Given the billions of dollars spent annually on border enforcement, not to mention the long lines at the various crossings, the most pleasant way to travel legally from Mexico to the United States might be on the border’s only hand-drawn ferry. Every day, six wide-backed Mexican men use ropes and cables to pull an ersatz barge, El Chalan, a distance of about 10 car lengths across the Rio Grande from Los Ebanos, Tex., to Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Mexico, and vice versa. Sometimes passengers help out, too.

The trip takes only a few minutes, but, especially on weekends, every ferry is full, which makes it feel as if the men are pulling the boat through cement. El Chalan — which roughly translates as “the Barge” in Spanish — is capable of carrying three cars and a dozen people at a time. When it occasionally lingers midriver, the ferry becomes the ultimate in-between: floating proof that what Americans call the border (a hard line to be defended), Mexicans more appropriately call la frontera, a bilingual frontier with a unique mingling of characteristics.

Recently that cultural melding has become more serious. For longtime passengers like Martha Vásquez, who grew up across the river in Gustavo Díaz Ordaz before moving to Oklahoma, the barge has become the best, or only, option for safe passage. Drug cartels now run her home state, Tamaulipas, but their territorial battle has generally sidestepped the ferry crossing. American border-patrol agents are known to take their time with inspections, and strangers are easily noticed among the regulars making the trip back and forth. Still, everyone’s movements have become more calculated. These days, Vásquez relies on the first ride of the day so she can pick up her mother and return quickly. “We used to come all the time,” Vásquez said, standing at the sandy edge of Texas. “But right now I’m scared. Someone is on the other side waiting for us, but I’m still scared.”