Sehila Mota Casper
Posted July 23, 2026

 

 

Recently, I found myself standing beside a river in Pueblo, Colorado.

 

At first glance, it looked like any other river—quiet, unassuming. The water moved gently through a lush landscape edged by new buildings, carrying little visible trace of the history that had unfolded along its banks. As I stood there, I realized I was looking at something far greater than a river.

 

I was looking at a border. Or rather, a ghost of a border that no longer exists. For most of my life, I believed I knew exactly where the border was.

 

It was the line between my home state of Texas and México, stretching west across the Southwest all the way to California. It was the checkpoint my parents and I crossed dozens of times a year, driving eight hours from Dallas to Eagle Pass so we could spend weekends with family across the Río Grande.

 

Every other Friday, Mom and Pop would come home from work, pack the truck, and my mom would make a pallet bed in the back of my father’s black Chevy pickup with its thin red stripes. My three siblings and I would stretch out across blankets and pillows, lulled to sleep by the rhythm of Texas roads, knowing that when we woke up, we’d be at the border.

 

For years, that was my map. That was La Frontera. Then I learned something that completely changed the way I understood this country.

 

I had known this history in my head. But for the first time… I felt it.

 

The original international boundary between the United States and México once sat hundreds of miles north, along the Arkansas River in southern Colorado.

 

The river moved. 

Lands were stolen. 
The treaty lines shifted. 
The border was redrawn.

 

But the people did not move in the same way. The land did not forget. Standing in Pueblo, I felt that realization deep within me. I was hundreds of miles from the line I had always known, and yet everything around me felt achingly familiar.

 

I could see México. 
I could feel La Frontera.

 

It was there in the skin tones and the braids in people’s hair. 
In the easy rhythm of Spanish and English weaving together across the room.
In the pride people carried in their Latinidad.
In the way elders spoke about El Movimiento—the Chicano Civil Rights Movement—not as something confined to the past, but as something still shaping our present.

 

Our Nuestra Historia Symposium, hosted in partnership with History Colorado, brought together more than one hundred community members—elders, historians, educators, activists, preservationists, elected officials, students, and cultural leaders.

 

Some had been Brown Berets.
Some were among Colorado’s first Chicano professors.
Some had organized walkouts.
Some had fought for educational equity and racial justice.
Some had spent decades preserving community memory.

 

All of them carried histories that rarely appear in official records. On the first morning of the symposium, one woman quietly approached me.

 

She didn’t ask how I was.

She didn’t ask about the day’s agenda.

She didn’t ask about the speakers.

She asked one simple question.

 

“Are you federally funded?”

 

Her decision to stay or leave depended on my answer. She didn’t want to invest her time in another effort that might disappear with this administration. When I told her we were not federally funded, she nodded and walked away.

 

Ultimately, she stayed. And that moment has stayed with me. Because beneath her question was not politics. It was trust.

 

Over the next two days, we talked about public memory, historical interpretation, and our responsibility to tell fuller histories. We reflected on the ethical role historians, art historians, and preservationists play in shaping public memory—not only through what showcase, but through whose voices we choose to elevate. Again and again, the conversation returned to a simple truth: You cannot separate people from place.

 

In Pueblo, that truth felt like binationality at its best—where the line between countries faded and what remained was shared space, language, memory, and belonging. It was, in so many ways, more México than Texas: a place where histories, traditions, and ways of being from both sides of the río lived together in one community. And continued.

 

Rivers can be rerouted.
Boundaries can be redrawn.
Buildings can be demolished.
Maps can be erased and re-drawn.

 

But the people and the land remember.

 

On the second morning, something shifted.

 

The hesitation that had quietly lingered the day before disappeared. The room greeted us with hugs. Besitos. Music. Laughter. Scholars became storytellers. Storytellers became our teachers. Strangers became comunidad.

 

We moved from presentations into story circles. Elders shared memories of colonias and Christmas traditions—walking from house to house saying “Mis Christmas,” receiving oranges, pecans, and homemade cookies from neighbors who shared what little they had. Together, people mapped memories onto Pueblo’s streets, naming storefronts, churches, parks, and community spaces that had shaped their lives.

 

Before we left Pueblo, we walked alongside the river.

 

The Arkansas River.

The Arkansas River.
Once the boundary between two sister countries.

Less permanent.
Less prominent.

 

Because here, hundreds of miles from today’s international boundary, people knew this had been Mexico. They knew the river’s story. They knew the land’s story. They understood that treaties had changed the boundary— Not who they were.

 

It struck me how often our collective memory speaks only of the current border and forgets the ones that came before. Colonization and Manifest Destiny taught us to see one line as permanent and to forget the others.

 

So, I found myself asking a question I couldn’t let go of.

What makes a Borderland?

Is it a river?
A checkpoint?
A treaty?
A line drawn on a map?

 

Or is it something we carry within us?

 

Perhaps the Borderlands were never simply a place.
Perhaps they are a way of remembering, a way of being.

 

Throughout the symposium, another truth quietly emerged.

 

Again and again, it was women who held the room together. Women facilitated conversations. Women welcomed participants. Women shared stories. Women organized meals. Women blessed us before leaving.

 

Recently, an Episcopal priest shared that his research centers on abuelas. Without them, he said, decisions are not made. They are the spiritual and cultural anchors of their communities. They bless you when you arrive. They bless you when you leave. They hold families together across rivers, across borders, and across generations.

 

In Pueblo, it became clear that the Borderlands are held not only in land and law, but in the hands and hearts of women who stay. I couldn’t help but think about the founding of Latinos in Heritage Conservation. Many of our matriarchs have reminded us that they did the difficult—and often dangerous—work so that our generation could have a seat at the table. So that we could help shape decisions and policies instead of simply responding and being affected by them.

 

Our task is to continue their work. As we move toward America’s 250th anniversary, much of the national conversation asks what should be commemorated. What should be remembered. What should be elevated.

 

Those questions matter. But another question matters just as much. Where is the border?

 

Governments ask where the border is. Communities ask a different question. What has stayed? Because the people who stayed carried language, traditions, recipes, faith, music, and memory forward—even when the map no longer reflected their reality. Governments create borders. Communities create belonging. One is political. The other is lived.

 

Standing beside the Arkansas River, I realized something I cannot unsee.

The river moved. 
The border moved. 
Governments drew new lines. 
Maps were rewritten. 

But the people stayed. 

They carried the language. 
They carried the stories. 
They carried one another. 
They carried the Borderlands in their bodies—long after the maps forgot them. 

And perhaps that is what the Borderlands have been trying to teach us all along.

Estamos aquí. We always have been.

 

Sehila Mota Casper, Executive Director, Latinos in Heritage Conservation.