In the decisive shift from imperial-states to nation-states after World War Two, two, arguably related, processes took place. There was a wide scale effort to delegitimize racist ideologies. At the same time, in a period when state sovereignty was (nearly) universally nationalized, the association of colonialism with foreignness was retained. Nationalist ideologies were regarded not only as legitimate but as practically mandatory in politics. This talk charts this history in order to understand how racism is organized, practiced, and resisted when national sovereignty is the hegemonic state form and when the social and juridical distinction between 'national' and 'migrant' are widely accepted. To do so, I examine the growing autochthonization of politics. Nationalisms the world over are increasingly reconfiguring the 'national' as an autochthon, i.e. a 'native' of the national 'soil'. Through a discussion of various autochthonous movements in very different contexts and with very different political registers, I analyze the double move wherein historic colonizers are re-termed 'migrants’ and today's 'migrants' are re-imagined as 'colonizers'. This move, I argue, is made possible by postcolonial racisms: the historic articulation between ideas of 'race' and 'nation' wherein ideas of national geography are racialized and racist ideas of blood are territorialized. The result, I argue, is an intensification of the very practices that anti-colonial struggles fought to overturn - capitalist practices of expropriation and exploitation and the associated denigration of the oppressed. I conclude with an argument for a decolonization worthy of its name, one that ushers in a planetary commons wherein no one is excluded. 

D. Emily Hicks (San Diego State University):

As Gilmore explains, “Capitalism requires inequality, and racism enshrines it.” I share her view  that the United States is founded on slavery and genocide. Using a complexity approach that  views the Mexico-US border as a complex system, I explore the concept of racial capitalism within the context of specific theoretical and literary works. These works highlight the  perspectives of Indigenous, Black, Afro-Latinx, Latinx and mixed peoples in relation to ethnic  studies, environmental studies, border theory and related discourses. I use concepts including  time scale, coupling and bifurcation to describe the emergence of political resistance within the  context of the militarization and proliferation of borders.
I examine multiple views, including those found in the works of S. Wynter, the Afro-pessimist F.  Wilderson, the Afro-optimist F. Moten, the African American theorist Nash and the Black queer  physicist Prescod-Weinstein. I also refer to works by adrienne maree brown, Anzaldua, Graeber, Mignolo, Nash and H. Walia. I analyze the Parable novels of O. Butler and a novel by a Lenca Honduran author, 13 Colors. I focus on climate change in California in Butler’s work and environmentalist activism related to the Agua Zarca dam on the Gualcarque River in northwest Honduras in Cardoza’s “13 Colors.”  I view both Butler and Cardoza as border writers. I draw on  multiple critical traditions, including Frankfurt Theory, Afro-Caribbean thought and anarchist  theory. I juxtapose the measured hope in Wynter, the Afro-optimism in Moten, the Afro pessimism of Wilderson and the complexity and anarchist-oriented call to action of adrienne  maree brown.

Jessica Aguilar (University of California, San Diego): 

Sayak Valencia’s Gore Capitalism (2010) argues that “bodies are conceived of as products of exchange that alter and break capital’s logics of production, subverting the terms of capital by substituting commodity production with a commodity- made-flesh in the body and human life, through predatory techniques of extreme violence like kidnapping and contract murder”.  Informed by Valencia's Gore Capitalism (2010) and Alexander G. Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus (2014), this discussion centers the representation of migrant characters in Emiliano Monge’s novel, “Las Tierras Arrasadas” (2015) to analyze the reproduction of sociopolitical hierarchies of race through the composition of what Sayak advances as gore capitalist scenes. Relatedly, the discussion brings to bear the methodological approach of interweaving of journalism, testimonio, and fiction, to ethnically relate accounts of migration. This presentation engages with the larger question of violence and representation and the extent in which the dismemberment of Central American migrant body/community is normalized or challenged in Monge’s novel. Finally, it speculates on whether the fictionalization of violence against migrant bodies and death translate into a public denunciation or acceptance of inhumane treatment to migrants.

