On the Border: Bleeding Arizona

There are never complete parallels in history, but patterns can often be found, where events in the past have an eerie similarity to events in the present, mainly because they are occuring for similar reasons.

This past weekend, the governor of Arizona signed Senate Bill 1070 into Arizona state law. This law purports to do what the United States federal government has failed to do--stem the tide of illegal incursions across the border with Mexico.

This invasion of illegal border crossers is no longer composed of campesinos looking for work, but now includes larger and larger numbers of violent gang members (many from Central and South America), drug runners, and other criminals. In the past few years, border violence has increased, and ranchers of all backgrounds on the border have suffered property damage, violent crime and murder. This mayhem has spilled over from the border areas to the cities and towns of the southwestern United States. Last year, for example, after committing a number of other crimes, members of a violent South American gang shot up a Denny's Diner during a robbery on Albuquerque's West Side, killing and maiming innocent Americans for no apparent reason. Gruesome murders of drug runners and drug cartel lackeys have occured here in the Albuquerque area, and in Arizona drug-related kidnappings have made Phoenix one of the kidnapping capitols of the world.

According to the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, it is the job of the federal government to provide for a legal process for immigration and naturalization for those wishing to enter the United States. The States, in return for their entry into the Union, expect to enjoy the protection of their borders with other nation-states. And it is on the border that the United States has the authority to provide that protection.

But the federal government, over at least 20 years and spanning four presidencies, has refused to control the border with Mexico, thus refusing to protect the life, liberty and property of citizens of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. This is not a racial issue at all, since most of those border citizens are Mexican-American, Hispanic, Spanish, or in California, Latino. (The differences between these categories appears to be regional: in New Mexico, most of the locals were made citizens of the US via the treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago after the Mexican War, and they call themselves "Spanish.").

Arizona, in particular, has experienced what can only be called an invasion, (as has the People's Republic of California), and the federal government has not only refused to control the border--which IS its Constitutional duty--but it has also imposed unconstitutional controls on the border states--forcing them to provide education, free health care, and welfare to people who are here illegally. This has placed an enormous burden on the infrastructure of these states-- and schools, hospitals, and law enforcement have been severely challenged.

As I said a year or more ago in my first On the Border blog entry, these states--except for California, have actually called out the National Guard to try to do what the Feds will not; to control the border, in order to protect the life, liberty and property of citizens and legal immigrants living within US territory.

The new law signed by Governor Jan Brewer seems to be an act of desperation more than anything else. It is not a good law--it will further burden Arizona law enforcement, and will very likely be another instrument for the harrassment (intended or not) of American citizens who have a Spanish surname or accent, or who 'look Mexican.' No matter how desperate the situation, one's name, accent or genetic heritage is NOT probable cause. US Citizens have the right to travel within the borders of our own country without answering questions and without producing papers. The right to security in one's person, effects and papers is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and the power of the government to question, search and seize one's person or one's property is likewise severely limited by the 4th and 5th Amendments.

Further, it is likely that SCOTUS will eventually rule the law unconstitutional, and it is very likely that the governor and the state legislators of Arizona know it. In the meantime, the federal government is likely to refuse to cooperate with Arizona law enforcement, creating a greater burden on Arizona cops, and further animosity between Arizona's citizens and their own federal government. Thus this is a situation in which federal neglect of its duties and its refusal to resolve the issue of the illegal crossings of our southern border has resulted in a stand-off with a state, and that this stand-off is likely to spread. Bleeding Arizona is an omen of the shape of things to come.

In the history of the United States, we've seen such stand-offs before. I am thinking of 'Bleeding Kansas', which was a full-out border war between pro-slavery groups from southern Kansas and Missouri, and anti-slavery groups from Kansas. The tide of emigration to Kansas increased substantially, as members of both sides tried to increase their numbers to influence how Kansas would enter the Union--as a slave-state or free. At one time, Kansas actually had two competing territorial governments, and southern armies marched into Kansas to confront John Brown and his guerilla army. Although the proximate causes of Bleeding Kansas are different that what we see in Arizona, and the violence much more explosive than protestors in Phoenix throwing water bottles at the Arizona Capitol Police, the ultimate cause is the same: the refusal of the federal government to deal with an inflammatory issue because it would upset a delicate balance of power in Washington.

To put it bluntly, our Pols lack the courage to take real stands on the issue and develop a principled and Constitutional policy on immigration. The US can have open borders only if the US scuttles the welfare state; but rather than discuss the fundamental issues, our Pols pander to the electorate in order to retain their seats. They are the furthest thing from statesmen that this country has seen since the Compromise Generation of the 1840's and 1850's.

And so they put sovereign states like Arizona into the impossible position of either enforcing federal law at the state level without compensation, and without a Constitutional mandate, or choosing to go bankrupt as all the people who will be forced to pay for it flee the State because of the tax burden and because of the lawless violence on the border.

That Arizona is pushing back against the federal government is not surprising. But it does not auger well for the relationship between an increasingly out-of-touch imperial federal government that has long ago overreached its Constitutionally limited power, and the States, which are sovereign entities now expect to sit down and shut up for the sake of increasingly worthless federal reserve notes. The federal government is bankrupt, and will now try to stay in business a little longer by preying on the states. The push-back is inevitable.

Arizona should scrap the unworkable law, and instead tote up the costs of the federal neglect of its border with Mexico, and bill the federal government for it. New Mexico and Texas* should do the same. The bills will not be paid, but they will be a moral shot across the bow of the United States Ship of State.

*Arizona and Texas may actually do it; New Mexico--manana-land USA--is very unlikely to because it still receives two dollars from the Feds for every dollar sent in. We are working on it, but it will be a difficult sell here. I will not even suggest California do it. That state is currently positioning itself to bill the other states through the federal government for its own irresponsible spending.

