Reaction to the Border Crossing

            I am so very fortunate to be able to take this trip this year, following the recent political events with the new administration and paralleling my LACS Capstone course surrounding the latinoization of the United States and border relations with Professor Barnett.  Before leaving for the trip, Professor Barnett stressed just how excited he was for me to be able to travel to the borderlands for the first time, as it is critical for both this course and his course as well as for active, effective, and compassionate citizenship today, and I was particularly interested in that aspect of our trip, in relation to the O’odham specifically but also in the broader sense of human rights and international relations.  Now, after spending a week in the borderlands and crossing the border into Mexico and then back into the United States, I feel both completely taken aback by witnessing the current situation in person and completely unprepared to digest the changes that are to come from my own perspective or from one much more vulnerable than mine.

            Throughout the week, I was repeatedly shocked by the number of Border Patrol officers that we witnessed each day, especially surrounding Sells.  The officers at the checkpoint station on the edge of the reservation marked the first moment that I, even as a U.S. citizen, felt some degree of unwantedness by my own homeland.  In this space, everyone is suspicious, as if it truly belongs to no one, contributing to its identity as one of the tensest international borders in the world, even though the reasons for such lie ambiguous in context and solidly within social construction.  If it is to be considered a truly welcoming and accepting home to anyone, it would be for the Border Patrol officers themselves, as suddenly they came to equal or outnumber depending on the day the number of everyday people that we saw. 

The most disgusting parts of the border relations are definitely the human rights violations and the exemplifications of profound racism and ethnocentrism, but it adds a sickening twist when the very sense of protection that the officers and the administration cite as motive and true aim, which many us saw immense cracks and holes in before this trip, completely collapses around us when our country starts to feel less and less like our own, in sentiment and in the representation by the behavior of the administration.  I do not even believe that I have the ability to truly comprehend why we have constructed this terse and cruel situation that has hurt so many thousands of people directly if the very purpose remains so hollow.  I do not want to hate the actions of this country, but when we drove up to the border crossing to face signs explicitly stating that cell phones, cameras, and recording devices were strictly prohibited and to be turned off, my stomach dropped and my mouth became dry.  This was not an operation for the people – most definitely not for the people trying to enter the country for the first time but not for those already living within it either.  It is not protection; is it hatred and the fear of otherness that defines profound racism.  And as much as I knew that from books and pieces of literature, I was still taken aback, because even I, as is the case with many others, hung on to some naïve hope for some kind of justification or sense of understanding in order to maintain a worldview in which people have a basic understanding of and capacity for kindness, compassion, and the granting of intrinsic human worth.