Why Walls Won't Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide

Abstract

In this richly textured volume, geographer Michael Dear draws on diverse sources and literature across the humanities and social sciences to show how a third nation at the US-Mexican border has evolved historically and how it has confronted recent dramatic changes in the region. Dear powerfully contends that the wall at the boundary eventually will fail because the zone long has been characterized by coherence and cooperation. Although they have shifted, these practices continue in the face of both the Mexican drug wars and increasing US border security measures. The book's tight, clear prose and structure — beginning with historical context and moving to current debates — builds toward the overarching argument against walls. Dear offers persuasive reasons why they won't work, including the long history of border thinking and collaboration across the divide.Immediately setting up the unequal power relations that have shaped the region, Dear points out that Mexico never forgets its lost land while the United States takes for granted the vast territory that it gained. In outlining the historical formation of the area, Dear uses nineteenth-century reports and surveys, in addition to studying the interesting shifts in the history of monuments and markers at the boundary. But the book starts long before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and problematizes the notion of beginning at the moment of division.Drawing on original research and on the work of historians including Oscar Martínez and others, Dear shows how the borderlands, though at the edges of both nations, are critically important to each. Demonstrating how local and regional norms exist in tension with national imperatives, the book is about border people and national policy. The US security and immigration dramas and the Mexican drug wars did not originate in the borderlands. Yet these evolving crises disproportionately affect those residing there. The book contextualizes these events but keeps the main focus on the people who occupy the third nation. Impressively, Dear spent over two years journeying along both sides of the 4,000-mile border. Owing to the timing of his research, he saw the boundary's fortification by the United States unfold before his eyes. He lucidly describes the immense transformations at the line by the early 2000s alone and how those who live in the borderlands have handled them. The system of US fortification, which Dear calls “the Wall,” has not — and will not — cut off economic ties and communication among the people who live in the area. As the book demonstrates, when we take a long view of the history of the borderlands, the Wall is an aberration. Offering a complicated view of the drug wars, Dear shows how the US border industrial complex has some common interests with the cartels. He considers the long-lasting influences of the Prohibition era on the region. The book explores the effects of a pervasive, normalized narcocultura on border people's psyches. Addressing the severe problems facing the Mexican state in light of the drug wars, Dear ultimately takes a hopeful stance. Without glossing over the troubles and dangers that exist, he argues that Mexico is neither a narco-state nor a failed state.Why Walls Won't Work charts how the residents of two nations have forged a third nation and its importance to both the United States and Mexico. It provides a history of cultural blending in the borderlands and a look at the great multiplicity of border residents. Taking a transnational approach, the book includes a myriad of voices and perspectives from both sides of the border. It offers vivid accounts of local continuities and differences across the zone. Centering on the citizens of the third nation, Dear asserts that they will be crucial to the future of the two countries and that they can teach us a great deal about humanity. Specialists, students, and general readers interested in the history of and current debates concerning the region should find this volume useful and compelling.