“It's my home, not a war zone”: Mobilizing a multitude to demilitarize the Texas Rio Grande Valley

Abstract

AbstractOn 25 January 2017 then‐President Trump issued Executive Order 13,767 “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvement” which designated dozens of new miles of barrier construction in Hidalgo County and surrounding municipalities in the Texas Rio Grande Valley (RGV). In response, a multitude of political organizations known as the No Border Wall Coalition (NBWC) mobilized in an effort to demilitarize their communities. Our analysis focuses on three organizations within the NBWC—the RGV Sierra Club, Texas Civil Rights Project, and the South Texas Human Rights Center. These organizations, and others, are calling for an end to encroaching physical walls, a proliferation of surveillance technologies, and an expansion of military‐police enforcement personnel. Using a triangulation of qualitative methods, we identify three campaigns of resistance used by the NBWC: protecting the environment, defending landowner rights, and preventing migrant deaths. Our analysis reveals how each of these campaigns helps bring together a diverse set of political organizations and interests into a collective web and narrative structure, and underscores the common formation of what we designate as a multitude. We show how this multitude transforms RGV communities “from below,” as the NBWC reckons with environmental degradation, the suspension of civil and political rights, and humanitarian harms.