Border Violence Research Articles

What can television do? Cultural representations of border violence in FX’s The Bridge

ABSTRACTFX’s The Bridge uses the two decades of violence against women in Juárez, Mexico, as a backdrop for a crime procedural drama about a serial killer. While there is a long history of cultural activism about the murders, The Bridge is the first mainstream television show to address the violence. I argue that while the show repeatedly centers police and journalists rather than community organizers, and thus limits the possibility of representing the social geography of the US–Mexico border, its moments of contradiction open up more complicated ways to understand the violence.

An Author's Response

Honored by the colleagues who celebrate Jesus ACTED UP with their reflections on the book's twentieth anniversary of publication, I respond briefly to each other them in turn. I frame my response with recollection of the trauma of the 1980s and both governmental and ecclesial homophobia and AIDSphobia at the beginning and a brief portrait of ways I am still “ACTing UP” in partnership with my husband Joe and the members of MCC in the Valley, especially in relation to ecology and US–Mexican border violence. With Michaelson, I reflect on the necessity of confrontational activism in the pursuit of social justice reforms. With Cheng, I consider the role of Jesus ACTED UP in inspiring the continuing development of queer theology. With Jordan, I emphasize the interdependence of silence and the speech of protest, of spiritual disciplines and social activism. Finally, with Hunt, I recognize my own journey of spiritual development and growth in relation to the diversity of LGBTQ communities and the intersectionality of the structures of dominance against which we contend.

“We are not animals!” Humanitarian border security and zoopolitical spaces in EUrope

This article juxtaposes two prominent discourses accompanying the neoliberalisation of EUrope's borders. The first is the emerging notion of humanitarian ‘migrant-centredness’ found in the policies of elites and security professionals in the field of EUropean border security and migration management. The second is the use of animalised metaphors and imagery that pervade narratives of ‘irregular’ migrants' embodied experiences of detention across and beyond EUrope. It argues that what is at stake in this juxtaposition is more than simply a discrepancy between the ‘rhetoric’ of neoliberal bordering and the ‘reality’ of ‘irregular’ migrants' experiences. Such a view, which is commonly held among diverse critics of border violence, ultimately makes a problematic appeal back to the very humanitarian frame that has already been coopted by authorities associated with or even complicit in that violence. Seeking an alternative diagnosis and ground for critique beyond the ‘rhetoric/reality’ bind, the analysis draws on conceptual resources found in (post)biopolitical theory – particularly Jacques Derrida's concept of ‘zoopolitics’ – in order to identify and explore animalisation as a specific spatial technology of power. Understanding the work that the zoopolitical threshold does in shaping contemporary spaces of incarceration and producing animalised subjects offers new insights into both governmental logics of border security and the limits of humanitarian-based critiques.

'All they did was taking pictures': Photography and the violence of borders

Abstract

The Phenomenology of Perception and Fear: Security and the Reality of the US–Mexico Border

This article uses an interpretive phenomenological approach to examine the deployment (and perception) of fear in the US–Mexico border region. This region is currently perceived by “others” to be under siege by drug-trafficking organizations, terrorists and undocumented immigrants. However, the inhabitants of this region experience a vastly different reality that is far-removed from the rhetoric of fear often used by politicians to identify and define the inhabitants. In many instances, the effects of border violence are exaggerated in ways that benefit political and corporate interests; moreover, this specific tactic operates to squeeze and constrain efforts aimed at civic engagement and public input in policies. We expose perceptions and misperceptions on issues related to fear, and explain the ways in which fear can be expropriated as a social construct that prevents meaningful political dialogue.

