Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border

by Gilberto Rosas

Analyzes how border and immigration enforcement culminated in a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. On August 3, 2019, a far-right extremist committed a deadly mass shooting at a major shopping center in El Paso, Texas, a city on the border of the United States and Mexico. In Unsettling , Gilberto Rosas situates this devastating shooting as the latest unsettling consequence of our border crisis and currents of deeply rooted white nationalism embedded in the United States. Tracing strict immigration policies and inhumane border treatment from the Clinton era through Democratic and Republican administrations alike, Rosas shows how the rhetoric around these policies helped lead to the Trump administration's brutal crackdown on migration―and the massacre in El Paso. Rosas draws on poignant stories and compelling testimonies from workers in immigrant justice organizations, federal public defenders, immigration attorneys, and human rights activists to document the cruelties and indignities inflicted on border crossers. Borders, as sites of crossings and spaces long inhabited by marginalized populations, generate deep anxiety across much of the contemporary world. Rosas demonstrates how the Trump administration amplified and weaponized immigration and border policy, including family separation, torture, and murder. None of this dehumanization and violence was inevitable, however. The border zone in El Paso (which translates to "the Pass") was once a very different place, one marked by frequent and inconsequential crossings to and from both sides―and with more humane immigration policies, it could become that once again.

296 pages, Hardcover

Published March 28, 2023

Reviews

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Im a fellow El Pasoan who also moved away and his account of trying to reach his family during the massacre resonated. Powerful witnessing of painful truths in our hometown. Highly recommend

[Wisbison · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very informative book that highlights the troubling atmosphere of international borders, especially the one between the US and Mexico.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gilberto Rosas is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois. Rosas was born in El Paso, Texas. Most of his and his wife's families have connections to El Paso (Rosas 5-6). In 2023, Rosas published a response to the El Paso Massacre of Saturday, August 3, 2019, when a White Nationalist killed 23 people who happened to be Hispanic in a Walmart in El Paso. Rosas’s book was entitled Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border. Rosas’s book has several appendices, an index, a section of notes, and a bibliography. A chapter of the book entitled Unsettling is written by Diana Martinez, an El Peso-born activist involved with the Coalition to End Childhood Detention (Rosas 38). I read the book on my Kindle. Rosas’s book, Unsettling, is a series of anthropological essays with a common thread. A significant symbolic figure in the book is the figure of La Llorona from Mesoamerican folklore (Rosas 45). Rosas writes that “garbed in white, La Llorona warders the darkness, seeking her children” (Rosas 45). Rosas uses the symbolic figure of La Llorona to symbolize the policies of children's separation from the American government during the late 2010s. The book Unsettling covers a lot of ground. The book is well done and well written. Gilberto Rosas’s book Unsettling is a heartfelt academic response to the immigrant policies of the late 2010s and the El Paso Massacre of 2019.
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