As the U.S. government built its latest stretch of border wall, Mexico made a statement of its own by laying remains of the Berlin Wall a few steps away.
The 3-ton pockmarked, gray concrete slab sits between a bullring, a lighthouse and the border wall, which extends into the Pacific Ocean.
“May this be a lesson to build a society that knocks down walls and builds bridges,” reads the inscription below the towering Cold War relic, attributed to Tijuana Mayor Montserrat Caballero and titled, “A World Without Walls.”
For Caballero, like many of Tijuana’s 2 million residents, the U.S. wall is personal and political, a part of the city’s fabric and a fact of life. She considers herself a migrant, having moved from the southern Mexico city of Oaxaca when she was 2 with her mother de ella, who fled “the vicious cycle of poverty, physical abuse and illiteracy.”
The installation opened Aug. 13 at a ceremony with Caballero and Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s former foreign secretary who is now a leading presidential candidate.

Caballero, 41, is married to an Iranian man who became a U.S. citizen and lives in the United States. She and their 9-year-old are used to cross the border between Tijuana and San Diego.

Since June, Caballero has lived in a military barracks in Tijuana, saying she acted on credible threats against her de ella brought to her attention by U.S. intelligence officials and a recommendation by Mexico’s federal government. Weeks earlier, her bodyguard de ella survived an assassination attempt.

Caballero said that she does not know who wants to kill her but she suspects payback for having seized arms from violent criminals who plague her city of her. “Someone is probably upset with me,” she said in her spacious City Hall office.