzki is taking matters directly into his own hands. In order to learn from his Mexican border brothers, he traveled to Baja California Norte and established sister city relationships between Slubice and seven Baja municipalities. Looking across the Oder River at Germany and thinking about Polish history, he says with some concern, "We don't know what the power on the other side plans. We don't know how far they can expand. This is our fear. We would like to be a partner, an equal partner. But with this economic disparity, our fear is we will stay behind." Rzadski believes Mexicans have skillfuly used the economic strength of the United States to generate developement in their own country "without losing their cultural identity, without loosing their national identity, and without losing any territory. They can show us how to use the power of your neighbor. This is the message from the Mexicans to the Polish people."
Edmund Rzadzki is embarking on a three-year study of the Mexican border strategy. With a twinkling smile he explains his personal self-sacrifice for the good of Polish border towns: he is moving, along with his wife and kids, to Rosarita in Baja for the next three years to conduct his research and build cross-border ties. Without approval from Warsaw, his private think tank will study in the sunshine on the Pacific beachfront far from the bleak Slubice winters. "I have the right from my constitution to take any action as a citizen. And we already have seven partnerships. It is unique in Polish history and it is unique in Mexican history."
Of course, the scars left on Poles and Germans by the Second World War are fresher than the wounds left by the U-S-Mexican War a century and a half ago. One difference -- a significant proportion of Hispanic Americans, as many as 20% in Nogales on the Arizona side, have family on the other side of the border. Very few Poles have those kind of ties, ties that encourage cross-border commerce and business partnerships.
As these iconoclastic crossborder movers and shakers roam the world hankering for a slackening of their central government shackles, they do tend to stumble on one paradox. While lusting after freer movement of goods and poeple, they continue to seek relief from criminals and unwanted migrants.
George Lewinski is MARKETPLACE foreign editor. He and journalist Peter Laufer are in Berlin covering European integration for MARKETPLACE as it broadcasts during the first week of June from the new German capital in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Marshall Plan.
