330: Borderly Part One: Before the Line

This is Part One of Borderly, a limited series by Immigrantly exploring life on the U.S.–Mexico border through history, memory, and lived experience. Before walls, patrols, or policy debates, there was a river. In this opening episode, host Mario Carrillo returns to El Paso to examine how the border came into existence and what was lost when a line was drawn through land, families, and identity. The episode traces the border’s origins from the Rio Grande as a shared lifeline for Indigenous communities, through colonization, war, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mario reflects on growing up crossing the border freely, leaving El Paso, and what it meant to come back. The episode also features historian Yolanda Chávez Leyva, who shares her border story and decades of research on the El Paso–Juárez region. Her work reveals how revolution, migration, labor, and racial hierarchies shaped the area, and how cruelty and generosity have coexisted here for generations. This episode lay...