Breastfeeding: A View from the Border.

The United States–Mexico border is the largest international boundary, running from Tijuana–San Diego to Brownsville–Matamoros; it extends 1,989 miles (3,201 km) along the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo depending on which side of the border you are standing on. It is the most frequently crossed international boundary in the world, with *230,000 legal crossings being made each day, 350 million in a year. In 2001, more than 300 million two-way border crossings took place at the 43 Ports of Entry (POEs). In this area, you find 2 countries, 10 border states, 44 counties, 80 municipalities, and 15 pairs of sister cities. Two border sister cities share more commonalities between each other when compared with another city in the same state. These two countries are independent of one another, but yet they share the same history, tradition, ancestors, language, culture, religion, music, dance, customs, beliefs, and practices. Here children can get up in the morning, go to school in another country, and be back home in time for dinner. An engineer can go to work, have lunch at a restaurant, get back to work, and come back home in the same day. People cross the border for many reasons: work, school, for a meal, parties, church, to see the doctor or the dentist, to buy groceries, medications, to go shopping, to a movie, for entertainment, and even a funeral, that is how close knit it is. The border is very dynamic, mobile, always changing, and full of exciting, vibrant, smart, talented, hardworking people who are either born here or for some reason they arrived or end up here. As it relates to health, we are not like Las Vegas; what happens on one side of the border will impact the other side of the border.