Commencing its journey 20 million years ago in what would become central Colorado, it pushed south unrestrained for nearly 2,000 miles, down through New Mexico and on to Texas, until it reached the Gulf and its passionate commingling with the salt sea.

Along its path, the Rio Grande in times past cut a channel so deep, and possessed a power so prodigious, that the river came to form a border separating two nations--nations who more than once fought wars to define it to their advantage.

But it persistently defies human definition. Because it predates us.

With actual beginnings 40 million years ago, its currents didn't flow until the earth's tectonic plates at its head pulled apart and created the Rio Grande Rift.

Even at 20 million years younger, however, in human terms the river's lifespan is almost beyond comprehension.

Humans would not appear for another 19,900,000 years; but had they been present, their distance from us--their descendants--would span nearly 330,000 generations. And the river would have nourished us all, as it does now.

These days, intensive commercial agriculture along its floodplain at times siphons off nearly 75 percent of its flow. But the river has been profoundly altered by other pressures not related to the water itself.

The river, and the long geographical border that it marks off, has evolved over the last roughly seven decades to be the perilous, complex multinational territory that is it today.

But more philosophically, or more hopefully perhaps, without human pressure--or humans themselves--the river would surely flow again.

The River.

It is always the river that defines us here, fostering its peoples and the myriad forms of life on its path, all borne inexorably forward on its currents, for better, or for worse.

We at Noticias Southwest, then, describe life along our country's southern border, in two installments:

The first presented as firsthand experience from decades past and the present day.

And the second as a report on the status of the region now, with its challenges for governments, regulatory agencies, and regional law enforcement personnel encountering the diversity of peoples in search of what the majority of immigrants have always sought: life, and freedom.

The young American couple and their daughter, new arrivals at the El Paso border, had finished their dinner and sat listening to the Mexican dance band play its last tune of the evening.

Leaving their nearby stucco house in the El Paso suburb of Ysleta late that afternoon, they had crossed over the light-green metal bridge spanning the glassy surface of the Rio Grande, and arrived moments later at a restaurant in the small Mexican town of Zaragoza for an evening of dinner and dancing.

As they arrived, the wait staff had mistaken the woman for an attractive Mexicana, and had vied with each other to see who would serve her first.

Now in her thirties, the raven-haired beauty with olive skin, shapely figure, and dark eyes was the intense, intelligent progeny of a Mohawk grandmother; and her innate humility, a product of her upbringing, drew others powerfully to her.

Her husband was a tall, slender, muscular man, and had been his small-town high school's star quarterback, showing such speed and grace on the field that he'd twice been scouted by University of Texas football staff.

The man's maternal family had been first-generation Swedes, and his blond hair and chiseled face made him a fitting complement to his wife.

After his service in the war, he'd heard from friends in his small Texas Panhandle town about the opportunity on the border and moved his young family west for better prospects.

The daughter, quiet, shy, and towheaded like her father, seemed to bear little likeness to her mother's side; but her piercing black eyes warned those caught in their gaze that her roots grew out of a distant Native past.

After dinner, the family paid their waiter and began to collect their belongings early, knowing they had to cross back to the El Paso side before midnight or stay in the Mexican town overnight.

The hall by now was nearly empty, and seeing the family prepare to leave, one of the musicians called over to a fellow bandsman before packing up.

"Hey, Osvaldo! Let's do La Llorona for the pretty lady, want to?"
"Ey, Osvaldo! Vamos a tocar 'La Llorona' para la linda señora, quieres?"

His friend smiled at the question and was silent for a moment, gazing out the club's picture window as if looking on a scene far away.

A ghostly Strawberry Moon hung low on the horizon through the hazy night air, casting ochre-colored shapes and shadows over the roofs of the houses around the nightclub. The man seemed to shiver, and took in a deep breath, his eye on the scene before him.

Dressed in black dress pants, crisply starched white shirt, and short, black tuxedo jacket, the man at last turned away from the window, loosened his red string tie, and headed back to the bandstand.

His dark brown, heavily creased hands showed the wear and tear that came from hard physical labor; yet moved with delicacy, like musicians' hands everywhere.

