THE "THIRD NATION" AT THE MEXICO-U.S. BORDER

Michael Dear, Why Walls Won't Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2012) ("The boundaries separating nation-states are usually regarded as robust, established features of the human condition, but they are not. The map of present-day European nation-states, for example, is largely a consequence of two twentieth-century world wars; and the principal impetus for this book is an adjustment in the boundary of the Mexican nation-state that is only a century-and-a-half old. Moreover, since the 1848 Treaty, the line separating the US and Mexico has been constantly renegotiated and adjusted as a consequence of geopolitics and daily life among border-dwellers. Exigencies of place and practice have often trumped the rigid imperative of international law, as national histories become subordinated to pragmatism, convenience, local memory, and informal tradition. It is the ascendancy of such local practices and traditions that gave birth to 'alternative' spaces such as a third nation." "A 'third nation' is a community carved out of the territories between two existing nation-states. The idea encompasses notions of a people, identity, territory, and practice. We speak of a nation when referring to a group of people whose members voluntarily identify with one another on the basis of a shared history and geography, including (for example) ethnics traits, cultural traditions, and joint alliances against external threats. The sentiment that unites its members is commonly called nationalism. Because many of the characteristics underlying nationalism are nebulous and even transitory, Benedict Anderson famously referred to nations as 'imagined communities.' Attachment to the land is one important feature of identity, and when a people acquires the sovereign rights to govern a territory--and that right is recognized by others--the territory is deemed to be a nation-state." "A third nation is an 'in-between' space, transcending the geopolitical boundary that divides the constitutive nation-states and creates from them a new identity distinct from the nationalisms of the host countries. The third nation at the US-Mexican border is not yet a nation-state, but we have encountered many of the characteristics of previous nations in the borderland. These include the ancient Chichimecans, the Spanish colonialists, and the Comanche and Apache imperiums; their vestiges stand as palimpsests of the present-day third nation." Id. at 71-72. "There are no magic words to solve the problems of immigration in the US or drug-related violence in Mexico. Instead, I offer one incontrovertible conclusion regarding the borderlands: the Wall will not work. Here's why. Because the Border Has Long Been a Place of Connection [] Because the Wall Is an Aberration in History [] Because Twin City Prosperity Requires There Be No Barriers [] Because People Always Find Ways over, under, through and around Walls [] Because Governments and Private Interests Continue Opening Portals in the Wall [] Because 'Third-Nationhood' Is Already in People's Minds [] Because Diaspora and Diversity Trump the Border Industrial Complex [] Because Mexico Is Going Global and Democratic [] Because Walls Always Come Down..." Id. at 170-177.).