My daughter lives on a section of land near the Rio Grande that has been in my mother’s side of the family for many years.

People who live in this rugged and remote part of the Chihuahuan Desert wilderness have a different take on the attempts to seal off the U.S.-Mexico border.

For that matter, practically everyone who lives on both sides of the 1,254 miles of the Rio Grande’s international boundary between Texas and Mexico has a different take on plans to build border fences and seal off the United States from Mexico.

They don’t like it.

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, who has boosted his career by bashing illegal aliens, must speak for many Americans when he wonders what is wrong with Texans who resist efforts by the federal government to erect security fences at various places along the Rio Grande.

The other day a federal judge ordered a number of angry Texas landowners to open their land to government surveyors as a part of the process to build a border fence.

As a small consolation, the judge also denied the government the right to take privately owned and municipally owned land along the river without an official hearing.

Many city officials and landowners along the Rio Grande are resisting efforts to build border fences authorized by Congress, which approved $1.2 billion for 700 miles of security fences to keep out illegal immigrants, terrorists and drug smugglers.

A lot not understood

There’s a lot that Dobbs and people in Congress do not understand about the differences between the Texas-Mexico border and the same international border shared with New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The international border in those other states runs in a straight line across dry land.

The Texas-Mexico border is a river that snakes back and forth from the high desert at El Paso to the subtropical lower Rio Grande Valley before it ends in a sandy delta at the Gulf of Mexico.

A security fence along the Texas-Mexico border would either have to snake back and forth in the middle of the river, which is too stupid to even contemplate, or require the taking of land owned by Texans in order to erect an ugly fence that cuts them off from the river.

Many cars and pickups along the Texas border where a border fence is planned have bumper stickers that read “No Border Wall.” Similar signs are posted in yards.

Some landowners reportedly would have to give up a mile of more of their land so the government can build a fence that would essentially cede their land and the river to Mexico.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War, established the Rio Grande as the official international boundary. In hard-fought agreements signed in 1906 and 1944, Texas and Mexico have shared the water from the river, which is called Rio Bravo in Mexico.

Ranchers and farmers along the Rio Grande depend on river water for their cattle and crops. Wildlife depends on river water. People fish, raft and canoe in the river.

A 15-foot security fence capable of withstanding a crash of a 10,000-pound vehicle going 40 mph that blocks your view and restricts your access to the river would not be welcome.

The fence aside, a culture is being destroyed by people who know nothing about life along the shared border.

The Rio Grande corridor where my daughter lives has been a crossroads for cultures dating back more than 10,000 years.

There are few official border crossings along the Rio Grande but many unofficial crossings where people have lived for many generations in a compatible and friendly cross-cultural ecosystem. Nearly every small community or trading post on one side of the river has a companion population on the other side.

The border crackdown is destroying many of these long-standing and mutually beneficial relationships without making the nation one bit safer. Not that Dobbs or many members in Congress care.

Rowland Nethaway’s column appears Wednes- day and Friday. E-mail:RNethaway@wacotrib.com