The New Genocide: Immigration and the U.S.-Mexico Border

The New Genocide: Immigration and the U.S.-Mexico Border
By Raúl Al-qaraz Ochoa // www.antifronteras.com
2 November 2011

On the eve of Dia de Los Muertos, local Tucson, AZ community members commemorated the lives of 183 people that died attempting to cross the Arizona-Sonora border this year alone.

White-painted crosses carried the names of each person deceased, most times there were no names to read, but rather a «desconocido» or the «desconocida» (unkown) because they were never identified and sometimes because their bodies were so decomposed that their gender identity was not identifiable.

This is the grim reality in the southwestern borderlands.

Two people die every day attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Over 8,000 mothers, fathers, children, tios and tias have perished in their attempt to seek better life opportunities or to reunite with other relatives since 1994.

These are not mere deaths, it is a new form of genocide.

When people hear the word genocide, Germany’s concentration camps or Rwanda’s killing fields may come to mind. But what if we used the word genocide to describe the United States and its treatment of Latinos? Would that be an exaggeration?

We live in a country where politicians and state legislatures (from Arizona to Alabama) and government agencies (from the Department of Homeland Security to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to U.S. Customs and Border Protection) themselves have publicly admitted their vision of lowering and eliminating the numbers of people of Mexican and Latino origin.

Of course, these goals are masked with law and order rhetoric, such as “Operation Endgame’s” end goal of “removing all removable illegal aliens by the year 2012.” Now, they don’t say they want to get rid of Latinos per se, but who are they kidding? They might as well.

As Michelle Alexander argues in «The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness», the racial caste system in America never ended, it was simply re-designed. The same applies with what we know of genocide today–it has transformed.

Today we are seeing that genocide is taking new form and has evolved into a more institutionalized and sophisticated effort. Through U.S. and state policies, directly and indirectly, people of a particular ethnicity are targeted for elimination (both physical and mental).

According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II, adopted by the UN General Assembly:

“…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, is genocide, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

In 1996 Gregory Stanton, the president of Genocide Watch, presented a briefing paper called «The 8 Stages of Genocide» to the United States Department of State. In it he suggested that genocide develops in eight stages that are «predictable but not inexorable».

Mind you, there are clear differences between genocide in Rwanda (‘high-intensity’ genocide) to the one taking place at the U.S.-Mexico border (‘low-intensity’ genocide).

Stage (in bold) Characteristics (follows) and how it relates to the border is in italics:

1.
Classification. People are divided into «us and them».

 As it relates to the U.S.-Mexico border: People are divided between “legal” and “illegal”.

2.
Symbolization. «When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups…»

As it relates to the U.S.-Mexico border: Skin color, language and physical appearance are symbols that single out Latinos, as legalized in laws in states like Arizona, Georgia and Alabama and the border line itself.

3.
Dehumanization. «One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases.»

As it relates to the U.S.-Mexico border: Latinos are dehumanized where the media and political figures equating this population to vermin and disease invading the U.S. Dehumanization then leads to criminalization, where being ‘brown’ in America is tied to criminality and is subject to second-class status and punishment.

4.
Organization. «Genocide is always organized… Special army units or militias are often trained and armed…»

As it relates to the U.S.-Mexico border: The U.S. has militarized the border with National Guard troops and states like California and Arizona have welcomed right-wing, white supremacist militias.

5.
Polarization. «Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda…»

As it relates to the U.S.-Mexico border: Political speeches, mainstream media reports and policies and laws targeting migrant communities create a polarizing and hostile environment.

6.
Preparation. «Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity…»

As it relates to the U.S.-Mexico border: People are identified and separated by I.C.E. and Border Patrol agents; people aren’t led to physical killing fields, instead they are detained in detention camps and eventually deported.

7.
Extermination. «It is «extermination» to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human.»

As it relates to the U.S.-Mexico border: Once deported, many migrants attempt to cross back to the U.S. where they face border policies that facilitate death through a strategy called “prevention through deterrence” where urban areas are fortified while desert areas are left wide open for people to cross. Policymakers knew people would die and believed those deaths would deter further migration. Since 1994, over 8,000 ‘deaths’ and murders have taken place at the U.S.-Mexico border.

8.
Denial. «The perpetrators… deny that they committed any crimes…»

As it relates to the U.S.-Mexico border: This reality has been largely ignored by the mainstream media and political figures.

In short, we live in the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis, but few recognize it as such. Since there are no large killing fields or concentration camps (as of yet) where people are being slaughtered, the deaths continue uninterrupted with no national or international outrage. Yet people of a particular ethnicity and national origin are systematically targeted for death—through U.S. and international economic and political policies.

It’s a new form of genocide.

And for those that are not successfully eliminated, there are 5 tactics on how they are dealt with:

1. Attrition through Enforcement. This tactic is intended to make life impossible, through laws, cutting off access to basic needs such as public services (HB 2008), work (E-Verify, employer sanctions) or public safety (SB1070/Secure Communities/287g). The purpose is for migrants/Latinos to go to another state or they self-deport to their ‘place of origin’.

2. Brutality/Criminalization/Incarceration. Hate crimes and law enforcement brutality is on the rise. Murders by police and border patrol agents are common. And we have more than 32,000 political prisoners in immigration detention centers on any given day. The Latino population is becoming the fastest growing population in federal prisons.

3. Underclass Status. The capitalist state benefits from laws and policies of genocide because it dehumanizes and criminalizes workers, making it so that the Latino population is vulnerable to labor abuse and exploitation.

4. Cultural genocide. Laws such as HB 2281, the ban on Ethnic Studies or the ban on bilingual education attempt to cut the cultural and historical roots of those who have not been physically eliminated (either through deportation or death).

5. Maximize Profits. Here the capitalist, profit-motive looms just as large if not larger than the racist realities of these policies. For-profit prison contractors like GEO and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) continue bidding to build and run migrant detention centers at increasing levels. To no surprise, the militarization of the Southwest border is also generating profits for corporations such as Boeing and other companies providing the government technology, infrastructure and fencing of the border.

The current political and economic system is clearly applying full force a systematic plan of removing the un-assimilated Latino community (and other people of color) by any and all means necessary. Through deportations, imprisonment, police brutality, poverty, unemployment and lack of access to health care and education, Latinos are feeling the thorns of a horrifying strategy that intends to either eliminate this community through death, deportation or preserve them here as a permanent exploitable underclass subjected to violations of human, civil and labor rights.

Throughout history, we can see that the border is part of a larger cycle of violence. It is rooted in the ongoing genocide and colonization of indigenous land and peoples, imperialism, and global economic structures that continue to dominate our world.

It is critical to recognize how these physical borders permeate to all aspects of our lives where our intersecting identities are fenced in, criminalized and attacked not only for being people of color, but also for being poor, women, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer identified.

Knowing this comes with the responsibility not only to fight to stop this grim reality, but to also organize towards a world free of borders and genocide.

Take a stance and minimally, please refer to the deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border not as mere deaths, but rather as the symptoms of intentional U.S. policies of genocide.