Emma Newman (Texas A&M University): 

Brooks County, Texas is south of Corpus Christi in the Rio Grande region of southern Texas. Outside of the main city of Falfurrias, the county is sparsely populated and consists primarily of ranchland and desert vegetation. These hot, arid areas are home to what clandestine migrants moving north from the US-Mexico border have referred to as El Caminar, or the walk. El Caminar is the route where coyotes or human smugglers lead groups of clandestine migrants on foot around the Border Patrol checkpoint in Falfurrias. Since late 2020 the United States Border Patrol has recorded a dramatic increase in the number of migrants remains found in the desert ranchlands of Brooks County, Texas. Local humanitarian organizations are struggling to install fresh-water dispensaries, conduct search and rescue missions, and provide forensic identification of the bodies of migrants who perish. This study builds on the work of Jason de Leon, Ieva Jusionyte and Gilberto Rosas in their studies of migrant experience and state violence in the borderlands. This study mobilizes an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of how places of sanctuary and violence have come to exist within Brooks County, and how these events affect community organizations and influence individuals’ life experiences. The analysis of how some environments increase the impact of potentially deadly forces endured by migrants, while other cultural factors mitigate these forces is examined through the theoretical framework of biopolitics and its necropolitical permutations.

Scott Bennett (Point Loma Nazarene University): 

During mid-September of 2021, a large group of Haitian asylum seekers to the United States convened at a makeshift camp under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Some accounts of the temporary settlement have included up to 15,000 migrants, with members of the crowd crossing the Rio Grande River into Mexico to get food, water and supplies. On September 19, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorized the use of horseback agents to prevent the migrants from returning back across the river. The scene was both chaotic and dramatic, and journalists documented the day’s activities with photos and videos. In a particularly moving and poignant photo, photojournalist Paul Ratje captured a CBP agent grabbing a migrant’s T-shirt with the reigns of his horse flailing close by. The still photograph gives the immediate impression that the reign is being used as a “whip.” My presentation focuses on the interpretation of this photo, taking into account the idea of reality vs.  perception, racism, and the concept of social justice concerning immigration and asylum seekers in the borderlands. I also consider the theoretical implications of the role of photojournalism and the media concerning society’s reactions to such an event.

The presentation focuses on the interpretation of photojournalist Paul Ratje’s “whip” photo of a horseback Border Patrol agent confronting a Haitian migrant in Del Rio, Texas. I consider the idea of reality vs. perception, racism, and the concept of social justice concerning immigration and asylum seekers in the borderlands.

Katherine Kaufka Walts, JD (Loyola University, Center for the Human Rights of Children):

Racism is the underpinning of our migration system. The need for borders and the context for enforcement have been inextricably shaped by a vision for America that excludes the Black and Brown other. The first panelist with explain the long history of racism that shaped our current system.

Madeline Brashear, JD (Loyola University, Center for the Human Rights of Children):

Nestled in the context of racism, border law and policy has evolved to create a situation that cultivates death and then blames the Sonoran Desert. The second panelist will explain the current border policies and their nexus to migrant deaths.

Perla Torres, (Colibri Center for Human Rights):

In their absence, tens of thousands of families across the United States and Latin America are left with the agonizing uncertainty of not knowing what has happened to their loved ones. In addition to the emotional trauma they face each day, families are denied truth and justice. The consequences of border deaths and disappearances are felt throughout the Americas: families living in 14 countries and in 43 states across the U.S. have reported disappeared relatives to Colibrí. Colibrí bears witness to this unjust loss of life, accompanying families in their search and holding space for families to build community, share stories, and raise awareness about the consequences of border militarization. Through the Missing Migrant Project and DNA Program, Colibrí works with medical examiners to compare information families provide about the missing as well as DNA samples with unidentified remains recovered along the border in the hopes of giving families the answers they so deserve. Colibrí and families of the disappeared — along with medical examiners and other human rights organizations — refuse to let these lives be forgotten. Overcoming enormous challenges to identify the dead, together we search for answers, demand justice, and reunite families with their loved ones — important, unique, and irreplaceable human beings.

Sarah J. Diaz, JD LLM, (Loyola University, School of Law, Center for the Human Rights of Children):

Around the world the normative framework for the right to life is changing. Not only are nations expected not to summarily deprive people of their right to life, but nation-states are expected to create conditions conducive to survival. As the framework changes around the world (in the European, Inter-American, and UN systems), new human rights norms can be applied to US law. Through this lens, a radical approach to border policy can be developed – one in which the US government is held accountable for cultivating death, one in which we could envision border policy that respects the right to life of all persons, and in particular, those in the Arizona Borderlands.

Odessa Gonzalez Benson (University of Michigan):

Human rights denote universality, moral normativity, and the backing of the international community. Citizenship rights, meanwhile, denote particularity, collective identity, and sovereign territory. Yet others some argue that human rights are realized only through the nation-state. Refugee resettlement allows introspection into the tensions between the human and the citizen, as the “refugee” embodies the transition from the internationally- governed refugee camp to a national political community. This study examines rights discourse surrounding the US Refugee Act as a crucial moment of policy formation, and how policy discourse made sense of human rights approaching US borders. I argue that human rights discourse in US policy brings refugees to the door but abandons them as soon as they enter the sovereign space, where. There, US policy discourse materializes not citizenship rights, but neoliberal citizenship. Refugee resettlement reveals the limits of human rights, and the contradictory ways that the market and the state encroach on the neoliberal constitution of citizenship.

