Radio Topia.

From PRX.

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries.

I'm Joe Richman.

On September 25, 1964, the United States shrank by a single square mile.

It happened in Texas, where the Rio Grande serves as the

border with Mexico, and the river had divided the two countries ever since Texas became a state.

But rivers can move, and 100 years earlier in 1864, torrential rains caused it to jump its

banks and go south. Suddenly Suddenly the border was in a different

place and Texas had gained 700 acres of land called the Chamizal, named after a plant that grew in the

area. It was a thorn in the side of U.S.-Mexico relations for a century, until that day in September

1964, when the U.S. finally gave part of the land back to Mexico.

But by that time, roughly 5,000 people had moved to the Chamizal and made it their home.

Today on the show, what happens when instead of people crossing the border, the border crosses the people?

My name is Mario H Mario Genia Trillo.

I grew up in the Chamisal area during the 50s and 60s.

I lived one street away from the river, which was the division between the two countries.

The river was just more like a highway that you had to cross

to get to where you needed to be.

There was a baseball team on the Mexican side,

and then there was a team on the El Paso side,

and they would just signal each other through whistles,

...