Ich bin ein Sonoreño
This week marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I remember that event very well. (Even then I was older than most bloggers are today.) It was a watershed event. It was stirring.
And thus I understand why there was a bit of an orgy of self-congratulatory backpatting among online progressives this week.
But I didn’t see much mention, in American coverage of the anniversary, of the beam in our own eye.
During the 28-year history of the 87-mile-long Berlin Wall, 136 people are known to have died attempting to cross it. That’s an average of just under five people a year.
Since 1994, an average of 373 people have died attempting to cross the US border with Mexico every year — 75 times as many as in Germany. The proximate cause of these deaths may be dehydration, hyperthermia, exposure and drowning rather than East German bullets, but they are deaths caused by government policy just the same. They are still deaths deliberately used by the state to deter people from crossing.
And the damage our wall does to delicate ecosystems, the damage to wildlife migration routes and habitat, is immeasurably worse than that from the entirely-urban Berlin Wall.
Where is the outrage? Where are the speeches? Where are the demands to tear down the wall?
Comments
Good point. Hadn’t thought of it that way.
Hey dumbshit:
Have you ever seen the TRASH the illegals leave behind in the desert? Talk about destroying the ecosystem!
Because Dirk’s trollish question bears answering from a strictly ecological standpoint, my answer is yes. Yes, I have seen the trash migrants leave in the desert. It’s a problem. I wrote about it at some length. The article I wrote can be seen here continuing here.
Not that “Dirk” is asking the question in good faith or anything. But here’s the executive summary for people whose attention spans or reading comprehensions aren’t up to the task of reading a real article written for grownups:
1) People leave trash in the desert because they’re fucking dying out there. It’s a life-and-death situation. You have to carry gallons of water and then you have to carry as little weight as possible. You tell me you wouldn’t leave a couple empty gallon water jugs out in the creosote flats if you were faced with carrying them sixty miles.
2) People also congregate around water holes, frightening wildlife and contaminating the wildlife’s drinking water with their urine and feces and various other things. Why do they do this? See the first sentence of item #1.
3) Even worse is the damage from smugglers “coyotes” who drive across desert wilderness to get their “cargo” across. Hundreds of miles of new roads across the Cabeza Prieta in the last five years. Drug smugglers are probably a greater source of this particular sort of damage.
4) People cross the border in one of the most dangerous pieces of country in the lower 48 because the US government, intent on mollifying sociopathic yahoos like “Dirk,” deliberately made much of the rest of the border far harder to cross in. The idea was that the high likelihood of death in the desert would deter migrants.
5) People cross the border in huge numbers in the first place because the US looted the Mexican economy. Here’s a grown-up link with big, hard-to-understand words like “trade” and “NAFTA” if anyone wants more detail.
6) None of this excuses the damage to wildlife that a wall would pose. A shorter vehicle barrier, such as the one built in southern Arizona to protect Organ Pipe, would prevent most new damage from illegal cross-country driving, while allowing animals and people ready passage. A wall would be devastating to wildlife and to the landscape.
So, like I said, Dirk’s was a trollish question and ordinarily I’d have just nuked it so as not to stink the place up. But there was a legitimate question buried in there, so I answered it.
Oh, and hi, Formerly Apostate! great to have you here. Sorry about the mess on the rug. Apparently it’s hairball season.
I live in South Texas. Locally there’s been plenty of outrage and speeches and demands - and lawsuits. It just doesn’t get a lot of press coverage. The Texas Observer does a pretty good job, though. Go to http://www.texasobserver.org and see La Linea by Melissa del Bosque.
Quibblishness: there were actually many drownings of East Germans trying to escape to the West.
Walls are attempts by empires (dating back a few thousand years) to protect their imperial state, whilst savaging the lands of the unwalled. Most indigenous first nations people around the planet didn’t need to build them; and in the remaining cases still don’t. It always fascinates me how Euro-americans (including the Ashkenazi) across the planet seem hell bent on building walls around lands they stole.
First of all I really enjoyed browsing through your website. It is very stimulating for someone from “cold country” to experience life in the desert. Thank you.
I was struck my your post on the Berlin Wall in comparing it to the wall being constructed between Mexico and the US. You are correct, although I am not a desert ecologist, I am an ecologist and can imagine what kind of havoc can be wreaked by bisecting a n ecosystem. The problem with political boundaries is they have nothing to do with the natural world.
I am not an expert on illegal immigration, but it occurred to me that the wall really isn’t doing such a good job, is it? I remember watching people from Mexico slimb over huge chain linked fences capped with razor wire in broad daylight in El Paso in 1969. I can’t imagine what it is like now.
Clearly we would be better off trying to provide support for the Mexican government in creating jobs with livable wages located in Mexico. Correct me if I am wrong, as I stated I am no expert on these matters.
Thanks for your hard work on this site. Is very inspiring.
bill;www.wildramblings.com
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