CRIMINALIZING FRONTERIZOS - Yet Another Lament

In Spanish, there is a word for people whose lives and family trees span the US-Mexico border: "fronterizos." The closest we can come in English is "borderlanders," but this word does not conjure the rich and painful history that the Spanish word suggests.

In the 1930s somewhere between 400,000 and 1 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans returned to Mexico "by their own decision or through officially voluntary – though often coercive – repatriation programs directed by state and local governments and charitable aid agencies," this according to the USCIS. I know many people whose parents or grandparents were forcibly evicted in this way - in effect, they were deported without due process.

Now, eighty years later, according to the Washington Post, US federal authorities are sifting through the birth certificates of fronterizos born twenty, thirty, forty years ago and demanding that they provide corroborating documentation (hospital bills, rental agreements, etc.) to prove that their mothers were residing in the United States at the time of their birth.

This is just the latest initiative in a decades-long endeavor, directed by both Republican and Democratic administrations, to "harden the border," presumably as a precondition to more comprehensive immigration reform. "Enforcement, then reform" has been the mantra of US politicians from across the political spectrum. What this has meant on the US-Mexico border is "enforcement, then more enforcement, then more enforcement." What this has meant is more long, hard suffering for fronterizos.

The Trump Administration's policy of "zero tolerance" brings all this to a sad, and predictably Orwellian, conclusion. Unlike their compatriots, US citizens who live along the border can now be judged as inherently suspect by virtue of their place of birth.

I have spent a great deal of time across the last few decades trying to understand just a little bit about the lives of fronterizos. Many of you have generously taken the time to join me in this endeavor, and I thank you for sharing this spiritual exercise, for trying to walk a few short miles in the shoes of others.

Should you care to take one more step in this journey, I recommend this thought-experiment today: imagine that your livelihood, and your foothold on life in the only country you have ever known, depended on calling your mother and asking her if she has a paper trail from the prenatal care she received while she lovingly nurtured you in her womb.

photo credit: Maria Teresa Fernandez

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