Brush Patch

Much water has flowed since 1894 between Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Tex., on the silty ever-changing banks of the Rio Grande--but not enough to wash the word chamizal from long Mexican memories. In Mexico City's Chamber of Deputies last week Deputy Professor (of the National University) Jose Betancourt Perez rose to spout: "Mexico cannot believe in the Good Neighbor policy if the United States does not comply with its obligations in the Chamizal case."

In Spanish chamizal means brush patch, and a 600-acre strip of previously Mexican brush was left low and dry on the U. S. side of the river when the Rio Grande changed course after a flood in 1864. In 1894 a Mexican who owned part of the strip claimed it was Mexican territory and for years boundary commissions argued Mexican claims, U. S. counterclaims. In 1911 a Canadian arbitrator ruled that the international boundary followed the course of the river as it was in 1864, but where that might have been, no one knew for sure. So Chamizal has stayed in decisively under the Stars & Stripes as a district of South El Paso.

No brush patch today, Chamizal still finds it hard to live up to the valuation of $50,000,000 arbitrators set on it 34 years ago. In it stand the new $165,000 Bowie High School and a new U. S. Customs House, but more prominently a red-light district, a small stockyard and any number of ratty firetrap tenements. To Deputy Perez' oratory, the reaction of city-proud El Pasoans was: "Wish to hell they would give it to Mexico."

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