Update: Amerikan terrorism claims 3,000 along border Campaign to Stop Operation Gatekeeper and Open the U.$-Mexico Border advances

by Studies for the Liberation of Aztlan and Latin America (SLALA) Two weeks before the 4th of July while amerikans prepared for fireworks displays and "holiday getaways" 30 people, including a 2 year old child, died crossing into the u.$. through deserts in order to bypass the militarized areas of the u.$.-Mexico border in search of work.(1) These tragic and preventable deaths are only the latest in a 7 year trend of increasing numbers of deaths along the u.$.-Mexico border as a result of the INS's brutal military blockade-style operations along the border with Mexico from California through Arizona and Texas.

INS policy militarizing the control of civilian traffic across the u.$.-Mexico border under various ill-named operations involves the construction of a concrete- and-razor-wire "Triple Wall" from San Diego to Yuma and into Texas, arming Border Patrol agents with high-powered rifles and night vision equipment and sending them off to hunt immigrants. The overall effect is the movement of immigrant foot-traffic from the relative safety of the cities and into the deserts of the Southwestern states where they are exposed to the elements and are victimized by smugglers and settler vigilantes. Five months prior to September 2001 MIM reported that under domestic pressure Mexican President Vicente Fox pushed to increase the number of Mexicans admitted into the u.$. as "guest workers" and that some amerikan capitalists supported the idea because of their need for exploitable labor.(2) While the amerikans favored expanding temporary work visas and refused to drop immigration restrictions altogether Vicente Fox did bring up the issue of legalizing undocumented immigrants currently in the u.$.(3) But after the September 11 attacks when amerikans gave up on paying lipservice to "constitutional rights" and threw out some of their most prized "civil liberties," all plans for progressive reform by way of lifting immigration restrictions went out the door as well.

In Tijuana, for instance, for those people who live in Mexico and work in San Diego conditions have worsened (with daily checkpoint crossing, storm trooper intimidation, long waits and longer working hours) since the initial paranoid border closings and emergency foot-traffic measures implemented in September. A person living in the area reported that automobile traffic crossings average 4 hours (up from 2 to 3) and foottraffic lines number 1000 people on weekdays, and up to 3000 on weekends (up from 60-100). Undocumented immigrants also face increased repression in the wake of September 11 as the u.$. authorized the re-deployment of armed marines to border areas, a practice they had stopped in 1997 pending an "investigation" into the murder of a Chicano youth on his family's ranch by marines. Since 1993, 3000 deaths along the border are directly attributable to INS operations. (1) With an attitude very different from the concern expressed over the death toll resulting from the World Trade Center attacks, Amerikan authorities and the INS did not bother to record cases of immigrant deaths in Arizona and Texas until 1996 and did not begin to do so thoroughly all along the border until 1998.(4) As a result they claim that 1300 immigrants have died crossing the border since 1995.(1) A more accurate figure is provided by Mexico's Foreign Relations Office which cites 2228 total deaths since 1995.(4)

Economically, amerikans depend on the depressed wages in Third World countries. Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Derechos Humanos, an immigrants' rights organization echoes what MIM has been saying all along. In a radio debate with a voice box for the reactionary antiimmigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform she said that immigrants come to the u.$. out of sheer desperation because Mexican companies cannot survive because of u.$. trade agreements. She correctly pointed out that immigration is not a "law-enforcement" problem because "immigrants provide the 4th leg" to amerikan social security. Mexico cannot be "bailed out" by the u.$. so long as the u.$. extracts more from Mexico than what amerikans want to admit.(1)

Its really more than a "4th" leg. The brutal super-exploitation of billions of workers in the Third World not only contributes to "social security" but to the high standard of living for hundreds of millions living in oppressor countries, accounting for imperialist profits. No amount of stock references to "social security" can cover up for the fact that Third World proletarians average $0.48 per hour, while u.$. so-called "workers" earn $16.40.(5) Billions of proletarians in the Third World live under u.$.-supported death-squad governments, which use military force to fix wage rates and attack union organizers.

MIM Advances Petition Campaign

Beginning in 1993 when the militarystyle blockades began, MIM has been reporting on the human rights abuses and dangers faced by Latin American immigrants due to Operation Gatekeeper (the three-barrier blockade stretching from San Ysidro, CA to San Luis, AZ) (6) and in April of last year MIM launched a petition (7) campaign demanding an the end to Operation Gatekeeper and establishing an open border with Mexico.

