Noam Chomsky: How the U.S.-Mexico Border Is Cruel by Design
▻http://architecturemps.com/full-text-3
In order to understand the rationale behind the fortification of the border and the physical form it has taken in recent years, it is necessary to go back a little first. The US-Mexican border, like most borders, was established by violence – and its architecture is the architecture of violence. (...)
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After the war of the 1840s the US-Mexican border remained fairly open. Basically the same people lived on the same sides of it, so people would cross to visit relatives or to engage in commerce, or something else. It was pretty much an open border until the early 1990’s. In 1994, the Clinton administration initiated the program of militarizing the border, and that was extended greatly under George W. Bush in the 2000s—largely under the guise of safety and defence from terrorism. (...) That was interesting, and revealing, because the warnings from the security services were that the dangerous border, with regard the possible incursion of terrorists into the US, was the Canadian border. If you take a look, you can see why. The Canadian border is so porous that you and I can cross it in some forested areas. If you were worried about terrorism, you would fortify the Canadian border. Instead, they fortified the Mexican border where there is no threat of terrorism; it was, clearly, for other reasons.
Clinton’s militarization of the border in 1994 coincided with the passing—I should say the “imposition”—of the executive version of NAFTA, since it was not supported by the public. (...)
It was clear that the final version of #NAFTA, which is not a free trade agreement at all, would lead to the substantial destruction of small and medium scale American-Mexican agriculture. Mexican campesinos can be efficient, but they can’t possibly compete with highly subsidized US agricultural business. (...)
In general, it was assumed that there would be a flow of people fleeing from Mexico across the border as either a direct, or indirect, result. It had to be militarized and protected. (...)