A line in the sand

Hyperborder

The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and Its Future

Fernando Romero

Princeton Architectural Press: 318 pp., $35 paper

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187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border

Undocuments 1971-2007

Juan Felipe Herrera

City Lights: 352 pp., $16.95 paper

The U.S.-Mexico border is a 2,000-mile geopolitical line that runs from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, slicing through 10 states, two deserts, at least four different regional accents and at least three different philosophies on how to cook meat, all while changing shape from rivers to rocks to ranch fences to wooden posts to menacing metal walls rigged with electronic sensors.

Yet the border has never been just a line on a map. CNN's Lou Dobbs knows this as well as a Tijuana local who wakes up to the smell of U.S. Border Patrol tear gas. It is a machine and a metaphor, a tool and a scapegoat, an entire cosmology and, especially these days, a political quagmire as laden with quicksand as the mention of a Palestinian state at a Passover table. There's no way to talk about it without getting lost in circuitous, maddening debate.

Take your pick: The border is a problem, its own country, a drug funnel, a sun-baked cemetery, a desert DMZ. It is the death knell of America or its promise. It is a scourge of crime and assassination or the laboratory for Mexico's booming future. It is the leaden footprint of America's imperial past or the front line of a Mexican invasion.

No wonder, says Mexico City architect Fernando Romero: It cuts between the planet's leading immigration nation and its leading emigration nation. Throw in a combined population of more than 12 million people (estimated to double by 2020), a million daily crossings and as many as 20,000 Border Patrol agents by 2009, and you have the makings of what Romero has dubbed the "hyperborder."

In his new book, "Hyperborder," Romero attempts to sidestep the debates and lay out an accessible, and handy, gallery of tables, charts, maps and photographs that illustrate the border region's complexities and its impact on U.S. and Mexican life. For Romero, the hyperborder emerged with the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1994 tornado that wreaked havoc on the rural Mexican economy and left a flurry of problems in its wake: a dizzying population boom, teetering infrastructures, scarce water supplies, industrial pollution and drug-smuggling violence.