US-Mexico Border Wall Research Articles

Дональд Трамп и избиратели: оценки основных проблем

В статье на основе изучения обширного массива результатов опросов общественного мнения в США рассматриваются отношения американцев к деятельности президента Дональда Трампа. Анализ общественного мнения за время его президентства показывает, что многие американцы не разделяет подходы Трампа к ключевым проблемам внутренней и внешней политики. На основании этих оценок будут формироваться электоральные намерения американских избирателей на предстоящих президентских выборах в ноябре 2020 года. Американцы положительно оценивают действия Трампа в сфере экономики, отмечая экономический рост в стране, снижение безработицы, высказывая положительные прогнозы на будущее. В то же время многие отмечают, что от снижения налогов выиграли, прежде всего, богатые слои, при этом среди небелого населения большинство негативно оценивает экономическую политику Трампа. Также критически большинство американцев оценивают политику Трампа по отмене, радикальному изменению системы медицинского страхования, принятой при Бараке Обаме («Обамакер»). Одним из первых шагов Трампа в области экологии и изменении климата стал выход США из Парижского соглашения по изменению климата. Тогда же, в 2017 г., опросы показали, что большинство населения против этого — 53%, в то время как поддержали этот шаг лишь 30%. По главным вопросам иммигрантской политики Трампа общественное мнение в основном определилось: американцы готовы принять незаконных иммигрантов, приехавших детьми, они против строительства стены на границе с Мексикой и считают, что число иммигрантов должно оставаться таким же, как сегодня, или увеличиться, а не сокращаться. Эти оценки идут вразрез политике Трампа. 53% избирателей считают, что «президент США Дональд Трамп не говорил правду о своей политике в отношении Украины»; 54% — что он «злоупотребил своими полномочиями в действиях относительно Украины»; 52% — что Трамп препятствовал конгрессу в расследовании его действий по отношении к Украине. И 48% считают, что Трамп совершал преступления на посту президента, 44% так не думают. Большинство американцев критически оценивают действия президента Трампа во время эпидемии коронавируса, особенно в начальной фазе кризиса. В целом деятельность Трампа на посту президента 50% американцев оценивают отрицательно, 40% положительно и 10% не имеют мнения. Лишь в области экономики положительные оценки превышают отрицательные — 50% : 39%.

When Mental Walls Lead to Physical Walls: The US-Mexico Border Wall, Art, and Public Conversations about the Social Responsibility of Engineering

The fact that engineering is involved in highly political issues—from climate change caused by fossil fuel extraction to how we understand truth itself because of deepfakes—makes it imperative that we find new ways to highlight the crucial role that engineers and engineering play in shaping society, and new ways to hold engineers and engineering accountable. We have designed, built, and installed an interactive art installation called When Mental Walls Lead to Physical Walls to generate public conversation about the social responsibility of engineers and engineering, using the US-Mexico border wall as a case study. We find that the politically charged nature of the topic might make it difficult for attendees to speak directly to ideas of social responsibility. At the same time, the installation provides opportunities for attendees to question, critique, and reflect on the effectiveness and impacts of the design of the border wall and the motivations engineers might have in working on this project. With proper planning and execution, the installation can be used as a research tool to understand how diverse audiences—from engineering students to those who may not have any experience in engineering—understand the role of engineering in society.

Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US–Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez

