By: Haily G., Taichi U., Angie R., Nigusom K.

Introduction

In our U.S. Mexico borderlands class, we sought to better understand the Latinx community living in Central Texas. The topic chosen was the perceptions of and around the U.S. Mexico border regarding topics that are typically addressed when speaking about the border. The topic is important as the border and the area surrounding it has been controversial for years, and new rules and regulations have been placed on asylum seekers that need to be addressed as well as public health concerns. For years the U.S. invested millions and millions of dollars into the “secure” militarized border known and talked about today. As per Latino Rebels episode Juan González’s Harvest of Empire, the government spent $26 billion on ICE and Customs and Border Patrol making border funding the most invested in industry over “the budgets of the FBI, the DEA, the secret services, and the ATF and U.S. Marshall service combined (Rebels, 2022).” What caused this increased investment into the border? The answer is fear. The border that has been relatively open for years, with monitoring of the flow of people and products, had gone on more of a lockdown after 9/11 occurred (Eichstaedt,2014).

Throughout this essay we analyzed the different perceptions surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border in regards to perceptions Central Texas Latine individuals developed through their own experiences. We studied a variety of sources to compare the interviewers’ answers to better understand different perspectives on the border. Questions addressed include: Are the perceptions of many backed with evidence and true? What are the reasons for these perceptions if true? Lastly, what can be addressed to best resolve these issues?

Stigmas

Drugs

There are several issues that are often brought up regarding the borderlands, one of which is drug trafficking. According to Howard Campbell, who looks directly at how the drug trafficking business is impacting women on the US side of the border, the Mexican drug business is run based on corrupted officials of both Mexican and U.S. law enforcement. He discusses how many men and women living along the border struggle with acquiring jobs and live in poverty, and the temptation to aid in the drug business can provide them with a little extra cash. Although he finds it important to cover a variety of perspectives being 1) women are coerced by men in their lives to aid in smuggling  2) single mothers left with children to feed feel they must get whatever job they can acquire to get money for their family as well as others including women feel empowered or liberated or 3) they do it willingly (Campbell, 2008).

The NPR article, “How Do Illegal Drugs Cross The U.S.-Mexico Border?” mentions two ways by which drugs are smuggled into the country. Gil Kerlikowske, the director of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, provides legal ports of entry by which drugs are illegally entering the country, hidden from border patrol. Another access point is drug smuggling through the southern ports of the US border. In recent years, the United States Postal Service has become another avenue for drugs to be smuggled into the United States. The pressure of sending packages on time reduces the possibilities of packages being checked. Contrary to popular belief, the southern border is not the only legal port of entry for drug smuggling (NPR,2019).

However, drugs coming out of Mexico are not all to blame. The problem is there wouldn’t be a supply of drugs being smuggled into the United States unless there was a demand. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Americans spend at least $100 billion per year on illegal drugs (Eichstaedt,2014). Certain policies could be implemented to alleviate the demand for drugs in the United States, and there would be no need for drug smuggling. Although the perception is based on truth, it is important to look at all sides of the problem.

 

Border Security

It is important to discuss issues occurring on the Mexican side of the border as well as it has adverse effects on the U.S. side. To gain insight into this, a podcast by This American Life interviewed asylum officers after these new rules were enforced. Asylum cases previously used to allow asylum officers to do a credible fear screening for refugees to see if it would be dangerous to return home, these refugees would be allowed to enter America and await their court date – where an immigration judge would make the final decision in court. The credible screening was very relaxed on rules as many of these refugees fled their homes for valid reasons such as corruption and violence due to the drug cartels. It would allow the refugees to reside in America as they await their court date to keep them safe. However, since the Trump administration, new rules and regulations went in place to prevent people from coming to the U.S.

The new Migrant Protection Protocols are very vague and questionably legal according to the asylum officers in the podcast. Now not everyone gets to be interviewed, and they have to show evidence that they would be harmed if they went back to Mexico – not even their home country. They have to be threatened by gangs or police by specific reasons in U.S. laws like race, religion,or gender. They also have to show the Mexican government will not protect them – with proof. However, a problem brought up in the interviews was the corruption of Mexican police by the drug cartels. Peter Eichstaedt, in the Dangerous Divide, talks in his book about how the Mexican police actually arm the drug cartels, making living in that area dangerous, leading to several fleeing for their lives (Eichstaedt, 2014). These new regulations have decreased the number of people able to seek asylum in the United States, and has led to an increase of people coming into the country illegally. One of the biggest issues occuring now is the influx of unaccompanied minors sent over by their parents for a better life (This American Life, 2019)

Methods

To get a better understanding of these perceptions around the border, we sought out people to interview who identified as part of the Latinx community. Each student interviewed about three to four people who identify as Chicanx, Mexican, Mexican-American or Latinx. In these interviews, a series of questions were discussed on topics such as their perception of the border along with their experiences, how welcomed they feel in their communities, culture, and their hometowns etc. Audio forms of the interviews were recorded and converted into .wav form. The audios were then transcribed and converted into a file that allowed coders in the class to get the general consensus or sentiments that came with these questions. Sentimental analysis refers to the method by which the coders identified negative and positive experiences throughout the audio files. In groups of four, each group chose common words within the interviews taken in order to better differentiate between negative and positive experience. Our group chose family, raised, border, moving, and crossed, meaning that a graph is created when any of these words are detected through code used in Sentimental Analysis.

Findings

Our findings showed that many perceptions of the border are based on truth; however, there are underlying issues that have led to these circumstances. Findings included interviewees discussing the dangers of being on the Mexico border regarding starvation, water, and violence such as kidnapping.

