Border Bandits: Hollywood on the Southern Frontier

Introduction Welcome to the Alamo Hollywood on the Border

1 O n January 26, 2006, the United States Border Patrol, working with agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency, discovered what many claim was the largest and most sophisticated cross-border tunnel to date. Information about this tunnel quickly hit the headlines with news flashes engineered to elicit introduction welcome to the alamo hollywood on the border —Now that you’re here what are you going to do? Sell us tickets to the policeman’s ball? —We’re with the border patrol, ma’am, we don’t have any balls. —flashpoint (1984) fears about the hydra of villainy: drug traffickers, “illegal” immigrants, and terrorists. The 2,400-foot tunnel grabbed attention for its infrastructure and amenities; fortified with concrete, it boasted electric lights, a ventilation system, groundwater pumping, and was fully equipped with a pulley system for the rapid transit of “drugs and other contraband.”1 The tunnel was described by many news sources as having a south-tonorth trajectory that originated in Tijuana and terminated in an industrial warehouse in San Diego. The two tons of marijuana found in the tunnel were a clue to its main function, but the discovery sparked fears: “These tunnels are known to be used for smuggling drugs and illegal aliens. They also could be used (and almost certainly are being used) to smuggle terrorists—along with weapons and explosives—into the United States.”2 The tunnel quickly became the clearinghouse for North American fears about underground traffic into the United States and about the spawning of illegal activity with roots in Mexico that pointed to conspiracies against national security. The whole scenario read like the ongoing plot of the popular television show 24 (Fox), in which terrorists find covert and illegal ways of entering the United States. No similar media ploy exists for the north-to-south traffic into major border cities 2 i n t r o d u c t i o n like Tijuana or Ciudad Juárez where visitors from the United States go in search of illicit activities, or for unauthorized north-to-south traffic in merchandise. Instead, mainstream U.S. media depict the border as a necessary barrier to unwanted traffic while the borderlands are often represented as a repository of all things illegal. Recently, news items about such tunnels have appeared more frequently, causing some to claim that underground entry into the United States obviates the need to erect a wall against invaders from the south. These stories deny the realities of economic and political interdependence between Mexico and the United States and act as symbolic blockades to cross-border dialogue. Since the inception of cinema, the Hollywood motion picture industry has commandeered the borderlands to tell a story about U.S. dominance in the American hemisphere. Hollywood has often exploited the trope of the southern border between the United States and Mexico to capture a range of “American” ideals and values—integrity, moral clarity, industriousness, rugged survivalism, confidence, and self-sufficiency, among others. The border is also a vital repository of threatening ideas—homosexuality, prostitution, globalization, economic liberalization, drug trafficking and abuse, sexual promiscuity, effeminacy, and terrorism—and undesirable or inassimilable people such as Mexicans, Native Americans, racially mixed characters, immigrants , war veterans, terrorists, and dominant and domineering women. Moreover, many of the lost battles of history—the Alamo and Vietnam in particular—are replayed on the border to conclusions that restore confidence in the “American way.” I argue that Hollywood border films do important social work: they offer a cinematic space through which viewers can manage traumatic and undesirable histories and ultimately reaffirm core “American” values. At the same time, these border narratives shape “proper” identification with a singular and exceptional moral hero who might register anywhere from maverick to vigilante. These stories delineate opposing values and ideas—for instance, the proper from the improper and the citizen from the unwanted guest or “alien.” Latino border films offer a critical vantage from which to consider these topics; they challenge the presumptions of U.S. nationalism and subsequent cultural attitudes about immigrants and immigration and often critically reconstruct their Hollywood kin. The southern frontier is one of the most emotionally charged zones of the United States, second only to its historical predecessor and partner, the western frontier. The border has become the symbol of a strong and Welcome to the Alamo...