The following is the historical and political context to the border wall and our work here that I’ve picked up in the past few week or so. To me, it all comes in to play at today’s frontera. I’ve tried to stay concise and engaging, but I ramble some and it may be rough. Please let me know if corrections are needed.
Conquest to Mexican Revolution (if you’re short on time or attention you may want to jump to "Pre-NAFTA")
Several hundred years ago, native groups traveled all through meso-america (current-day Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, etc) and the Northern part of N America, i.e. Navajo-lands in the West and Dakota land in the Mid-west. Turquoise, abalone, corn, cocoa, feathers, shells, etc. were traded back and forth through the whole continent, and marriages were made cross-continent for political alliances and trade relationships.
In 1519, Spaniards flooded Mexico city and conquered the Aztec civilization and tierra de México in two years, enslaving the indigenous population.
Jump ahead nearly 300 years to Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Miguel was a creole [Spaniard parents, but born in Mexico], a Catholic priest, and a compassionate, riled-up radical. He challenged the power of Spain and of the church, questioned the immaculate conception and laws of celibacy. He danced, he drank, he had a lover and several children. He raised silkworms and grew grapes, and worked with indigenous and mestizo communities to help them find independence from colonial economic systems. In 1810, Miguel gathered up a rebel army of indigenas, mestizos, intellectuals, liberals, and campesinos (farm/field-workers) and revolted against colonial rule, igniting the Mexican War of Independence. The revolution developed and changed hands for the next 10 years, until independence from Spain was won in 1821.
In 1836, fifteen years after independence from Spain, the territory of Texas separated from México and became a US state in 1845. Following Texas, in the Mexican-American War in 1946 the US invaded the territory of current-day CA and NM. The US swarmed and captured Mexico City and forced the Mexican government to sell the US its territory from CA and NM into the Pacific coast region, all in the name of our holy Manifest Destiny.
At the start of the Mexican-American War our endearing Walt Whitman, to my great disappointment and disillusionment, wrote in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Miserable, inefficient Mexico – with her superstition, her burlesque upon freedom, her actual tyranny by the few over the many – what has she to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race? Be it ours to achieve this mission!” [taken from: Nevins 2002]
Southern NM and the territory of AZ fell into US hands under Santa Anna’s rule soon after with the Gadsen Purchase of 1853, for the US to complete a transcontinental railroad to California.
The 1910 Mexican Revolution sprouted against the rule of Porfirio Diaz. Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Venustiano Carranza are the admired figureheads of the revolution, and in the middle of a fluctuating government, Carranza became president in 1915. If I’ve lost you in a muddle of history, note this: under Carranza the Mexican Constitution of 1917 was created which, in Article 27, redistributed land from the hands of wealthy elite hacienda owners into communally owned, agriculturally-focused ejidos [community-organized land commons].
The ejidos were established “to create new agricultural centers, with necessary lands and waters; to encourage agriculture in general and to prevent the destruction of natural resources, and to protect property from damage to the detriment of society.” [Article 27, 1917 Constitution of Mexico].
Alrightee – so the 60-second preface of a history of Mexico is established.
Pre-NAFTA to Present
I’ll start the border-wall story a hop before the turn of the 20th century.
In the late 1880s, immigration back and forth from U.S. to Mexico was generally unregulated. In fact, the U.S. concern at the border in the 1880s was immigration of Chinese populations from Mexico into the U.S. In 1882 the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to ban/bar people from immigrating from China to the US to work. The US had previously encouraged Chinese immigration into the U.S. as poorly-paid laborers for building railroads, but when the railroad work was completed, the US rejected Chinese citizens. [Note: this pattern will be repeated].
February 14, 1904 Immigration Act establishes the first formal border patrol along the U.S. Mexico border – several men patrolling on horseback, not much more. [Nevins p28].
The Immigration Act of 1917, in response to immigration through Ellis Island, etc., begins to formalize the immigration process into the US, requiring an $8/person tax of entry and a literacy test [Nevins 195]. Later on, developments like the requirement of a passport and quotas of specific nationalities sprout from this act.
1924, the U.S. Border Patrol is established for additional security on the U.S.’ land borders. During prohibition, Border Patrol focused on preventing booze traveling into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico. During the depression, thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans were deported from the U.S. to Mexico in the US government’s response to high unemployment rates. Here, the Border Patrol turned more of its attention to preventing illegal immigration into the US from Mexico [Nevins 30].
During WWII, though, the US immigration attitude flipped. With US working-age/-class men overseas at war, thousands of Mexicans were brought into the US to fill that job vacuum in Eisenhower’s guest worker Bracero Program.
