Beyond the Wall
Since November there’s been an upsurge in local, national and
international marches where protestors carry signs that read:
“Build Bridges, Not Walls.” They are responding, of course, to
the Trump Administration’s long-promised Border Wall.
And they are reiterating something scholars already know:
even where there are border walls, creative community
building, so often spear-headed by women, easily blurs
boundaries.
The U.S.-Mexico border we know today was formed out of two
moments, the 1848 signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
between the U.S. and Mexico (which designated the Rio Grande
river as the official border separating Texas and from its
southern neighbors) and the Gadsen Purchase, which, in 1853,
established the rest of the dividing line. Not only a
geographic boundary, the border became associated with a set
of practices of inclusion and exclusion affecting those on
both its sides.
Still, Mexicans were not immediately or irrevocably “othered”
by the U.S. government.
Mexican workers provided necessary labor for U.S.
manufacturers, both within the U.S. (where they worked as
conquered labor, migrant labor, and as “guest workers”) and in
Mexico (in maquiladora assembly plants). It took a 1970s-era
recession to spur a stronger stance against Mexican
immigration to the U.S., with the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (now known as Homeland Security)
specifically citing such migrants as national security
threats. Explaining economic problems as a consequence of
unauthorized migration and employing the language of
“invasion,” even then CIA director William Colby would claim
that population growth south of the border would mean “120
million Mexicans” by the end of the century and a Border
Patrol without “enough bullets to stop them.”
Similar fears are employed today, as the administration looks
for ways to slash budgets so as to fund President Trump’s
wall. Of course, there is already a border wall that crosses
653 miles of the 2,000-mile stretch separating Mexico and the
U.S. Economists peg its cost at $7 billion, and estimate that
Trump’s proposal will cost another $25 billion (excluding
labor costs). No one is truly able to account for how this
wall will be handled on privately owned land or in Texas,
where the Rio Grande flows, but these details are cast aside.
Natural obstructions haven’t stopped the Border Patrol before,
after all—in the stretch of border between San Diego and
Tijuana, for instance, the Surf Fence project granted $4.3
million on behalf of the Patrol to erect a barrier stretching
300 feet into the Pacific Ocean.
Goods and capital are freely allowed to cross; the border is
designed to obstruct, control, and regulate the movement of
people, of labor.
In heated rhetoric, U.S. citizens are told that border
security is about violence, crime, economics, and the drug
war. Women and children are victims (though not blameless
ones) and border dwellers are simply collateral caught in
sometimes-literal crossfire. Where statistics show a doubling
in migrant deaths in the last 20 years, government
spokespeople and media report on the “unintended consequences”
of border militarization. From a human rights perspective, the
wall and its construction have already violated international
norms, including the rights of indigenous peoples, the right
to private property, and the right to non-discrimination. This
is all, it would seem, the collective cost of U.S. safety.
The reality is that 82 million people call the borderlands
home. They survive, even flourish. And women are central
agents, not victims, in this setting.
In my ongoing research just across the U.S. border in Maclovio
Rojas, I have met women, like Hortensia Hernandez, who assume
leadership roles to fight for community well-being and lead
their neighbors in building their own schools, sports fields,
and public services in an area where neither the U.S. nor
Mexican government seems willing to help.
And in Tijuana, a majority-female workforce toils long hours
for low wages in the factories of multinational corporations.
Women there have created cross-border alliances with activists
in the U.S. to try to improve their working conditions. Their
American counterparts show their support by, for example,
protesting in front of the homes of factory owners who live in
the U.S. Such transfronteriz@ organizing transforms “us versus
them” divisions into a movement recognizing that we are all
workers with entwined destinies.
The borderlands include both U.S. and Mexican territory, U.S.
and Mexican citizens and nations of Indigenous peoples. They
represent a site of resistance, conviviality, agency, and
creative community building. This is a space in which
transformative politics not only can but already does take
place.
The health of both countries’ economies, so reliant on the
cross-border construction and sale of goods, and the health
and viability of borderlands communities will be immeasurably
impacted whether the Trump Administration’s wall comes to
fruition.
Politicians, corporate leaders, and borderlands residents must
come together—like so many autos built with U.S. parts in
Mexican factories—to fashion not only steel walls but also
humane policies if the people and economies of both countries
are to flourish.
— Michelle Téllez, Assistant Professor of Mexican American
Studies at the University of Arizona.