INTER-FACE

Deconstructing La Chinesca: Part 2

2007-08-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

With such great luck my first night in El Centro, I couldn't wait to get to Mexicali and see what I could see. My first impression of Mexicali was that it was like other border towns with their railroad tracks dividing the town in half and all the casas de cambios, bus stops, and people waiting in lines. Although, just as you pass the last U.S. Border Patrol agent a large Chinese pagoda comes into view. This pagoda, fenced off from public use, was built in 1995 commemorating a 1991 friendship agreement between Mexicali and Nanjing, China. This monument to the sentiments of intimacy between Nanjing and Mexicali stands at the very pivot point between Mexicali and Calexico's cross border traffic. It's the first thing you see entering Mexicali and its the last thing you see of Mexicali as you enter Calexico (the cars lined up behind the pagoda are entering the US, on the other side of the building to the left is traffic entering Mexico).

The 1991 ceremony was conducted with local officials, members of the Chinese Association of Mexicali, Nanjing officials, and Chinese businessmen with economic ties to Northern Mexico. One of the members, perhaps president at the time, of the Chinese Association of Mexicali, Eduardo Auyon, seemed to have been the MC of the event. Eduardo Auyon is an important person to consider when thinking about La Chinesca, because he has done important historical recovery of the La Chinesca's evolution in addition to providing interesting cultural commentary about being Chinese in Mexico. He has written three books two in Chinese and one in Spanish, El Dragon en el desierto. An important precursor to El Dragon was a film by the same name made in 1986. The film told the story of Li Han a Chinese immigrant to Mexico who evaded the anti-Chinese politics in Sonora (See Orientalism South of the Border) by moving to Mexicali. The film featured local Chinese Mexicans as actors as well as the entire Auyon family. The film was produced through UABC with the help of Sergio Ortiz Salinas, scholar Gabriel Trujillo Munoz, and Angel Norzagaray. Later that year it aired on Channel 3 in the Mexicali area. In many ways, people have become familiar with La Chinesca through Auyon's art, writing, and acting. Perhaps he deserves his own post down the road?

In addition to the pagoda, there are other signs of amity between Chinese and Mexicans. This primary school on the edge of La Chinesca portrays a Chinese child greeting a Mexican child.

The images of the children draw on 19th and 20th century stereotypical motifs in an attempt to illustrate political sociability in spite of perceived differences - a self-essentializing nod to multiculturalism's 'right to difference'. The Chinese with traditional garb and the Great Wall in the background and the Mexican with sombrero and Aztec pyramid in his background. This image also suggests that cultural negotiation is gendered and a meeting of masculinized subjects. A rendering of this image appears in Auyon's El Dragon text as the title page to the chapter on historical relations between China and Mexico. What I find interesting about these expressions of friendship and tolerance is its asymmetrical character. These are efforts by Chinese Mexicans may communicate a desired future, as well as a revisionist history. Many accounts of the historical relations between Chinese and Mexicans speak at length about cultural contact and budding economic ties. However, they often omit the political persecution and disenfranchisment that many Mexican Chinese experienced during the Mexican Revolution, rise of Mexico's welfare state, and its subsequent indutrialization. I have found several Mexican scholars and authors who have tried to reconcile these historical silences (Gabriel Trujillo Munoz, Maricela Gonzalez Felix, Jose Jorge Gomez Izquierdo, Moises Gonzalez Navarro), but it seems to be an interesting site to interrogate the practice of imagining the nation, nationalism, and ongoing racial formations.

From a Gramscian perspective of hegemony, racial formations are always contingent and contestable. At this angle, the cultural production of "historical ties" may represent a repeating "manuevor" against and countering the nationalist forces of erasure and marginalization. Of course a cultural studies approach to political analysis is always subject to critiques of subjectivist relativism but this case remains particularly apt for deconstruction given the dynamism of border culture and the strength of presence of La Chinesca. For instance, not only have the Mexicali Chinese had to cope with the transition from majority to minority (the Chinese outnumbered Mexican nationals in the early 20th century), but they have also been able to remain a prominent "feature" of the Mexicali landscape. It is the material consequences of particular representations that make cultural criticism a useful method of analysis. The following map of La Chinesca dates to 1925.

Since this period, the distribution of La Chinesca has been mostly reduced to those locations south of the railroad. Although many buildings like that of ABSA remain near the old lumberyards on the north side of the tracks it seems that few live on that side. Again, let me reiterate that these thoughts are just reflections on my experience and the information I received through limited interviews. I hope that readers with more information/experience will continue to help me understand La Chinesca and it's evolution.

Deconstructing La Chinesca: Part 1

2007-08-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

This past week I spent Sunday through Friday in the Imperial Valley doing some footwork for my research project about Asians in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. The next few posts will cover some of the highlights and some reflections on my experience. Over the past year I have tried to dig up all that I could find on the Chinese population in Mexicali, the state capitol and bordertown with Calexico, CA. Because so little has been written about Imperial and Mexicali Valley's Asian population after 1940, I wasn't entirely sure that there would be a significant population still in existence.

I arrived in El Centro, CA around 7pm rounding off 9 hours of driving from Oakland. The entire Imperial Valley seemed to be ensconced in a thin fog or fine dust. In addition, only a few cars and trucks shared the road with me as I found my way to the hotel. After cleaning up and putting myself back together, I decided to try one of Imperial Valley's Chinese Restaurants - Lucky's on 4th and Orange. As I drove around looking for Lucky's I wondered where El Centro's residents hangout? The parking lots I passed were all empty and the, seemingly recent downtown "revitalization" had not produced a night life to speak of. I turned south on 4th and found Lucky's parking lot full of cars, nearby street parking was also taken up. As I approached the building, a family of seven was just leaving, as I held the door open for them to exit I noticed pieces of paper taped to the entrance window advertising daily specials in English, Chinese, and Spanish. I felt that I was in the right place. Inside the restaurant waiters were running plates of Chinese food to a large group having a baby shower. Some old vaqueros were digging into their lo mein and others families we busy with food and conversation. I heard all three languages being spoken that night.

After eating my "combinacion equis" (mounds of lo mein, char sui, beef broccoli, and fried rice) I went to the counter to pay and introduced myself to the Chinese woman behind the counter operating the register. I told her that I was in the Imperial Valley to research the impact of the border situation on local Asians communities and to learn about their more recent history (1940-present). She immediately perked up and introduced herself and began sharing little-known facts about the Chinese community in Calexico, CA and Mexicali, BC. She proceeded to find her husband who worked in the kitchen. After meeting Jenny and Roman Zhou I found that they own Lucky's and have been in El Centro for 17 years. Prior to settling in Southern California they lived up North near Oakland's East 14th Avenue upon arriving from China's Provence of Canton, a major site of Chinese emigration for the last 200 years. As Roman return to the kitchen, Jenny began to list off other local Chinese Americans I should speak with who's families have been in the valley for several generations. I couldn't have hoped for a better beginning to my research trip - great Char Sui and enthusiastic locals!

Some how I forgot to snap a photo of the place. I'll put some photos up for the next post.

Race and Nation in Mexico - Orientalism South of the Border

2007-05-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

In northern Mexico, after the 1910 revolution, a printing press in the border town of Nogales, Sonora was hired to copy playbills for the “Sumptuous Debut,” of soprano singer M.G. Moreno and the return of the comic-singer Sanchez Molgosa. The playbill enticed possible patrons to attend the “sensational opening” of “Loca de Amor,” a lyrical comic duet embellishing the effects of the Ley de Trabajo, a law requiring all foreign enterprises to employ of at least eighty percent Mexican nationals. The performance was dedicated to Mayor Jose M. Arana and the Cultural Society of Magdalena. Mayor Arana, a local businessman and schoolteacher, was also a pioneer of nativist business associations like Junta Comercial y de Hombres de Negocios and Junta Central Nacionalista “En Defensa de la Raza” (Hu-DeHart). The organizations’ sole purpose was to propagandize and lobby for discriminatory laws against Chinese businesses in Sonora but also throughout Mexico. The Mexican ligas used images such as this one

to convince readers that the Ley de Trabajo specifically meant the ousting of Chinese shopkeepers (Espinoza 1932). The caption of the cartoon reads, “…and the fervor of “the green guards” was more than obvious to her that the town endorsed the government acts.” Ligas antichinos sprang up across the northern border states and as far south as the state of Oaxaca throughout the post-revolutionary period. Sixty years earlier white Americans north of the border formed anti-Chinese groups and passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first immigration law to legally exclude immigrants based upon race. The Chinese Exclusion Laws also formed the first immigration police officers, called "Chinese Catchers" - later to become the Border Patrol in 1924. The Chinese Exclusion Acts in the US were not repealed until 1943, but during that period many Chinese immigrants sought entry to the US through Mexico and many ended up staying in Mexico. By the early 20th century both Mexico and the US had defined thier territorial borders through anti-Asian politics, while implicitly relying upon Chinese immigrant labor.

Prior to the revolution, Mexicans were mostly ambivalent to Chinese immigration (Hu-DeHart); some Mexican officials even made light of US concerns regarding Chinese immigration to the US via Mexico just to spite the arrogance of their American counterparts (Lee). Yet, during the revolutionary period armed conflict often became anti-Chinese violence. Cumberland purports an important “psychological factor,” to explain why “the persecution was a particularly norteño phenomenon.” He continues by emphasizing a periodization, noting that

“especially prior to 1916 – and by that date, the pattern, though not the details, had been set – one can establish a high correlation between discriminatory outbreaks and military action. Defeats, long drawn-out battles, retreats, and sieges were frequently accompanied by violence against Chinese… The Sonorans carried their latent prejudices with them wherever they went; frustrations incident to military action triggered the explosions.”
(Cumberland)

As stated earlier, the Mexican revolution stirred an intense nationalism leading to bloody struggles for power and control of the Mexican nation-state. Hu-DeHart claims that the Chinese had established a “dominant petit bourgeois class,” that did not compete with Mexicans but, “met new demands for goods and services in a greatly expanded society.” Becasuse of their class position, she posits that,

“[t]o the humble, dispossessed masses, [the revolution] promised social justice to all Mexicans; it promised national control of the country’s resources and economy. Chinese domination of local business in much of the north, notably Sonora, became a national embarrassment.” (Hu-DeHart)

What is important to point out here is that the struggle for control of Revolutionary Mexico included wealthy elites of northern Mexico where the highest concentrations of Chinese immigrants were found. Many of the Revolution’s political leaders like Francisco Madero from Coahuila (President 1911-1913), Venustiano Carranza also from Coahuila (President 1917-1920), Álvaro Obregón from Sonora (President 1920-1924), as well as Plutarco Calles also from Sonora(President 1924-1928) were familiar with, if not ardent supporters of the ligas antichinos. These relationships made critical linkages between national politics and local developments. Linkages such as these meant that ligas antichinos made waves in the national pond, in addition to making national level politics important to promoters within the local ligas.

Unlike the US campaigns, the Mexican ligas were not supported by a groundswell of disenchanted laborers. HuDeHart uncovered quite a different dynamic in the campaign’s formation in the Mexican context.

“Leading the fight against the numerous, ubiquitous and relatively prosperous Chinese business community were small and modest Mexican merchants, school teachers, and other middle class aspirants, with the support of some organized labor. These people basically resented the Chinese for blocking their social and economic advancement. Thus, Sonora’s anti-Chinese persecution had a clear class base.” (Hu-DeHart)

Rather than popular anti-Chinese politics resonating at the national level, as in the US case, the Mexican case follows a recruitment narrative in which the Mexican petit bourgeois class sought support from national and state elites as well as from the lower tier mass of workers. Hu-DeHart emphasizes the particularity of the formation of ligas antichinos in Mexico by pointing out that, “In the absence of firm constitutional grounds, a strong ideological basis had to be established to justify anti-Chinese persecution.” Yet the question remains; what was the constitution of that “strong ideological basis”? In this regard the literature on ligas antichinos lacks sufficient depth, a point that will be developed in depth later.

It is necessary to highlight the peculiarities of Mexico’s relation to US imperialism regarding the formation and maintenance of the ligas antichinos. In the post-revolutionary period many of the attempts to pass local anti-Chinese ordinances like the Americans did were thwarted by US consular pressures on Mexican politicians. American foreign-service agents were keenly aware of how important the Chinese petit bourgeois class was for the US monopolies in mining, cattle ranching, cotton, and transportation industries within Mexico (Hu-DeHart). According to one analysis, 77% of corporations in Mexico were foreign owned, primarily by American industrialists (La Botz). Combined with the financial resources of a transnationally organized network of Chinese merchants, lobbying against discriminatory laws was effective at challenging the legitimacy of legal attacks. By these accounts, it is curious how the scale of economic and political domination by US interests did not over-shadow the comparatively less ominous presence of the Chinese petit bourgeois. Instead, much of the anti-Chinese leaders in Mexico claimed that excluding the Chinese was necessary to be considered among the family of Western nations (Lee).

Addressing this ideological dilemma brings the nation and race together as a useful way to understand the formation and maintenance of the ligas antichinos as well as the racist character of the Mexican state. According to Stern, the post-revolutionary period initiated a public discourse of “mestizofilia,” an intense nationalism based upon a “dangerous genuflection” to the imperial narrative of “one triumphant race.” “Mestizofilia” reinterpreted Spanish colonialism, re-ordering the racial hierarchy, claiming that Spaniards were “indianized and infused with the mythical vitality and resistance of the Aztecs and Mayans.” In turn, public policies and academic departments throughout Mexico used the scientific paradigm of eugenics to support the philosophical renovation of the mestizo – “a national hybrid idol” (Stern) These notions of mestizaje were used in political discourse to unite a supposedly “vigorous, productive, and homogeneous political body” but also as an ideological spring whose waters feed the ligas anti-chinos. By this formulation, recruiting members and soliciting support for the ligas implicitly meant an affirmation of the superiority of Mexican mestizos (Spanish and Indian) as well as resonating with the revolutionary call of “Mexico for Mexicans.”