Abby Wheatley (Arizona State University): 

Between 1998 and 2018, the remains of 7,505 people were recovered in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands as a result of prevention through deterrence policies that deliberately raise the costs and risks of crossing to prevent migrants from entering the U.S. autonomously. The implementation of Title 42 (March 2020) further exacerbated human rights abuses in the borderlands and elevated the risks of crossing as thousands of migrants and asylum seekers were removed from the U.S. without the opportunity to apply for asylum. As a result, many migrants are making repeat attempts to enter the U.S., extending their migration journeys and their stays in the border region in the process. Drawing on ethnographic research in the borderlands, this presentation examines the ways in which migrants themselves experience and articulate “closed” borders. Building on a growing body of literature on migrant vulnerability, it centers social and political critiques produced by people in transit as they attempt to navigate a securitized and militarized border. These critiques reveal a range of ways in which migrants themselves understand, narrate, and challenge contemporary enforcement measures. While some migrants normalize border security efforts, others call attention to the way in which these policies criminalize and racialize them, ultimately forcing them to risk their lives to migrate. Through the narratives and lived experience of vulnerable travelers, this presentation positions migrant critiques at the center of scholarly debates. This approach challenges analyses that view migrants as static victims and emphasizes the ways in which they understand and subvert their subjugation.

Ernesto Hernández (Chapman University): 

 

Popular mythologies fuel how Americans see the US-México border. This paper examines: 1) the racialized and policy consequences of this and 2) law’s contributions to this mythos. As described by Greg Grandin in The End of the Myth (2019), border myths act on domestic pessimism and treats racism as an inevitable reality. This contrasts frontier myths, which previously inspired American expansion west and overseas. For most American history, the frontier was regarded as innately positive, while downplaying its intrinsic racism. The consequences of frontier ideals were disproportionately suffered by Mexicans, Native Americans, and many communities domestically and overseas. Now, border mindsets fixate on national limitations and “America first.” This has racialized consequences.

This paper analyzes how law contributes to border mythologies. It examines court cases addressing border wall funding (Trump v. Sierra Club, 2021), “Remain in Mexico” policies (Biden v. Texas, 2022), and COVID exclusions (Arizona v. Mayorkas, 2022). These border cases exemplify how law builds on myths, by prioritizing limits and acting on national pessimism. This has racial consequences for the communities who disproportionately suffer the effects of exclusions at the border. This paper describes the Supreme Court’s place in border myths as similar to its historic role in race relations. Prior roles impacted Native Americans in the Marshall Trilogy (1823-32), Asians during Chinese Exclusion (1883-90), Puerto Ricans and Pacific Islanders in the Insular Cases (1901-17), and Asian Americans with Japanese Internment Cases (1943-44). The paper concludes by emphasizing Grandin’s socio-economic solutions to rising pessimism and border myths.

In March 2022, in response to a request from the Sidewalk School for Children Asylum Seekers (SWS), pediatricians from the San Francisco Bay Area partnered with the SWS and Global Response Management (GRM) in Reynosa, Mexico to pilot a pediatric telehealth clinic to address the health needs of children seeking asylum.

• Felicia Rangel Samponaro (co-director, Sidewalk School), Victor Cavazos (co-director, Sidewalk School): Work at the Sidewalk School, anti-Black racism faced by Haitian asylum seekers, and the need for a medical collaboration. Felicia will also share challenges.
• Brendon Tucker (GRM) will discuss the medical needs in Reynosa, the safety challenges faced by the medical team and asylum seekers, and the collaboration.
• Jyothi Marbin MD will discuss the telehealth consultation partnership, how we have been able to recruit doctors to volunteer, and the impact of the clinic

Access to pediatric care is severely limited for children seeking asylum at the border in Mexico. In March 2022, in response to a request from the Sidewalk School for Children Asylum Seekers (SWS), pediatricians from the San Francisco Bay Area partnered with the SWS and Global Response Management (GRM) in Reynosa, Mexico to pilot a pediatric telehealth clinic to address the health needs of children seeking asylum. Methods: 11 pediatricians volunteered to provide weekly telehealth clinics at SWS. The telehealth clinics function as a satellite of GRM, which depends on physician volunteers but often lacks providers with pediatric expertise. A US based pediatrician recruited physician volunteers for 4-hour clinics. A medical assistant hired by SWS assisted with patient scheduling and visit support. GRM provided medications, referrals, and labs and were available for urgent medical needs. Volunteer interpreters were available for language support. Results: From March - November 2022, the pediatric telehealth clinic saw 104 patients over 26 clinic sessions. Ages ranged from 2 weeks to 17 years; 59% spoke Haitian Creole and 41% spoke Spanish. The top three diagnoses were gastrointestinal issues (n=67), infectious disease (n=51), and dermatologic (n=26). Discussion: Collaboration between US-based physicians and local partners supporting asylum seekers living in low resource settings can support the health of children asylum seekers. While there were many lessons learned, our pilot demonstrated this model is feasible and depends on a partnership between locally based humanitarian support, on the ground medical partners, and volunteer physicians.

• Dr. Jacqueline Arrellano
• James Cordero
• Thelma Navarro, MPH
• Sophia Rodriguez, MA, MPH
• Luis Osuna
• Victoria Vazquez, MA
• Dulce Real

The Aid as Disruptive Resistance panel focuses on the collective actions of humanitarian aid work and its direct and indirect impact on recent arrivals in the United States. The panel’s objective is to resist what U.S. policies, and border communities, find permissible. Our panelists disrupt the various forms of political deterrence that are experienced at the border region and the effects of state violence that migrants carry with them after their journey ends. The panel will share various forms of aid provided from material goods, search and rescue, to repairing and healing migrants through acupuncture services. The aid provided by panelists disrupts ongoing dehumanization of migrants and seeks to ensure the dignity of migrants and migration. Dignity as in the right to movement and a dignified death, rather than the continuous dehumanization of bodies. The deterrence not only affects migrants’ physical health, but also impacts families and communities as border policies have funneled migration to the wilderness increasing disappearances and resulting in unresolved grief and loss of their loved ones.

Roxana Rodríguez Ortiz (Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México):

Considerando que para mi la frontera siempre es la posibilidad del encuentro dialógico con lo otro, no podía dejar fuera del modelo epistemológico de la frontera 1 aquello que nos afecta cuando cruzamos, transgredimos un límite. Ni tampoco podía ceñirme a una estructura clásica de narrativa académica cuando lo que nos heredó el confinamiento y la pandemia es precisamente la disyuntiva del cómo habitar el mundo: las diferentes corporalidades incluso fronterizas.

Para hablar de otras corporalidades fronterizas pienso en primer lugar en el cuerpo político (Arendt) que habita las zonas de convivencia fronteriza pues si queremos hablar de construcción de paz tenemos que hablar de muchas otras categorías que circunscriben esa otra posible categoría que intento deconstruir: una frontera pacífica que solo se puede pensar, desde mi perspectiva, si nos remitimos a la potencia de afectar y ser afectados (Spinoza).

La frontera ecológica no se refiere (exclusivamente) al cuidado del medio ambiente en la frontera, en primera instancia deconstruye la ecología de saberes (De Santos) que se gesta en la frontera México-Estados Unidos y, en segunda instancia, interpreta cómo es afectado el cuerpo político fronterizo para poder entonces hablar de justicia en las fronteras y quizá de la construcción de paz mediante la aplicación de determinados modelos de sociedad que se deben redactar a partir de la teoría existente.

* El modelo epistemológico de la frontera consiste en un pantone conceptual, metodológico y de categorías analíticas; un ejercicio teorético que me ha permitido corroborar la pertinencia de pensar las fronteras como espacios donde se establecen relaciones ontológicas que dan cauce a nuevas epistemes locales, donde lo ético y lo estético difícilmente es considerado por quienes redactan las políticas fronterizas y migratorias, no así por quienes resisten la inercia de la globalización. Véase: https://roxanarodriguezortiz.com/borderstudies