These findings are important as they seek to understand these perceptions around the U.S. Mexico border, and get an understanding from some who may aid in a different perspective. As said before, several of the perceptions were confirmed, but we find it important to understand these further to get a better understanding of why it is happening. The issues along the border can best be addressed by first addressing the public health issues such as food and water security as well as job opportunities to alleviate the challenges faced at the border.

One interview portrayed several negative points as seen through the graph’s own lowest points. By crossing the 0.0 mark, the graph proves negative words detected in this specific interview. Words that prompted such high and low points in our interviews are some of the words we chose to be identifiable. For example, moving and leaving are some of the words that cause a low point in this specific graph.

The high points represent the many times this interviewee mentioned their family. When asked about the cultural traditions they practiced, the interviewee from this graph mentioned family as the foundation of their Mexican culture. When stating his lack of belief for education growing up, the interviewee also talked about his felt duty of working to make money in order to contribute to the family. Throughout the interview, the interviewee kept sharing his perspective on growing up in “a country that allows them to be free”.  He spent most of his life moving to states like Arizona, Indiana and eventually Texas. Overall, he was appreciative of his experience in the U.S. and prefers his way of life in the US over Mexico and he spoke about the freedom he has to practice his religion. The graph reflects the positive outlook of the interviewee.

Contrary to the last interview illustrated by the above graph, this next graph demonstrated significantly more positives than negatives. Granted that throughout the interview, family was mentioned at least twelve times and the graph motions for a similar perspective based on how high above the 0.0 line the graph is and the amount of high points the graph assumes.

When asked about their cultural traditions in the family, this person immediately turns to tamales and other Mexican foods as a response thus connecting food to culture. In addition to cultural foods, he also brings up posadas, traditional re-enactments of Jesus’s mother asking for shelter. This tradition is heavily tied to the catholic religion. When asked about their thoughts on the border, the interviewee stated having a family currently living in Laredo, a city along the U.S. Mexico border. They further spoke about loving their experience visiting and living within Laredo. They mention their family being well-off and gatherings involving carne asada and fun family games. This person’s perceptions on the border were influenced by their affirmative and joyful interactions with the border and the people residing near it, in this case their family. Overall, this speaker never had negative perspectives when discussing family. Passionate and hardworking are additional words they use that further their positive take on family and the border as both are intertwined in their life.

After further investigating our interviews, we found a few common themes between concepts mentioned in the interviews conducted by ourselves. We found that most of the jobs taken up by Latinx in Central Texas or relatives involve some type of manual labor. The speaker from graph one mentions leaving school to immediately focus on making money to help support their family while their father also worked for a steel factory business making steel parts. Manual labor became a popular career path for many of the interviewees themselves and their parents. The second interviewee mentions  manual labor as their grandparents worked in construction and built a lot of houses and traveled around the US to work and earn money, his father worked part time jobs in the U.S., but eventually went back to Mexico to become an engineer. In another interview conducted by one of our group members, the speaker talks about growing up in a ranch and witnessing the manual labor her grandfather and eventually her father took up. They worked in the fields harvesting corn and beans, however her grandfather worked on burning coal. She currently also works as a janitor for a local school.

Another common theme was the incorporation of faith in their lives. Most of the people interviewed mentioned Christianity and practicing Roman Catholicism. The interviewees’ faith gives us a glimpse on the tight ties between religion and culture as further proved in a report published by the Pew Research Center. The report The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States, included a 2013 National Survey that found 55% of the latines who participated identified themselves as catholics, meaning that in 2013 about 19.6 million latines practiced catholicism. As the report also mentions the slow drop of 12% Catholic Latines from a previous poll also conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2010, the 2013 survey suggests the decrease of latines who identify as catholic. Further, we saw how an older generation of interviewees would more passionately answer any questions about religion, taking their time to construct a thoughtful answer, and ultimately also responding with more in-depth details about how and why they practiced. While the younger generation of interviewees occasionally mentioned their belief in God, their responses were more broad and distracted away from God as they connected their religion to other topics like food. Through the posadas mentioned by our second speaker and the forward declaration of some of the speakers claiming their belief in God, we concluded that still a large portion of Latines in the US and in Central Texas actively practice christianity or believe in God.

 

The TF IDF graph below, conducted by our coder, shows the most used words in order from each of the interviews used. Starting from left to right, it shows how much each word was used in comparison to the other commonly used words. To help the reader see this better, they are also color coded, it starts from dark blue, which are the most commonly used words to green and light green as the word is used less frequently. As is clear in the graph, you can see most of the interviewees used the word “Spanish” the most, but not all of them. For instance, the second interviewee used the word “people” more than any other word. As the shade gets lighter the word is used less frequently, as in the second shade is the second most used word and the third is third and so on.The words marked by the red dots are words that we had chosen to expand on for our chosen theme.

We chose “ family”, “border”, “mom/dad”, “raised”, “moving”, “crossed”, “leaving” based on our theme.  As you can see, “family” is the most used word and “border” is the second most used. Since we interviewed about their community and the U.S/ Mexico border, we expected that those words would be frequently used.

Conclusion

Although perceptions are often hinted with truth when it comes to the U.S. Mexico border, we felt it best to look at them from a multi-perspective view. Pablo Vila said it best in his book, Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U. S. -Mexico Border, the border is so much deeper than the perceptions viewed of the area because the border makes up so many actors with different identities, that it is difficult to apply perceptions to a town such as El Paso (Vila, 2004). Although there are issues with drug smuggling, illegal crossing of the border, etc. It is imperative to look at different perspectives of the issue because they do not solely belong to those living on the border. The US-Mexico border is a binational, transborder region of great diversity in environment, economic, social conditions, and governance. There are several significant characteristics of the border region that make the region different from other areas within the United States and Mexico (Lusk,2014). but looking at the policy side of the issue – we find that far more relevant for these perceptions. Backed by our interviewees’ answers as well, these