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Friendship Park Still Threatened
By Ann Jarmusch
March/April 2023
 Watch this video "Wondering what 30-foot-walls would look like at Friendship Park?”
 Friends of Friendship Park came bearing valentines, including a 10-foot-tall heart, outside the Customs and Border Protection office in Chula Vista on February 14, 2023. |
 The southern edge of currently closed Friendship Park, looking toward the Tijuana bullring, shows the doomed Binational Garden. |
 On a Sunday in 2021, Friends of Friendship Park brave bleak weather for a Marcha de Silencio to protest the park’s closure since February 2020. All photos and video courtesy Friends of Friendship Park |
Construction has restarted at the westernmost section of the San Diego-Tijuana border, where it resumes ravaging Friendship Park/El Parque de la Amistad, which straddles the international line. Despite savvy, ongoing protests mobilized by the Friends of Friendship Park, contractors are preparing to install two 30-foot-tall steel bollard walls topped with anti-climbing panels and another section that will rise to 18 feet. A new gate in the wall will enable visitors on the U.S. side to greet friends and family in Mexico through a metal-mesh barrier—government-decreed limited numbers and hours, of course, when the park finally reopens.
The nonprofit, binational Friends have advocated for a friendlier Friendship Park since 2006, but they have re-intensified their campaign during the past year or so. Starting with Congressman Juan Vargas’s impassioned appeal for work stoppage at a place of peace, they gathered strong letters and signatures from almost every California legislator whose jurisdiction touches Friendship Park. Only the governor eluded them.
Meanwhile, they collected hundreds more letters from citizens, clergy, and organizations, including SOHO, all protesting the inhumane new walls and disregard of the park’s symbolic meaning, established when first lady Pat Nixon dedicated it in 1971. (At her request, the Mayor of Tijuana removed the flimsy barrier there at the time so she could hug the many Mexicans who came to welcome her.) The Friends continue protesting outside a Customs and Border Protection office in Chula Vista, creating videos and simulations to convey the walls’ impact, and holding Border Church services and Marchas de Silencio on Sundays.
In August 2022, the CBP responded to this unprecedented public outcry with an unprecedented response of their own: They ordered a work pause to allow for community input. The Friends were ready, facilitating a design workshop to re-envision the park as a more hospitable public park. Architects, planners, and landscape architects from the U.S. and Mexico spent a weekend on an inspired plan, informed by public comment. The pro bono design team devised park improvements, some as simple as adding benches and shade, which could still be implemented. CBP agents reviewed the design without comment.
Throughout the Friends’ campaign, other lesser-known but precious assets have received little notice. The adjacent Border Field State Park contains significant historic, archeological, and cultural artifacts plus a wealth of birds and wildlife. Like Friendship Park, these assets are threatened by construction that is exempt from all historic preservation and environmental protection laws.
The Friends have been smart about every move, and have won considerable media support. But the group also favors “soft” power. An artist created a border statement by hanging two native sage plants, aided by a very tall ladder. Recently, a group “delivered” bright red valentines to the CBP office. The large Binational Friendship Garden of Native Plants, tended by volunteers for years, will be destroyed for at least the second time by heavy equipment putting up the new walls. The government promises to replace its native plants, but that’s not the same as lovingly homegrown.
The Friends are still fighting the walls. Their recent call to action is cringeworthy for them and their supporters: They accuse President Joe Biden of “choosing to complete Donald Trump’s border wall,” despite Biden’s pledge that “there will not be another foot of wall constructed under my administration.”
Will there ever be peace at Friendship Park?
For more information, updates, and media coverage, visit friendshippark.org
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