Reviewed by: Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US–Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez Caitlin Blanchfield C. J. Alvarez. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US–Mexico Divide. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781477319031 Hardcover: 352 pages If recent footage of panels of the US–Mexico border wall being toppled by high winds and of flood waters "smashing through" border wall construction sites is an indication, nature would rather see the border wall unbuilt.1 C. J. Alvarez's Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US–Mexico Divide capably illustrates the entangled history of the built and natural environments of the US–Mexico borderlands. This volume is a significant contribution to the field of architectural history as well as environmental history and borderlands studies. As Alvarez points out, histories of the border often focus on the borderlands as spaces of social and political construction while environmental histories tend to focus on how development has transformed the landscape around the international divide. Alvarez intertwines both of these approaches by "advancing the notion that the border is a literal construction site." "Paying attention to the built environment of the border," he writes, "can help us understand the way it functions and for whom."2 The first chapter of Border Land, Border Water traces boundary surveys of the nineteenth century and the construction of stone and iron obelisks that cleaved Baja California, Sonora, and parts of Chihuahua in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. These beacons marked larger state projects both by the US and Mexico of mapping, surveying, and subdividing the borderlands in anticipation of future private development. "Just one more property line" in a vast landscape of extractive industries, Alvarez says.3 One of the strengths of this chapter is its reading of the desert through frameworks of both environmental history and aesthetics. Border markers were symbols of environmental management in a territory that many government administrators and settlers found both topographically challenging and unattractive. These two reactions arose from epistemological assumptions that rendered the desert a hard-to-inhabit wasteland—assumptions that, Alvarez points out, were extended to Indigenous peoples who lived in the borderlands. For instance, the Tohono O'odham Nation, whose homelands span the US–Mexico border, were depicted by surveyors as being as uncivilized as the landscape itself. The richness of the desert that the O'odham knew and prospered within was lost on these government officials. By looking at built interventions into the border, cultural perceptions of the border environment, and the social worlds of the borderlands, Alvarez constructs a layered and interconnected account of border building across different nations. This would have been made even stronger by discussing other cross-border Indigenous communities—such as the Yaqui and Kumeyaay—and by continuing this discussion through the book's longer chronology.4 While the border is a means of division, it is itself also divided. To the west of El Paso, the border is an imagined line, and to the east, it is an arcifinious boundary following the deepest channel of the Rio Grande. Border Land, Border Water shows how regulation and control unite the different types of construction across these terrains. Chapters one and two oscillate between descriptions of efforts to demarcate the border through these divergent territories and the impacts of the Mexican Revolution on border building all along the northern frontier. Modern militarization of the border, Alvarez argues, began with the Mexican Revolution, as the United States military began testing surveillance technology and developing [End Page 131] infrastructure to transport equipment and troops—an origin point for the militarized landscape of the border today and the intense accretion of surveillance infrastructure and architecture of control that limn the international divide. Some of Border Land, Border Water's most lively sections come from the detailed archival work Alvarez has undertaken in these chapters, revealing the borderlands as a terrain of individual experiences and relationships, not solely a reflection of state policies and top-down building projects. Chapters three and four focus on large-scale damming projects and efforts to reshape, harness, and manage the Rio Grande for commercial gain. Even...

Asymmetric cross‐border protection of peripheral transboundary species

AbstractInternational political boundaries challenge species conservation because they can hinder coordinated management. Peripheral transboundary species, those with a large portion of their range in one country and a small, peripheral portion in an adjacent country, may be particularly vulnerable to mismatches in management because peripheral populations are likely in greater conservation need than core populations. However, no systematic assessment of peripheral transboundary species or their status across borders has been attempted. We show that numerous species in three vertebrate taxa qualify as peripheral transboundary species in North America, and that these species are often protected differently across US–Canadian and US–Mexican borders. Asymmetries in cross‐border protection may threaten populations through disruption of connectivity between periphery and core regions and are especially relevant given expected impacts of climate change and the US–Mexico border wall. Our results highlight the need for greater international collaboration in management and planning decisions for transboundary species.

Imperial designs: Remembering Vietnam at the US–Mexico border wall

Portable helicopter landing mats designed for Vietnam have been reused to build large sections of the US–Mexico border wall. The Army Corps of Engineers provided institutional links between these two geographically distant imperial projects. After documenting the historical connections between war and wall, I shift the analytic lens to show how mid-century modernism and imperial foreign policy were entangled aesthetically. General Westmoreland, Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Serra all draw from the same social imaginary. Substantive political disagreements notwtihstanding, geometric grids animated aesthetic affinities that have made it more difficult to perceive, let alone critique or dislodge, the long tentacles of American imperialism.

Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method

Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method