His smooth face was meticulously clean-shaven, and his jet-black hair, combed straight back with pomade, gleamed under the bandstand stage light. He glanced over at his friend, who stood waiting with his little Requinto guitar under his arm.

"You're right, hombre, the crowd's gone home now," the man said. "And besides--this is La Llorona's time. Es la hora de La Llorona."

Then glancing quickly over at the family's table, he pulled out a weathered violin from a case behind the bandstand, nodded to his friend, and approached the family with a slight bow.

"Mister, Missis, and young girl," he said quietly, "My friend and I think we have one more song in us. May we play the last song for you?"

"Well, we'd be honored," the man at the table answered, leaning back in his chair and placing a hand on his wife's shoulder.

"So, then, we were thinking, Joaquín and I," the musician continued, nodding at his friend, "that you may like to hear a song very famous with the Mexican people--the one called La Llorona. Possibly you know this song?"

"No, I don't think we do," the man at the table said, "but if it's a famous one, then we've got to hear it." The bandsman smiled, and continued his tale.

"The story of La Llorona, which means, ah--'the crying lady'--is very old," the man explained, "and the belief in the lady of this song is still very strong with the campesinos in our country--the rural people.

"The story is so old, in fact, that my father, who was also a singer, told me that it comes from the time before the Spanish, before La Conquista," he said. "And the song is about the spirit of a woman who wanders all alone in the night, crying for her children--or perhaps for love." Now quite somber, and speaking almost in a whisper, the man added, "And there are some who say she still roams with the spirit of La Cihuacóatl."

Now the shy little girl, who had been sitting quietly, could contain her curiosity no longer and burst out, "But, who is . . . SEE-wah-Kat?"

"Oh, little one," the musician said, chuckling and placing a hand on the girl's head, "This is the ancient Mother the old people called La Diosa de la Tierra."

Then with his friend behind him strumming an accompaniment on the tinkling Requinto, the man raked his bow across the violin strings in the first few notes of the bittersweet melody, slowed briefly, and paused at the cadence. Straightening up and breathing in deeply, he lowered his violin and began to sing in a high voice of such reserve, yet filled with such feeling, that the little girl caught her breath.

"Alas for me, Llorona!"
"¡Ay! de mí, Llorona!"
"Llorona of long ago, and of today"
"Llorona de ayer y de hoy"

"I used to be something to look at, Llorona!"
"¡Ayer fuí una maravilla , Llorona!"
"But now I am only a shadow!"
"¡Y ahora ni sombra soy!"

"They say I feel no sorrow, Llorona"
"Dicen que no tengo duelo, Llorona"
"Just because they don't see me crying"
"Porque no me ven llorar"

On and on he sang, his voice growing in intensity with each verse, with a sound like quiet weeping. Tears formed in the little girl's eyes.

"There are the dead who make no sound, Llorona"
"Hay muertos que no hacen ruido, Llorona"
"Yet how much greater is their pain!"
"¡Y es más grande su penar!"

"Alas for me, Llorona!"
"¡Ay! de mí, Llorona!"
"Llorona of the blue heaven"
"Llorona de azúl celeste"

"And even if it costs me my life, Llorona"
"Y aunque la vida me cueste, Llorona"
"Even that couldn't make me stop loving you!'
"¡No dejaré de quererte!"

As the man sang the last verses and the old tune faded into silence, the little girl felt transported beyond her immediate surroundings, set adrift in some wordless sphere, floating above the scene, alone with the strange spirits of the night.

Exhausted and dazed by the intensity of the evening, she stirred moments later, tossing fitfully where she lay on the car seat next to her mother. The man had turned the car across the wide asphalt slab in front of the restaurant and now drove through a labyrinth of narrow dirt streets leading toward the town's main road.

It had grown quite late; and as the car's headlights threw weird shadows across the mud walls of the modest little houses as the family passed, the man drove slowly, watching for the few street signs as there were, so as not to miss the turnoff that led to the border bridge.

Presently as the little girl raised herself up off the car seat to look out, there suddenly appeared to the right a white-haired old crone, scuttling along the roadside and kicking up dust with her shabby huaraches. When she caught sight of the car, the gaunt old woman dashed behind a crumbling adobe wall, while the girl frantically peered into the darkness to make sure she hadn't imagined her.