M. Isabel Martin-Sanchez (University of Wisconsin-Madison):

Los arquitectos Ronald Rael y Virginia San Fratello invitan a repensar la frontera México / EE. UU. y a interactuar con ella a partir de sus múltiples posibilidades. Fruto de ello, es Teeter-Totter Wall (2009): un columpio transnacional que propone concebir la infraestructura de la valla divisoria más allá de su ámbito físico y excluyente. Su propuesta se limitó al ámbito teórico durante casi una década, pero cobró vida en 2019. En julio de ese año, tres prototipos rosas del balancín fueron instalados clandestinamente en los huecos del muro fronterizo, permitiendo así que niños y mayores pudieran jugar juntos desde países diferentes. En esta presentación interpreto la instalación de Teeter-Totter Wall como un performance participativo y de guerrilla que crea comunidad y reflexiona sobre las dinámicas de poder en la zona mediante la cotidianeidad del juego. De tal modo, defiendo que la obra intercede en el espacio para convertirlo en un convivio compartido, un lugar de experiencias vitales que sitúan el muro en un nuevo plano epistemológico y comunitario. Para ello empleo un marco teórico interdisciplinario, poniendo énfasis en los estudios visuales y de performance (Dubatti, Schechner, Mirzoeff, et al.). Interpreto, además, que el esqueleto de metal de la infraestructura resembla la figura de las cruces rosas que recuerdan a las víctimas del feminicidio en México. Sus códigos visuales evocan así una imagenería secular que es práctica de una memoria ampliada de duelo colectivo y se integra en un discurso narrativo-visual que reclama el valor de los cuerpos femeninos ultrajados.

Juan Carlos Camacho Molina (Universidad Autónoma de Baja California):

Toy an Horse fue una obra de arte instalación creada por el artista tijuanense Marcos Ramírez ERRE para el evento cultural de índole binacional inSITE97. La obra consistió de un colosal caballo bicéfalo de 10 metros de altura situado en medio de los 24 carriles de acceso vehicular a Estados Unidos, cada rostro dirigiendo su mirada en dirección opuesta (una hacia Estados Unidos otro hacia México). Intentó recrear la historia de la caída de Troya pero lo hizo convirtiendo al caballo en un juguete rodante situado en la garita internacional más transitada del mundo. Tomó lugar durante un período en el que la frontera entre San Diego y Tijuana estuvo casi completamente cerrada debido a la inmigración ilegal a los Estados Unidos. En este contexto estuvo la Operación Guardián, así como la Proposición 187, ejemplos de la militarización discursiva y práctica de la frontera. El trabajo propone analizar la obra en torno a su emplazamiento físico, las interpretaciones de distintos académicos, así como su recepción en la prensa, contraponiendo los discursos que vieron en la figura del caballo bicéfalo una relación entre ambos países con la intención de promover el comercio y antecedentes históricos como el “Día del embellecimiento y Amistad” en un intento por la universalización y estetización de la frontera, intentando anestesiar la sensibilidad alrededor de una zona de contacto asimétrico como lo es y ha sido la frontera México-Estados Unidos.

Amarilis Perez (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales FLACSO-Mexico):

Durante una ponencia en México, Cherrie Moraga recordó que viajando por la frontera sur de Estados Unidos había visto un letrero que decía Aztlán. En ese momento, ella pensó “Aztlán existe”. Activistas, artistas, intelectuales y académicos chicanos y chicanas han elaborado un amplio repertorio teórico-práctico en torno al territorio de Aztlán que me ha seducido. El objetivo de esta ponencia es estudiar el imaginario de Aztlán como territorio en resiliencia para la defensa de la vida; partiendo de la pregunta sobre qué aportaría un estudio como este a los principales temas o problemáticas convocantes del Foro: el racismo, los derechos humanos y la construcción de paz. Para esta investigación se consultaron diversos archivos en las colecciones especiales de la Universidad de California y de la Universidad de Texas en Austin. Además se hizo trabajo de campo en varias ciudades del estado de California. Asimismo, se analizó el impacto de la política migratoria estadounidense y mexicana en algunas ciudades fronterizas. Como hipótesis planteo que el imaginario del territorio de Aztlán se sostiene en el tiempo y en el espacio mediante la reactualización de repertorios antirracistas e interculturales que han constituido el fundamento de las hoy llamadas Ciudades Santuarios. El estudio del imaginario de Aztlán como un territorio en resiliencia permite ubicar experiencias concretas de colaboración y solidaridad comunitarias e intercomunitarias que han promovido la construcción de paz en contextos donde existe una flagrante y sistemática violación de los derechos humanos.

2:30 - 3:30 pm: Round Table 1 - Reflections on Race and Migration Over the last 5 years in the San Diego-Tijuana Region

• Survivors of Torture International (Etleva Bejko, Executive Director)
• Detention Resistance
• Armadillos 

3:30 - 3:45 pm: Break

3:45 - 4:45 pm: Round Table 2 - "Death By Policy": Current Trends in Migration Policy and Racialization of the Borderlands

• ACLU (Norma Chávez-Peterson, Executive Director)
• Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP), UCLA (Monika Y. Langarica, Staff Attorney) 
• Haitian Bridge Alliance (Charlotte Wiener, Staff Lawyer)
• Jewish Family Services (Kate Clark, Esq., Senior Director of Immigration Service & Lead Immigration Attorney)