The Bracero Program lasted from 1942 to 1964, but was interrupted in 1956 by “Operation Wetback,” a massive deportation program of undocumented Mexican laborers/immigrants. Nearly 500,000 people fled the U.S. in fear of persecution from the Operation. Over 130,000 people were deported to Mexico in the course of a year, representing the largest deportation by any U.S. president at the time. **
1980 Sanctuary Movement starts in response to refugees from the Guatemalan Civil War and El Salvador Civil War.***
1982 the IMF and the World Bank, with pressure from the US, offers Mexico (in a depression) monetary aid under the conditions that Mexico must agree to a series of [neoliberal] economic reforms, essentially: 1. Remove social programs and cut social spending, 2. Privatize government-owned businesses, 3. Decrease tariffs on foreign imports.^
A few years later, the US, Canada, and Mexico went into negotiations for NAFTA, or “North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement.” The agreement was mostly pushed by the U.S. to protect its investors in Mexico and to take advantage of cheaper labor and weaker environmental regulations south of the border.
On January 1, 1994 NAFTA went into effect. On January 1, 1994 the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) declared war against the Mexican government and declared its protest of NAFTA.
Remember Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution from before? (27 - the creation and protection of ejidos [communal lands]). Under NAFTA, Mexico had to rewrite Article 27 and end the ejido system, opening up the traditional, communal land to foreign investors. In the original constitution, “Only Mexicans by birth or naturalization and Mexican companies have the right to acquire ownership of lands, waters, and their appurtenances, or to obtain concessions for the exploitation of mines or of waters.”
The ejidos had been the fundamental structure of agricultural communities – their means of income, their sustenance, their community common ground was all based in communal land ownership. When NAFTA was implemented, this land became privatized. The Mexican government had done away with the majority of its social spending, so subsidies, aid, social programs simply disappeared in rural communities.
With the removal of tariffs, the US started exporting super-subsidized grains, namely corn, into Mexico. These US grains, US corn, was vastly cheaper than Mexican corn. Naturally, the US corn out-competes the local Mexican corn, and Mexican corn (and other crops) farmers go out of business. They are forced to sell their land (often to foreign investors/corporations) and move into urban centers looking for work; many try to cross al norte to find work in the US. The Mexican agricultural economy was/is completely disempowered by the importation of cheap US corn. Corn is in nearly every Mexican meal. It is a dietary staple, a cultural staple, the foundation of a historical national identity; the Maya are known as “peole of the corn.” Corn is a symbol of life, of sustenance, of cultural inheritance. For the agriculture of Mexico to be forcefully flooded out by subsidized corn from the US Midwest is insult after insult upon injury after injury. (I rant; many people are much more aware of agricultural dynamics between US and Latin America, please correct me if I am spreading misinformation).
I digress. Back to border.
From 1993 – 1997 a series of border fortification projects occurred that intensified security and Border Patrol action in popular, urban areas of migration. Operation “Hold the Line” in El Paso TX, Operation “Gatekeeper” in San Diego CA, Operation “Safeguard” in AZ, Operation “Rio Grande” in TX. The language of these operations alone is military, war-like, implying an invasion or siege pressing against the border from the south. These operations were intended to block migration from Mexico into SW US cities and to divert migration towards the hottest, driest, most rural parts of the US desert. The formal statement of this is “prevention through deterrence.”
The strategy of “prevention through deterrence” was introduced in “Border Patrol Strategic Plan: 1994 and Beyond, National Strategy,” published seven months after NAFTA went into effect. The plan states that under prevention through deterrence, Border Patrol aims to “achieve a rate of apprehensions sufficiently high to raise the risk of apprehension to the point that many will consider it futile to continue to attempt illegal entry” [US Border Patrol 1994].
With this strategy in mind, the Border Patrol predicted that “with traditional entry and smuggling routes disrupted, illegal traffic will be deterred, or forced over more hostile terrain, less suited for crossing and more suited for enforcement” [U.S. Border Patrol 1994]. In other words, people crossing illegally into the U.S. from Mexico will no longer be able to cross in urban, populated areas with resources (water, shade, transportation, etc.) for basic human needs, due to increased border security through the aforementioned operations (Gatekeeper, Safeguard, etc). Instead, migration will be funneled into Southwest desert landscapes, where people attempting to cross are likely to become lost in the mountainous, wild terrain and die from dehydration and/or heatstroke. The prediction is that migration will be herded to desert lands and people will die from environmental factors; the prediction is that these deaths will prevent others from crossing.
The plan recognizes that, along the border, “…the searing heat of the southern border effect[s] illegal entry traffic as well as enforcement efforts. Illegal entrants crossing through
remote, uninhabited expanses of land and sea along the border can find themselves in mortal danger” [US Border Patrol 1994]. Border Patrol also notes that “
violence will increase as effects of strategy are felt.” [Bold not included in original text.]