The height of anti-Chinese sentiment in Sonora resulted in their forced exclusion from the state of Sonora in the early 1930s. Previous attempts to implement this policy underscore the importance of the convergence of political, economic and cultural elements. The political discourse of “mestizofilia” combined with the growing discontent around economic opportunities in Sonora gained resonance with National level politics, especially because the President at the time, Plutarco Calles, was a native Sonoran and thus sensitive to state level issues.

Series in Critical Security 7

2006-08-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

SCS 6 gave me the opportunity to delve a bit deeper into what is meant by "threats" in the discourse of National Security. Further reflection on the issue has helped me to realize a fundamental reality of security: the condition of relationships between entities (for lack of a better word). I came to this understanding by breaking down the different parts that constitute the concept of a "threat." In order for there to be a threat, there must be a vulnerability. If there were no vulnerabilities then threats would cease to be considered a threat. Secondly, in order to calculate vulnerabilities there must exist some potential capacity to exploit that vulnerability. So in a very structural and schematic way "threats" are relational. My use of relational in this instance is meant to describe the connections between different elements in security discourse. So, for instance, in order to claim that Saddam's supposed capacity to deploy WMDs was a threat, US vulnerability to such a capacity had to be demonstrated - thus, the relational structure.

But given the intellectual mileage already accumulated in this series, I know that "ethnic state security maps" operate as, "the basis for state elites structuring inter-ethnic relations in a fashion that best secures the current state structure" (Enloe 1980, p. 15). Furthermore, I know that state structures operate at the level of racial projects and ensure their viability through the creation of domestic and global racial hierarchies entangled with gendered, classed, and sexualized forms of difference and domination. These theoretical insights from Ethnic Studies scholarship bring another use of relational into the fold of Critical Security Studies.

This other use of relational refers to post-structuralist theory of identity formation with special regards to Derrida's use of the term differance. This term, differance (different from difference with an e), emerges from the understanding that meaning is produced because of the relationship of elements in a system. In this system there are no positive elements - no elements that can be called simply itself. The identity of a "thing" depends upon its difference from the network of other "things" that are strung together in space and time - so that its meaning is never present in itself but always deferred, delayed, put off until you have time to cross that space and time to determine the set of relations (Thanks to "Derrida for Beginners", for the helpful exposition).

If we are to mesh these concepts together then it seems plausible to think of the structure of race relations that best secures the state apparatus as the result of inter-relational racial discourses. In other words, ethnic state security maps provide the orientation of subjective identities. [This is a new idea that I'm trying to work out, so I'm not sure if this is will be fruitful in the end, so thanx for bearing with me] May be an example would help out. For instance, when the possibility of Arab immigrants carrying out a terrorist threat in the US is considered, policy elites, bureaucrats, and pundits never define the threat of such individuals solely based upon thier abilities. The definition of that threat involves merging the identity of undocumented latino border crossers with Arabs, in order to demonstrate a vulnerability. Additionally, the threat consideration will likely victimze the bureaucracy as plagued by poor funding (this has the dual effect of garnering more legislative support shifting the blame to those who oppose such policies). In a different example, the consideration of undocumented immigrants in the US is never solely based upon political rights, but rather defined in relation to thier impact on domestic workers and labor markets (especially in regard to black workers, in an effort to prevent solidarity). Additionally, the secrutity considerations of Latinas is different than that of Latinos, which links them to the stereotype of black women in thier relationship to state. These security considerations allow policy makers to make claims that security policies that create insecurity for the target population are appropriate for managing the problem. It seems that Critical Security Studies must draw from the traditions of Ethnic Studies if it is going to be able to alleviate the insecurity of state security programs.

The challenge for combining racial theory and Critical Security Studies is the double movement of dismantling the racial discourse created by the security apparatus as well as establishing new possibilities for social organization that are not the result of threat calculations. If you can think of other challenges, please bring them forward - I'd love to hear them.

Summary
Relational Threat Analysis:

Structural schema which defines the "threat terrain."
Unstable and fluctuating constellation of inter-referential identities, the basis of "who" in questions concerning state security.

Meta-Post and Interlude

2006-08-15T23:41:00.000-07:00

This is NOT the end of the Series in Critical Security; we've got a long way to go still! However, I want to quickly thank the readers and commenters of the last few posts.
Thank you for engaging with my thought process - you all have helped me to make the most out of my summer readings. I hope they continue to inspire more comments, questions, corrections, challenges, etc.

Thanks to Senor Perez, I've been blog tagged to answer a few questions.

1. What is a book that changed your life? Definitely Walter Lefaber's "Inevitable Revolutions" - read this one in undergrad.

2. What is a book you've read more than once? Spawn, No.1 (Image Comics) Read this daily when it came out. I'd like to read it again to see how I've changed.

3. What is a book you'd want with you on a desert island? it's really a tie between "101 recipes for coconuts" (for obvious reasons) or "The Log of the Sea of Cortez" by Stienbeck (his ecological exploration of the northwestern desert coasts of Mexico would continually inspire hours of snorkeling around my deserted island).

4. What is a book that made you giddy?Anis Nin "The Little Birds"

5. What is a book that made you sad? I'd have to agree with Senor Perez on this one. Red Azalea, by Anchee Min. (well, he gave it to me to read)

6. What is a book you wish had been written? The History of Chinesca Culture in Mexicali, Baja California.

7. What is a book you wish had never been written? This is difficult to answer for me b/c I don't want to ascribe to any book-burning logic. I would wager to say that any book that comes into existence represents some particular subjectivity that corresponds to real people and that even bad books ought to be allowed to exist b/c someday someone will probably think that my future book will be terrible and should never have been written. I've sufficiently evaded this question.

8. What is a book you're currently reading? Samuel Huntington's "The Soldier and the State" ( a book that should have never been written btw), Aihwa Ong's "Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality", & Dr. David Brunner & Sam Stall's "The Cat Owner's Manual"

9. What is one book you've been meaning to read? Nayan Shah's "Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown

10. Now tag five bloggers.
Makeweight, PerformativeAmy, B(rad F)lis, Mr. Baus, & the next reader ( ...if your reading this blog for the first time then consider yourself tagged!).

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More on "ethnic state security maps," threat analysis, and Ethnic Studies in SCS 7, stay tuned.

Series in Critical Security 6

2006-08-10T06:28:00.000-07:00

Without coursework, I'm much better at responding to current events.

Michael Chertoff, the U.S. homeland security secretary, told reporters earlier, "We believe that these arrests [in England] have significantly disrupted the threat, but we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted." NY Times. "Plot to Bomb Jets Is Thwarted in Britain".

The recent terrorist threat to British and American airlines crossing the Atlantic to the US provides us with an excellent opportunity to inquire about the production, dissemination, and consumption of "threats."
I think its useful to examine first what is meant by the word "threat." (thanks to Craig for the methodology)

Etymology:
Old English þreat "crowd, troop," also "oppression, menace," related to þreotan "to trouble, weary," from P.Gmc. *threutanan (cf. Ger. verdrießen "to vex"), from PIE *trud- "push, press" (cf. L. trudere "to press, thrust," O.C.S. trudu "oppression," M.Ir. trott "quarrel, conflict"). Sense of "conditional declaration of hostile intention" was in Old English The verb threaten is Old English þreatnian; threatening in the sense of "portending no good" is recorded from 1530.

Definitions:

An expression of an intention to inflict pain, injury, evil, or punishment.
An indication of impending danger or harm.
One that is regarded as a possible danger; a menace.
Taking advantage of a vulnerability.
A combination of the risk, the consequence of that risk, and the likelihood that the negative event will take place.

Today was the first time that the US has been put on the red SEVERE threat level. But what does this mean, beyond the call for all of us to, "remain vigilant"? What are the political consequences of such a declaration? Is it possible to examine this moment as a discursive event? - creating facts through fiction.

David Mamet wrote Secret Names in the Threepenny Review saying, "...the application of jargon, is an understood tool for the manipulation of behavior... If we say that the government has lowered [or raised] the threat level, then we must mean that the government is in charge of the threat. Semantically, what else is the meaning of this "color code"? One cannot act differently on a day coded red than on one coded orange, and indeed no one even suggests that one can... He who defends everything defends nothing, as Napolean said... So semantically - that is, as judged by the way in which words influence thought and so action - the procolamation of the threat level is an admission that there is no threat. Or that if a threat exists, the government is powerless to deal wth it. And those who accept the reiteration of the threat level have submitted... daily trading submission first for an abatement of anxiety and, as time goes by, for painful and shameful self-examination." Even Mamet's thoughts do not truely hit the mark though, in my opinion.

Is this crazy talk? I mean people have died, right? Don't we need to pay attention to this shit to prevent more suffering? This analysis of discourse is not meant to belittle or demean the pain, suffering, and death of the victims of terrorism. It is an effort to understand the context of that violence to honor thier lives by examining the masquerade orchestrated by the state, in which the victims occupy center stage. What could be more belittling than to prop up someone's suffering as a vindication for more suffering. More importantly, this masquerade represents an unwillingness of the state to critically examine thier own, "ethnic state security maps."

The etymology of the word threat contains interesting references to notions of state security. First, the word þreat refers to a crowd or troop signaling a recognition to challenges to soveriegnty and legitmacy. Second, the last instance, "The verb threaten is Old English þreatnian; threatening in the sense of "portending no good" is recorded from 1530." The notion of "good" as in the public good or national good is problematic; it has been used to rationalize nearly any kind of state violence that exists - from genocide to forced sterilizations etc. At this point it is possible to make that claim that the words threat and security are not antonyms, but work mutually together in security discourse to produce a politico-social affect. In this formulation the security of the state is garnered through the strategic creation and management of "threats."

This is done discursively, but responsibility has to be placed upon geo-political actions that also generate threats that necessarily require management. President Bush's declaration today that we are at war with Islamic Fascism, is a historically produced situation. Systemic US intervention in Muslim affairs have removed the political center to allow only extremes to exist. Here's where the management comes in. Once the extremes become more popular as modes of understanding the geo-political landscape, the more the US can make claims like Bush did this morning. The creation of a particular political reality requires continual discursive maintanence to harness the political and rhetorical power of the situation. A process that sequesters more and more authority in the face of contradiction.

The acceptance or rejection of the "threat" level is not simply a matter of access to education and information as some may argue or political affiliation (The right-wing Minutemen group rejects any threat level that is not SEVERE). Or even just a matter of ignorance. I think it also has to do with your position in the "ethnic state security map." If you are positioned poorly in this model, you will likely view security as political manipualtion and a threat to your personal security. If you are located in a favorable position, it is likely that you will agree with the security protocol proclaiming your allegence to the system of inequality that produces your priviledge.

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"What can I wear today, I don't have anything to go with SEVERE!"
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Click HERE for continuation of comment stream on defintions and use of 'discourse'

Series in Critical Security 5

2006-08-05T17:09:00.000-07:00

Shadow Wolves - Native American Customs Agents

"Shadow Wolves are summoned units on a timer which lasts 60 seconds. Shadows Wolves have Critical Strike and are invisible except when they are attacking." - Quote from Warcraft III Handbook.

In this series, one of the most important questions to ask is, "How is something/someone governed?" The technique, practice, personnel, training, materials, and skills are important to understanding what "affect" the act of governance is to have on a population and territory (to use the language of governmentality). The Shadow Wolves are another example of how "ethnic state security maps" racialize and construct ethnicity in order to produce particular "national security" outcomes. The Shadow Wolves are a select group of men from the Tohono O'Odham nation located in Southern Arizona along the border. The enlistment of Native American "trackers" for service in the Bureau for Immigration and Customs Enforcement presses many interesting issues of security discourse to the foreground, but for this post I'll be addressing the issue of security discourse and Native American identity.

Before I say more, please watch this video from a special edition of "COPS" from the FOX network highlighting the service of the Shadow Wolves.

Right from the start, the host, Harry L. Newman Sr., displays the "thickness" of security discourse in contemporary politics. Let's take a closer look,

Ever since 9/11, the big question in this country is, how safe are our borders. Well, the job of keeping our borders secure has fallen on a new organization called ICE. Now, we've been riding along with them in the main battle zone of this war. Let me tell ya', sometimes the fight still makes the place feel like the wild wild West.

So, again we have the obscuration of the history of national security regulating immigration through racial designations. Second, safety is used rhetorically in the question, "how safe are our borders?" but the borders have always been maintained with violence making them deadly places. Third, the rhetorical question is answered with adjective secure, making a leap in logic to change the definition of safety, as in "free from harm", to "complete containment." This is an important leap of logic because it makes the people from the "outside" dangerous, while allowing the "inside" to remain uncontaminated. Fourth, Mr. Newman (or Mr. Newman's writers) labels the border a "battle zone" of a "war." Which war is he talking about? Is he talking about the Mexican-American War, the War on Terror, or just plain old racial violence. One needs to ask this question of "which war?", because Mr. Newman still thinks it's the "wild wild west."

The "thickness" of Harry's introduction to the Shadow Wolves sets the tone for the rest of the episode. Although, the main message of the episode seems to be, "See, Indians are active members in National Security. We're not all white! Plus all Indians are "natural" trackers, born with a "special connection to nature." A connection which allows them to "hunt" out the bad guys." Mr. Newman and Roger Applegate from ICE go on to say,

The shadow wolves bring a special insight to that job [border security], becasue they are all Native American. They bring with them a whole host of skills that they bring with them, in being members of a tribe. The skills have been passed down to them through thier ancestry. The ability to track, is one of the major assests that they have now.

The This episode seems to present the Tohono O'odham nation as completely supportive of federal immigration policy decisions. In fact, naturally inclined, to the particular techniques required by federally legislated law. Instead, I would argue that the Shadow Wolves are much more like the description in the Warcraft Handbook.

