DeepSummary
The episode features an interview with Professor Alexander Avena, discussing the history and significance of the US-Mexico borderlands. Avena explains how the establishment and maintenance of the border was part of a broader process of settler colonialism and imperialism. He traces the origins of the border back to the Mexican-American War and the subsequent displacement of indigenous communities.
Avena examines how the military campaigns against Native American groups like the Apaches shaped the logics and techniques later used in US imperial ventures abroad, such as the wars in Vietnam and the post-9/11 conflicts. He argues that the border has been a site of imperial formation, where settler colonialism and imperialist aggression converged.
The episode also covers Mexico's perspective on the border, the current Mexican president AMLO's policies, and the paranoia and racism surrounding the border in the American mindset. Avena discusses the future outlook for Mexico and the role the borderlands may play in the coming decades.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The establishment and maintenance of the US-Mexico border was deeply connected to processes of settler colonialism and American imperialism.
- The military campaigns against Native American groups in the borderlands shaped the tactics, personnel, and mindset later used in overseas American imperial ventures.
- The border has long been a site of paranoia, racism, and 'imperial anxiety' in the American psyche, fueling militarization and anti-immigrant policies.
- Mexico's current president AMLO has taken a pragmatic approach to border/migration issues, prioritizing domestic political considerations over more principled stances.
- Water scarcity and climate change are seen as major challenges that could exacerbate tensions in the border region in the coming decades.
- Indigenous dispossession and the subjugation of Native Americans formed the foundation for later American imperial projects abroad.
- Imperialist and settler colonial logics continue to pervade American military, legal, and immigration systems to this day.
- The border region has historically been a site of transnational cultural exchange and communities, disrupted by increasing militarization.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “This is when the US, both the US and mexican government sent out these mapping and survey expeditions in the 1850s to kind of precise where the line the border is going to go in some instances, that these groups had to, like, ask local indigenous politics for permission and for safe haven in order to be able to do their work.“ by Alexander Avena
- “So, again, it's another way for me to kind of think through both more traditional concepts of us empire and how it's fundamentally connected to these legacies and these practices of settler colonialism abroad.“ by Alexander Avena
- “So the idea is then, in this border space, the history of the us military and settler experience in this space and what is now Arizona, how that then and the people who were involved, these individuals, how that influenced and shaped them, this group of military officers that historian Catherine Bjork refers to as prairie imperialists will then go on to lead us military imperial adventures abroad in the Caribbean and in Asia in the late 19th and early 20th century.“ by Alexander Avena
- “So I think at least my view since the. I think this is what the Amda administration has also done in particular in relation to your specific question about migration policy, is that they've. I think they've looked at some of the polls that have been done domestically in Mexico since 2018, and they see that their posture of not explicitly saying that they're following the US line, but in practice they are following the US line is not an unpopular one.“ by Alexander Avena
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Episode Information
Revolutionary Left Radio
Revolutionary Left Radio
5/20/22
Professor Alex Avina returns to the show, this time to discuss the US-Mexico borderlands, its fascinating history, its deep relationship to colonialism and imperialist formation, the current Mexican president AMLO, the spectre of the border in american's minds, and much more.
Find more of Alex's work here: https://alexanderavina.com/
The American Maginot Line parts 1 and 2: https://fx.substack.com/p/the-american-maginot-line?r=12vpd&s=r
https://fx.substack.com/p/the-american-maginot-line-part-2?s=r
Outro music: Ramon Casiano by Drive-By Truckers
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