The “indicators of success” of “controlling the Southwest border” include:
- “political pressure to loosen border” [note that this political pressure is not necessarily from the Mexican government, US political interests, or international pressures – simply that there will be protest]
- “potential for more protests against immigration policy”
- “increased alien smuggling fees” [increasing prices of hiring a coyote or a pollero]
- “inquiries from U.S. employers of undocumented workers” [which may imply that a decrease in undocumented migrants to the US may be a point of concern to the health/function of US employers dependent upon migrant labor]
- “more violence at attempted entries” [the shock of this one speaks for itself]
- “improved public perception” [of the effectiveness of the Border Patrol]
Furthermore, on a point of rhetoric, not once does either Border Patrol border plan (1994 or 2005) refer to undocumented migrants as people, or even simply migrants. They are referred to as “aliens,” “illegal aliens,” and “illegal immigrants,” distancing them and dehumanizing them. This language is cold and unemotional, which allows the report to discuss the deaths of real, feeling, valuable human beings in a factual, detached manner through euphemisms and suggestive wording.
Today’s Border Patrol policy, 17 years later, lives and maintains this strategy and these expectations [see: 2005 National Border Patrol Strategy: Office of Border Patrol by US CBP].
Today’s border wall, the past 17 years, has been developed, enforced, and reinforced with the expectation that death and violence will occur along the border. In fact, an increase in violence and increase in public protest are
official measurements of success. As in, more violence, more death, more dissent means that the Border Patrol is doing it’s job well and the border is unfolding according to plan.
In a report from the Congressional Research Service last year, an analyst and specialist in immigration policy writes that “…border crossings have become more hazardous since the “Prevention through Deterrence” policy went into effect in 1995, resulting in an increase in illegal migrant deaths along the Southwest border” [Haddal 2010].
Since 1994, since the implementation of “prevention through deterrence” (rather, death by desert) over 6,000 migrant deaths have been recorded along the border. Thousands more have died in canyons and arroyos and plains and peaks and their remains have not been found.
(If you have read this far, thank you. I believe this needs to be read and shared.)
While in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC last month, I saw a film on US immigration policy towards Jewish refugees/migrants applying for Visas in early WWII. The US initially refused to offer any exception and/or safe harbor for Jewish refugees fleeing the early Holocaust. In 1937 Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist, wrote of the situation:
“It is a fantastic commentary on the inhumanity of our times that for thousands and thousands of people a piece of paper with a stamp on it is the difference between life and death.”
Several decades later we are reliving and recreating the same brands of cruelties, with different intentions and different victims.
Our immigration policy and our nation’s attitude towards migrant rights and Mexican citizens are unjust and inhumane. Our border policy is in violation with basic (international) human rights. We can
not ignore this.
** This record has been broken by the Obama administration, which in 2010 deported approximately 400,000 people.
Source: Slevin, Peter. “Deportation of illegal immigrants increases under Obama administration.” Washington Post. Monday July 26, 2010.
*** The Guatemalan Civil War (1954-1996) and the El Salvador Civil War (1980-1992) were violent, traumatic wars that resulted in hundreds of thousands of Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States. However, US immigration policy prevented most from gaining asylum status. In response, the Sanctuary Movement formed in the US in 1980 (starting at the U.S.-Mexico border and branching out into the rest of the country). Members of the Sanctuary Movement saw the U.S. government’s refusal to grant asylum as a violation of human rights, and they provided shelter and medical, material, and legal aid to refugees under a philosophy of “civil initiative.” They define civil initiative as “the legal right to directly aid the victims of human rights violations when government is the violator.” Civil initiative organizations act on human rights and international law, are non-violent, and are transparent and in dialogue with the government (for policy reform). No More Deaths is one of the many organizations born of the Sanctuary Movement.
^Tariffs are taxes/fees placed on foreign imports used to protect one’s nation’s economy. (Tariffs make foreign goods more expensive than local goods and, thus, local businesses are favored over foreign).
Haddal, Chad C. “Border Security: The Role of the U.S. Border Patrol”. Congressional Research Service 2010. 2010 August 11.
Nevins, Joseph.
Operation Gatekeeper: The rise of the “illegal alien” and the making of the U.S.-Mexico boundary. Routledge, New York NY. 2002.
Office of Border Patrol and Office of Policy and Planning. “2005 National Border Patrol Strategy: Office of Border Patrol by US CBP”. September 2004.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. “Border Patrol Strategic Plan: 1994 and Beyond, National Strategy.” July 2004.
