Stopping at the border
"There's an evil force of vodka-sodden Mexicans thinking 'Reconquista'?" said Professor Michael Dear of the University of Southern California. "Doubtful."Dear was referring to the clever Absolut Vodka ad that saw exposure south of the border but was taken, by people for whom the notion was convenient, as a sure sign of our nation's growing border problem with Mexico.
Dear was speaking at a recent Farmlab salon in downtown Los Angeles. Farmlab, an intellectually and botanically sprawling affair underneath the Spring Street bridge, hosts weekly lunchtime lectures for anyone who rolls in. Today, Dear discussed the state of the U.S./Mexico border at Tijuana and beyond.
First some numbers: The 2,000-mile border was cemented with the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, and by 1898 there were 258 markers, bookmarked by two marble "puntas initiales" at either end. Now there are 700 markers, some obscured and made redundant by fences and some sunk into the Pacific Ocean, and 700 miles of fence, mostly in urban areas like Tijuana, Mexicali, and Brownsville, TX.
But despite fence complexes that in some case comprise three fences 30 feet apart from each other, one steel, one mesh, and one barbed wire, speaker Hector Lucero of Baja Caifornia's Cultural Affairs office said, "they don't deter border jumping."North of Calexico there are graveyards of border crossers who didn't make it, collectively known as Juan Does.
But the border means somethig different the farther away one gets.
Indeed, trans-border citizens (people who daily cross the border for work), Dear said, view the border as a "two-hour Stop sign."
Dear said that border people, who live with the virtual or tangible border each day, view any proposed fencing with a shrug and see it as a logical next step, while the government in Mexico City is offended by the snub.
He also noted that the border is in itself a country. Mexicali was not connected by rail to Mexico City until 1948, and in many ways all border towns share more with the country they border than the country they belong to.
See also: Farmlab
Labels: border, farmlab, los angeles, mexico
posted
by Mavervorl Media
0
comments
links
to this post
