Ronstadt’s life on the border

Linda Ronstadt is a child of the borderlands, said Michael Schulman in The New Yorker. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer was raised in Tucson, just north of the U.S. border with Mexico. Her grandfather was a Mexican bandleader, and Ronstadt’s parents had friends on both sides of the border. In her childhood, Mexicans and Americans would cross freely back and forth to eat and shop and go to each other’s weddings, baptisms, and parties. She’s horrified by the region’s militarization. “I feel filled with impotent rage,” says Ronstadt. “I grew up in the Sonoran Desert, and the Sonoran Desert is on both sides of the border. There’s a fence that runs through it now, but it’s still the same culture. The same food, the same clothes, the same traditional life of ranching and farming.” Ronstadt, who now lives in San Francisco, had to give up singing a decade ago because of a debilitating form of Parkinson’s disease. When she was still able, she worked with the Samaritans, supplying food and water to migrants crossing the border. “You meet some guy stumbling through the desert trying to cross, and he’s dehydrated, his feet are full of thorns, cactus,” she says. “Then you see this Minute Man sitting with his cooler, with all of his water and food and beer, and his automatic weapon sitting on his lap, wearing full camouflage. It’s so cruel.” ■