Valuable when "summoned" for a particular service
Playtime is limited to a short duration
They should not be used frivolously, the "Critical Strike" is your opportunity to command the battle field.
Disposible, Invisible, Harmless

While the Shadow Wolves are busy being "summoned," other Tohono O'Odham's are struggling to live with the border maintanence policies that bisect thier traditional lands. Rose Arietta writes for the Global Policy Forum,

Operation Gatekeeper, designed to crack down on illegal immigration in the San Diego area, diverted migrants to the less crowded Sonoran Desert and Tohono O'odham land. Within a year or two, hundreds of tribe members "started calling the vice chairman's office because they were being stopped and asked for documents," says tribal general counsel Margo Cowan. "Some of them were roughed up-dragged out of their cars, spoken to with profanity, told they had to get documents or they would be arrested and deported. Some were arrested. Some were deported."

During the Immigrant-Rights marches earlier this year in May, Tohono O'odham Indians were side by side with Mexicanos and other immigrant groups denouncing the effect that national security has on thier lives.

[please see comments about this issue]

I think the case of the Shadow Wolves can be used as a good example of how "ethnic state security maps" construct ethnic and racial identities in service of producing security discourse.

There is too much here in the Shadow Wolves case to get into for one post, so I'll save some for another time. Meanwhile check out these links to other Shadow Wolf contributions to security discourse. Tell me what you think. I haven't had time to check them all out, yet.

Other Contributions to National Security Discourse
Shadow Wolves Unofficial Web Site HERE

Small Regional News and Local Business Article HERE

Smithsonian Article on "People & Culture" HERE

Customs and Border Protection Newsletter HERE

Shadow Wolves Train Moldovian Police Forces HERE

Series in Critical Security 4

2006-08-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

The previous post, SCS 3, outlines a recurrent topic in my research, the role of borders in globalilzation, governing through security, and identity formation. I really only have this one case study (i.e. American Southwest & Iraq) to go from, but I am continually finding new sources that sorrowfully reaffirm my hunches that something meaningful is circulating between these two places creating influences on how security policy is both made and implemented.

What inspired the paper, which lead to the previous post, was a video I found on Google Video. The video shows a slideshow set to a Kid Rock song, which at the end turns suddenly violent and switches to video clips of destruction, violence, and combat. The author of the video is a BORTAC (SWAT Unit) agent of La Migra sent on contract from the DHS to serve the DoD in Iraq on one of the many border security missions. Notice the iconography of desert patrols mixed with American periphenalia - very a la frontera. There are some important messages here about who BORTAC agents believe themselves to be: authors of violence and destruction, deliverer of law and order, and models of hyper-masculine heterosexual patriotism(contains graphic scenes). Go to video HERE.

[see comments section for more about this video]

US Border Patrol missions to Iraq are a small portion of Operation Steel Curtain, a tactical operation designed to gain control over the Iraq/Syria border region. Steel Curtain is still a larger part of Operation Hunter, designed to control the whole Anbar region. One could continue this scaling excercise to bringing Hunter into Operation Iraqi Freedom, the War on Terror, U.S. imperialism, and right back to Huntington's domestic/international racial hierarchy of civil-military relations (SCS 2).

Here you'll find a series of links to an official military news site HERE, a blog entry with first- and second-hand accounts of Operation Steel Curtain HERE, and a home video by a Marine from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines of the 81st Platoon HERE (contains graphic scenes) (try to pay attention to the lyrics of the soundtrack). My intent, is to offer a the multi-dimensional perspective on this "event."

I believe this layered and dimensional perspective is important to see and recognize becasue these "voices" are all contributing to the formation of security discourse. What is particularly interesting about the home videos from both the BORTAC agent and the US Marine is that they provide a glimpse into the interpretations, representations, and explanations that they tell to themselves and each other about thier experience. These are immensely important if we are to understand "what" the agents and soldiers are bringing back to la frontera with them from the Middle East. As the author of the Marines home video states on his website,

"From Cali to Falluja, San Diego Naval Station to the Syrian Border, 2/1 has been around the block."

The following links go to other videos. Someday this will turn into a real research paper comparing the discourse and rhetoric of these home videos and how they speak to the state-terrorism of border policing and the fascade of "national security."

Unofficial US Border Patrol Recruitment Video HERE (must have Windows Media Player)
US Marines 2/1: Operations Steel Curtain & Iron Fist HERE (contains graphic scenes)

Does anyone know if there are laws governing the taping or photographing of military missions while on duty? I seem to remember something about that. Well, after all, doesn't the military want to keep control over what images the public sees?

Series in Critical Security 3

2006-08-04T00:13:00.000-07:00

Border Lessons: From the Sonoran Plains to the Syrian Dunes (& back)
[a version of this paper was presented @ the 2006 Bi-Annual Ethnic Studies Graduate Student Conference at USC; thanks for all who gave me feedback and encouragement. Please forgive the rough cut of this draft. Helpful comments, suggestions, and criticism will be incorporated into future drafts, thanks in advance.]

Introduction
The main objective of this paper is to examine the significance of U.S. involvement in the maintenance of Iraq’s tumultuous borders. In order to do this it is necessary to work out an historical analysis which frames this situation in a broader context. Doing so may also help bridge struggles for human dignity in other contact zones of imperialism. This paper tries to make the case that the role of the U.S. Border Patrol in the establishment of Iraq’s Department of Border Enforcement (DBE) is something worth investigating? I will argue that this role represents a stretch of the arms of the U.S. administration; bringing with it political anxieties from the Southern U.S. border, hierarchical categories of social identities, and economic plans for global capitalism. Stopping at this level of analysis would do a disservice to the potential of this project by neglecting to demonstrate how wars at the imperial periphery translate and adjust to social hierarchies at home. I feel this analysis is necessary to determine if this is a direction I would like to take my dissertation, because I think it has the possibility to contribute to discussions about the cultures of U.S. imperialism, social identities & nation-states, and the militarization of immigration and border maintenance. The major point of this paper is to explore interesting avenues of research for the role of the U.S. Border Patrol in Iraq.

On August 24th of 2003 Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator of Iraq, signed into law the creation of the Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement (DBE) charged with the duty to, “monitor and control the movement of persons and goods to, from, and across the borders of Iraq” (CPA Order 26, 2003). Mr. Bremer’s actions signal the recognition that the borders of Iraq must function as both bridges and barriers. This same issue was addressed by the US Congress in 1929 with the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol, nearly 75 years after the conquest of Mexico. It may be the case that border making has become a more important task for an imperial state than it did in previous conquests. The U.S. Border Patrol, born out Congress’s actions 77 years ago has come to have a role on the development of the Iraqi DBE. Iraq’s DBE consolidates the activities of more than five separate military and civil agencies from Saddam’s legacy. The previous border regimes were regulated by corruption and inter-ethnic violence. The new DBE is modeled on US border institutions and currently receives training from US agents from those organizations; which is to say that the border violence and corruption have not disappeared but merely changed form, an issue that I will address later. New DBE agents receive training at the Jordanian International Police Training Center in Amman. As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports, trainers, consultants, and managers from the Bureau of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (BICE) and the Bureau of Customs & Border Protection (BCBP) “are bringing security directly to the threat in the war on terror. Our people are on a vital mission to train Iraqis to protect their own borders and build an institution that will safe guard the new freedoms and democratic principles being established” (BCBP 2004). The US government is not only importing expertise but also ideology to the DBE as a quote from an anonymous BCBP official makes evident, “[we] are teaching members of the Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement how to secure their frontierlands” (Hammerstrom 2005; emphasis added). This discourse of enforcement may be of significance to the outcomes of Iraq’s border projects.

The first large offensive of Iraq’s own military forces was called Operation Steel Curtain (initiated in November 2005), a US collaboration to control the Syrian/Iraq border region. This was a strategic operation to prevent both Syrian forces from joining the Iraqi resistance and arms smuggling networks from functioning. The symbolism of the proto-military blitz to the border echoes the violence of the U.S. frontierlands, to use the language of the anonymous BCBP official, and helps to bring the Iraqi borders into the US imperial imagination. I assert that these institutional linkages feed narratives, technology, expertise, and ideology into Iraq and circulate the horror and glory of war and militarized tactics back to the U.S. In the same month as Operation Steel Curtain, President Bush arrived in Tucson, AZ to promote his immigration policies and advertise the continued militarization of the Southern border with technology tested in Iraq; in particular, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for remote surveillance. Furthermore, the US Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), the Border Patrol’s special-forces unit, has been deployed to Iraq on several missions to conduct anti-smuggling operations and counter-terrorism at Iraq’s borders. The extension of the US Border Patrol beyond US territory and into Iraq may be a method of domesticating the “foreign” as well as intensifying the treatment of domestic borders as “dangerous”.

Scholarship on the cultures of U.S. imperialism has developed a rich language to analyze this situation and has important consequences for this research. In this scholarship, borders serve a contradictory role in the imperial imagination. On the one hand they are a source of anxiety, vulnerability, and fear, while on the other hand become the stage for which power is flaunted and displayed. The border imaginary is not only spatially complex but discursively ambivalent. The imperial border fantasy is caught in an endless cycle of desire to build barriers, in a state of siege, as well as to break them down in conquest. In this case, the US military triumphantly transgressed Iraq’s borders and now struggles to guard and protect them. This may constitute a fetishization of the border environment.

In this paper I have outlined some interesting categories of inquiry for this study; political discourse, underlying economic interests, administrative styles of governance, and the social relationships between minorities in the U.S., enemies abroad and actors of U.S. imperialism. These analytical categories not only address historically relevant comparisons for the War of Iraq (2003) but contribute to a further articulation of the notion of the “agency of empire” employed by Gonzalez and Fernandez (2003) to describe the practice and ideology of American imperialism in the 20th century. Middle East has also generated its own discourse about the agency of empire as Ho (2004) recounts the colonial history of the Middle East explaining how imperial domination in this region has always been met with diasporic resistance and accommodation. Ho refers to the social disruption caused by colonialism as “imperial pollution” (2004: 41), in an attempt to communicate the fallout effect of forced migration as well as the policies that emerge to manage it. Although comparing the histories of the American Southwest with the Middle East is a far stretch it is interesting to compare the consequences and responses to the agency of empire.

This story of American imperialism and border making begins with what Haas calls epistemic communities, or,

“knowledge-based groups of experts and specialists who share a common belief about cause and effect relationships in the world as well as political values
concerning the ends to which policies should be addressed… [and] play in identifying new problems and proposing solutions.” (Haas 1990)

The formal institutionalization of the border patrol in 1929 signals the initiation of this community, although origins of this group can be linked to the Texas Rangers. An epistemic community implicitly relies upon the propagation of policies and projects that reinforce the legitimacy and supremacy of the beliefs held by the members of the community. The propagation of policies relies upon lesson drawing, or the notion that a set of actions can produce a determined outcome in different places and times. Applying this concept to the story of border making suggests the desired outcome is territorial and economic control, political domination, and cultural hegemony. In Border Games, Andreas provides an overview of border narratives which help to describe the epistemic community of border control institutions. These border narratives correspond to the struggles with regulatory capacity and the rise of the localized forms of power; for instance during the late 1990s, Congressmen and bureaucrats explained border policy according to a “combination of externally driven threats and inadequate defenses to repel them” (Andreas 2000: 144). This manner of framing border policy hands over authority for policy making to the so called “experts”, the growing epistemic community of border control institutions, as well as casting a shadow over the broader transnational supply and demand forces that govern cross border flows. Andreas argues further that this epistemic community adopts a logic of escalation in which to explain perceived weaknesses (i.e. see how bad this program is, give us more money to do it better) or for expanding projects that are perceived to work well (i.e. see how good these programs work, give us more money to do more of this). This theory suggests that epistemic communities are historically produced and cannot be understood as moments or events in which empire has agency but a process. Stoler (2002) maintains that this process is always messy, ambivalent, and riddled with contradiction.

According to Braudel (1966 in Wallerstein 2001), “events are dust,” and must be placed in the “longue durée” of history; in this case, the longue durée of U.S. imperialism. Despite the debates around when U.S. imperialism began, this study sets out to merely establish points of relevant comparison. In order to make the imperial package of domestic anxieties, hierarchical categories of social identities and plans for global capitalism more lucid, I will demonstrate some interesting historical frames of analysis. Montejano (2000: 20) contends that comparing the Middle East to the, “…situation of the Texas Mexico 150 years ago… can serve as a marker or baseline to measure how far we have come.” Almost in response to Montejano, Sharrett (2004: 126) reminds us of the parallel between 9/11 to the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor and the Lusitania in Tonkin Gulf with their political arrangement as a “useful incident” for instigating the Spanish-American War and the Vietnam War. From these references, the longue durée of U.S. imperialism appears to offer a rich context in which to examine the role of the U.S. Border Patrol in the establishment of Iraq’s DBE.

Administrative
As Montejano suggests, historical comparisons can help us identify “how far we have come” (2000: 20), especially in comparison to other forms and practices of U.S. colonial governance. Examining the administrative styles of governance throughout periods of the longue durée of U.S. imperialism will help explain the organizational mechanics and methods of implementation. Foucault describes bureaucratic functions which manage actual bodies and populations as consisting of technologies of biopower (1980). If we are to understand the significance of the U.S. Border Patrol’s role in Iraq we must develop a critical inquiry into the particular practices and outcomes of institutional programs and policies. It seems reasonable to question the methods and practices being taught in Iraq by the U.S. Border Patrol given their disastrous outcomes produced along the U.S.’s Southern border. Prasad maintains that a historical frame such as the longue durée of U.S. imperialism is essential to understanding contemporary “management practices and discourses,” because he views them as, “having emerged from (and/or bearing the imprint of) the colonial encounter” (2003: 31). Cooke argues that, “imperialism was organized, and it was managed” (2003: 90), this means that not only is the structure of institutions important to compare historically, but also their institutional cultures.

