Crisis and the Global Factory at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Gabriel Solis — 2020-06-01T17:45:53Z

Since its inception, the U.S.-Mexico border has assumed a life outside of itself, taking shape in an assemblage of fictions that inhabit the gringo imaginary. Contemporary references to “the border” evoke a wide spectrum of fantasies. On one end, there are the standard apocalyptic visions; the masculine tales of Western violence, the invading Central American child armies, desert streets running red with the blood of endless cartel wars. Other times, we encounter the more palatable, Beto O'Rourke-type tropes, invoking hard-working, bilingual communities, “Hispanic heritage,” and a smiling cast of multicultural characters who eat elote together in the sun, and generally feel very safe. Both visions have an entangled genealogy of course, as the sprawl of settler-colonialism and monopoly capital has always rested upon a contradictory set of rationales, juggling the racial subjugation of an unruly borderlands with a promising vision of progressive, and even inclusive, colonial governance. Yet, in their divergent efforts to conjure the U.S.-Mexico border into a comprehensible periphery, standard narratives miss the place of border communities in producing the world we live in.

- IV545 - June 2020 / United States (USA), Mexico, Covid-19 Pandemic

International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Crisis and the Global Factory at the U.S.-Mexico Border