Professor Martinez 3/11

On March 11, we continued our discussion with Professor Martinez, having just finished our discussion on the potential strain in family relationships due to border issues and different living scenarios caused by the migration of particular family members. Professor Martinez began the class with a brief review of some of the border history we had learned from Professor Lopez, to introduce the topic of militarization of the border and criminalization of migrants. Professor Martinez reminded us of the guarantees made by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to people who would be living in the US who were former Mexican citizens, and how these guarantees were violated in the years following. Professor Lopez also reminded us of the land confiscations and terrorizing that the new Americans were subjected to by the government, the Texas Rangers and other rogue citizens.
With these details, we discussed what these border atrocities did for American identity, and what modern border militarization continues to do for our self-image. Border militarization creates an impression of "national security", but security from what? Knowing that many measures taken to tighten the border only slow crossers down, we put on this show for our own purposes of identity. Race and class seem to play a larger part in the way we construct ourselves than we would like to admit.
While searching for our American identity, we often lose sight of the fact that the US has helped significantly in creating the desperate economic situation in Mexico, and our immigration ideology conflicts with the economic policy in NAFTA. These policies have caused the migration of many Southern Mexicans towards the north looking for work, but when they arrive are met with chaos and vigilantism against the crime of crossing the imaginary line we call our border. The militarization of the border contributes to the image of all migrants crossing it as drug smugglers and in the post 9/11 world terrorists. Militarization contributes to dehumanization of the migrant by treating him as inferior because he is necessarily a criminal. Historically violence and confiscation of land dehumanized the migrant by treating him as inferior on the basis of his race/nationality. American identity needs to construct and image of itself that is not contingent on the exclusion of specific peoples.