Another one for our “There Goes the Neighborhood” file: the President of the United States announced yesterday that 1,200 National Guard troops are being called up to “secure our borders.” Many of these troops are going to be stationed in our beloved home, the State of Arizona, which in the last few weeks passed at least two racist laws effectively eliminating “ethnic studies” from the public education system and empowering police to stop and demand proof of citizenship or proper documentation “on suspicion.” Nobody knows quite what the National Guard will be needed for, as migrants are not violent, but according to the President, the deployment of the military in this situation forms a “bridge to longer-term enhancements.”
Militarization of the border has lead to the two headed chimera of the Border Wall and the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol is allowed to ride their vehicles and act with impunity in all public lands, including wilderness areas, leading to environmental damage that parallels the migrant trails they are attempting to stop. At the same time, the Border Wall as a massive construction site is as environmentally devastating as it is as a an enormous barrier to wildlife corridors and disruption of a complex ecosystem. The previous President sent the National Guard to the border, and the current one’s repetition of this action reflects the fact that the same complex is in power with a different face.
This is the complex that initiates immigration by denying Mexico and the Global South the rights to food sovereignty. This is the complex that uses trade and diplomacy as war by other means, placing human urges over the natural well being of life on the planet. With the “maus” trap that is border security policy, we are confronted with a violently self-destructive strategy, which pits humanity against itself for the benefit of corporate machinations. This pollution of the spirit is reflected in the industrial programs that cause the Mexican diaspora, and the waste that it generates both at home and abroad.
A biocentric analysis of globalization must understand that borders exist only in the mind of an industrial nightmare.