Feminicide: Theorizing Border Violence

FeminicideTheorizing Border Violence Martha Idalia Chew Sánchez Gender Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Media Representation and Public Response. Edited by Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba and Ignacio Corona. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010. Pp. 200. $50.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780816527120. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Edited by Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. xxviii + 382. $94.95 cloth. $25.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822346814. Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera. Edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba with Georgina Guzman. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Pp. x + 314. $55.00 cloth. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780292723177. Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries. By Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 374. $94.95 cloth. $25.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822350750. Cities and Citizenship at the U.S.-Mexico Border: The Paso del Norte Metropolitan Region. Edited by Kathleen Staudt, César M. Fuentes, and Julia E. Monárrez Fragoso. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pp. xxi + 250. $95.00 cloth. $31.00 paper. ISBN: 9780230100329. Publication of four edited volumes that examine femicide in the Mexico-US border region adds immensely to our understanding of that phenomenon, particularly when they are read through the lens of Nicole M. Guidottie-Hernández’s Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries, which traces violence in the borderlands from the nineteenth century to the present and demonstrates how violence has shaped people’s identities in the border area. These books tap many of the foremost authors on femicide, who bring to their analyses a wide array of disciplinary approaches and touch upon a host of related themes. Guidottie-Hernández’s work is informed by Chicano studies, borderland history, transnational feminism, and Latino studies. Guidottie-Hernández theorizes on the continuous mutation and situationality of national membership, rights, and birthrights. She explains some of the ways that exclusionary practices of membership, made manifest in policing racialized, gendered, and sexualized subjects, have obscured the physical and psychological pain and trauma inflicted on such communities. She successfully demonstrates how competing understandings of [End Page 263] racial projects have worked in tandem to “produce proper subjects in the borderlands” (8). Guidottie-Hernández traces physical and discursive violence to explain shifting notions of citizenship linked to the expansion of capitalism in the borderlands. In her reading, full citizens tend to maintain a “sense of bodily and physical integrity” (7). The moments and markers of differentiations in citizenship are inscribed through violence and denial of access to justice, land, resources, and control of the body, and through vigorous policing. For Guidottie-Hernández what is important about such notions of citizenship are the alliances that existed at various points in time between the Mexican and US nation-states in the persecution and terrorization of Yaquis, the collusion of the Mexican elite and some Papago Indians in the grand massacre of Apache and other nomadic Indians, and the elitist Mexican-American interpretation of racial dynamics in Texas. Guidottie-Hernández makes a major theoretical contribution to border theory and Chicano studies in that she problematizes the concept of mestizaje, which essentializes and dehistoricizes Indian identity in the borderlands. Throughout her book, the author demonstrates how the mestizaje concept masks inequalities, disruptions, and heterogeneities within indigenous groups and indeed all racial groups in Mexico. She is also critical, and rightly so, of privileging the Aztec heritage, as most Chicano studies works tend to do. In particular, she interrogates the construction of Aztecs as a single indigenous group of common cultural, spiritual, and ethnic heritage for Chicanos and Mexicans, and the resulting lack of integration in the Chicano consciousness of the Apaches, Comanches, Havasupais, Hopi, Jemezes, Kiowa Apaches, Lipans, Papagos, and Pimas, to mention some other groups. Guidottie-Hernández calls to mind the forgotten pain inflicted on the Yaquis and Apaches during Mexican- and US-sponsored terrorizing wars. Further, she exposes the historically unacknowledged periodic active alliances of some indigenous and Mexican groups with Anglo-American elites in such endeavors. Building upon research on histories of violence and displacement of racialized and sexualized bodies...

The Spectacle of Drug Violence: American Public Discourse, Media, and Border Enforcement in the Texas-Tamaulipas Border Region During Drug-War Times

This article explains how mass media and U.S. political rhetoric have created a “spec tacle” of border violence as an offshoot of Mexico’s drug war. The study shows how some U.S. politicians and government officials have promoted their political agendas by communicating an alarmist view of the drug war within Mexico that includes a spillover of violence into the United States and narco-terrorism, which allegedly re present enormous risks to U.S. national security. The creation of this spectacle has had a real impact on specific policy areas, particularly on border security and immigration. This analysis focuses mainly on the Texas-Tamaulipas border region.

Violence at the Borders

This paper argues that borders and violence against migrants no longer takes place exclusively at the geographical space between two sovereign territories. Instead border violence today has become much more normalized and diffused into society itself. An entire privatized industry now capitalizes on the cycle of transporting, incarcerating, hiring, and releasing nonstatus migrants. Similarly, however, resistance to this violence is also shifting from the older confrontation with sovereignty and the demands for rights to the larger aim of making the nonstatus migrant or nomad the new figure of political belonging and solidarity: demanding equality for an regardless of status.

Border violence in Eugene McCabe's Victims trilogy

In 1976 RTÉ broadcast three plays by Eugene McCabe which were set in the border area of south Fermanagh/north Monaghan and which focused on the effects of the conflict between the Provisional IRA and the security forces as this was played out within the local Protestant and Catholic farming communities. Largely ignored by academic work on the literature of the Troubles, this article argues that they provide a challenge to a simple postcolonialist reading of border antagonisms by their implicit registering of the class tensions within each communal bloc.

Texas Ranger Biographies: Those Who Served, 1910-1921 (review)

