Border Hysteria and the War against Difference

"Watch out locos! Godzilla in a mariachi hat could be an Al-Qaeda operative."

In this piece, performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña articulates a passionate defense of "undocumented" immigrants, post-national identity, and a multiracial USA. This text-in-progress is part of the borderless movement of citizen journalism circulating in cyberspace.

I

In October 2006, King George signed a bill authorizing the construction of an additional "border security" wall spanning one-third of the US-Mexican border. The plan was to build a concrete wall replete with floodlights, surveillance cameras, and motion detectors. On the front-page photo of Mexico's daily La Jornada, George W. and a group of opportunistic governors and politicos from the southwestern states stand posed before a postcard-perfect Arizona landscape. The President sat at a table signing the bill, his sycophantic groupies fanned about him, gawking and gaping like backstage groupies. It was pure performance art for electoral purposes. The photo was published throughout Latin America and caused general outrage.

I asked myself: "Who is going to build that pinche wall—undocumented migrants hired by Halliburton?"1

A month later, Congress approved the proposal—the same week they squashed habeas corpus. Una mera coincidencia?

Outside this country of the US everyone asks: "Why does the US need more walls and more isolationistic politics? Aren't they isolated enough already?" But within our borders Washington incessantly chants: "National security! Homeland security!" More walls, laws, and border patrols!

The master narrative of US national security (as written by the neocons in collaboration with the mainstream media) reads: "Muslim radicals are out to get 'us'; 'illegal aliens' are out to take 'our' jobs. We, victims of the wrath of history, are merely innocent bystanders. Our only crime is our belief in freedom and democracy." This strategic deployment of the rhetoric of victimization and of heroism and of moral panic clearly justifies both the tightening of our borders and the militarization of our international policies.

II

This is the new brand of immigration hysteria: bigger, better, whiter.

As the years have passed and the US has nurtured its citizens' convalescence from post 9/11 shock, nativist newscasters, opportunistic politicians, right-wing think-tanks (FAIR), and citizen groups continue to portray Latino immigrants as the source of all our social and cultural ills and of our financial tribulations— even, at times, as distant relatives of Arab extremists.

Since 9/11, the semiotic territory encompassed by the word "terrorist" has expanded considerably. First it referred strictly to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, then to Muslim "fundamentalists," eventually it engulfed all Muslims, and then finally all Arabs and Arab-looking people. In 2003, when a Palestinian friend told me: "We (Arabs) are the new Mexicans, and by extension you are all Arabs," I realized how easily the demon mythologies of the brown body transfer from race to race, from country to country. Memories, like attention spans, are short and mutable. Color, like disease, is contagious…

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft forged the missing link between the War on Terror and Latin America. During his reign a Puerto Rican Muslim named Padilla was detained as he returned to the US from a "suspicious" visit to Pakistan. On several other occasions Mexican migrants were detained for an indefinite period of time without explanation or legal counsel. Their crimes? One of them wore a tattoo with the image of Bin Laden. Another one, a Mexican ice cream vendor, was seized while videotaping a government building in Fresno. He wanted to send a tape to his family back home "to show them the beautiful buildings of his host city." These cases are heartbreaking and reveal a frightening political reality: the scattershot US War on Terror has definite second front line, the US-Mexico border.

During a CNN "town meeting" on border issues conducted by anti-immigrant pundit Lou Dobbs, Republican Michael McCaul explained: "You know, after 9/11 the border is really a national security issue. We simply do not know who is coming into this country." The implication of his warning was clear...