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Border monuments: memory, counter-memory, and (b)ordering practices along the US-Mexico border

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2012

JESSICA AUCHTER
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Abstract

Immigrant deaths have increased in recent years due to changes in border enforcement practices, yet less attention has been paid to the memorialisation of undocumented immigrants who die crossing the US-Mexico border. This article explores the ordering mechanisms of statecraft through an examination of how the dead bodies of undocumented migrants pose a resistance to these mechanisms. I first lay out my conception of statecraft and the bordering practices involved in this specific context, then address the memorialisation of undocumented immigrants who lost their lives crossing the border. The article embarks on a journey through anonymous desert gravesites and small desert cemeteries haunted by the spectres of immigration. It explores the contestation surrounding memorialisation of death through the monument, the narratives of anonymity surrounding the memorialisation of undocumented immigrants, and the counter-memory discourses that emerge in an effort to rewrite the meaning of these migrant deaths. These counter-memorial discourses, I argue, posit desert border monuments as a threat to statecraft because they cannot be situated within the (b)ordering mechanisms of the state.

Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 291 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2012

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References

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7 It bears mentioning here that though bordering may be a feature of statecraft, bordering does not always take the same forms or have the same effects. Many contemporary borders remain lines across which people and objects cross effortlessly, while others are strongly secured through a variety of violent policing practices. However, this article focuses on one specific instantiation of the practices of statecraft and bordering: the contemporary US-Mexico border.

8 Thanks to Rick Ashley for this point.

9 Doty, ‘The Double-Writing of Statecraft’, p. 180.

10 William Langiwiesche, ‘The Border’, The Atlantic Monthly (May 1992), p. 53.

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12 Andreas, Peter, Border Games: Policing the US-Mexico Divide (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. It is important to point out though, that policing is not the primary function of the border. As Louise Amoore points out, ‘management of the border cannot be understood simply as a matter of the geopolitical policing and disciplining of the movement of bodies across mapped space. Rather, it is more appropriately understood as a matter of biopolitics, as a mobile regulatory site through which people's everyday lives can be made amenable to intervention and management.’ Amoore, Louise, ‘Biometric Borders: Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror’, Political Geography, 25 (2006), pp. 336–51, 337CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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17 This also helps to explain why we see many different forms of territoriality across different states and periods in history.

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22 For more on this specific point, see Bonnie Honig's discussion of the play between xenophilia and xenophobia in ‘Immigrant America? How Foreignness “Solves” Democracy's Problems’.

23 Doty, ‘The Double-Writing of Statecraft’, p. 176.

24 Rotella, ‘El Brinco’, p. 99.

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26 Salter, Mark, ‘When the Exception becomes the Rule: borders, sovereignty, citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 12:4 (2008), pp. 365–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Judith Butler also theorises the state of exception. She uses Guantánamo as an example, where it is part of US territory, but at the same time is in Cuba. American law operates, but at the same time it is beyond the scope of US law and beyond the scope of legality/illegality. It is the ultimate non-place, where men are reduced to bare life. She is most concerned with the idea that we use narratives to place individuals within hierarchies of value, to decide what constitutes a grievable life. This has very real implications when it comes to referring to an American soldier who was killed in Afghanistan as our ‘brother’ and an Afghan civilian who was killed as ‘collateral damage’. See Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004)Google Scholar. Agamben himself goes further than Salter and Butler, who both locate the state of exception as a non-place almost at the fringes of society (in the case of the border, literally). Agamben argues that the state of exception is in fact everywhere. The state of exception is no longer confined to the camp, to an enclosure which we can define as outside of our society and not worry about. Today we are all at the mercy of thanatopolitics, of that intersection between sovereign power and biopower which forces us to live and forces us to die, which decides on which lives matter (Agamben, State of Exception).