So far MIM, RAIL and SLALA have collected more than 1000 signatures from all over the country and from within the u.$. prison system. In 2001 MIM and MIM-led activists collected signatures at a border action rally in San Ysidro (7) and at Harvard University. This year MIM has collected signatures at a march in Los Angeles on Mayday in support of amnesty for some undocumented workers, and at the Santa Barbara march for "economic justice."

At the May Day rally in Los Angeles, a MIM supporter approached a young white womyn watching the crowd go by. The womyn said she was happy to support legalization for those immigrants who are already here, but would not support a call for open borders. When pressed on this, she said that the freeways in Orange County, CA are already too crowded and would only be more so if the borders were opened to anyone who wants to enter the country. This typical short-sighted amerikan "head-up-yourass" reasoning was countered by a MIM comrade who pointed out that the people who are dying to cross the border are too poor to own cars and are not the ones clogging the freeways and the polluting air. In general the crowd at the May Day rally was generally very friendly to MIM's petition, and helped non-Spanish speaking comrades circulating and translating the petition. Most individuals who signed the petition insisted that everyone in their marching group sign as well, and people thanked us for being out there with the petition and praised the demand for open borders.

More recently SLALA has been collecting signatures in an area a few blocks away from the infamous "garment" (read sweatshop) district in downtown Los Angeles. On one occasion MIM ran into one Chicano cultural activist who was suspicious that MIM's position on the u.$.-Mexico border is no different from Bill Klinton's and the NAFTA treaty. The activist said many things that MIM would say about revolutionary politics and culture: it is no coincidence that Black and Brown people fill the prisons of this country while the white nation has the run of it. Cultural forms for expressing the righteous anger of the oppressed at imperialism - through posters and art, poetry, slogans and street theater - are an important part of anti-imperialist resistance.

The activist argued that Mexico is already dominated by Amerikan capital, and that this would not change if people are allowed to cross the border freely. MIM grants that this is true: stopping Operation Gatekeeper with its increased militarization of the u.$.-Mexico border will not topple imperialism. Even opening the border completely won't do that. MIM organizes for partial demands, like stopping real people from dying by the hundreds from Operation Gatekeeper, as a part of building public opinion for the overthrow of imperialism. Opening the border to the free flow of labor would save and improve the lives of many more than hundreds of exploited people. This is well in line with MIM's long-range goals of socialist revolution to benefit billions of the oppressed and exploited. One of the most inspiring advances in MIM's campaign has come from within the u.$. prison system. One prisoner sent back a petition with 44 signatures on it. He apologizes for it having taken so long to get it back to us because it's difficult to collect signatures in lock-down units. It took him 15 days to collect the signatures. A MIM comrade asked: how many of us on the outside are collecting 40+ signatures every two weeks?

Join the Struggle to Stop Operation Gatekeeper and Open the Border

In spite of the settler-inspired post-9/ 11 paranoia about immigrants three u.$. states are now majority non-white; others are barely majority white. A large percentage of people living in the u.$. have cultural and economic ties on both sides of the border. There is no reason why the amount of signatures collected in support of an open-border and against Operation Gatekeeper should not go into the thousands.

Follow the example of dedicated prisoners and inspired MIM comrades. To do your part to put pressure on the u.$. government copy, distribute and return completed petitions to MIM. (Get a copy of the petition here: http://www.etext.org/ Politics/MIM/cal/OpenBorder.htm) You can also cite MIM's petition in protest correspondence to Michael Nicley, Deputy Chief, U.S. Border Patrol, 425 "I" Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20536.

Notes:

1. "Illegal Immigrants in Peril" NPR: Travis Smiley Show, July 3, 2002. www.npr.org/ ramfiles/tavis/20020703.tavis.01.ram
2. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/cal/ OpenBorder.htm
3. The New York Times, April 8, 2002.
4. http://www.stopgatekeeper.org/deaths.htm
5. MC5, Imperialism and its class structure, 1997, section C.4.
6. MIM Notes 84, January, 1993.
7. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/cal/ Petition.PDF
8. MIM Notes 233, 1 May 2001.