On the Border: A look at the soccer rivalry between the United States and Mexico

To understand the soccer rivalry between the United States and Mexico, you have to start with the Border. I don't mean the border, the physical region where the two countries intersect. I mean the Border, the mythologized, only quasi-geographical territory where the idea of America and the idea of Mexico bleed together. The border, the physical region, is a place with a real climate and real people, an economy, cities, maquiladoras, drug trafficking, checkpoints, and so on. The Border, the psychic region, is a sun-obliterated desert where law and chaos expire into each other and civilization dissolves. It's a terrain of rattlesnakes, liquor, and bones, the place where criminals run to escape. Lonnie Johnson was singing about the Border in 1930, when he recorded "Got the Blues for Murder Only."