To explicate further, Public Administration Review is the oldest academic journal devoted to the science, processes and art of public administration; it is telling that first issue was devoted to national security and defense as well as the command structure of the civil service. The first paragraph of Harris’s cover article “The Emergency National Defense Organization” is worth quoting here,

“When a nation engages in war today, all other business and interests are subordinated to one supreme end of winning the war. While this country is not at war, the administrative problems of a large defense program are similar to those of actual war, and in a defense program it is essential to build an organization which, with modifications will meet wartime needs.” (Harris 1941:1)

For Harris, the longue durée of U.S. imperialism is the development a bureaucratic technologies of biopower and an institutional culture of war. It seems useful to situate the role of the U.S. Border Patrol in Iraq as a recent manifestation of this development process.

Economic
If we take our cues from Marxist economic historians then we must accept that the modern state, that is to say the U.S. government throughout the longue durée of its ongoing imperialism, is invested in capitalist modes of production and deploys biopower over lower classes in order to preserve profitable advantages (Wallerstein 1997, 2001, & Wolf 1997). Wolf reminds us that throughout history war and trade, “necessarily fed upon each other” (1997: 106), therefore if we are to understand the violence of U.S. imperialism we must understand the access to material resources and global routes of distribution and visa versa. The Spanish-American War cannot be understood without comprehending the significance of Alfred Mahan’s military-strategy of networked islands with coaling stations to support military protection of U.S. trade interests. Similarly, the War of Iraq (2003) can not be explained without acknowledging the enormous oil fields lying beneath the Syrian Desert. Not unrelated, the Mexican-American War must be connected with urban class anxieties in the Northeast U.S. (Streeby 2002) as well as the need to class race with the creation of Anglo land-owners and a Mexican proletariat through land claims law (Limerick 1987). This is all to say that the role of the U.S. in Iraq’s borders may have important economic undertones, as one World Bank memo suggests – Iraq’s borders are an important element for preparing Baghdad for direct foreign investment in export manufacturing as well as securing oil exports (World Bank 2005).

For Iraq it is clear that oil and pipelines dominate the economic space such that the location of oil reserves, refineries, and ports are important land marks that define political interests in the region. They attract the attention of the Iraqi resistance as well as US occupation forces. The borders of Iraq must also serve to link the desert nation to other regional sites of production. A majority of its imports come from Syria, Jordan, and Turkey to support domestic consumption. The US occupation of Iraq has not only created social unrest, but has destroyed the national economy already crippled by more than a decade of trade embargoes. In a World Bank Trade Facilitation paper, the financial institution recognized the poor conditions of the Iraqi economy but states that,

“There are substantial opportunities for employment generation and private sector led economic growth in construction (and reconstruction), services (including retail and wholesale commerce), agriculture, and more import-substituting industries. All of these depend vitally, in part, on the availability and cost competitiveness of importing inputs. The pace of recovery and the affordability of consumer goods will be critically dependent… on the efficiency and competitiveness of inbound supply chains and trade logistics” (World Bank 2005).

This quote reflects a forward thinking mentality with a specific vision for the borders of Iraq. From their perspective, “borders must be both secure and business friendly” (Andreas 2000). To follow up on their analysis of Iraq’s trade potential, the global financial institution has initiated a pilot border project for the Turaybil, Iraq/Al-Karameh, Jordan (TK) crossing [see appendix 1]. This project marks a dramatic change in Iraq’s ports of entry because of its history as being a state-led economy, at war, and under embargo. The TK border already provides transit for nearly US$1.5 billion dollars of trade between the two nations. Yet the long wait-times, un-standardized procedures, lack of security protocol, and logistical coordination problems increase uncertainty and inefficiency that, as the report suggests, will damage the ability of the Iraqi economy to expand. Therefore, Iraq’s border crossing institutions also figure prominently into the future of both the Iraq economy and the regional network. In this way the World Bank is attempting to alter the transnational dynamics of the regions economy while developing a specific localized form of border management. The border itself emerges as a place-based node in regional circuits of production.

The World Bank report proposed to develop the TK border as a model to be propagated to the other crossing points to improve Iraq’s viability as a trade partner and profitable site for foreign investment. It is implied that Iraq will recover only with the assistance of foreign sources of capital; it thus follows that investments in border controls are prerequisites to improving the domestic investment environment within Iraq. For the TK pilot, Environmental Chemical Corp. International (ECCI) has already completed housing for DBE personnel and basic port of entry infrastructure (Eliah 2005). Meanwhile US Army Lt. Gen. Petraeus, who serves as a link between the DBE, DHS, and the US Army expects to install radios for communications, back-scatter x-ray machines to inspect vehicles, and ground sensors that will detect movement along the border outside of the official crossing point; all technology developed through the history of border control in the American Southwest (AFPS 2004). Between 2002 and 2004 ECCI was awarded US$1.5 billion in Iraq contracts from the US federal government (CPI 2005). The no-bid contracts for these projects are the new forms corruption at Iraq’s borders. The World Bank would argue that the establishment of secure and efficient border crossings will not only help the suppression of Iraqi resistance but also the recovery of the domestic economy. The AFPS announced that the US occupation plans to build more than 180 border forts in the next year (2004). These efforts will advance DBE plans for more than 251 forts (Global Security 2005). Because of this I suggest that these development trends position borders themselves as place-based sites in the geography of power. To control the places of the border is to govern the manner in which Iraq becomes networked with regional and global systems of production and consumption.

Ideology
The last frame of analysis for this historical comparison of the longue durée of U.S. imperialism is ideological, or in other words reflecting the system of beliefs, attitudes, and values that guide society to maintain political legitimacy and class domination. Marx referred to this as the superstructure of society and saw it as emerging from the basic structure of the economy to support particular modes of production and the class divisions necessary to extract a surplus value from trade in commodities. The ideological underpinnings that the epistemic community of U.S. border experts carry with them rests upon a history of racism in the Southwestern U.S. It is very much concerned with the categorization of people not only according to their relationship to the economy but also to a racially charged White-State. This kind of ideological frame of analysis ultimately means the comparison of socially constructed identities across space and through time. These socially constructed identities correspond to ideological reference points of a social hierarchy. For instance, the political projects of Manifest Destiny, the Spanish-American War, and the War on Terror all re-inscribe negative characteristics to different kinds of bodies as naturally subordinate to white American male domination. Just as all “other business and interests are subordinated to…winning the war.” so too is the ideological superstructure and its hierarchy of identities. This means that identities are not static and exclusive; to the contrary, it is more accurate to view socially constructed identities as fluid and ambivalent because of their continuous contestation and relation to other groups in other places. Take, for instance, the practice of calling Filipinos niggers in the Spanish-American War, or Mexicanos as peons in the Mexican-American War, or Chinese as coolies in Manifest Destiny, or Arabs as terrorists in the War on Terror. These identities locate people within a social hierarchy justifying genocide, servitude, demonization, and control.

Examining the ideology which supports the U.S. role in establishing Iraq’s DBE may have important lessons about how socially constructed identities are employed, translated, and adapted in addition to the consequences of their circulation between the U.S./Mexico border and Iraq’s borders. Saldivar writes that “American identity is the “continuous movement” between places characterizing a new transnational “becoming”” (1997: 29). This idea challenges the notion that the U.S. Border Patrol is simply on a border-making errand in the Middle East. At this point we may ask, what does this situation mean for the American identity and what is in continuous movement between these locations? Kaplan asked similar questions of Manifest Destiny and the Spanish-American War to come to the understanding that U.S. imperialism “emphasizes the collapse of boundaries between here and there, between inside and outside, and the incoherence that the anarchy of empire brings to the making of… culture” (2002: 15). In this historical analysis the role of the U.S. in Iraq’s DBE should be compared to other instances of administering U.S. imperialism to examine what social constructions are employed and transformed in the process of speaking political discourse, securing resources and trade routes, ensuring class divisions and racial hierarchies, and using technologies of biopower.

Conclusion
In August, 2005 Minas Mizra of Michigan plead guilty to several counts of alien smuggling. Minas and three others were involved in a smuggling ring that facilitated the movement of well paying Iraqis and Jordanians. The smuggling route first brought the immigrants to South America where visas and other documents were produced and then led through the southern US border (ICE 2005). This case motivates the DHS personnel to coordinate immigration controls at Iraq’s borders as a national security measure for US borders. The logic of escalation at work in the DHS automatically connects localized notions of border security with global border management. Whether surveying Mexican or Arab border crossers in either Iraq or the US the threat is perceived to be the same with equal consequences. Perhaps, the epistemic community of US border control can be thought of as Orientalizing borders; as in the production of authoritative knowledge about border management and the mastery of techniques to tame the frontierlands of the global borderlands.

The ultimate reason for this research is to explore resistance to the hardening of national borders amidst a global political and economic crisis. In particular, I want to undertake this study because I want to bring the situation at the U.S./Mexico border under a more critical light. I see this as necessary because of the standardization and normalization of this condition in other geo-political situations; Israel/Palestine and India/Pakistan, to name a few. In order to challenge these methods of “solving” social problems I think it is necessary to de-stabilize these strategies of bureaucratic control. In short I want to demystify the public policies of U.S. imperialism in the borderlands and pull back the proverbial curtain to reveal the agency of Empire. I view this task as illuminating strategic fissures for breaking state legitimacy. I also want to illustrate U.S. imperialism’s use of hierarchical categories to show their ambivalence and viciousness. My hope is that challenging the situation at the Southern border will also challenge the history of hierarchical categories and the role of borders as “marking” identities.

Works Cited
American Forces Press Service. 2004. “Iraq’s Border Enforcement Department Graduates First Cadet Class” News Articles. Amman, Jordan. Sept. 29.

Andreas, Peter. 2000. Border Games. Cornell University Press: Ithica, NY.

Braudel, Fernand. 1966. La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen á l’ époque de Philippe II. 2nd ed. enl. Paris: Aramand Colin in Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2001. Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

The Center for Public Integrity. 2005. “Contractors.” The Wind Falls of War.

Coalition Provisional Authority. Order Number 26. “Creation of the Department of Border Enforcement.” Aug 24, 2003.

Eliah, Elaine. 2005. “Team Builds Border Post to Enhance Iraq’s Security.” News Articles. American Forces Press Service. Baghdad, Iraq. Nov. 18.

Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977. ed. Gordon, Colin. New York: Pantheon Books.

Global Security. 2005. “Iraq Border Police / Department of Border Enforcement” Intelligence.

Gonzalez, Gilbert. & Fernandez, Raul. 2003. A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations, and Migration. New York: Routledge Press.

Hammerstrom, Cari. 2005. “Border Patrol lending a hand in Iraq.” The Monitor. Feb. 1.

Harris, Joseph. “The Emergency National Defense Organization.” Public Administration Review. Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 1941.

Kaplan, Amy. 2002. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Limerick, Patricia. 1987. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc.

Montejano, David. 2000. “Old Roads, New Horizons: Texas History and the New World Order.” in eds. Zamora, Emilio; Orozco, Cynthia; & Rocha, Rodolfo. Mexican Americans in Texas History: Selected Essays. Austin: Texas State Historical Association.

Prasad, Anshuman. ed. 2003. Postcolonial Theory and Organizational Analysis: A Critical Engagement. New York: Palgrave MacMillan Press.

Saldivar, José David. 1997. Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sharrett, Chistopher. “9/11, the Useful Incident, and the Legacy of the Creel Committee.” Cinema Journal 43. No. 4, Summer 2004.

Streeby, Shelley. 2002. American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Stoler, Ann. 2002. Carnal Knowledge & Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 2005. “Michigan Man Pleads Guilty In Scheme To Smuggle Aliens From The Middle East To The United States.” News Release.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1997. The Capitalist World-Economy: Essays by Immanuel Wallerstein. Paris: Cambridge University Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2001. 2nd ed. Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Wolf, Eric. 1997. 2nd ed. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

World Bank. “Iraq: Private Sector Development Trade Facilitation Program.” Concept Note.

Series in Critical Security 2

2006-08-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

Recently finished Cynthia Enloe's Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies (1980 - University of Georgia Press). In this text she makes the interesting distinction between the semantic differences of "national security" and "state security." For Enloe, "state security is a formula for maintaining the authority of hierarchical structures," while, "national security is a formula for protecting the shared interests of a horizontally bonded citizenry" (p. 232). This is an important distinction for many obvious reasons. First, most claims of "national" security are actually "state" security programs. Second, state security formulas rarely, "protect the shared interest of a horizontally bonded citizenry." Third, the concept of a horizontally bonded citizenry is a sort of neoliberal political myth that all Americans are just Americans, which seems to be an intentional political strategy designed to make "security" into a public good that benefits everyone - so the theory goes. Through these distinctions, the use of "security" rhetoric and discourse by governments can be seen as a mode of social control and method of building hegemony. Which is basically saying that the use of references to national and state security is often in the service of preserving a particular hierarchical social order and socializing individuals to accept that social order as benign or benevolent.

In regards to this explanation of (nation-) state security policy, Samuel Huntington (pictured below) in 1957 wrote in The Soldier and the State, that, "the ordering of civil-military relations [are] basic to a nation's military security policy," (p. 2) and he continues this line of thought by asking, "what pattern of civil-military relations will best maintain the security of the American nation?" (p. 3) If we are to follow Huntington's logic, then we can understand that both the state and the nation must be structured in a way that preserves the so called "order" of both. In addition, it is the purpose of security policy to establish the capabilities of maintaining that order through civil-military relations. To contemporary policy analysts, this description of security may seem reasonable, even practical, but behind the normative language of Huntington's security concepts lie the historical foundations of a rigid American racial hierarchy, vicious genocide, white supremacist colonization, and imperial domination. If these historical foundations are the tenets to the the particular ordering of civil-military relations that Huntington claims must be maintained, then the security policies which he believes in must be related to the preservation of the governmental capacity to create and maintain a system of racial domination domestically (reference Huntington's Who Are We), as well as internationally (reference Huntington's Clash of Civilizations).

Enloe's work pivots on a useful concept she coins as, "ethnic state security maps" (p.15). She contends that these mental maps, "trace the expectations that elites have regarding the political dependability of various ethnic groups. Such mental maps become the basis for state elites structuring inter-ethnic relations in a fashion that best secures the current state structure" (p. 15). According to Enloe, "Military policies operationalize state security maps. Officials' choices in recruiting, promotions, assignments, and field deployments all articulate what state elites are usually restrained from spelling out programatically" (p. 16). Enloe has been ahead of the game for some time now. She developed these ideas nearly 30 years ago, which also speaks to enduring influence of "national security" programs in American history.

Recognizing that Enloe wrote Ethnic Soldiers in the late 70's, means that her thoeries of civil-military relations and state security did not incorporate theoretical advancements; notably critical race theory and the theory of racial formation. To me, it is interesting that her work did not recieve much aclaim. Her idea that state security policies shape and are shaped by the "ethnic identities" of groups in relation to the (nation-) state in an important theoretical contribution. Incorporating racial formation theory with Enloe's "ethnic state security maps" means describing security policies in terms of, "reproducing structures of domination based on essentialist categories of race" (Omi & Winant, 1994, Racial Formation in the U.S. p. 71). According to racial formation theory, "a racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular lines. Racial projects connect what race means in a particular discursive practice and the ways which both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based upon that meaning" (p. 56).

In Ethnic Soldiers, Enloe categorizes ethnic groups that figure prominently in "state security maps," the following are particularly relevant for understanding the intersection of "national security" and the current immigration debate.

groups residing along sensitive frontiers
groups fulfilling strategic economic roles
groups with sufficient political resources to challenge the existing political order

On all three accounts Latino's, specifically Mexican@s, would and do figure prominently in "national security" policies. Some policy analysts argue that 9/11 and international non-state terrorists caused immigration to be subsumed by security policies. Explaining immigration policy in this way contributes to the racial project of immigration control by obscuring the historical roots of racist immigration laws and the daily terror thier enforcement creates for immigrants of color. Rather, race has always been central to "state security" in the U.S. and regulating the colorline through laws about citizenship and immigration have always been transposed onto notions of "national security."

Series in Critical Security 1

2006-07-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

This is the first entry in a series that I plan to post as I am reading stuff on governmentality, imperialism, ethnic-military relations, and racial formations. I am reading these texts with one eye on "border studies" and the U.S./Mexico border area and the other eye on traditional administrative thought and security discourse. I have named this series, "critical security" to specifically reflect the myriad forms and definitions of security as well as to highlight the notion that some forms of security produce insecurity for others. For example, National Security measures that focus on reducing undocumented entry into the U.S. produce a migration situation in which undocumented crossers are confronted with great uncertainty, vulnerability, and hostile environemntal conditions that threaten thier own personal security. Yet, one can not assume that "reducing undocumented entry" is a legitimate National Security issue. Bringing up such positions highlights the importance of discourse analysis in the examination of security. This basically means that the more immigration is treated as a national security concern the more national security strategies will be deployed to address its contradictions.

To begin, some basic questions must be presented to understand the scope of a critical security analysis of immigration and borders.

Ontological - What is to be governed?
Ascetics - How is it to be governed?
Deontological - Who is to be governed?
Teleological - Why is it to be governed?
Operative - Who is to govern?

These basic questions transform the practice of the nation-state into a problematic condition that brings the entire system of social relations into question. These questions are concerned with the concepts of authority, knowledge production, and technique.

Identity, Belonging, Priveledges, Rights, Claims, Nationalism, Race, Gender, Sexuality, Desire, Ideology, Movement, Territory, Space, Property, Law, Doctrine, Courts, Police, Armed Guards, Threats of Violence, Provocation of Inter-Ethnic Conflict, Physical Barriers, Empty Deserts, Demarcated Maps, Landmarkers, Road Signs, Road Blocks, Checkpoints, Troop Deployments, Detentions Centers, State Prison Contracts, Federal Prison Contracts, Time, Transnational Law Enforcement Cooperation, La Migra, U.S. Customs Agents, DEA, El Grupo Beta, Los Federales, La Policia, Judges, Lawyers, Notarios Publicos, Coyotes, Narcotraficantes, Employers, Laborers,(Im)Migrants, Families, A Racial Hierachy, Jobs, Wages, Prices, Taxes, Profits, Subsidies, Aggressive Economic Restructuring, Producer Price Index, Global Trade in Commodities, Industrial Monopolies, Access to Cheap Resources, Industrial Corporations, Private Security Firms' Executives, Shareholders, Voters, Electorates, Legislative Representatives, Lobbyists, Investors, Military (Sub-)Contractors, Weapons Manufacturers, Legislative Aids, Campaign Contributions, Ability to Deploy Coercive Force, Masculinity, Anglo-Saxon Decendents, Ethnically White, Protestants, Capitalists, & Racists (people who attach negative characteristics to particular bodies as naturally occuring behavioral outcomes of physical difference).

What would this list look like if mapped out spatially to reflect the inter-related character of different groups and concepts?

Minimum Wage Legislation - Race, Immigrants, and Economic Logic

2006-07-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) reported toady that Kennedy (D)/ Hoyer (D) ammendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill was approved by the Senate and is now waiting approval in the House. The amendment would change the minimum wage from 5.15 to 7.25, thats about 1,500 more a year for minimum wage workers. Todays minimum wage is the lowest its been in 50 years.

The Civil Rights Act of 1965 made racial discrimination illegal in the labor market. These political changes marked the increase in power to legislate the highest minimum wage to workers; well that is mostly people of color who were looking for opportunities outside of the Jim Crow system. The subsequent decline in the minimum wage reflects the rigidity of a political economy which consumes labor through constructing racial difference. The decline of profitability by American industries following the Civil Rights Act posed challenges to global competition in monopolistic manufacturing industries, such as the automotive and textiles industries. A series of minimum wage "adjustments" were made to secure the profitability of American industries but in the end, American businesses sought the labor of non-citizens in foreign lands whose laws did not protect wages nor against discrimination (that is not to say that everything here in the US was fine, but that legal discourse made differential treatment a political liability). Now industry is bringing manufacturing back to America, because the new wave of immigrants suffer from historic subjugation and under-representation and are kept fearful in society by restrictive harsh immigration laws making them a cheap source of non-citizen labor (not subject to anti-discrimination laws for citizens).
As the cost to producers goes up, the harder industry leaders lobby to lower minimum wage (this often comes in the form of complaints about global competition, recession, and inflation). The Producers Price Index (an index which measures the general cost of production for all commodities) was fairly steady throughout the first half of the 20th century, then came the Civil Rights Act and growing scarcity of resources. Scarcity of resources means higher costs in research and development. Below is a graph of the PPI from 1913 to 2006 the average production of all commodities. The begining of the upward slop falls squarely on the late 60s.

When the cost of production increases producers pass that cost on to the consumer with higher prices. The higher that prices go, the more money people must spend on necessities. The price of milk over the past few decades ('80-'97) speaks to this.

So on the one hand we have an economy that desires and creates cheap laborers, but on the other hand the economy needs consumers in order to generate the profits that all business seeks. If the income for the general population is too low, businesses will see a decline in thier profitability and an increase in unproductive inventory. In this manner, the political economy is not meant to eradicate poverty but to generate it and manage poverty within certain thresholds. Milton Friedman, knew that unemployment and interest rates were connected and sought ways of managing this interaction. The debates about legalizing immigrants over the past year come to intersect squarely with the issues of minimum wage and poverty regulation. To be sure, immigration reform is not only about brown bodies in a white nation, but also about new elements that challenge the tolerance of previous poverty regulation thresholds. For instance, the reaction of American industries to the Civil Rights Act. The guest worker program is an excellent example of poverty regulation, disposible brown labor.

The usual debate surrounding immigrants and the economy regards the mantra, "they took our jobs." When the Cuban Muriel boat immigrants where absorbed by the Floridian economy in the 80s thier wages did sink as a result of an increase in the number of workers searching for a limited number of jobs (many economists believe labor markets to function this way). The reality is that the economy makes jobs for them or they make jobs for themselves. The last economic census said that new immigrant businesses accounted for a majority of the new businesses for 2005. No true capitalist would turn away from the opportunity to extract some surplus value from a willing worker. Not even a racist capitalist would turn down the opportunity to stick it a brown worker. Latino immigrants comprise 40% of agricultural jobs, 33% of grounds maintenance jobs, 22% of food preparation jobs, and 22% of construction jobs. The presence of cheap laborers creates the incentive to invest in industries that can exploit them. Without thier presence, the unfavorable forcasts of profitability would prohibit such investments.

All in all, the minmum wage increase is likely not to pass the House and the extra 750,000,000 that would be paid to the lowest wage earners will stay in the hands of white corporate shareholders.

Looking Like California

2006-07-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to look like you're from California? I was recently celebrating the ol' 4th of July with Julie's family in Estes Park, Colorado. While there I had to go to the front office of the resort cabins in which we were staying to get a parking pass for our car. At the front desk I was greeted by an attendant who asked me where I was from before she even asked what I was in the office for. With my guard down I casually answered, "California, in Oakland." The attendant replied, "Oh, you look like your from California," then she proceeded to do the job that she's paid to do, getting me my parking permit.
What does it mean to look like your from California? I didn't even have surfer shorts on nor a worn-out Billabong shirt. I didn't even have flip-flops on. The attendant didn't even engage in enough dialog to see if I had an accent (common small talk tactic with strangers).
She was most likely using my Chinese features as a referent to the geographic location of traditional destinations for immigrants. I guess this means that people who look non-white aren't really from the US; different places have different expectations of racial makeup. I mean to say that I knew this already (you know, historically produced expectations and all), but what is new to me is the experience of someone telling me that I look like I'm from California. Originally, I'm from Indiana and most people don't even know what to say. Some have even answered, "Indiana, USA???" I guess that looking like California at least places me in the right nation.
Google image found the following picture with the key words "California look," enjoy.

Oaxaca, Oax

2006-06-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

[Backlogged from May 31]
Julie and I have been in Oaxaca city for more than a week now. We are almost finished with our two weeks of Spanish courses at the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca. My Spanish is better than its ever been and I am so glad that we took this time. Julie´s Spanish is also really good. She´s asking questions and taking care of business here all by herself, something she didn´t think she could do. Our first week in Oaxaca was really nice. When we arrived it was such a relief to escape to a completely different environment without my cell phone or computer or books. We had no troubles finding our posada (family owned hostel). The city is really easy to navigate and many of the cool places to go are within walking distance from out poasda. We went on a tour of Zapotec ruins, called Yagul, with a great guide, Pedro, who described the site and its history with Marx and Foucault, awesome! When our classes started I found my class with only three other people, this was really nice. The course work was pretty tough but my teacher, Tanivet, is super cool and moves quickly through material. Learning Spanish is exhausting. Everyday after class Julie and I went back to the posada for a siesta. We then returned to the Institute for workshop classes on Mexican cooking. This was great, we learned how to make mole verde and other yummy treats like Arroz con leche.
At the end of the week, Julie and I were sitting in the Zocalo, the public area with a little park and I found some old friends from AZ: Todd and Lauren. They moved to Oaxaca to work for an organization called Witness For Peace - check them out, pretty cool stuff. Anyways, that was a random encounter that was very nice. We have been
sharing some time with them. Besides those things, I arranged for an intercambio: a person that is interested in learning English from another Oaxacan school. Omar is
my intercambio and he´s cool. He is an engineering student and we have a fun time. most of the time, I speak in Spanish and he speaks in English and we talk about everything from X-Men, to Stock car racing, to politics in Oaxaca and in the States.
Our Second week in Oaxaca was completely different. three things, the teacher´s strike, the massive wave of high school and college students at the institute, and the new workshop in the history of Mexican music.
First, the teachers´s strike was such a surprise. I´m still trying to figure out what the f is happening here but all of the public teachers in Oaxaca are on strike and have blocked more than 50 main streets in downtown. They have brought the city to crawl. They demonstrate everyday with huge marches. They take over Pemex Stations for days at a time and have converted the Zocalo, tourist area into a massive urban street camp for striking famillies. The organization and carry through for this strike is enormous and I am very impressed. My homework for my spanish class is to write a one page report based upon interviews of striking teachers. I´ll let you know what I come up with. every other day they shut down the Pan-American highway right outside of the Institute for the enitre day. It has been really educational.
Second, the institute has received truck loads of new students from US highschools and colleges, now my class is maxed out at 10 students, this is not so good. I don´t like the school now so much. I´m still learning though and that is good. Third, I´m having a blast in my new workshop on the history of Mexican music. there are only three students, julie, me and Ming from Boston. this is so much fun and I´m using different vocab and learning cool stuff about mexican music. Now Julie and I are finishing up our last week and planning our next phase, the beach phase. more later. Julie and I are both healthy and safe, we have sufficient money and
are having a great time.

Mazunte, Oax

2006-06-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

[Backlogged fron June 9th]
Julie and I have left La Ciudad and headed south to the coast. we are in a small town called Mazunte. It is the off season and most things are shut down and turned off. We made an initial reservation at a posada that had a website and a phone number so that we knew we had a place to stay when we arrived. This place was inevitably owned by up-state New Yorkers (new agers at that). They used the verb ¨to share¨ for everything, ¨we would like to share something with you, you owe us 80 dollars for the room.¨ We have since moved to a new place overlooking the beach with an excellent hammock placed just right to view the coast. The new age place was great too but difficult to get to with long staircases and wierd people.

Julie and I are attending to our emails in the only internet place in town. The sticky keyboard is a challenge. Above my computer on the wall is an advertisement for work in the US as an ice cream truck driver. 600 to 1200 dollars in 7 months! There{s a phone number and email address if your interested. Does anyone know where the 803 area code is for?

Anyways, we are here in the heavy heat of the coast. We are mainly just trying ways to fight the humidity, sun, and mosquitos. We are also surrounded by cool birds I{ve never seen before. Yellow throated cacique, trogons, and western tanager. This town reminds me of the little towns I visited in Costa Rica in the northwest.

I am trying my best to be a beach bum but its so hard for me to just sit, Julie and I so anxious to explore and check things out. But we are retiring frequently to little cabañas for 2 for 1 drink specials. These refreshments mainly just make me want to take a nap. Which is completely out of the question without a mosquito net.

The ocean is fairly rough right now so many of my dreams of snorkling all day are dashed by the ominous waves and threatening red flags on the beach. hopefully I{ll get a bird tour in one of these days.

Got to go now. we are happy and safe thus far. A little sun burned, only reinforcing the desire to relax and stay out of the direct sun.

Mercado de Abastos

2006-05-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

On Saturdays, Oaxaqueños gather at the Mercado de Abastos to buy and sell everything life demands in Oaxaca. Julie and I arrived via taxi because we were not sure how far of a walk it would be from our posada. The mercado is on the other side of a big street and we thought we´d let the driver take care of the logistics. Besides we had been walking all over the city for the previous two days. When we arrived, we realized that the big road was the Pan-American highway, or the Gringo Project as some referred to it. It was unclear which parts were boulevards, highways, railroads, or sidewalks, but everyone was using them at the same time for thier own ends. Once we crossed the street into Abastos we found a giant building, not in height but in breadth. The biulding was likely three or four blocks long and one block deep we decided to walk through it just to see what we could find. I don´t even know where to start. There were definitely sections that were categorized, like boots and shoes, tools, breads, fruits, vegetables, artisanal goods, plastic toys, socks, chicken feeds, paper and writing utencils and restuarants. The Mercado de Abastos is much bigger than the building we were confronted with at the Pan-American highway. We decided just to walk through it to see what its dimensions were. We got lost several times but eventually found its limits and estimated that the market was about five square city blocks. Every other street is a covered building with shops and vendors inside. The ones outside consisted of tent cities with beautiful vegetables, sharpened argicultural implements, and shoe shiners.
Originally, Julie and I were on a mission to find Zapotec clothing and a folding serated knife to cut tomatoes with. Our posada only had table knives. Once we got there, our mission changed constantly though. As soon as we would find our selves in a new section we decided to explore that only to get lost and wander around to find the section that we intended to go to. This entire space of the Abastos was thriving with people and rarely was there a section that was not busy with exchange. On of the funniest and interesting parts of the Abastos is how idle vendors spent thier time. Some where completely out sleeping on top of thier registers or scales, others brought full-on video game systems. Julie and I witnessed some young boys leaving a clothing tienda with a plastic carton tied to thier waists dragging behind them. Scraping and jostling along, what appeared to be just clothing in the carton turned out to be a baby napping in the carton as the boys walked briskly and talking intently amongst themselves. Meanwhile, the baby fast asleep. The boys were likely on orders by thier mother to occupy the baby while business was heavy. When other vendors say what we were gigling about they too noticed the boys and joined us in our giggles. It was really a fun experience. The Zapotec churro vendors were making fun of me for how deeply enraptured I was to find churros at such a cheap price. Other vendors were entranced by the comedy of Julie attempting to purchasing tomatoes, avoacados and onions with broken Spanish and her involuntary giggles.
We found the knife, decided against buying Zapotec goods, and I became desirous of leather cowboy boots. We´ll try to go back next weekend.

Counter Surveillance

2006-03-24T11:14:00.000-08:00

On the one hand it is necessary to critique systems of oppression and expose the rationale, technique, and consequence of its operation in our lives. On the other hand it is also necessary to create the practice of resistance which best fits the oppressive conditions of our lives. One of the most pervasive discourses (knowledge + practice) of oppression is that of surveillance. Surveillance is a method of power which combines spatial arrangement with strategic, aesthetic, or economic valorization of the landscape. Surveillance creates a superior invulnerable position of the observer which coincides with the role of affirming the political order that makes that position possible. Becasue surveillance creates a sense of mastery over the unknown it legitimizes the control over a population. Surveillance can be resisted and is being resisted. I have included some links to counter-surveillance sites which demonstrate the creative practice of resistance.

Guide to Closed Circuit Television Destruction
How to Neutralize Camera Sensors
The Surveillance Camera Players

Some of the material for this entry was taken from David Spurr's Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (2001) Duke U. Press. Check it out.

The Emerging Security-Industrial Complex, an Economy of Fear, and Borderlands Outcomes

2005-11-27T20:35:00.000-08:00

In the introduction to The Rebordering of North America, the editor Peter Andreas describes the U.S. security response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as a convergence of debates over, “economic integration… and security” (19). After reading a litany of actions taken by the U.S. government to bolster national security efforts it becomes clear that the idea of security has touched nearly every aspect of governance. Some call this the security revolution. Andreas posits the security revolution against that of international commerce in order to contribute to, “discussions over the meaning and management of borders...[and] the shifting nature of borders and territorial politics” (2). Despite the interesting comparative perspective that the contributing authors offered between the Canadian and Mexican borders, I felt the text lacked a critical perspective on the real price of fear. In other words, I think the text overlooks the linkages between policy makers, the federal bureaucracy, and those who supply security products and services. The security revolution has resulted in the largest government restructuring in the last fifty years, thousands of new personnel positions, enormous budget increases, and more than $1 trillion dollars in security spending in the next decade. I would like to propose a field of inquiry not on economy and security, but on the economy of security. The economy of security is an important frame of analysis because it also functions socially as an economy of fear, oppression, and control.
The policy system described above is characterized by a closed process of governance that relies upon legislators, bureaucrats, and large private corporations who supply goods and services. This relationship has been called a closed policy community, an iron triangle, and an industrial complex. These ideas gained popularity with the experience of legislating expensive military contracts and later to the construction of prisons. The security revolution may be a consolidation of these policy areas as well as an expansion into new areas such as immigration control. The system I am trying to describe might be called a security-industrial complex because of the close ties between the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, legislators, and security companies. The security-industrial complex seems to rely upon the other two systems described above; military and prison. In a way, the security system encompasses them and creates interconnections. Perhaps this is the, “retooled and redesigned…part…of the “war on terror”” (1) that Andreas intended to speak to. However, other folks consider the federal reorganization to be merely window dressing to political maneuvering, yet the real effects of the security revolution and its industrial complex are most apparent in the US/Mexico borderlands, as well as Wall Street.
Mills (2004) proclaims in Forbes magazine that, “We have scarcely begun to tap technology’s potential to make our homeland more secure against terror. Security is a very big and growing tech business…a security-industrial complex is rapidly emerging…[and] the money flowing into military and homeland security infrastructure security will leverage revolutionary technologies and materials for the new digital age.” According to Mills, the security-industrial complex is a saving grace for America in a post-9/11 context. For Andreas and Biersteker as well as the other authors in thier volume the security-industrial complex functions as a virtual self-embargo to international trade. Companies that rely on cross-border trade will most likely advocate for a more “efficient” security-industrial complex, so these ideas are not inherently oppositional. Biersteker’s contribution to the volume states that, “powerful economic actors, with strong interests in the continuation and development of North American regional integration, are likely to play an important role in ensuring that physical security concerns do not displace economic and commercial ones” (155). In order to understand the economy of security we must examine the politics of demand and mechanics of supply. This entry will examine these two factors as they relate to the US/Mexico borderlands.

Racial Threat and the Demand for Security
These borderlands are the site of successive waves of conquest; first with Spanish Imperialism, then Mexican Nationalism and now with American Imperialists. Each period was steeped in its own forms of conflict and coercion with different economic systems and different politics. At the core of these conflicts are particular forms of culture that create benevolent meanings out of conquest and coercion. Furthermore, these cultures are racially oriented in the way that, “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (Omi, Winant 1994, 55). In order to justify imperialism, the aggressor often constructs the target population as being both a victim and dangerous. In this way, imperial actions taken against the threat of danger or out of benevolent charity are applauded and encouraged. The American southwest has a history of imperial violence and in this sense also a racialized space or geography with the border as a focal point. Omi and Winant (1994) argue that racism is historically constructed and persists because of institutionalization in social structures such as schools and factories. They go on to describe what they call racial projects or coherent programs that interpret, represent, or explain, “racial dynamics, and… reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines” (Omi, Winant 1994, 56). By way of immigration policies, many of the functions of the Department of Homeland Security can be understood as racial projects. Immigration policy has always attempted to “manage” the movement of people in specifically racialized ways. For instance, the Chinese Exclusion laws, the Bracero Program, and Operation Wetback among others. However, what is new about the Department of Homeland Security is the great re-inscription of racial meanings onto notions of security with extremely high levels of political investment. As Biersteker reminds us, “The very existence of the modern, Weberian state is legitmated by its ability to protect its citizens from attacks from outside its boundaries and to provide security and order within territorial space defined by its borders” (Andreas, Biersteker 2003, 153). In many ways the order within the state is a racial order and security of borders is a process of individualized racial categorization. Certainly, terrorist attacks constitute threats, but in the same breath undocumented, Mexican border crossers are conflated into similar political categories; so that catching illegal aliens is somehow the same as catching terrorists or making the nation safe and secure. This aberration means that racial meanings are beginning to blur so that dark skin makes Arabs and Mexicans impossible to tell apart and so both must be considered dangerous.
In policy terms, Andreas figures the security response as a, “politically successful, policy failure” (3) in the way that symbolic actions create political currency, but fall short in achieving implementation goals. Anderson (Sadowski-Smith 2002) perceives border militarization and industrial projects along the border as sacrificing the humanity of border residents and the land to serve the interests of D.C. politics and American investments. I think both of these authors are correct to a certain degree but misplace their causal linkages. Anderson’s sacrifice zone thesis correctly links border violence to racism but sees it as a function of proximity to the actual border line while Andreas’s analysis does not go far enough to explain why the security policies are considered politically successful. If Andreas believes the efforts to control undocumented crossing and militarize the border to be successful, then it must be attributed to the perverse satisfaction of racist attitudes. This is not to say that Andreas is racist but that those that consider the policy to be a good thing rest upon racist attitudes and ignorance not simply because of some perceived political advantage from responding to 9/11 with resolve and determination. In a similar vein, Anderson fails to recognize a broader history of imperial violence and the racial geography covering much of the southwest in areas far from the Southern border, perhaps this comes from her bio-regional place based analysis. The security-industrial complex analysis that I am putting forward advances on these two deficiencies by theorizing the ways that security policies respond to political demands by expanding police powers along pre-existing racial lines in addition to creating new ones.
Not only does the pre-existing racial order correspond to an economy dependent upon racialized immigrant labor, but the expansion of police power to “manage” immigrant populations becomes an end in itself, especially to those companies who lobby for fiscal appropriation of federal security contracts. The persistence of immigration control as a racial project extends from a history of justifications for U.S. imperial violence of the last century and a half. The current form of imperial violence toward immigrants most likely began with the Texas Rangers then federally institutionalized as the U.S. Border Patrol in 1929. Several laws in the past three decades have served to augment this institution. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, as well as the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 significantly bolstered the police powers and militarization of the border. Yet, the most influential law to advance the security-industrial complex has been the Homeland Security Act of 2002. This act strengthens the relationship of military technologies for domestic use, while increasing the number of federal police officers. In other words, the Homeland Security Act has generated domestic market demand for military technologies by cultivating the notion that national security objectives will be achieved by expanding efforts to control immigration. From this critical vantage point counter-terrorism functions as counter-diversity. Winant argues that these forms of public policy constitute a white racial project and in this way the security-industrial complex represents security for white people at the price of insecurity for people of color.
As the security-industrial complex is racial, it is also gendered. Security policies rely on actual people to carry out actions and these actions correspond to traditional stereotypes of hyper-masculinized heterosexual soldier/officers. So, in a direct fashion Homeland Security relies upon males to deliver security outside of the domestic home in order to reclaim a white domestic nation. Indirectly, this positioning corresponds to a re-inscription of women as homemakers and informal housework as contributing to national security. On the dark side of the security revolution, many more of the undocumented crossers are now women and more than half of those experience sexual violence when crossing the border. Additionally, the industrialization of the Mexican side of the border demands specifically female labor, while poverty draws them out of the domestic sphere and into the factory. The increase in undocumented female immigrants has led to a re-emergence of the disgraceful imagery of the hyper-sexualized welfare mother with out of control “fertility rates”. This imagery constructs female immigrants as threats to the social welfare system and deserving of harsh treatment. The security-industrial complex relies upon the racial memory of imperial violence and in doing so revitalizes race as a national security concern. Because race is a concept of unstable conflict the strength of the security-industrial complex is dependent upon the belief that race is a strong determinant of behavior. In this sense Mills hit the nail on the head when he proclaimed the existence of untapped security markets; white people will be much more willing to spend money to allay their fears once they know how dangerous people of color are.

The Cultural Production of Fear and Its Uneven Distribution
In October of this year a Wall Street Journal front page headline read, “How Tools of War On Terror Ensnare Wanted Citizens” (Newman 2005). This article describes the recent increases in citizen detentions by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security. The article reports that U.S. citizens account for more than 80% of the Bureau’s interior detentions (this figure does not include undocumented border crossers). Routine visits to state institutions or minor brushes with the law often led to immigration questioning, detention, and juridical processing. Since 9/11, thousands of federal immigration agents with firearm and arrest authority are legislated into service each year. Immigration enforcement agents now constitute the largest domestic federal police force ever in existence in the U.S. The security-industrial complex enjoys unfettered growth during the intense periods of fear.
The Bush administration’s War on Terror serves an important cultural role for the security-industrial complex. The authors in The Rebordering of North America never give enough attention to the cultural aspects of increased security. As policy analysts they are mostly concerned with macro-processes and the overall effect of collective action. What they miss are the ways that fear and ignorance can inform policy and its implementation. The War on Terror combined with the Department of Homeland Security closes the imaginary distance between the far off battle field and the home-front/borderlands. The cultivation of anxiety works in multiple ways with security-industrial complex to formulate an economy of fear.
The racial order figures prominently in the economy of fear. This emotive economy functions optimally when privileged white people are made to feel unsafe. It also generates anxiety and loathing for undocumented immigrant workers ensuring that they will work for sub-standard wages. The wages of fear are the foundation for domestic economic control and are integrated into nearly all sectors of the economy. Anderson acknowledges this function of increased immigration policing but the The Rebordering of North America text does not bring this factor into their analysis, although in other work Andreas does recognize the wage depression effect.
Does this mean that security-industrial complex creates a political economy of fear? Are there certain groups of people that benefit more than others in the cultural production of fear? What benefits are created? What are the costs? Does the distribution of the costs and benefits of fear in society create social conflicts that come to define racial, gendered, and classed meanings? Several of the authors in The Rebordering of North America correctly ask the question, “security for whom?” yet fail to continue through the rhetorical logic to examine the racial inequality that emerges from the racial order inflated by the security revolution.

The Dark Side of National Security: Borderlands Outcomes
I use the phrase dark side of national security for a few reasons. First, the dark side refers to the view of the security-industrial complex from a non-white perspective. Second, it refers to the unseen effects of increased security on informal markets such as undocumented labor or smuggling. Third, I use this phrase to develop a counter-discourse to the pristine notion of national security and patriotism.
In the first use of the dark side of national security I turn to my experience as an organizer for a community group fighting racial profiling by Border Patrol agents of Mexican American border residents in the town of Douglas, AZ. During my time there I quickly ran into difficulties because of the pervasive integration of the immigration enforcement institution. In the small town of Douglas, AZ most people live and work within the town and are under the threat of racial profiling in all parts of their daily lives. When asking people about their experiences they are quick to complain and voice resentment toward the agents. However, no one is willing to voice their opinions public for fear of being black listed. Because the Douglas sector has the most agents of any other the activities and needs of the agents come to dominate the economic base of the town. Mechanics garages are always full of vehicle repairs, restaurants are always packed with bureaucrats and agents, hotels are booked with agents on rotation, real estate markets adjust to the purchasing power of Border Patrol agents, and they spend their dollars in every grocery and clothing store. The expansion of the security-industrial complex in Douglas also led to the expansion of passive aggressive economic coercion.
In the second use of the dark side of national security, Douglas, AZ continues to provide insight. The Douglas/Agua Prieta border town is now the most popular crossing point for clandestine border crossers and drug smugglers. Several years ago Border Patrol agents discovered a series of tunnels connecting the two border towns. Through these tunnels thousands, maybe millions, of kilos of cocaine and marijuana where smuggled to the U.S. As enforcement continues to grow so to does the premium for illicit goods and services. Not only do drugs becomes more profitable but so too does the business of undocumented border crossing. If you cross the border from Douglas into Agua Prieta you will be amazed to find the number of one night motels, sporting goods stores with camping gear, and catholic votive stores stocked with patron saints of migrants and travelers. As the U.S. federal government increases border patrolling, coyotes and snake-heads increase their profits and expand their operations. Lastly, if the border is a magnet and attracts immigration enforcement agents, then the agricultural fields 30 miles north of the border repel those agents to work for their wages in fear.
In the third instance of the dark side of national security, I bring the focus to the history of border vigilantes in Douglas. As Anderson acknowledges in her contribution, white supremacy and anti-immigrant ranchers have picked up their American flags and rifles and headed for the border to find the alien law breakers. Unfortunately, the security revolution and 9/11 have provided a platform from which these vigilante groups spout their hate and aggression. From the Minuteman project to day labor site patrols in states far from the border to protests outside of Banks for offering checking and housing mortgages to undocumented workers these racist anti-immigrant groups are demonstrating the effects of a political economy of fear. The uneven distribution of the production of fear generates conflicts that led to oppressive conditions and have social control outcomes such as segregation and unrequited racial violence.
In this entry I have argued for the treatment of the development of the War on Terror and the Department of Homeland Security as a security-industrial complex that operates as a powerful racial project with a political economy of fear that supports its existence and expansion. From this thesis the title The Rebordering of North America should perhaps shift to The Re-Ordering of North America in order to reflect the specific racialized foundations in which such programs rest.

Works Cited
Andreas, Peter & Biersteker, Thomas eds. 2003. The Rebordering of North America: Integration and Exclusion in a new Security Context. Routledge: New York.

Mills, Mark. “On My Mind: The Security-Industrial Complex.” Forbes. Nov. 29, 2004.
Retrieved on 11/25/2005.

Newman, Barry. “New Dragnet: How Tools of War On Terror Ensnare Wanted Citizens.” The Wall Street Journal. October 31, 2005. p. A1.

Omi, Michael & Winant, Howard. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States From the 1960’s to the 1990’s. Routledge: New York.

Sadowski-Smith, Claudia ed. 2002. Globalization on the Line: Culture, Capital, and Citizenship at U.S. Borders. Palgrave: New York.

Policies of Profit in Russia and the Market of Nostalgia

2005-08-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

This past week OMON, or masked commandos, carried out high Russian court orders to raid the dachas of Yekaterininskiye Valy outside of Moscow. Dachas are coutry houses that have occupied a place in Russian history since the early 1700's. The masked OMON violently tore through these country villages arresting those who resisted their advances. The high courts of Russia ruled that this particular village had built thier dachas too close to the Istra River and thier permits had run out in 2000, almost six years ago.

This situation exemplifies how courts create inequality and facilitate the consolidation of property rights. The court decision follows Mr. Veremeyenko's annoucement of financial interest in developing this region into golf courses and vacation homes, reminiscent of the gardening and subsistence culture of the dacha lifestyle. The dachas were an important symbol of the redistribution of property rights in the Russian Revolution. They were also refuges of stability throughout Russian history. The stability of the dacha system provided an artisitic climate for many famous Russian writers.

The dachas in Yekaterininskiye are being emptied in order to supply consumers with "culturally authentic" vacation experiences. As the Russian economy stalls and industrial manufacturing drops-off the economy increasingly becomes dependent upon foriegn capital from both corporate entities and the global elite. The political backlash of economic decline, corruption, and dissident terrorists have made Russia a tough sell to global investors. The dachas seems a likely target for marketing the nostalgic cottage life of Russia's dwindling middle class to the global elite and Moscow aristicrats.

The dacha "lifestyle" was popularized by Martha Stewart's quest for the perfect home environment to nest in. Mr. Veremeyenko's proposed development offers wealthy individuals the rustic lifestyle of homemade meals made from the surrounding gardens without the fuss of actual work. I'm not saying that Martha Stewart is complicit in the OMON raids in Yekaterininskiye, but it is the marketing of an unattainable imaginery and nostalgic upper-middle-class lifestyle that creates economic demands which unscrupulous investors will exploit. And exploit them at the cost of the very cultural settings that are the object of desire. The consumption dachas is class warfare and it does not appear to be going away. Achieving a more exquitable system will mean starving the elite, more than a little, they are already beyond fat.

So far to the right, almost left...

2005-07-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

I am currently interning with the ACLU's Immigrant Rights' Project in Oakland and my main work has been to produce some primary information on the vigilantes/minuteman projects and other anti-immigrant groups. So far, this has consisted of producing a timeline of events hosted and incidents of abuse perpetrated by these groups. I am also producing a family tree of sorts that maps out the membership of these groups to demonstrate the overlapping membership between groups.

Throughout my internet travels in conducting this research, I was sort of shocked by how much anti-Bush and anti-Corporate sentiments were posted. I half expected them to be ardent Bush/Cheney supports. Very few of the sites actually supported the administration; most called Bush an immigrant lovin' puppet of the Mexican dictator (I don't know how they get these ideas) or other names of the sort. If you thought Bush's guest worker programs were sucky, well these anti-immigrant groups believe guest worker programs to be synonymous with handouts to the poor. On the surface one might suspect that lefty progressives and these anti-immigrant groups actually share some common enemy, big corporations. Many anti-immigrant groups have begun to target corporations like Home Depot who hire undocumented immigrants. The difference between lefty progressives and the anti-immigrant groups is that one is based upon racism, xenophobia, and paranoia; while the other is motivated by the corporate impunity from damages done to society and the environment.

It is very troubling that the Bush regime is not the ultra-right. One thing that was served more than anything else to shift politics in this country seems to be 9-11. I'm not one for the, "this will change everything" line but for somethings it has. It seems that liberalism has been supplanted by security as a driving political philosophy. A political lighthouse of this sort is destined to retreat into groupisms and other sub-national factions. In this way, homeland security has been as much about Race as it has been about terrorism. It seems that the security narrative of the Dept. of Homeland Security has done more to help construct the idea of 'Racial Threat' and 'Dangerous Classes' than the 'War on Drugs' did in several decades (needless to say the War on Terror has been good for the Prison-Industrial-Complex).

The new security narrative espouses an enemy-within philosphy of social policy. This basically means that good Americans will support the weeding out of the 'bad' from the 'decent and true' elements in society. The racialization of security then justifies racial profiling, internment, while criminalizing the behavior of those 'indecent and false' elements, and last but not least making certain classes ineligibile for public benefits. All the while funneling more money into the other Corporate conglomerate, the Military-Industrial-Complex.

The danger for immigration policy is that (mega)-ultra-rightwing legislative proposals like Rep. Tancredo (R-CO) will make (regular)-rightwing legislative proposals like the McCain (R-AZ)/Kennedy (D-MA) bill seem like a good deal. There are so many hostile ideas floating around congress right now like stronger deportation measures, increasing immigration enforcement agents by the thousands, and stronger sentencing requirements that it might be safer to simply try to block any immigration laws from being past for fear of getting a worse deal from a bad law by way of amendments. Hopefully, Sheila Jackson-Lee's (D-TX) bill will enter the spot-light to show that immigration policy does not have to be led by security and that security does not have to be led by prejudice.

for C.S. Carrier

2005-07-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

bake me a face, California.
it says don't let the grass overgrow and nourish the native dance.
crash your ingredients with bricks and cactus flesh skins.
why bruise a heel when Sacramento cuts branches?
your ambient touch sound is viscous air.

Property Accumulation

2005-07-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

The sage worlds of my man Meth, "Ain't nothin move but da money," applies to the consolidation of property rights and rent collecting capability of corporations. The Wall Street Journal noted that the globalization of real-estate markets has remained a strong market for corporate investments. According to Ryan Chittum, "investors are diversifying the geographic concentration of their real estate portfolios." In fact this doesn't sound all that different from a colonial logic of expansion. As more countries pass legislation that opens real estate markets to foreign owners to welcome precious corporate investment, the ownership of land and the distribution of property rights becomes more concentrated in the hands and interests of the few.

As the gap between rich and poor accelerates, fewer people can afford to own land. This means that the wealth created by the ownership of the property rights does not stay where the property is but where the owner's bank account is. This will ensure that future wealth produced on that land will not belong to the region but to the owners of said property. The national accounts for economic activity will register the productivity but the actual profit of the property will reside elsewhere. This will create greater mystery about how economic projects will benefit localities; that is to say a false picture of wealth creation for regions with high foreign property owners will likely deceive its residents with high performance.

I am also concerned about the implications that this trend has for the future troubles created by global climate change. When climates change and local conditions become more uncertain, the diversification of real estate portfolios will put corporate capital at a better position to adapt to these changes. Meanwhile the majority of landless people on the planet will increasingly have to comply with the conditions set by corporate property owners. This trend demonstrates a slipping grip of the sovereignty of nation-states. Society will increasingly rely upon the capital networks, security, and deals that corporations are willing to make to the public (at decent profit, no doubt). With increased climate change there maybe increased demands for environmental services such as plant relocation, flood and landslide prevention, drought relief, security from hurricanes, and creating fresh water. Corporations will be in a good position to capitalize on these demands. Doing so will allow corporate interest to set the conditions for compensation and do so while holding our health, safety, and security out in front of us like a carrot for a hungery pack animal.
As this graph from the Global Footprint Network demonstrates, we have been above the Earth's carrying capacity for some time. We are essentially living upon borrowed ecological capital from future generations. The consolidation of property rights under the globalization of real estate makes the management of land a less democratic process and puts land management decisions in the hands of people that are most insulated from the negative effects of global climate change. The people most likely to be negatively impacted by global climate change are those with the least resources to cope with the process of adaptation; the poor, undocumented, and dispossesed. That is mostly people of color. The corporate consolidation of property rights around the globe is an environmental justice issue now that can be discouraged by striking down legislation that de-regulates the sale of property rights to foreign corporate bodies. Instead, redistributing property rights to domestic workers and connecting thier economic well-being to the maintanence of the value of the property rights would not only establish localized management of land but also make those workers less susceptable to the negative changes of climate change by lifting them out of poverty.

CAFTA, SHAFTA

2005-07-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

Why have people not learned the lessons of NAFTA, its been a decade of the same old economic rhetoric and promise just over the horizon. CAFTA, the Centeral American (CA) version of the 1994 "free" trade agreement, is being advertised as the same panecea for economic and political woes. Here in the Wall Street Journal from Friday (15th) Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes,

"Th[e] hunger for goods from the outside (CA) illustrates the most important role of CAFTA for develeoping CA, and it is not access to US markets for CAFTA exporters. The treaty's main contribution to regional development is that it will help Centrals gain access to imports, thereby raising living standards and increasing the competitiveness of CA economies."

The US is currently in one of the largest trade deficits in decades, meaning that we have consumed more things from abroad than we have sold to other countries. This has been largely due to the behavior of footloose corporations who seek cheaper production conditions in the global south. However, domestic producers here in the States are begining to learn how to tap into the undocumented labor pool and lower thier labor costs. The delays in immigration reform are probably not due to the lack of political movement but the unwillingness to do anything that might jeopardize producer access to this secondary labor class. U.S. manufacturers face enormous economic pressure to become low cost producers. This trade agreement may be an effort to boost exports from this wave of production. CAFTA will not only allow US producers to sell goods to CA consumers made by the migrants, but the de-regulation that CAFTA will bring changes to thier labor markets causing further northern migration.

Bush visited North Carolina (NC) last week to pitch CAFTA to textile workers. A year ago NC exported $1.7 billion in textiles, most of which was exported to CA countries. Bush warned that if CAFTA did not go through this market would be lost to them. This productivity however is made possible by the huge influx of labor to that state. NC has seen more than a %500 increase in the foriegn born latino population there. If CAFTA is not passed then maybe Hondurans can make thier own shirts in Honduras and live normal lives. Don't get me wrong, I think migration is all good as long as it is a choice that is made out of freedom and not by deceptive policies that lead to economic desperation. Right now NC's representatives in congress are split on their support for the bill.

CAFTA is basically, promoted as a sort of "free market bliss" in which Central Americans who do end up staying home will end up being better off becasue they will have greater access to consumer goods. If well-being is defined by consumption then well yes of course they should consumer more, we should all consume more and increase our well-being, duh! What if well-being is not merely defined by material consumption of private goods but also the consumption and access to public goods; education, health care, healthy environments, and political equality. These things contribute much more to individual well-being more than material consumption can. So we all do indeed require a minimum amount of material consumption but basing continental trade policy upon such simplifications forces people to engage in the private markets in order to fulfill thier needs, while they watch thier wages fall in order to attract the corporate investors to thier country. These are contradictions that do not fall into the economic models of WSJ contributors or trade policy negotiators.

Luckily the unions all over the continent are intimately aware of CAFTAs potential impact. Costa Rica's labor unions have threatened violent uprisings if CAFTA is pushed through by thier President Pacheco. Costa Rica's heavy investments in public goods, wary acceptance of World Bank money, strong labor unions and cooperatives (worker owned enterprises) are what keeps Costa Rica slightly better off than its CA neighbors. CAFTA would effectively dismantle these social support structures and make domestic productivity more reliant upon corporate investment from abroad. In addition, Costa Rica's nationl debt is not as high a percentage of its national productivity as it is for other countries. For other countries a major percentage of the money collected as taxes goes to paying just the interet on debt from international financial institutions. Breaks are given to these countries for paying back this money when they participate in the world economy through trade agreements and allow foreign companies to setup shop on thier soil and use thier labor. Trade negotiators from these countries are always under debt pressure to participate in international trade agreements. The map below shows the amount of debt each country has accumulated in the time between 1991-2000. Check out the link to the site for this map by clicking on the title of this entry.

We still have a chance to shoot down CAFTA here before Bush gets his chance to impose it on our friends in CA. The trade agreement passed in the Senate in the closest vote on a trade bill in 40 years, 54 to 45 votes. It still has to pass the House and 190 democrats of 202 are likely to oppose it. Use this link to find your Representative ( http://www.house.gov/ ) and tell them that you do not support this trade agreement.

U.S. VISIT

2004-07-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

Will the tech-industry distinguish the idealized citizen? The US-VISIT program is a $10 billion dollar contract going to one company, Accenture. One of the handful of companies to benefit from the militarization of the border and anti-immigrant policies. Increasingly, the private sector is taking on legislative mandates. The question of accountability is paramount in this relationship. How will the profit drive of Accenture influence how identities are measured and what constitutes a persons identity? Policies like US VISIT are likely to contribute to the racialization of immigrants and those that cross borders.

Independence Day on The Border

2004-07-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

In Bisbee, AZ there was a large gathering for the Julym 4th celebration. In old Brewery Gultch, here in Bisbee, there was a diverse group celebrating Independence Day. I took this opportunity of a large gathering of people to advocate for immigration reform. The Border Action Networks immigration legalization campaign involves the signing and sending of postcards to Senator McCain letting him know that Southern Arizona is united in their demand for immigration reform that establishes a broad-based legalization program, essentially asking him to support the Safe Orderly Legal Visas and Enforcement Act of 2004. The first comprehensive immigration reform bill to pass through Congress in 30 years. Its about time.
Supporting immigration reform such as this on Independence Day felt very appropriate. What is more in line with this countries history than immigration. With the exception of the Native Americans of this continent, this nation was founded on immigration. I received some interesting responses when asking people to support immigration reform by signing a postcard to send to Senator McCain asking him to take action on immigration reform. Many of the responses from people revolved around their emotional connections to the agency that enforces immigration policy, the Border Patrol. Many felt anger, frustration, fear; yet others expressed a sense of pride, confidence in their mission and an extreme dislike for undocumented crossers. Some folks told me that they felt it was their patriotic duty not to advocate for immgiration reform such as mentioned. Others thought immigration reform was an appropriate issue on July 4th in Bisbee. Regardless of who agreed or not, I was able to secure 75 signatures. This was the best Independence Day I've ever had.

J-Rock

2004-06-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

I flew to Chicago to see my pal Justin. Here he is with his wife Gemma and thier adorable son Oscar. Justin and Gemma were married on the 26th of June, 2004. They just left for rural Japan where Justin begins teaching English.

Border Action Network

2004-06-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

Border Action Network sent a delegation of immigrants to Senator McCain's office to deliver 3,300 postcards from Southern Arizona residents calling for broad-based legalization in immigration reform. This is a photo from the following press conference in which undocumented migrants spoke about thier experiences in the workplace and in thier communities.

Tuscon Dispatch

2004-06-18T14:06:00.000-07:00

This was the trailer that carried our belongings while we hwalked the migrant trail. We used items that we found along the trail, left by migrants, to make a display to put along the Border Patrol sign at the Tucson Sector HQ.

Here is the display.

Evidence of Paradox

2004-06-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

Recently in the Arizona News it was found out that Border Patrol uniforms are are made in Mexico. Does this come as a surprise to anyone? Is this not the perfect representation of the critical connections between politicians, bureaucrat's, and their business. Here's the basic scenario: our government (who contracts out to a foreign producer) to make cheaper uniforms as a cost-cutting measure (a strategy derived from an economic system that produces disenfranchised migrant workers) for an agency (that has received the greatest increase in funding than any other U.S. agency) assigned the enforcement of the immigration policies that the government has mandated. Does the right-hand know what the left is doing? More importantly, does this contradiction matter to them? Paradox has come to define many of the explanations that social scientists come up with to explain our world. Is it possible to have a hegemonic power that is not contradictory? Is paradox not integral to the practice of hegemony? What does it mean, to say that Border Patrol uniforms are made in Mexico? Could it mean that it means nothing and that hegemony is complete and that disparities in the distribution of power are the only way to maintain the status quo? Or does it mean that the underbelly of hegemony is being exposed? When Gramsci talks about hegemony, he is also quick to point out that hegemony is never complete and that hegemony must always be adapting to the production of new systems of meaning. Evidence of paradox seems to be the fracture in hegemony. The observed paradox is the target for action. This is the location with the most leverage for change.
Here are a few other locations of leverage...
repatriations policies of the Border Patrol, enforcement of state and federal laws concerning vigilantes on the border, and one of my favorites...the Nogales Complex. The Nogales Complex is the name I have given to the condition of the Ambos Nogales (Sonora and Arizona). Nogales was one of the first locations along the border to receive phenomenal growth in Maquiladora development from U.S. investment. Because of a lack of enforcement protocol in Mexico these Maquilas have had the opportunity to turn the Nogales watershed into one of the most toxic places in North America. Here's the twist. Because the U.S. now receives about 80% of its produce from Mexico, and much of that is located in the northern half of Mexico, 80% of the produce produced in Mexico comes through the Nogales, AZ port of entry. This would not be a bad thing if the produce distributors did not wash the produce with water from the Nogales watershed. Does this make sense to anyone?

Challenging State Power

2004-06-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

Peter Andreas wrote a book entitled "border games" in which he describes some of the symbolic aspects of enforcing immigration policy. He goes on to say that those who wish to have the border dissolved underestimate the importance of deploying symbolic resources that establish state legitimacy. Peter wrote this book in the late 90's, a time of growing militarization and increasing economic pressure to migrate. The astronomical escalation of resources devoted to enforcing the harsh immigration policies following closely after NAFTA has more than doubled the budget and personnel since Peter wrote his book. The dramatic increases of migrant deaths in Arizona's Southern deserts is a result of border barracading and militarization around urban regions in the hopes that the hostile desert environment would be a passive deterrent, they were wrong. In just this year more than 80 deaths have occured as a result of these policies. That is an increase in three times the rate of last year. These deaths are also a symbolic representation of the way that immigration policy regards the migrants who support the domestic U.S. economy at its very foundation. The deaths of migrants in the desert represent the utter lack of respect for human rights; it is also important to recognize that labor rights are human rights. In this way, the symbolism of state legitimacy includes the hypocracy of legislation that is both pro-immigration and anti-immigrant and inhumane in the treatment of migrants. The policy is essentially a strategy that treats migrants as labor inputs. The defacto effect of immigration policy has been the maintenance of a large pool of cheap labor ready upon demand for exploitation in the "post-industrial" U.S. economy. If the U.S. is to ameliorate its symbolic legitimacy, then the border militarization must be stopped, legalization available for migrant workers, and real economic development for migrant sending countries. It is appaulingly apparent that current strategies of development through globalization are wholely inadequate as formal means of improving the quality of life of people equally.
In response to these horrific symbols of inhumane state power, we of the No More Deaths Coalition have chosen to deploy our own symbolic resources to demonstrate the humanity of migrating people, respect for thier rights and contributions to the U.S. economy, while calling attention to the dire need for legislative reform in immigration and economic policy. The No More Deaths Migrant Trail Walk for Life is a symbolic gesture deployed by people who are tired of unfair policies that force out our migrating brothers and sisters into situations of exploitation and even death. The Migrant Trail Walk for Life is a statement of resistance and a proclomation of hope. State symbols of power and legitimacy that result in the death of innocent people constitute a neeed to challenge that system.
Too many people have died. Policies are not benefiting enough people. The potential benefits of broadening legal immigration have been muddled by the wave of misinformation from racist anti-immigrant groups.
This movement is in part a reflection of the unequal process of globalization created by the simulaneous loosening of regulations on financial capital flows and restricting labor flows. Clandestine labor mobility has become a common response by the most disenfranchised of underdeveloped nations. Violating human rights in an effort to control sources of cheap labor is a long and vile tradition. A tradition in which people have always resisted by creating ne symbolic meansings to the official and legitimate structures that oppress them. In this sense, the No More Deaths Migrant Trail Walk for Life is creating a more legitimate meaning of the border through an adherance to dignity, justice, and human rights by transforming the border from an anonimous monument to security and the rule of law to a memorial to the casualties of an economic and political order of inequality. Creating new meanings for the border is an essential method of progressive change and establishing an ethical interpretation of legislative reform.

A March to Nogales, Son.

2004-05-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

We walked down the streets of Nogales in a contemplative mood. A loud hollow drumbet out the rythum of the march. We were marching for the No More Deaths Campaign against the militariazation of the border, unfair immigration, and economic policies. As we approached the official port of entry into downtown Nogales, Son. the somber mood of the march was elevated by the shouts, crys and whistles of our Mexican brothers and sisters on the other side of the border. They were holding up the port of entry into Nogales, AZ. They too were holding crosses remembering those who have lost thier life to the deserts of the Southwest. As we crossed, Mexican Officials, locals, tourists, children, street vendors, federales, and the Border Patrol look on while the two groups converged on the west side of the port of entry along the barrier fence and placed our crosses on the wall. The direct representation of policies designed to deter migrant workers; workers vital to the U.S. economy; workers simply searching for a better life. Some for themselves, but mostly for thier families. PLacing the crosses on the wall that directed thier course into the deadly harsh desert was a deeply satisfying action. I am sure that this act also had significant meaning to the other groups who were participating; Borderlinks, Humane Borders, Derechos Humanos, Border Action Network, Wingspan, Pan Left, Samaritans, los punks de Nogales, Son., the Yaqui indians among others.
The migrant trail that we are about to under take will be a symbolic gesture in the memorial of those who set out to cover the same ground and failed. To comemorate this symbolic act we gathered at the Central Nogales Plaza and were blessed by a yaqui ceremony where a single Yaqui dancer moved in rythm with the two violins and thumping harp. With shakers at this shines and bells at his waist he traced lines in plaza. A constellation of lines connected by coins offered to his feet. He danced facing the players encouraging them with his dance. A dance that blesses our journey and sends us south of Nogales to Altar, a major launching point for migrants expecting to cross the border, a starting point for those searching lost ones, and a place made important by the reponse of people to the immigration and economic policies of the U.S.
As we drive outh from Nogales we followed train tracks, that followed a river, that followed the land. The sun setting to our right painted the Sierra La Madera to the left of us pink and maroon. An tradition that developed in Northwestern Mexico was the creation of saints that emerged out of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. One of these saints was Juan Soldado, he was said to look after those who were wrongly accused and healed those who were ill. It seemed to me that Juan Soldado Santo had painted the mountains in such beautiful colors to leave touching images in the hearts of those who were migrating north. Also that the Sierra La Madera will warmly recieve them as they return to thier families in the future.

Poetics and Policy

2004-05-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

Addressing the problems of the borderlands through poetics and policy is an interpretive method of analyzing laws, policies, and institutions. Poetics implies that there is a conscious reading and interpretation of material that also has symbolic and representational characterisitics. This is how I view policies. The results of policies are a reflection of strucutral and institutional conditions, thus by interepreting policies and laws one may better understand the intention of the authors. Applying this perspective to the borderlands is particularly challenging becasue it is the intersection of different policy systems, cultures, political ideologies, and economic systems. In this way examining the poetics of policy in the borderlands, one may view the borderlands as a contested region in which the intention of policies are linked to the distribution of power and the dynamics of this complex intersection.