The Cross-Border Walleyball Game That Has Endured For Nearly 40 Years
*I know many of you have seen the photo on social media. Here’s the story behind the picture. The residents of Naco, Arizona and Naco, Sonora play a volleyball game using the border fence as a net. VL
By Alfonso Félix, Remezcla
While many U.S. politicians today continue to insist on the need to build a bigger wall at our border with Mexico – like, say, Donald Trump – a group of Mexican and U.S. citizens have something else in mind: a net. For more than 30 years, a group of residents in the border towns in Naco, Arizona and Naco, Sonora have been staging a cross-border walleyball game (a volleyball variant). Using the border fence as a net, their game is a call to rethink the political line that divides the two countries.
[pullquote]The fact that members of the same family can play for different teams –different countries– also evidences the arbitrariness of citizenship.[/pullquote]Walleyball has also inspired similar events in other places. In 2010, a soccer match named the Transborder game, was played between the border fence that divides the Baja Californian and Californian towns of Mexicali and Calexico (notice the combinations of the words Mexico and California used in the name of the towns). Players from each team were divided on both sides of the border; the defenders were tasked with staying on their side and trying to get the ball across the border to their forwards, who’d be waiting for the ball in order to try to score a goal.
Click HERE to read the full story.
[Photo courtesy of Remezcla]