Darting from behind a grotesque stand of mesquite trees at the end of the interlocking neighborhood paseos, the woman looked quickly in the family's direction, pulled at the worn rebozo swathing her frail shoulders, and was swallowed by the darkness as an eerie, mournful voice rose and fell in the night air. Now deeply alarmed, the girl shuddered and clung to her mother, pointing out the car window.

"Mama!" the girl cried, "La Llorona! Over there!" Her parents were silent, not understanding what had frightened the child.

"Can't you SEE anything?" the little girl cried. "Didn't you HEAR it?" The girl's mother's eyes widened at this outburst, as the man pulled off the road and killed the engine.

"See there!" the girl suddenly exclaimed, pointing toward the adobe wall where the old woman had first appreared. Her parents looked toward the wall, saw nothing, and glanced inquiringly at one another.

But as the family turned and peered into the gloom, the wraith appeared again in the faint light of the little neighborhood street. Standing at the far end, and gazing intently in the direction of the car, the woman now held one gnarled finger aloft, and spoke hoarsely in a voice that was not of this world:

"The path is not well marked!"
"¡El camino no está bien pintado!"

"Therefore proceed with care, my little one."
"Por eso anda con cuidado, mi'hijita."

Then with an enigmatic smile and tugging at her tattered shawl, the woman wheeled and vanished into the shadows as the ghostly voice again flew out across the night.

The girl's parents were clearly astonished at all that had transpired; but the girl herself was now perfectly calm, strangely reassured by her mentor's fateful words. And though she hadn't understood the handful of words the woman had uttered in her strange tongue, the youngster somehow grasped their intent. Moments later, the girl's mother broke the spell that had fallen over the family.

"Well, I think we'd best get out of here," she whispered to her husband. "Something very strange has just happened, and while I won't say I'm completely petrified, I would still rather get back home before I try and understand it."

And with this the man started the car and made for the border highway as he glanced uneasily in the rear-view mirror.

She drove through her old neighborhood in El Paso's Lower Valley, looking for any memento of her time there as a child. After 20 years away at jobs across the country, she'd come back to be in a friend's wedding. Nothing looked familiar--only the friendly waves of the people now living at the old homestead--so she waved back and retook the main road back to town.

After the wedding, she dressed in jeans, got in the car, and headed north out of El Paso.

She wanted to go to the river. After all these years. To see it. Smell it. Wade along its muddy banks. And remember. It was to be a homecoming.

She drove up the Interstate towards Las Cruces, watching for natural landmarks that could lead her toward any isolated side road where she could go down to the river's edge unnoticed.

She didn't want to be confronted by the commercial growers and their braceros. These guys could get pretty confrontive after decades of state-sanctioned proprietary dibs to the river water. In their eyes, she was a trespasser.

She also didn't want to try to go to the river in El Paso--there were cops everywhere, crowds of border crossers on foot, and cars and trucks stuck idling for miles and miles on either side of the multilane bridge connecting Juárez and El Paso.

No, she didn't want to see that, to have any part in it right now, those bewildered human hordes, caught in the cacophony of blind governmental indifference and self-interest.

She wanted to sit at the edge of the river now as she had then, decades ago, to gaze at its green, undulating surface carrying birds and fish and mesquite branches and unidentifiable clumps of debris slowly by.

It was growing season; and as she drove on, she looked across the highway's east side and saw ditches flush with water, feeding into field after field of corn and hot peppers and stands of pecan trees.

She exited at an access road along an isolated stretch of the freeway moments later, turned west, and headed up a narrow dirt road to her left.

Pulling off on the shoulder, she got out and searched the skyline, looking towards a cluster of trees beyond an adjoining field of onions. She caught the scent of the river before she saw it.

There, she said. There it is. She got back in the car, drove a few feet, stopped, looked at the condition of the road, and reevaluated her chances.

Parking the car on a nearby patch of gravel, she got out again, walked back to the road, and took off on foot toward the trees.

Once at the edge of the trees, she worked her way up a slight embankment, and stood on a ledge of moist earth.

She carefully stepped down through deeper sand to the other side of the embankment, pushing past brush and low-hanging tree limbs that obscured her view.

