第10章
The Border as Anti-Frontier: From Boundary to Wall
Borders represent both domination and the panic of power-what Freud described as "a fortress on the frontier," implying that the society being defended is as unstable as an individual's ego. On the U.S.-Mexico border, obsession with external fortification reveals internal troubles.
The U.S.-Mexico border was established by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo following the Mexican-American War. The line runs from the Gulf of Mexico westward along winding rivers whose banks shift with time and whose waters are diverted to serve towns, ranches, mines, and factories, before crossing arid lands and finally reaching the Pacific. In its path, the border divides dozens of indigenous communities including the Tohono O'odham, Yaqui, and Apache, along with farms, ranches, wildlife habitats, archaeological sites, bird and butterfly reserves, towns, streams, canals, canyons, roads, paths, cemeteries, and city streets.
The border began with just stone markers in the 1850s, with no fence. People, animals, goods, and water crossed freely, creating an integrated ecology. The U.S. surveyors largely ignored the region's inhabitants, dismissing the land as "a sterile waste" good only as "a barrier or natural line of demarcation between two neighboring nations."
Mexico barely survived the 19th century intact. After breaking from Spain in the 1820s, Mexico suffered coups, civil wars, lost Central America, Texas, and its northern territories to the U.S. In 1862, France invaded and installed Maximilian as emperor, though Mexican liberals eventually drove out the French and executed him.
Instead of military conquest, debt leverage opened Mexico to foreign investment. American capital-led by J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Hearst, and others-transformed Mexico's economy, gaining control of oil, railroads, utilities, livestock, agriculture, and ports. North of the border, corporations dispossessed Mexicans and indigenous communities of millions of acres through "litigation, chicanery, robbery, fraud, and threat," while south of the border, tens of thousands of Yaqui were violently expelled from their lands in Sonora to make way for export plantations owned by American companies.
In 1910, Mexico erupted in revolution-what historian John Mason Hart calls "the first great third world uprising against American economic, cultural, and political expansion." Peasants fought planters, secularists battled Catholics, and workers rose against owners. Fields were burned, factories sacked, mines flooded, and oil rigs and plantations nationalized.
Border policing evolved gradually but also in bursts, typically during wars and economic crises. Before World War I, the border remained relatively open. As historian Mae Ngai notes, the U.S. "had virtually open borders" except for Chinese exclusion laws. No passports, visas, or green cards were required. Simple health and intelligence tests were the only barriers at entry points like Ellis Island.
Everything changed when the U.S. entered WWI in April 1917. Wilson signed sweeping immigration restrictions including literacy tests, entrance taxes, and quotas. Mexican workers, needed for southwestern agriculture and mining, were exempt from quotas but required to pass through checkpoints for health inspections and delousing.
The U.S. Border Patrol operated with absolute impunity against migrants who had no rights. Former Texas Rangers turned patrollers were accused of tying migrants' feet together and dragging them in and out of rivers until they confessed to illegal entry. Many patrollers were active Ku Klux Klan members throughout border towns from Texas to California, with one military officer noting that "practically every other member" of El Paso's National Guard belonged to the Klan.
