Cheree Charmello Andrews

When I arrived in Rivera, Uruguay—a quietly bustling city stitched to the edge of Brazil by an invisible thread so alive one can feel its breath—I was still cloaked in the rigidity I had inherited from growing up in the United States. I wanted a schedule. A guide. A map. To be told where I could and shouldn’t go. Borders in my country are sharp, defended, often weaponized. My idea of a “boundary” was built on concrete and caution. A thing that separates. But in Rivera, the line between two nations was—peace. A wide, welcoming stretch of cobblestone where neither wall nor war interrupted the conversations—Ones happening seamlessly and simultaneously in a variety of tongues.

Frontera de la Paz. Fronteira da Paz. Peace Border.

No matter the idioma, I hadn’t expected an imaginary line to stretch my learning so far and so wide.

My Fulbright cohort and I returned there often. Each time, children played fútbol, striking the ball across borders without a hint of caution. Teens strolled hand-in-hand, bantering in a melodic blend of portuguese and español and portuñol—a bountiful blend of sounds and browns totally new to me. Shopkeepers sold from stalls that spilled out of both nations. Peso, real, dollar seamlessly exchanged. There was no tension, no need to define one side from the other. The peace border trusted its people.

It seemed to trust me, too. 

I remember one afternoon vividly: The golden hour lit the trees in Plaza Internacional, and I sat on the edge of a presence, watching. The burble of Fonte Luminosa framed a small group of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous-Uruguayan teenagers skating. Kissing. Laughing.

One of the boys noticed me as he skated by, his wheels clacking against the cobblestone as he slowed up. “Você está perdida?”

I must have pulled a face as I strained to interpret and respond, my ear still unattuned to the unique timbre. With a tilt of acknowledgment, he switched to a portuñol, “You…lost?”

I shook my head. “Ah! No. Just…learning. Aprendiendo!”

He smiled as if this were the best possible answer. “Aqui, nadie se pierde,” he said, glancing around at the plaza.

Here, no one gets lost.

In that borderless hum of laughter and language, I was finding something I hadn’t even realized I’d needed to find—a sense of ease with simply being a collective we. The moments there taught me more about cultural grace than any diversity training I had ever taken. As a public educator in Pittsburgh, I thought I knew diversity. I thought I knew progress. I knew nada. Here, no one asked me to straddle a line, let alone to pick a side. They simply invited me to be. To listen. To absorb. I wasn’t a guest. I wasn’t a white savior. I was just present, sharing shade under a celeste sky that didn’t stop to check passports.

I got up to wander and noticed an old woman sitting on a bench beneath a sprawling ombú tree. Her golden skin caught sunlight like threads of glass as she tossed crumbs from a small paper bag to a cattle tyrant. I readied my camera as I smiled and gestured toward the tiny-but-mighty species that was, like so many things there, new to me.

“Buen dia. Que hermoso pájaro! ¿Usted es de aquí?”

“De aquí y de allá,” she said, motioning her hand from one side of the plaza to the other.

From here and from there. She belonged to both.

“¿Cómo mantienes la paz?” I mimicked her, gesturing toward Brazil and our shared presence in Uruguay.

She studied me for a moment, as if weighing whether I could understand her insight. She leaned in. “We don’t keep it. Peace is not something you keep. It’s something you give.”

I began to learn that peace is not kept by a border. Peace is a choice—a collective breath. And Rivera, this beautiful seam where Uruguay kisses Brazil, became a mirror that reflected who I could be if I dared to unlearn how to think of borders.

Back home now, I find myself craving that kind of space—one that doesn’t divide, but invites. A peace that doesn’t need to declare itself loudly, because it’s already breathing. In Rivera, I didn’t just witness peace. I became a student of it. And like any good learner, I carry my lessons forward: to pause before labeling, to listen before assuming, and to imagine that every line, every wall, every boundary can be a seam of peace.