Once there, she looked down at the river channel, took in a startled breath, and looked back down the embankment in disbelief.

She saw a riverbed of sand, rippled like dunes in the desert.

"The river's dry," she whispered. "The river's run dry." Tears filled her eyes.

Then, in that ancient, wordless human gesture that marks moments of tragic incomprehension, she slid down to her knees, lowered her head, and dug her fingers into the ground to steady herself.

Around her, the willows quivered in the breeze in answer to the fluttering leaves of the cottonwoods above her. She listened.

"We're still here," she thought they said. "We go down farther than you can see. Our roots find water. The river is below us, too."

She looked up, breathed in again, and caught the scent of the river below the sand.

"I was here before you two-legs walked the earth," the river seemed to say, "and I will be here long after you are gone."

A hawk called, high up, beyond sight, and woke her from her reverie.

"It's time to go!" the hawk shrieked. "GO AWAY!"

She got up, took one last look, and crawled back down the embankment, heading down the dirt road toward her car. She saw two men running toward her from across the onion field.

"Hey, HEY!" they yelled, menacing, waving toward the freeway. "What d'you think you're doing? GET OUT OF HERE!"

Now trotting at a clip, she raced to her car, jumped in, spun around, and sped off over the road leading to the freeway. She saw them in her rearview mirror, shooting her the finger.

Back on the Interstate, she glared in the mirror, relived the scene, and cried aloud, "F---- YOU!

"Screw you for presuming you can own something that can't be owned!" she raged, "For trying to control something more powerful than you'll ever be." And she drove on, exhausted in body and spirit.

She decided to go back to Ysleta, maybe go in the old mission, light a candle or something, try to calm down.

A half hour later, she pulled into the little town and parked on the casino side of the main street.

It was Saturday, and the street was bustling with townspeople, stray dogs, hawkers, cavorting children, and tourists taking pictures. She walked down a boardwalk, taking in the sounds of guitar music, whistles, and pulsing drums.

Nearing a corner, she saw an old Ysleta man sitting placidly on a wooden bench, with an older woman wearing a turquoise scarf and cotton dress--probably his wife--beside him. He smiled widely as she walked toward him.

He had an ancient face, as hard and deeply furrowed as an old brown saddle; and from deep inside his skull, his black eyes glowed like coals. He patted the bench next to him and waved a welcome; and she walked over and sat down on the boardwalk near him with her feet over the edge, grateful for the company.

He sat silent for awhile, and then turned and spoke to her like an old friend.

"You have Indian eyes, M'hija, and you feel it," he said with an air of mystery. "And somebody 'way back then knew you were coming. And they musta prayed a powerful prayer for you to feel that way."

She was astonished. A perfect stranger had just described the surreal urgings she'd been having recently in that twilight between waking and sleeping. She regarded him silently, unsure of how to respond.

"I just know, he said, seeing her confusion, and began to laugh. Then he spoke again.

"Too many cars!" he complained when he saw her crane her neck around to try to see if she could see the Zaragoza bridge.

"Always!" he went on, waving a hand back and forth. "They just sit there, day after day, honking and making noise, and stinking up the air!" Then he slapped his leg and laughed impishly, moving his wife to cackle and hold her sides. They looked down at their young visitor sitting on the curb, surveying the hubbub.

"I just went down to the river," she said mournfully, "up north. It wasn't there. Just sand." The man listened intently, paused, and then laughed again, louder than before. She frowned, surprised to think that he hadn't taken her comment seriously.

"Child, you give humans too much credit!" he said. "Dumb as DIRT! And even though things seem kinda okay now, they don't have much time, and they don't even know it." And he laughed uproariously.

"What?" she asked, incredulous.

"People! Gone 'bye!" his wife interjected, chuckling madly and holding her shaking belly.

"Don't cry!" the old man finally said."Somos demasiados." She looked back at him, more confused than ever.

"There are too many of us!" he said. "We eat too much! And the earth is gonna scratch us offa her, like fleas! It will be a blessing when we're gone! You, me, my wife, we're just little humans!

'You can't understand everything, girl," he continued, pointing to the sky. "Only the Great One, up there, can." Beside him, his wife was silent. And the old man's expression grew solemn.

"But the river is eternal."