Reviewed by: Texas Ranger Biographies: Those Who Served, 1910-1921 Harwood P. Hinton Texas Ranger Biographies: Those Who Served, 1910-1921. By Charles H. Harris III, Frances E. Harris, and Louis R. Sadler, foreword by Byron A. Johnson. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010, Pp. 454. Illustrations, genealogical charts, bibliography. ISBN 9780826347480, $50.00 cloth.) In 2004 Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler published a study entitled The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910-1920 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press). The authors, history professors at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, based their work on intensive research in a multitude of archival and public records. They won kudos from scholars of the Texas-Mexico border for their efforts. The volume under review, Texas Ranger Biographies: Those Who Served, 1910-1921, is a companion to their earlier publication. It presents a treasure trove of information on 1,782 men who wore the Ranger badge during a troubled decade, and provides valuable insights into understanding the changing nature, scope, and contributions of an organization often wrapped in myth and misunderstood in terms of purpose and involvement. The volume includes a foreword, preface, Ranger biographies, several genealogical charts, and a bibliography. In a foreword, Byron A. Johnson, Director of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, describes his institution and its programs, particularly the Texas Ranger Research Center (designated an official state repository in 1997). The authors preface the Ranger sketches with a brief overview of the Mexican Revolution and cite its Texas roots and reaction to the border violence. They stress the Rangers' role in the conflict as "the most controversial episode in the organization's history" (xii). The decade of unrest saw massive enlistments in what was then called the Texas State Ranger Force. Three groups served side-by-side and often were intertwined: Regular Rangers, Special Rangers, and Loyalty Rangers. The Regulars were on the state payroll and assigned to companies. Special Rangers included those hired by private groups for various duties (livestock inspectors, railroad police, oil field security, etc.). Some in this group were "honoraries." The difference between Regular and Special Rangers was often blurred. Loyalty Rangers, authorized by the Hobby Loyalty Act (1918), enjoyed the status of Regular and Special Rangers, but focused their attention on local subversion and acts of disloyalty. Many Rangers had relatives in the organization during these years. One small town in Wilson County, Texas, boasted twenty-two residents who became Rangers. A majority of the force were native Texans, but others came from the South and Midwest. Two had been Arizona Rangers. In 1935 the Rangers became part of the Texas Department of Public Safety. The authors have done an excellent job of collecting and arranging available information on the Texas Rangers who served during these years. Listed alphabetically, the sketches contain personal data, dates of service, classification (Regular, etc.), remarks, and keys (letters, numbers, and combinations of the two) to sources in the bibliography. Deciphering the keys can be a challenge. Researchers and scholars of Texas Ranger history will applaud the herculean effort [End Page 340] involved in the preparation of this volume, a work that should stimulate fresh research on the subject and quiet many myths that surround the organization. The text is enhanced by some sixty Ranger photographs. By its content and example, the volume quickly will become a major addition to the study of a critical chapter in the history of the Texas-Mexico border. Harwood P. Hinton Midland, Texas Copyright © 2011 The Texas State Historical Association

The ‘Border Within’: Inhabiting the Border in Trieste

In this paper we look to the Italian border city of Trieste—at various points in its past, a cosmopolitan port, Austria's urbs europeissima, but also a battleground for competing understandings of territoriality, identity, and belonging and a paragon of the violent application of an ethnoterritorial logic to a plurinational, plurilingual urban context; a paragon of the violence of modern borders. At the same time—and precisely by virtue of its border condition—Trieste has often found itself within the cracks of European modernity, rendering it a unique site for the rearticulation and reappropriation of that which Walter Mignolo terms “global designs”. In our analysis, we ask what lessons the experience of a city like Trieste in ‘inhabiting the border’ can hold for Mignolo's notion of “border thinking” and for the elaboration of alternative geopolitical imaginaries.

Ramchand Pakistani, Khamosh Pani and the traumatic evocation of Partition

This article will address the themes of partition, gender and trauma within two independent films from Pakistan, Sabiha Sumar's Khamosh Pani (2003) and Mehreen Jabbar's Ramchand Pakistani (2008). The article will consider how the events of 1947 – partition of India and creation of Pakistan – recur within the films as disruptive trauma. The article will consider what an engagement with the characteristics of trauma such as involuntary recall and disruption can bring to my readings of the films. Connections are established between women's experiences of ethnic tensions within the contemporary settings of the films and the gendered experiences of 1947. These are expressed in distinct ways, however; the prominence of the themes of trauma within both work to create a powerful presentation of women's subjectivity in Pakistan. Further to this, they draw attention to the possible inevitability of trauma being central to identities and locations forged out of a partition that entailed border creation, large-scale disruption, and violence. The article will conclude that close readings of both films highlight the role of the traumatic in the formation of gendered national identities.

The Glass Curtain

In an interdisciplinary workshop in the former Iron Curtain borderlands of the Czech Republic and Bavaria seven multi-national artists and one European ethnologist revealed the cultural dynamics of boundaries both by exploring an expressive landscape and memory field, and by experiencing cultural difference as reflected in the co-operation and creation processes within the group. By using ethnographic approaches to assist the process of developing and conceptualising artworks and self-reflexive, ethno-psychoanalytic interpretation, the project followed the impact of twentieth-century border frictions and violence into collective identities, but also the arbitrary character of borders. The results suggest how a multi-perspective, subjectively informed methodology of approaching space and spatially expressed memory could be developed both for ethnology and for art, bridging the supposed gap between 'artistic' and 'scientific' methods by combining their strengths in a complementary way.

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

754 Many thanks to Dipesh Chakrabarty, Geoff Eley, Dana Luciano, Nasser Hussain, Roger Rouse, Adam Thurschwell, and Martha Umphrey for their meticulous engagements, as well as to audiences at Amherst, Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, American Political Science Association, American Studies Association, and Cleveland State. Special nostalgic thanks to Virginia Chang, my original collaborator in the Obesity and Poverty conference (2002). 1. See David Harvey, “The Body as Accumulation Strategy,” Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, 2000), pp. 97–116. To call Harvey polemical is not to devalue his profound contributions to understanding the productive destructiveness of capital; in his work, a polemic is a call for precision, not a way of drowning it out. Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

Desensitization to Border Violence & the Bivens Remedy to Effectuate Systemic Change

Desensitization to Border Violence & the Bivens Remedy to Effectuate Systemic Change

Fort Wayne and Border Violence, 1840-1847

Fort Wayne and Border Violence, 1840-1847