The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration, And Homeland Security

by Tony Payan

As the United States' response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, begins to take its final shape, perhaps the most affected area of the country is the U.S. borderlands with Mexico. The optimistic talk of the 1990s regarding trade, investment, and economic integration in North America has given way to a rhetoric focused on security, particularly securing and controlling all points of entry to and exit from the United States. Cities and towns across the Southwestern border have experienced firsthand the consequences of the new, security-oriented national ethos and practices embodied in the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The comprehensive security strategy now in place permeates the three border wars examined in this insightful work―the war on drugs, the war over the enforcement of immigration laws, and the war on terror. As Payan demonstrates, the effects of these three wars have been significant. They include a loss of local autonomy and a disconnect between the priorities of Washington, D.C., and the local populations. Perhaps more important, they have created a rigid international line that represents a barrier to economic, social, and cultural integration―and a source of fear and suspicion between neighbors. Payan traces the history of these policies on the border to discern and understand the evolutionary patterns and common threads that join all three policies together today. He argues that historically the border has experienced a gradual tightening and increasing militarization, culminating in today's restrictive environment. This book illuminates the ways in which border residents are coping with the stricter border security environment, and how they navigate their daily lives in the face of an increasing number of federal bureaucrats and programs designed to close the border. It examines the significant conflict between the government's efforts to close the border and the border communities' efforts to open it.

164 pages, Hardcover

Published June 1, 2006

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting in that this-is-interesting-considering-it's-for-research kind of way (I'm doing a presentation on an issue related to this), but not really written in a compelling manner. There are some anecdotes throughout the book that make the situation more human, but much fewer and farther between than I expected. They also mostly serve to reinforce the idea that the author is, if you'll excuse the expression, ballsier than your average bear and willing to risk getting arrested for doing things that don't really seem all that relevant to proving his point in the book, or at least seem more like him grandstanding and showing himself as a "rebel" in some way than anything else (driving along random deserted places in the desert close to the border or trying to talk to random people who are preparing for the trek across). He also kept repeating the idea that Washington's politicization of the border and characterization of it as a dangerous place (which he seems to believe is somewhat of a myth, but never really persuades us that the reality is much different than that?) is affecting the many people who cross the border daily for work, school, and shopping in a negative way, and is driving the US and Mexico apart. He gave a couple of examples of this that I felt were good, but I never really felt that he backed up this idea in a substantial way, other than by saying that increased border checks were now making many people waste money and time, not to mention pollute the environment more, in long lines in cars waiting to cross the border. The book also seemed to be way too repetitive, with the summaries at the end of chapters seeming like he had cut and paste sentences from throughout the chapter rather than pulled together the information in a compelling way to make a point or concluding remark.

There were a number of interesting tidbits, though. One is pointing out how much September 11th strongly affected our border with Mexico even though September 11th had almost nothing to do with the US-Mexican border. The 9/11 attackers were let in with visas via airports (some of them which had expired, if I'm remembering correctly), and were not in any way migrants trying to cross the border on foot, and yet suddenly our "national security efforts" deigned that the border area was now the new threat. He also did convincingly illustrate that we're caught up in a war of escalation with the drug cartels who are trying to smuggle drugs through, with each side using increasingly high-tech and militarized technology, and that idea was disturbing. It was also amazing/frightening to read how smart and calculating the drug cartels are - they are in business, after all - in that now they transport the majority of their drugs in semi-trucks, many times cloaking their scents and putting them in the middle of loads so that they won't be detected, and are basically just betting that the trucks that they use won't be the few out of the million that cross the border that are pulled over to search, so it's a little like roulette, and yet it still pays off. It was this book that also exposed me to the idea of the "balloon effect", which has been very helpful to me in understanding both drug trafficking and undocumented crossing: once we put the "squeeze" on one area on the border in terms of security, we are not eliminating the demand for drugs/undocumented labor on the US-side, nor are we affecting the supply on Mexico's side, so we are simply shifting the transit to a different part of the border (hence why so many immigrants are now crossing in the wilderness of Arizona and New Mexico rather than the more vigilized Texas and California borders, and are dying at much higher rates because of the remoteness and the dangerousness of the terrain). In the drug trade, surprisingly, the majority of drugs are still coming through the legal checkpoints, and are just hidden in the semis, gambling that they won't be searched/won't be discovered even if they are searched, as I mentioned before, so that was surprising to me.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of this book for me was the publisher. Praeger Security International? Who are you, and what is your interest in publishing this book, which would seem to argue for less of a military approach, and more cooperation between the US and Mexico? Certainly doesn't seem like an angle that I would include in my next pitch to the government for sub-contracting on defense. On that note, Payan pointed out something very true: now that we have created this bureaucracy of Homeland Security, the nature of bureaucracies is to be slow in change (whereas the drug cartels are incredibly quick to modify based on need and have a seemingly limitless supply of people who are willing to replace small or large people who are captured by law enforcement because of the economic need), and also act primarily to preserve themselves. Therefore, of course Homeland Security will always say more agents, more money, more technology is needed... which Congress has duly and increasingly supplied them with.

I'm not quite sure what to make of all this yet, but it is food for thought.

[lailah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Figured I should learn more about the border since all I really know is RGV puro pinche 956. Could be structured differently, but is a good introduction for people unfamiliar with the subject (me).