27 Herzog, Lawrence, ‘Rethinking the Design of Mexican Border Cities’, in Monacella, Rosalea and Ware, SueAnne (eds), Fluctuating Borders: Speculations about Memory and Emergence (Melbourne, Australia: RMIT University Press, 1999), p. 41Google Scholar.

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29 Herzog, ‘Rethinking the Design of Mexican Border Cities’, p. 40.

30 Ware, SueAnne, ‘Borders, Memory and the Slippage In-Between’, in Monacella, Rosalea and Ware, SueAnne (eds), Fluctuating Borders: Speculations about Memory and Emergence (Melbourne, Australia: RMIT University Press, 1999), pp. 78–97Google Scholar.

31 ‘5,100 Crosses at Mexico Border Mark Migrant Deaths’, San Diego Union Tribune (30 October 2009).

32 Ware, ‘Borders, Memory and the Slippage In-Between’, p. 81.

33 It is worth pointing out here that this is a feature of modern statecraft, though the way in which the ‘other’ is defined is highly context-dependent. This is not to say that lives of citizens are necessarily grievable while lives of others are not. Citizens are rendered ungrievable due to specific political circumstances, while non-citizens do get grieved in specific contexts. What this implies, then, is that grievability is not inherent, and that it is possible to conceive of grieving the lives that have been deemed ungrievable, a task which this project begins to articulate. However, it does not take away from the fact that specific lives have been deemed ungrievable by virtue of their relationship with and to the state.

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35 Derrida, Jacques, Specters of Marx (New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar.

36 Butler, Frames of War, p. 149.

37 Trista Davis, ‘El Tiradito Shrine an Ode to Local Hispanic Folklore’, El Independiente (23 October 2009).

38 Ibid.

39 Ricardo Elford, ‘Discarded Migrants’, CMSM Forum (Autumn 2010), {http://www.archchicago.org/immigration/pdf/Immigration/Discarded_Migrants.pdf} accessed 25 Jan. 2011.

40 Ibid.

41 Amoore, Louise and Hall, Alexandra, ‘Border Theatre: On the Arts of Security and Resistance’, Cultural Geographies, 17:3 (2010), pp. 299–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 I use the term artefact very purposefully, to gesture towards the almost anthropological or archaeological nature of found objects in the desert. Indeed folklore professor Maribel Alvarez refers to her work as a cross between anthropology and archaeology. See Margaret Regan, ‘Tales from the Outskirts: Amado’, Tucson Weekly (22 July 2010). Because of the harsh sun and heat, objects fade quickly, and bodies decompose quickly, reminders less of recent death than of some ancient left object that is ours to discover. The nature of these artefacts has the tendency to place distance between the finder and the object. It is James's art to recover this distance.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Valarie James, e-mail interview (28 Nov. 2011).

46 Carol St. John, ‘Transforming Tragedy Into Art’, Hispanic News (22 March 2007).

47 Ibid.

48 Shinko, Rosemary, ‘Ethics After Liberalism: Why (Autonomous) Bodies Matter’, Millennium, 38:3 (2010), pp. 723–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 The children metaphor is an extremely powerful one here. Not only is the mother a symbol of resistance, as Shinko has illustrated, but the child seems to be the point of departure for the work of both Valarie James and Neil Bernstein. Both were prompted by the artefacts of children, yet both also recall the vital relationship between parent and child that sustains life itself, and in this way politicises the biopolitical processes at work that render migrants abject.

50 James, e-mail interview. Her point about audiences being moved to tears is also a powerful one. Tears represent the ultimate emotional bodily response, but they also replicate the sculpture of Las Madres as well, where the mothers appear to be crying.

51 James, e-mail interview.

52 Regan, ‘Tales from the Outskirts’.

53 James, e-mail interview.

54 Neil Bernstein, ‘Controversial-art-inspires-debate’, Santa Fe New Mexican (10 August 2008).

55 Kathy Engle, ‘Bridge over troubled borders: Artist created “Veil of Tears” tribute in Arivaca’, Green Valley News and Sun (21 February 2008).

