Georgetown University associate professor Adam Lifshey suggests as much in a forthcoming college paper that adds a musical twist to the border issue: "Born in the Estados Unidos: The Unbordered Frontiers of Latin America from Gloria Anzaldua to Bruce Springsteen and Beyond."

"Latin America does not stop ... at the national line between Mexico and the United States," Mr. Lifshey argues. "Currently, approximately one-tenth of the Mexican population is in the United States, a figure that does not even include the millions of Mexican-Americans who are U.S. citizens" (which he says puts the actual figure at approximately one-half of Mexico's present population, according to a campus news release).

Otherwise, he says, Latin America and the United States flow into each other in indivisible ways, including music, and thus "cannot be cleanly separated into two distinct geopolitical or cultural units."

He cites "Matamoros Banks" on Mr. Springsteen's 2005 "Devils & Dust" album, in which the singer adopts the voice of a Mexican man who dies in the Rio Grande while trying to reach his love on the northern side.

The professor says such a song "by a figure so associated with U.S. national imagery as Springsteen challenges conventional definitions of both Latin America and the United States and the walls that supposedly separate them."

Clinton's chimps

One of the last pieces of legislation President Clinton signed was the "Chimp Act," or Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection Act.

It established a refuge in Keithville, La., known as "Chimp Haven," to provide lifetime care to chimpanzees that were bred, purchased or used for research conducted or supported by the federal government.

Rep. Jim McCrery, Louisiana Republican, reveals that Chimp Haven is now home to 123 chimpanzees.