Dismantling Borders of Violence: Migration and Deportation Along the U.S.-Mexico Border

Today most accounts about the Mexico-United States border, of Tijuana, for example, talk about violence. The association has galvanized national and international attention and all but erased any semblance of normality in the region. To be sure, the media, both in Mexico and United States, has done much to create and spread this image of border life. Still, while the media has played a central role, others have contributed to this portrayal of life along the international line. After declaring war on drug traffikers throughout his campaign and only days into his presidency, Felipe Calderón sent troops to Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, announcing he plan to spearhead in these two border cities some of his most ambitious assaults on organized crime. The effort did not live up to expectations, and in 2010, Tijuana’s mayor issued a plea to the federal government to send even more soldiers to the city. The United States government, likewise, has advised its citizens to exercise caution when traveling to Tijuana or to avoid the city altogether if possible. The messsage has not been lost on academia. Research on the region has begun to frame the border as a place at once critical to national security and torn apart by bloodshed.

Whether one ascribes or not to the reality portrayed—that Tijuana is a violent place—the association merits discussion. The purpose of this essay is to begin a dialogue that focuses on a different type of violence, namely violence against migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, and offers a different understanding of Roman Catholic faith communities along the U.S.-Mexico border.¹ We are inspired and guided by the work of Moises Sandoval and his scholarly vision which helped launch the United States branch of the Commission for Historical Studies of the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean (CEHILA) and established a historical paradigm for interpreting the U.S. Latina/o Church with a focus on the poor, the marginalized and the persecuted.² In the words of Sandoval, his collaboration with CEHILA USA put forth the interpretive tools required for understanding the “underside of church history.”³

Incorporating the CEHILA perspective as articulated by Moises Sandoval, this essay interprets migration, deportation and violence along the U.S.-Mexico border from the perspective of the poor. It privileges the voices of the most vulnerable populations in the city of Tijuana, namely, undocumented migrants and the impact of violence in their daily lives. It draws on conversations (pláticas) and interviews with these men as well as Church leaders. It also examines previous research on violence. Drawing on Catholic Social Teachings and the Preamble to the Declaration of Human Rights, we put forward a new interpretation of violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, one that calls for a new understanding and refocused interpretation of violence against undocumented migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. This essay is divided into four sections with a discussion that moves from the general to the specific. 1) We begin with a review as to the causes and consequences of violence. 2) We then move to a categorization of the types of violence we encountered in our conversations. 3) We reframe deportation of migrants as an act of violence and explore the responses of migrants and their interpretations to their expulsion. 4) We conclude with suggestions on dismantling violence.

As an issue that spares no one—in Tijuana, the border, or the country at large—violence has clear implications for religious faith and practice. Many argue, furthermore, that the Catholic Church, one of the oldest institutions in Mexico with a formidable presence in contemporary Mexican society and culture, has a clear role to play in understanding the evolution of violence in the city as well as along the border, if not Mexico at large, and to formulate a response. To be sure, clergy and religious in Mexico have already begun to talk about the issue, formally and informally, and some have suffered for it.⁴ Indeed, we would...