Militarizing The Border

As historian Miguel Antonio Levario explains in this timely book, current tensions and controversy over immigration and law enforcement issues centered on the US-Mexico border are only the latest evidence of a long-standing atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust plaguing this region. Militarizing the Border: When Mexicans Became the Enemy, focusing on El Paso and its environs, examines the history of the relationship among law enforcement, military, civil, and political institutions, and local communities. In the years between 1895 and 1940, West Texas experienced intense militarization efforts by local, state, and federal authorities responding to both local and international circumstances. El Paso’s “Mexicanization” in the early decades of the twentieth century contributed to strong racial tensions between the region’s Anglo population and newly arrived Mexicans. Anglos and Mexicans alike turned to violence in order to deal with a racial situation rapidly spinning out of control. Highlighting a binational focus that sheds light on other US-Mexico border zones in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Militarizing the Border establishes historical precedent for current border issues such as undocumented immigration, violence, and racial antagonism on both sides of the boundary line. This important evaluation of early US border militarization and its effect on racial and social relations among Anglos, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans will afford scholars, policymakers, and community leaders a better understanding of current policy . . . and its potential failure.

Border relations between the United States and Mexico have had a tumultuous history. The connectivity between both countries has been demonstrated by the impact border issues have on each nation. Economic disparity, U.S. dependence on cheap labor, and the scourge of drugs that infects both nations have influenced this relationship. U.S. border enforcement efforts have sought to remedy everything from the immigration crisis to terrorism. Border enforcement tactics have taken on military characteristics, including the use of military troops, equipment, and resources. This evolution toward border militarization has both focused on drug trafficking and criminalized immigration offenders. As border problems threaten U.S. national interests, further militarization of the border is logical.

Tim Dunn examines these policies and practices in detail, and considers them in light of the strategy and tactics of the Pentagon doctrine of "low-intensity conflict." Developed during the 1980s for use in Central America and elsewhere, this doctrine is characterized by broad-ranging provisions for establishing social control over specific civilian populations, and its implementation has often been accompanied by widespread human-rights violations.

“Harsha Walia has played a central role in building some of North America’s most innovative, diverse, and effective new movements. That this brilliant organizer and theorist has found time to share her wisdom in this book is a tremendous gift to us all.”—Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine Undoing Border Imperialism combines academic discourse, lived experiences of displacement, and movement-based practices into an exciting new book. By reformulating immigrant rights movements within a transnational analysis of capitalism, labor exploitation, settler colonialism, state building, and racialized empire, it provides the alternative conceptual frameworks of border imperialism and decolonization. Drawing on the author’s experiences in No One Is Illegal, this work offers relevant insights for all social movement organizers on effective strategies to overcome the barriers and borders within movements in order to cultivate fierce, loving, and sustainable communities of resistance striving toward liberation. The author grounds the book in collective vision, with short contributions from over twenty organizers and writers from across North America. Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist, writer, and popular educator rooted in emancipatory movements and communities for over a decade. Praise for Undoing Border Imperialism: “Border imperialism is an apt conceptualization for capturing the politics of massive displacement due to capitalist neoglobalization. Within the wealthy countries, Canada’s No One Is Illegal is one of the most effective organizations of migrants and allies. Walia is an outstanding organizer who has done a lot of thinking and can write—not a common combination. Besides being brilliantly conceived and presented, this book is the first extended work on immigration that refuses to make First Nations sovereignty invisible.”—Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of Indians of the Americas and Blood on the Border “Harsha Walia’s Undoing Border Imperialism demonstrates that geography has certainly not ended, and nor has the urge for people to stretch out our arms across borders to create our communities. One of the most rewarding things about this book is its capaciousness—astute insights that emerge out of careful organizing linked to the voices of a generation of strugglers, trying to find their own analysis to build their own movements to make this world our own. This is both a manual and a memoir, a guide to the world and a guide to the organizer's heart.”—Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World “This book belongs in every wannabe revolutionary’s war backpack. I addictively jumped all over its contents: a radical mixtape of ancestral wisdoms to present-day grounded organizers theorizing about their own experiences. A must for me is Walia’s decision to infuse this volume’s fight against border imperialism, white supremacy, and empire with the vulnerability of her own personal narrative. This book is a breath of fresh air and offers an urgently needed movement-based praxis. Undoing Border Imperialism is too hot to be sitting on bookshelves; it will help make the revolution.”—Ashanti Alston, Black Panther elder and former political prisoner

This book explores European security and defense R&D policy, unveiling the strategic, industrial, institutional and ideational sources of the European Commission’s military research initiative. Starting from a well-defined empirical epicentre—the rise of non-civilian R&D priorities in the European Union—this book covers interrelated themes and topics such as approaches to arms production and R&D collaboration relationships between European R&D-related institutions technology and research foundations of European security policy past and present European armament collaborations transatlantic R&D collaboration the militarization of border security. Divided into 5 sections, the enclosed chapters explore the EU technology and innovation policy in regards to security, industrial competitiveness and military capabilities. The terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001 provided a window of opportunity for the introduction of security as a distinct European R&D priority. In fact, since 2002, the Preparatory Action for Security Research (PASR) has funded 45 million euros to 39 research consortia to conduct security R&D. While the idea of pooling defense research efforts and programmes in Europe is not new, the establishment of institutions like the European Defense Agency (EDA) are a major step into institutionalizing European agencies involvement in supporting defense technology research. It is against this backdrop of policy developments that this book is positioned, in addition to addressing some of the political, economic, industrial and philosophical questions that arise. Featuring contributions from a variety of academic fields and industries, this book will be of interest to scholars, researchers, students and policy makers in the fields of security policy, international relations, innovation, European studies and military studies.

Scholars contributing to this volume consider topics ranging from the effects of the Mexican Revolution on Tejano and African American communities to its impact on Texas' economy and agriculture. Other essays consider the ways that Mexican Americans north of the border affected the course of the revolution itself. .

Yet the unprecedented buildup of border policing has taken place in an era otherwise defined by the opening of the border, most notably through NAFTA. This contrast creates a borderless economy with a barricaded border.".

Forty years after Richard Nixon declared a “War on Drugs,” this sobering book offers views of the “narco wars” from scholars on both sides of the US-Mexico border. With evidence newly obtained through freedom-of-information inquiries in Mexico, it proposes practical solutions to a seemingly intractable crisis.