Alligators In Border Moats Is Funny Stuff, I Should Know

I grew up 2 blocks from the US-Mexico border, on the Mexican side.

True story, I was born in Texas so I’m a US citizen, but I lived in Mexico because my parents decided to move there when I was in the third grade. So I was undocumented, in Mexico. Technically, though, my Dad was at the time a Mexican citizen and a resident alien of the US, so I’m also a Mexican national becasue of my father. He’s since become a US citizen so I’m not sure where my Mexico status stands. It doesn’t matter though, because to me the border between the US and Mexico has always been more an inconvenience than anything else.

When I was a kid my buddies and I would ride our bikes to the nearby Parque Viveros that hugged a bend on the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande to those on the US side). We’d ride to the edge of the water, trudge through the rushes and dive in. It was another place in time. It was dangerous, and maybe we shouldn’t have been swimming in those waters, but it wasn’t dangerous the way it is now. Back then it was the tricky current and whirlpools that worried us – but never enough to keep us out of the water.

I wouldn’t jump in that river today.

President Obama recently joked that some Republican’s were so intent on making an issue of border security that they wouldn’t be satisfied even if they were to dig a moat along the border (this makes no sense where there’s a river) and fill it with alligators. I thought it was a funny joke, most Republican’s didn’t. But see, here’s the humor: I used to swim in that river; I’d swim to the American side and back because it was something to do on a summer afternoon, but today the river is filled with all manner of pollutants and debris and ruffians that shoot at you from behind bushes. Alligators would be overkill. It’s one of those you-had-to-be-there jokes, and I have been – it’s hilarious.

After the President’s alligators-in-the-moat speech in El Paso a video attributed to Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) surfaced on the Web. Part of that video says:

If it takes moats and alligators to secure our borders to get you to be serious — I’m game.

A friend from Laredo who sent me the suppposed Walsh link quipped, “they should do it, then everyone along both sides of the border will be wearing alligator boots.” You see, the joke is funnier the closer your ties to the line on the map. I’ve noticed that the farther you go from the border the stronger that line becomes. To a politician from Illinois the border is large, looming and menacing. Alligators in moats make sense.

But if you’ve spent part of your childhood sloshing in the border water you get the joke like few others do. It’s funny stuff.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda