Violence in the US-MEX Borderlands: The Consistent Threat to National Identity

Source: https://time.com/4977283/artist-stages-picnic-on-us-mexico-border/

By: Daniela Díaz Azcúnaga

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

Over the years, the current political boundary between the United States and Mexico has changed but one key feature has remained constant: its association with violence. Despite being far from the centres of both state powers, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands have become a significant place of great interest for those seeking and resisting power. More than a static political boundary, the U.S.-Mexico border region can be seen as a third different realm that emerges from constant interaction and coexistence of different ideas and experiences. What has been overlooked, however, is the important instrumental role that violence played in building the Mexican nation-state and how it used these differences to create a false superior-inferior identity that still persists today.

Today, the U.S.-Mexico border region is inhabited by an estimated of 15 million people from different cultural backgrounds. In the borderlands there is not just one identity; its inhabitants may identify as Mexican, Chicano, American, Puebloan, Yaqui, or from other Latin American countries that make the border region their home too.  This multi-lingual and multi-cultural coexistence in the region is what makes it so ambiguous and unstable; they both divide and connect. This cross-cultural coexistence, however, can represent a menace to state power. If people inhabiting the region have different identities, cultures and ideas and keep moving between both countries what does these say about how much control the state has over certain area or how unified they are as a nation?

Citizens can only claim the right to use violence only insofar as the law permits them, whereas the state can use violence to their liking either as punishment or also as entertainment and glorification of its power. As remarked by economist and political theorist, Max Weber, the state is the sole authority to assert the ;right” to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a territory. The state’s authority can therefore be understood as a domination of man over man by means of violence. When their power as authority is in jeopardy, violence is their immediate instrument to sustain it.

Throughout the history of the borderlands, there has always been a group designated as the threat to state power, national identity and hence the formation of the nation-state. In its transition from colony to modern nation-state, Mexico hid its purpose of using violence to build a nation, behind one of protection from ‘threats’ from ‘inferior identities’. After gaining independence from the Spanish Imperial power in 1810, Mexico naturally wanted sovereignty and a legitimate state. However, in order to begin building a nation-state,Mexico needed to overcome the rooted differences in the border region–the key was to give their citizens a common sense of belonging. The Mexican state, accordingly, attempted to unify its citizens by giving them the same sense of belonging and alienating them from those whose identities did not coincide with the ‘strong Mexican national identity’.

The first group targeted as a threat were those thought as savages. In the 1800s, during Porfirio Diaz’s regime (1876-1911), indigenous settlements in the border region were interfering with the modernization of Mexico. To solve this ‘problem’ Mexico monopolised and systematically used violence to either ‘civilise’ or get rid of these indigenous communities, such as the Yaquis–in the border state of Sonora– who were thought of as barbaric and uncontrollable. During this period the Yaqui population coincidentally diminished up to almost a half. The solution to the Mexican ‘Indian problem’ was either, ‘helping’ everyone identify to one sole national identity or eliminating them. Identifying as indigenous was identifying as inferior to modernisation, progress and national unity; it gave justification to use physical and psychological violence to end the threat that stopped the nation from growing modern and strong. Even though Mexico thought that eliminating the ‘Indian problem’ would secure their rise as a modern nation, the increasing interdependencies between cities in the border, gave rise to a different group they would later target as a menace: migrants. 

During the 20th century, a pattern of twin-cities emerged across the political boundary and as a result increased the interdependency and flow of people between these cities, such as Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, or Tijuana-San Diego. The increasing legal and illegal border crossings represented a threat to both nations: to the U.S. it represented a national security danger while to Mexico it signified losing the support of a strong international nation and powerful nation. The approach taken to solve this ‘threat’ transformed the border into an arena for coordinating state violence. In 1954, Operation Wetback, was enforced in the United States in cooperation with the Mexican government to control the increasing illegal border crossings. Mexican officials actively participated in the implementation of policing unsanctioned migration along the border. They coordinated with the U.S. Border Patrol to deport migrants into the interior of Mexicowho were forced to wait in wired enclosed detention camps.The use of violence changed during this period from an open physical killing, to an enclosed performance of racial and dehumanising discriminatory acts. The U.S. fed racialised ideas of Mexicans to their citizens under the justification for more border enforcement and sustain their power over the region. Whereas the Mexican state and migrants began to also assimilate themselves as the ‘problem’ and inferior neighbour. 

Migrants became the group depicted as a threat and turned into the ‘Indian Problem’ of the 20th and 21st century. The increasing migration towards the U.S. and the implementation of Border Enforcement, slowly turned Mexico into its perpetrator of violence and the inferior ally. Violence in the borderlands simultaneously divided and connected the communities that inhabit the region. It acted as a tool to the United States and Mexico to separate and obliterate those living in the border region who represented a problem to their rise as modern nation. According to Missing Migrants, 2,019 migrants have died crossing the border since 2014, and the number keeps increasing. The history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands has played an important part in the building of the Mexican state. It has stood as the opposite of strength, progress and unity to the Mexican government, however, building a wall or eliminating the diversity that conforms them will not solve or stop the flow of people, languages, culture that has evolved in the borderlands. The border emerged as a political boundary, social space and cultural hub and  despite –and sometimes because of the bloodshed– endured and became part of their own identity and also of that of Mexico. Instead of proposing new ‘threats’ its time to acknowledge the unity and strength that can be found amongst diversity.

Daniela is a Mexican student, currently in her second year of BA in Liberal Arts with a major in Politics at King’s College. She enjoys writing about environmental and social justice affairs, especially those concerning minority groups such as women, children or indigenous groups.