Why walls won't work
Subtitle: repairing the US-Mexico divide
By: Michael Dear
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
ISBN-13: 9780199897988
Subjects: History
Description: In this sweeping account of life within the United States-Mexican border zone, acclaimed urbanist and geographer Michael Dear traces the border's long history of cultural interaction, from exchanges between the region's numerous Mesoamerican tribes onwards. Once Mexican and American settlers met at the Rio Grande and the southwest in the nineteenth century, new forms of interaction evolved. But as Dear warns in his bracing study, this vibrant zone of cultural and social amalgamation is in danger of fading away because of highly restrictive American policies and the violence along Mexico's side of the border. As he explains through analyses of the U.S. border security complex and the emerging Mexican narco-state, the very existence of the "third nation" occupied by both Americans and Mexicans is under serious threat. But through a series of evocative portraits of contemporary border communities, he shows that the potential for revitalizing this in-between nation still remains.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-258) and index.
Table of contents: title: Monuments, Mexico and manifest destiny; title: Maps without borders: continuity & connection in early times; title: From frontier settlements to transborder cities; title: Law and order at the border; title: Third nation before the wall; title: Third nation of the mind; title: Fortress USA; title: Mexico: narco-state or failed state?; title: Third nation interrupted; title: Why walls won't work.