On the Border

"The fishing boats go out across the evening water
Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border
The wind whips up the waves so loud
The ghost moon sails among the clouds
Turns the rifles into silver on the border . . ."

On the Border
by Al Stewart, from Year of the Cat

(Photo taken from Wiki Commons, in the Public Domain)


I have lived in a border state for over 25 years and in that time I have developed a different perspective about borderlands than I might have had when I lived safely in the middle of the United States. To me, the borderlands are places from whence come separations, lawlessness, and more and more frequently, violence.

In the 1980's, during the time of the sanctuary movementin Albuquerque, I briefly sheltered a young woman from El Salvador whose baby daughter was an American citizen by accident of birth. Her mother had been raped by an American while she was trying to cross the border at Juarez.

In the 1990's, I was more and more frequently stopped at Border Patrol check stations when I traveled between Las Cruces (where I did fieldwork at the Jornada del Muerte Long-Term Ecological Research Station) and Albuquerque. There were stops between Cruces and Alamagordo across from White Sands, or between Cruces and Truth or Consequences, depending on the route. In my own car, I was usually waved through, obviously an American citizen, driving while white. But on the occasions when I took the Greyhound bus, the Border Patrol would board and ask for the ID's of every person on the bus. Secure in my obvious citizenship, I would not produce an ID, because citizens are not required to carry ID to travel within the United States. I would instead courteously ask the Agent to show me his ID, which is my right as a citizen who has been detained, even briefly. Once, awakened by a flashlight shining in my face, I started fumbling for my purse until I realized my rights, and asserted them, somewhat testily. The response from the Border Patrol agent was a courteous apology.
And I wondered what it was like for native New Mexicans of Hispanic origin; citizens by birth since the treaty of Guadalupe-Hildalgo, but whose appearance is no different than Mexican citizens. Could they safely assert their rights as Citizens?

At the same time, as the '90's wore on, and the turn of century came, the news of violence across the border grew. The victims at first were young women, disappearing while walking to and from work in clothing factories just across the border. But farmers and ranchers began to talk about the loss of livestock, destruction of their land, and threats against their families from the thousands who crossed the border illegally each year.

As the '90's turned into the 00's, more and more, the news of violence on the border was about the drug-running cartels, kidnapping young women and selling them into prostitution rings, shooting rivals, and harrassing American citizens. As a field researcher, I was strictly warned not to touch any strange packages found in the desert, and to never, ever work alone. Many of us began to 'pack' as we worked in the Jornada and even in the Sevilleta, 5 hours north of the border.I changed careers in the late '90's for family reasons, but in 2004 I learned that most of the LTER research along the border was stopped because it was becoming too dangerous for the researchers.

In the past few years, we have heard of gun battles happening along our border, and the modern Minuteman movement began. The summer before last, the governors of the border states called out the National Guard to assist controlling the border. We have been hearing of beheadings and bodies hung from lightpoles and bridges just across the border in Mexico.

Last year, the Chief of Police from Juarez was murdered before his daughter's very eyes, shot many times with automatic weapons, and the Juarez city officials moved to the American side of the border, for safety. American citizens are being kidnapped across the border in greater and greater numbers, as the drug cartels fight for supremacy, and numerous Mexican states are effectively run by the cartels, and the state governments have been destroyed.

Early this year, we read in our local paper that for all intents and purposes, Chihuahua is a failed state, the drug lords rule there by violence, and the Mexican government has no control over Ciudad Juarez. Gun battles have taken place across the border at Columbus, New Mexico, and gangland style killings have spread across the border into El Paso, Cruces, along our border, and into Phoenix, Arizona. Then a few weeks ago, we read in our local paper that the State Department has issued a travel advisory for the New Mexican border, and that they consider the collapse of Mexico into anarchy to be a real possibility.

A few days ago, I heard a radio host from Phoenix discuss the fact that the most kidnappings in the world take place in Mexico City, but that Phoenix is second, with one kidnapping a day in the past few years. The people being kidnapped are not only drug runners and criminals anymore, either. Many are innocent Americans who are being held for ransoms by drug runners who have lost their loads and must pay for them or face death.
The radio guy said that the Phoenix police are encountered terrible odds, being fired upon by automatic weapons smuggled across the border, and yet they do not even have rifles, and must call for permission before returning fire.

And we wonder what in the world is happening, as the national media does not report any of this.

This morning, I read that the Mexican drug violence has definitely come to Albuquerque. A young man, a drug runner, was kidnapped right here in the East Mountains, tortured, shot and burned, then left in the middle of a road on the West Mesa as a warning.

In an unconnected story, the bodies of young women are starting to be found on the West Mesa, and although we do not know their stories, and it may have nothing to do with the border, it seems eerily similar to the young women who were killed in Juarez all those years ago.

The world seems to be unraveling faster and faster, and for those of us who live in states on the border, the violence seems very close. And yet the political talk during the election seemed to be strangely out of touch with what we know to be the reality.
The economic crisis we are facing in the US is not ours alone, and in fact, it is worse in many other countries, including Mexico. There, the fall of the price of oil along with the loss of renumeration from Mexicans working in the US, means severe economic problems, enough to bring down the government.

And more and more, as I hear the news from the south, passed in our local press, media and by word of mouth, I am reminded of the unsettling words of Al Stewart's On the Border.

"Late last night the rain was knocking at my window
I moved across the darkened room and in the lampglow
I thought I saw down in the street
The spirit of the century
Telling us that we're all standing on the border . . ."

The song seems to be about the rising waves, the winds bringing news of trouble, the growing darkness on the border.