When it became inevitable that the old U.S.-Mexico border fence along Friendship Park would be replaced with a taller one, a local community coalition wondered if there was a way to preserve some of its many colorful murals painted over the last a decade.
The idea was brought to the Museum of Us by the Friends of Friendship Park Coalition, an advocacy group for the historic binational park between San Diego County and Tijuana. The museum was immediately on board.
It reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the contractor in charge of the ongoing replacement project.
The contractor agreed to donate the sections to the museum, and from there it was a matter of logistics, said Micah Parzen, CEO of the Museum of Us, located in Balboa Park.
“We sort of fell out of our chairs,” he said. “We kind of pinched ourselves and we thought, ‘Wow, maybe this could really happen.’”
As a result, 20 sections of the recently dismantled border fence — each of them 18 feet high and 8 feet wide, and most weighing about 4,300 pounds — were saved from being destroyed.
Paint and rust are on the steel sections of the old border wall that were saved from demolition.
(Alejandro Tamayo/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The deteriorated sections from the old bollard-style fence, currently stored in an undisclosed location in San Diego County, include well-known murals painted on the Mexican side by both local artists and others who traveled from various parts of Mexico, the U.S. and beyond.
John Fanestil, leader of the Friends of Friendship Park Coalition, said he was glad the community was able to preserve part of what he described as “an active public canvas that has seen years of cultural production.”
The Mexican side of the binational park is in Playas de Tijuana, a beach tourist site, and is easily accessible to the public. In contrast, the U.S. side is inside Border Field State Park within the U.S. Border Patrol’s enforcement zone, with controls on public access.
“The U.S. side of Friendship Park was always gray, sterile, and cold. Very austere,” Fanestil said. “And on the Mexican side (there was) color, life and energy, and culture and music and food, and the sense of life and vitality. And the wall became a place where all of these emotions were expressed.”
The group also secured an old mesh section installed where families from both sides could meet that limited contact to the tips of their fingers.
María Teresa Fernández, a photographer who has documented the changes in the fence between the two countries for more than two decades, recalled the times when families would approach the border fence to talk with their loved ones on the other side. Some of them even traveled from other cities within Mexico or the U.S.
“The tears of joy of seeing each other, these bars have them,” said Fernández, also a member of Friends of Friendship Park. “These bars witnessed those stories, and kept the tears and fingerprints of the families that were eagerly waiting for their loved ones.”
Murals cover the Mexican side of the border fence at Friendship Park in Tijuana in 2018. The sections have since been replaced with newer, taller wall, while the murals are now stored in San Diego County.
(Alejandro Tamayo/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The murals won’t be going on public display any time soon.
The next step is to engage in a dialogue with the community. Friends of Friendship Park will partner with the Museum of Us to establish a 12-member community advisory council to explore how and where these sections will be exhibited.
Parzen said the goal is to redistribute the sections back into the community on both sides of the border and the Kumeyaay nation in ways that “really share the humanity of that site and the multifaceted stories about what makes Friendship Park so special and unique.”
He said an exhibit could still be two or three years down the road, but he hopes that the council will have a plan in place within a year.
Some of the sections could be exhibited as stand-alone pieces, consisting of one mural at the upper panel and a second one on the lower section. Other murals were painted as diptychs.
Among them are the Pinky Kiss mural created by students from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California; a heart with an eye mural by Mexican artist Martha Sáenz; part of an upside-down flag mural for deported veterans by San Francisco artist Amos Gregory; and the Puerta de la Esperanza mural by Mexican artist Enrique Chiu, which was painted at the border fence’s gate.
Handprints and writing decorate a bollard of the old fence, now in safekeeping.
(Alejandro Tamayo/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Some of those murals were part of the Mural of Brotherhood by Chiu. The project started in 2016.
“It’s great that these sections are being protected because they’ve been iconic for many years,” he said. “It’s very important to be able to share the message of many people who worked together for these murals.”
Friendship Park was founded in 1971. The park on the U.S. side closed in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. U.S. officials later said it couldn’t reopen due to staffing issues.
The border fence replacement project was then announced last year, and officials have vowed to reopen the park once construction is complete.
The new primary fence in the area is 18 to 30 feet tall, and since last year local artists have begun painting new murals on the border fence.
