INTERNATIONAL NOTES: The Tortilla Curtain

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When officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service decided to build two new stretches of wall, totaling 12.5 miles, along the 1,950-mile Mexican border, they thought they were merely mending fences, not wrecking U.S.-Mexican relations. After all, the reason an estimated 1 million Mexicans enter the U.S. illegally each year is that most existing fences have been knocked down, shot full of holes or simply hauled away. Indeed, the new barriers might have gone up unnoticed had not the builders boasted that "anyone barefoot" seeking to climb over the razor-sharp wall would "leave his toe permanently embedded in it."

That grisly prospect unleashed a torrent of anti-American rhetoric in Mexico. Said Congressman Salvador Reyes Nevares: "Our government cannot remain impassive in the face of this inhuman measure, which tramples on our dignity." President José López Portillo called the fence-building "a discourteous, inconsiderate act." Editorial Writer Yolanda Sierra in Mexico City's daily Ovaciones dubbed the fence "a tortilla curtain."

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has sent engineers back to the drawing board to eliminate the wall's "inhumane features." They did not, however, accept the satirical advice of Editorialist Sierra: "The fence should be constructed so it will not scrape or cut and it should be built by Mexican labor. After all, Mexicans know how to weave very well. Remember our baskets."