Parque Chamizal occupies part of the land that was at the centre of the 1963 Chamizal Convention, the agreement that finally resolved a 115-year border dispute between the US and Mexico. The Rio Grande had changed course after 1848, leaving a 600-acre tract of land in legal limbo until Kennedy and Mexican President López Mateos settled it.
The park itself is a pleasant green space along the Rio Grande with cultural facilities, an open-air theatre, and public art. The binational nature of the resolution is commemorated on both sides of the border — the US has its own Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso. Standing on the Mexican side looking across the concrete-channelled river, the intimacy of the border and the oddness of the line itself become very real. A good place to reflect on what a border means.