The Border Crossed Us, 3/20-3/26

Immigration Explorer

Great job with the blog responses everyone. You've contributed some great input to the material we've looked at.

Here is an "Immigration Explorer," compiled by the New York Times. Adjust the date at the scroll bar towards the top, and select Mexico as the country. You will see the fluctuation in the Mexican population over time, specially around the 1920s. What events could these fluctuations be attributed to?

NY Times Immigration Explorer

Drugs, Violence, and the Militarization of the Border

Last week, we continued our discussion of maquiladoras and ended with the screening of Maquilapolis. To finish off this discussion, we are pleased to invite guest speaker Garrett Brown, coordinator of the Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network.
From their website:

The Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network is a volunteer network of 400 occupational health and safety professionals who have placed their names on a resource list to provide information, technical assistance and on-site instruction regarding workplace hazards in the 3,000 "maquiladora" (foreign-owned assembly) plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. Our goal has always been to build the capacity of workers and their organizations to understand occupational health and safety issues and to be able to speak and act in their own name to protect their health and to exercise their rights. Our activities have included providing information and trainings to workers, plant-wide health and safety committees, and to community, human rights and professional associations; technical assistance to workers filing complaints under international trade agreements; and technical information for grassroots organizations monitoring the performance of transnational corporations and government health and safety agencies in the global economy.

We hope you can bring your questions from the film and our class discussions for Mr. Brown.

This week, we would like to discuss drugs, violence, and the militarization of the border. The TWO readings are Narcovirus by Alma Guillermoprieto and Stage of Siege by Denise Dresser. If you took the course The Southern Border, you may have read these articles. Denise Dresser discusses the "militirization of Mexico." This following quote was taken from another reading:

"The growing military presence at the border is a "low-intensity warfare against immigrants."

How do you think this "militarization of the border" has come to affect immigrants? This changes the security and drug discussion to one about social justice and human rights. Think about projects like Operation Gatekeeper and the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Currently, the Obama Administration is still following Bush's plan to build "The Great Wall of Mexico," as some have coined it. There have even been talks of bringing U.S. troops to the border. This NYTimes article sheds some light on the current immigration and security discussion in politics. Also think about our discussion with Michael Dear and his images of the border to answer this question. Post your response on this blog.

In class, we will be watching some video clips from the documentary project, "The Wall" and try to connect two different perspectives on this issue.