One of VFP's newest chapters, Sgt Barrios Memorial Chapter #986 in Baja Mexico has joined the campaign to restore "Friendship Park"!
Friendship Park is a historic meeting place, overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the US-Mexico border, where generations of people from Mexico and the United States have gathered in a spirit of friendship. Designed to unite the people of the two countries, at its center sits a bi-national circular plaza, created in a single pour of cement, and a monument marking the end of the US-Mexico War. When then-First Lady Pat Nixon inaugurated the surrounding area as California’s Border Field State Park in 1971, she ordered her security service to cut the barbed wire at Friendship Park, so she could hug people on the Mexican side of the border. "I hope there won't be a fence here too much longer,” she said.
Sadly, Friendship Park is now marred by a wall covered in thick metal mesh, prohibiting virtually all physical contact:
- families are not allowed to hug, even after years of separation;
- members of the public find it almost impossible to get to know each other;
- access is restricted to short, prison-like “visiting hours,” on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
President Donald Trump wants to spend billions of US taxpayer dollars to build a massive wall on the US-Mexico border. We are proposing a positive and constructive alternative: a truly bi-national park at Friendship Park, the historic meeting place at the western-most end of the US-Mexico border.
The proposal would reduce the desperation that leads to unauthorized border-crossing by creating a space where families and friends from both nations can reunite. The new, bi-national space would increase security by allowing people from both nations to get know each other personally, and feel more secure about their neighbors. Several parks like this already exist on the border between Canada and the United States.