by TOM STEVENSON
Migrant deaths in Brooks County Texas PHOTO/Latino USA
For most of US history no one much cared that Latinos were entering the country and driving the economy of the south-west. In the 1920s the US introduced restrictive immigration laws but it didn’t have Latinos in mind: the perceived dangers were ‘inassimilable’ Italians and Eastern European Jews. During the Second World War the government laid on trains to bring thousands of Mexican labourers across the border to work on farms and ensure food security. In the 1950s the US started deporting Latin Americans who hadn’t arrived through official recruitment channels but this was mostly as a result of pressure from Mexico, where landowners were angry about workers being poached. US government-backed recruitment of Mexicans continued, and there were no limits on the numbers who could enter until a quota was imposed in 1965. In the 1990s the North American Free Trade Agreement threw Mexico’s rural economy into turmoil: migrant numbers rose dramatically and the Clinton administration began to militarise the border. The 9/11 attacks were used to justify even more fences and security personnel. Today the US-Mexico border is tightly monitored and in places absurdly fortified; it is patrolled by helicopters and night-vision aerostats.
Until recently the main gateway for Latinos was Arizona, where these fortifications were weakest. But in the last 18 months Texas has become the preferred destination. The number of ‘unaccompanied alien children’ arrested shows this clearly: in Texas last year almost 50,000 were cuffed by border patrol compared to 8000 in Arizona: total border crossings show a similar ratio. The nationality of those crossing has also changed: once almost all of them were Mexican; now equal numbers come from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico. The security deals agreed by the US and Mexican governments appear to have reduced the number of Mexicans who try to cross the border, but why are more people arriving from other Central American countries?
The end of a truce last year between the two most powerful Salvadoran maras – self-repatriating gangs originating in the US – is responsible for some of this increase. The region as a whole is racked by violence and ruled by repressive regimes. Washington has sponsored one military coup after another. George Kennan sketched out the programme in 1950, promising ‘coercive measures which can impress other governments with the danger of antagonising us’. In 1961 a strategy note prepared for Kennedy by the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised: ‘Latin Americans must … discard the philosophy that a corps of US-trained country personnel are dangerous to the indigenous governments.’ At the end of the 1970s the Sandinistas did away with the ancien régime in Nicaragua and, despite a CIA-backed rebel insurgency, a largely homegrown political arrangement survived, but Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have long been shell states with nothing to offer most citizens, economically or politically. Hundreds of thousands are leaving, and the shortest route takes them to Texas.
If you take Route 281 south from San Antonio, past the billboards (‘We buy ugly houses – call this number’; ‘AAA finance loans from $50-$1280’), you eventually reach Falfurrias, the largest place in Brooks County but still a one-horse town. The Dairy Queen burned down in May and the Walmart closed in July. Falfurrias once had a reputation as a hub for illegal gambling but this summer the gaming houses were raided and shut down. The town seems abandoned, apart from a border patrol station and a detention centre. The United States Border Patrol operates checkpoints on main roads many miles from the actual frontier. Falfurrias is 70 miles from the border and one of the inspection points is just outside town. If you’re an undocumented migrant this is where you leave the highway and walk for miles through the wilderness. More migrants die from thirst and injury in Brooks County than anywhere else in the United States.
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