Commentary: The U.S.-Mexican Border, Immigration, and Resistance

• Author: María L. Cruz-Torres
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X17699908
• Subject Matter: ArticlesImmigration

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 223, Vol. 45 No. 6, November 2018, 26–29

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17699908

© 2017 Latin American Perspectives

26

Commentary

The U.S.-Mexican Border, Immigration, and Resistance

by

María L. Cruz-Torres

Border crossing and its implications for both indigenous communities in

Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States were at the heart of my

late colleague Michael Kearney’s research, personal commitment, and activ-

ism. He sought to understand the movement of people in global and transna-

tional spaces. Contributing to Michael’s legacy, Lynn Stephen’s article raises

many important issues that provide us with a broad historical and contempo-

rary perspective on the movement of people across borders. Her discussion

begins with the immigration policies of the 1980s under the Reagan administra-

tion and ends with those of the Obama administration, both of which have

permitted and prohibited the entry of people into the country by creating and

implementing a set of legally ambiguous categories for labeling, separating,

and stigmatizing people. The underlying laws, regulations, and policies have

led to racial profiling or what Stephens calls the “differential perception” of an

entire population based on physical appearance, gender, ethnicity, language, or

degree of cultural and social assimilation.

Stephen points out that today’s immigration policies are not new but ves-

tiges of old ones created to control the crossing of the U.S.-Mexican border, and

categories such as “illegal,” “alien,” “undocumented,” and “model minorities”

are intrinsically linked to them. The origins of these policies date back to a time

in which many Latin American and Caribbean countries were struggling not

only with their own sovereignty, self-determination, and economic indepen-

dence but also with issues of social justice, human rights, inequality, poverty,

discrimination, and violence. U.S. interventions in these countries, instead of

bringing peace and improving the quality of life of their people, for the most

part exacerbated inequality and created first- and second-class citizens. U.S.

imperialism in Latin America and the Caribbean has had lasting consequences

(Grandin, 2006). Whether through support of corrupt and cruel dictatorships

such as those of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican

Republic, Manuel Noriega in Panama, Roberto Suazo Córdova in Honduras,

Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina, Augusto

Pinochet in Chile, or Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala or through funding and

support of campaigns of political repression such as Operation Condor, coun-

terinsurgency efforts in Honduras, large corporations such as the United Fruit

Company, or the drug war in Mexico, U.S. intervention has left chaos, brutality,

María L. Cruz-Torres is an anthropologist and an associate professor in The School of Transborder

Studies at Arizona State University. She has conducted fieldwork in rural and urban communities

in Mexico.

699908LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X17699908LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESCruz-Torres / COMMENTARY

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