Photo of Maria Trillo by her daughter, Nina Freer, who received a BFA in photography from the University of New Mexico, after learning her skills at Western New Mexico University

Maria Eugenia Trillo, a sociolinguist, grew up in the Chamizal area of El Paso, Texas, in the 1950s and '60s. The resident of Silver City, NM, told of the turmoil caused to her family and others, because the Rio Grande had moved, as rivers do, since it had been declared the boundary between the United States and Mexico in the mid-1800s.

Chamizal had once been a part of Mexico, but a moving river had chopped off the area and "given it" to the U.S.

In an article posted in The New Yorker, Trillo said she, as a child, did not understand "just how vulnerable her neighborhood was." Although her father was born in the U.S., he was "repatriated" to Mexico during the 1930s, along with many other U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. He returned to the U.S in the hopes of enlisting in the American military in World War II.

Trillo recalls the two-story tenement she grew up in, along with its hazards. Her parents saved up enough money for her father to build them a larger home in a better neighborhood. During her life in those days, the border was porous, with the family going back and forth for shopping and visits. She and her friends switched easily between English and Spanish.

Nowadays, Trillo, with a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of New Mexico, is an associate professor of the Spanish language, Latin American literature and linguistics at Western New Mexico University, where she is in her ninth year of teaching. The capability of speaking easily in both languages has stood her in good stead.

The New Yorker article continues with the history of Chamizal and the agreement finally made between the U.S. and Mexico in 1964 to set a permanent boundary.

An additional report on NPR, http://www.npr.org/2014/09/25/350885341/50-years-ago-a-fluid-border-made-the-u-s-1-square-mile-smaller , also quotes Trillo about her upbringing in Chamizal and the concrete channel that was built to define the border between the two countries.

The article concludes with comments by Trillo: "And although the river is encased in cement today, Trillo says she's not sure it will stay that way forever. 'There's only so much control a man can do on a river. Sooner or later, I personally think that river is gonna do what Mother Nature has taught it to do — to move,' she says."