SALALM 52

BORDERS: OBSESSION, OBSTACLE, OPEN DOOR?

Albuquerque, NM

April 27 - May 1, 2007

The fenced, patrolled, closed, violated and often crossed borders are not only along the well-publicized United States—Mexico line where miles of foot trails and illegal roads transport thousands of people per day across wilderness areas in the southwestern deserts, places that can be so lethal to humans that an estimated 4,000 migrants have died in their attempt to cross in the past decade. Other border regions in our hemisphere have become the focus of attention due to governments’ obsession with globalization, terrorism and security. South American migrants land their boats along the Pacific coastlines of Guatemala and Mexico. Central American migrants cross the land and river borders of Guatemala and Belize into Mexico to encounter the rough justice of Mexican immigration authorities and criminals. The Triborder region of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina has been described as a smugglers’ paradise and haven for Middle Eastern terrorists. The Andean borders between Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia traverse rainforest and mountains and have for many decades produced cash crops that fuel the massively lucrative global trade in cocaine and other illegal drugs. Without drug crops, many farmers in these regions would have no means of survival in the current global economy and more would join the ranks of migrants. Venturing across the Atlantic, we encounter mass migrations accompanied by similar fears and obstacles between the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Africa.

These are all places where rich and poor meet at a geopolitical line, where people must move to work and survive, where entrepreneurs excel at exploiting human needs and appetites to generate huge profits by moving contraband of all kinds, including drugs and people. These are also the places where states employ herbicides, sensors, lasers, unmanned aircraft, armies and private security forces in their attempt to control the lines, to facilitate the legitimized trade in goods and services and to stop traffic in contraband and people that has been deemed illicit. Like shadow versions of the real human drama playing at the borderlines, political and ideological forces act within states and internationally to influence ideas, opinion and discourse on trade, borders, terror, threats, security and the dangers and benefits of globalization.

As scholars and humans, we have a responsibility to understand the borders between our nations and within our hemisphere and our world. Economic integration, globalization, free trade, the global war on terror, homeland security, national security—all of these policies and buzzwords impact what happens on our borders—the geographical and geopolitical borders as well as the metaphorical ones. As librarians and scholars of Latin America, we have a responsibility to find, to collect, to preserve and to make accessible the research studies, the government documents, the literature, music, drama, films, art—all of the stories generated by those who must confront and live with the economic development challenges and achievements, the national and human insecurities, the environmental destruction, the natural and unnatural disasters, the massive migrations, crimes, and violent conflicts that occur in border regions.   

- Molly Molloy, Las Cruces, New Mexico, March 19, 2006.