Sunday readings: 16 November 2008

Playing both sides of the fence

Dr. Jason Dormandy, who teaches Mexican history (hey… I can recommend a good book) at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas writes wide ranging “Reflections on Latin America” as in this piece, covering the travel literature of the late Bruce Chatwin, the meaning of mountains and the interconnectedness of the Americas. And music:

Glenn Weyant … plays the U.S./Mexico border fence with a cello bow. And mallets. And sticks. And an egg whisk. I meant it when I said he was an interesting character.

Looking at the fence between the United States and Mexico in Nogales, Glenn set out to overcome this fairly unnatural divide in the landscape and the people with music, and what better music could their be to bring two sides of a fence together than to play the actual fence. Glenn says on his web site that that he wants the listener to ask themselves “What is it I am hearing? Why do these things exist? Who is kept in and who is kept out?” And in the end, his big vision is to change the wall from “an implement of division” into “an instrument of creation with the power to unite.”

How long has this been goin’ on?

Joseph Nevins and Timothy Dunn on the history of the border wall and the immigration “crisis” (14-16 November 2008 Counterpunch):

It is unclear when the U.S. government first began constructing barriers along the boundary, but through most of the 20th century, they were few and far between, located in urbanized areas and often in a state of disrepair and easily breachable. The absence for more than a century of strong physical barriers along the boundary reflects how immigration and boundary enforcement were largely nonissues until relatively recently. Prior to the 1970s, the U.S.-Mexico border rarely received national-level attention. When it did—as around the time of the infamous Operation Wetback in 1954—it was short-lived.

But matters began to change in the late 1960s in the context of a growing conservative-led war on crime and drug use, which pointed the finger at Mexico as a source of illicit commodities. The guest-worker Bracero Program (initiated in 1942) had ended in 1964, which led to the formally legal migrant labor influx (of up to 450,000 workers each year, totaling some 4.5 million over its existence) going underground and a significant increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of unauthorized migrants. Moreover, the deep recession of the early 1970s took place at the same time that the head of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched a highly effective public relations campaign warning of the dangers of unauthorized migration. [1] Together, these developments helped to bring unprecedented attention to the U.S.-Mexico border region and created the sense of an immigration “crisis.”

Could it be… SATAN?

Deborah Bonello, of the Los Angeles Times Mexico City bureau attends a book launch for a new profile of Jorge Serrano Limón, “Mexico’s most prominent Catholic fundamentalist and anti-abortion campaigner” (and one of the masterminds behind Martha Fox’s “Vamos Mexico” campaign — modeled on the Eva Peron Foundation of early 1950s Argentina, though with a much more right-ward political stance than Peron).

…when we arrived, attendees of the event were loitering outside on the sidewalk. “No hay luz,” they explained with a shrug. There was no electricity.  Last night, the light was only out in the Centro Cultural de Foco where the launch was scheduled to take place.

The organizers joked that it was sabotage, and friends of the authors reported that cables had been deliberately cut.

But we weren’t put off. At around 5:30pm we all shuffled into the building carefully, guided by candlelight into our seats. We sat in the darkness waiting for the presentation to start.

“Serrano Limón is a fundamentalist who thinks that the modern world is wrong,” stated Roberto Blancarte, a professor and investigator at the Colegio de Mexico and a specialist on religion. The organizers were sitting in front of a black backdrop on which had been mounted a simple, wooden cross.

And then, as Blancarte spoke, the light returned. An electric spotlight suddenly illuminated the speakers, cutting through the darkness like a celestial beam. The audience applauded.

“He epitomizes the right. He summarizes in brief what is a bigger phenomenon,” said Blancarte….