Chamizal National Memorial (Part 2)

On December 13, 1968, President Johnson and President Díaz Ordaz met again on the Paso del Norte International Bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez for the inaugural ceremony of the recently completed concrete-lined channel of the Rio Grande, which was named in honor of President Adolfo López Mateos. In 1969, President Díaz Ordaz gifted a Statue of Benito Juárez to Washington, D.C. as thanks for the Statue of Abraham Lincoln dedicated in Mexico City three years prior. This meant that each man was honored with a statue in the capital city of the other’s home country. Chamizal National Memorial was established on the part of Cordova Island retained by the U.S. on February 4, 1974 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on the same day. Mexico later opened Parque Público Federal El Chamizal on its own portion of Cordova Island.

This medal commemorating the land exchange between the U.S. and Mexico on October 28, 1967 was awarded to former commissioner of the IBWC Joseph Friedkin for his work towards settling the Chamizal dispute. He donated the medal to Chamizal National Memorial in 1996.

The red buttons on this ceremonial black box were pushed by President Johnson and President Díaz Ordaz on December 13, 1968 to open the President Adolfo López Mateos Channel of the Rio Grande that marked the new international border.

This 18-foot by 120-foot mural outside of the Chamizal National Memorial Cultural Center is called Nuestra Herencia, Spanish for “Our Heritage.” The mural was painted by Carlos Flores in 1992, touched up in 1997, and restored by the artist and his son, Marco, in 2016 for the memorial's 50th anniversary and the National Park Service Centennial.

Since the 1980s, a statue of Benito Juárez was planned for Chamizal National Memorial to complement the Statue of Abraham Lincoln in Ciudad Juárez. In 2016, the nonprofit XII Travelers Memorial of the Southwest initiated work to install this statue at Chamizal National Memorial. Benito Juárez-Child to Man was sculpted by Ethan Houser, donated to Chamizal National Memorial, and dedicated on September 25, 2022, marking the 58th anniversary of President Johnson and President López Mateos meeting at the old Bowie High School in El Paso to commemorate the ratification of the Chamizal Convention. The statue faces the direction of the Statue of Abraham Lincoln in Ciudad Juárez. According to XII Travelers Memorial of the Southwest, the statue features "...two figures. One is the young Benito, a 12 year old Zapotec sheepherder with a lamb at his feet. The other represents President Juárez in El Paso del Norte, during the winter of 1865, with a book in his hands, Notes to My Children, that he wrote, expressing his love of family and his nation."

Ciudad Juárez as seen from Chamizal National Memorial

In 1987, evangelical pastor Gerardo Bermudez created this message on Cerro Bola Mountain in Ciudad Juárez. It reads “Cd. Juárez la biblia es la verdad leela,” which translates as “Juárez City the bible is the truth read it.” The message is prominently visible from Chamizal National Memorial and southern El Paso.