56 Ibid.

57 Bernstein, ‘Controversial-art-inspires-debate’.

58 Tom Sharpe, ‘Artist's Monument to Migrants finds trouble in Santa Fe’, Santa Fe New Mexican (21 July 2008).

59 Ibid.

60 Bernstein, ‘Controversial-art-inspires-debate’.

61 Engle, ‘Bridge over troubled borders’.

62 Jackie Jadrnak, ‘A Public Display of Dissent: Art Project Gets Some Feedback in the Form of Spray Paint’, Journal Santa Fe (8 August 2008).

63 Bernstein, ‘Controversial-art-inspires-debate’.

64 Sharpe, ‘Artist's Monument to Migrants finds trouble in Santa Fe’.

65 Zane Fischer, ‘Justice for All: But Especially for the Artist’, Santa Fe Reporter (5 August 2008).

66 Jorge Pech Casanova, ‘2,501 Migrants by Alejandro Santiago Ramirez: A Brief Comment on the Significance of the Project’, {http://www.2501migrants.com/home.html} accessed 4 Dec. 2011.

67 Scott Norris, ‘Alejandro Santiago's “2501 Migrantes” in Oaxaca’, Art Culture (5 May 2009).

68 Reed Johnson, ‘Mexico's Alejandro Santiago Evokes the Toll of Immigration with Clay Figures’, Los Angeles Times (7 April 2006).

69 Ibid. Johnson further elaborates: The feeling of vulnerability felt during Santiago's border crossing inspired him to leave the figures naked. Thus even as his work memorialises the absences of migrants, it also memorialises their crossings.

70 Ben Fox, ‘Unknown Immigrants Fill Pauper Cemetery’, The Spokesman-Review (29 May 2001), p. A3.

71 Ware, ‘Borders, Memory and the Slippage In-Between’, p. 81.

72 Raftery, ‘Dying to Come to America’.

73 Ransom Riggs, ‘Strange Geographies: Death at the Border’ (9 March 2010), {www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/49478} accessed 24 July 2010.

74 Fox, ‘Unknown Immigrants Fill Pauper Cemetery’, p. A3.

75 Raftery, ‘Dying to Come to America’.

76 Fox, ‘Unknown Immigrants Fill Pauper Cemetery’, p. A3.

77 Indeed it disrupts the very possibility of doing so, because you cannot classify without first identifying.

78 Pamela Colloff, ‘The Desert of the Dead’, Texas Monthly (1 November 2006).

79 Ibid.

80 Salter, Mark, ‘Governmentalities of an airport: heterotopia and confession’, International Political Sociology, 1:1 (2007), pp. 49–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Interestingly, we submit ourselves to such an extreme that we are willing to be physically located in one place while our data double is in another. Salter discusses the way in which at the Ottawa airport, one enters US customs before one even gets on the plane. One is officially in the US, yet physically still in Canada. We have handed our electronic double fully over to the state, to travel without us.

82 Maurizio Ferraris, ‘Documentality’. Working Paper, Italian Academy, New York (11 October 2006), {http://www.italianacademy.columbia.edu/publications/working_papers/2006_2007/paper_fa06_Ferraris.pdf} accessed 25 Jan. 2011.

83 Ferraris, ‘Documentality’, p. 11.

84 This project does not entail a thorough detailing of counter-memorialisation sentiment or actions. It rather argues that counter-memorialisation is evident in specific practices of statecraft itself, in the construction of the distinction between grievable and ungrievable lives that the project has explored.

85 Raftery, ‘Dying to Come to America’.

86 The effects are thus immeasurable. As Amoore and Hall point out, the effects of art are often ‘wrought in the cracking of daily ritual, the dislocation of habit and fragmentation’. Amoore and Hall, ‘Border Theatre’, p. 305. They go on: art often works through a technique of defacement, which makes us see anew that which we thought we already recognised as familiar and mundane.

87 Thanks to Vivienne Jabri for this point.