What is a “border”?

April 27, 2010

by Sam Rocha

In the immigration debate, platitudes rule the day on all sides. The result is that the discussion is very hard (for me) to understand. Many of the things in the discussion are taken to be magical and are held unaccountable to basic questioning.

One of these things is this thing called “border.” It may seen too simple, but until “border” is demystified and made accountable to simple intuitions, I suspect that we literally do not know what it is we are talking about.

To begin with, a border is something like a shape in relation to color. It demarcates where one thing ends and another begins. In this sense, borders are everywhere. A border begins as a simple fact of perception.

In cartography, borders begin in the same way. Water and land create what we might call natural borders. It is no surprise, then, that geopolitics uses these normal ways of thinking about borders to make a more ambitious distinction: a line that demarcates between nations and citizens.

Here we begin to run into problems. Basic perception and even the evolving demarcations between water and land or mountain ranges and forests, are not arbitrary in the political sense. They literally map onto the physical world.

The borders of geopolitics, however, are usually the results of war or treaties written to avoid or end war. Unlike the more natural borders we might think of, geopolitical borders are not only exceptional to the physical world, they are also intended for much broader purposes.

When a nation declares a border, that line is to be protected from that which exists right beyond the border. Dr. Seuss does a nice job of depicting this in the absurd war between the “butter-side-uppers” and the “butter-side-downers.”

A geopolitical border, then, is a way to demarcate between the land and people of a nation. This demarcation declares one side “this” and the other side “that.”

In many ways, this demarcation seems as natural as perception or geography. After all, even an ocean declares one land mass “this” and the other one across from it, “that.” Naturally, those who find themselves on the “this” side of the ocean feel a certain belonging to their side in a way that they do not feel to the other side.

I don’t think that there is anything wrong per se with these feelings and the natural borders that create them. But when geopolitics are added-on to natural geography, I think we find ourselves in very dangerous territory.

Here are two dangers of geopolitical borders (GB) and there corresponding insight:

1a). A GB is the product of history and, depending on that history, it may be a blessing to human relations or it may be an ugly scar of power and domination.

1b). Since a GB is attached to a particular history, then, there were times in the past when the GB did not exist. In other words, a GB is not a natural part of things like shape in relation to color. Even our continents were once undivided, geologists tell us.

2a). A GB has been, is already, and likely will continue to be the cause of tremendous violence and suffering.

2b). Insofar as the violence and suffering caused by a GB is unjustified a GB can be a form of injustice.

What these remarks might help us to think about is this: a “border” is not a good reason to dismiss or accept anything outright. A geopolitical border is especially tricky and we should be cautious about taking it as an appeal to authority—legal, moral, or otherwise.

In the end, I think that if we took a less magical and superstitious look at borders we would see the actual people that are demarcated and ask ourselves whether these demarcations are just or not.

Insofar as they are, they are useful and, perhaps, justified. Insofar as they are not, they are not useful and, perhaps, unjustifiable.

My grandparents were born on neighboring ranches in South Texas. Their families had seen three nations come and go over the 1800′s—Mexico, The Republic of Texas, and the U.S.A. During their earlier lives, they never wondered about nationality. They spoke Spanish and worked with horses and cattle. It wasn’t until the WWII draft that my Abuelito and his brothers realized that they were U.S. citizens.

For the rest of their lives they lived in South Texas and traveled as migrant workers. They never learned English well. My Abuelo never spoke English at all. (But if you told him to go back to where he “came from” he would have gone further north, not south.)

They welcomed everyone into their home and family. This included many undocumented people from Mexico.

For them, the issue of the border was a practical one, not a mystical one. The grand issues of geopolitics never became a “border” to demarcate their ability to see their Gospel duty to love their neighbor—especially the widow, the alien, and the orphan.

These were not platitudes for them. They visited the San Juan Nursing home until they were homebound; they fed and housed immigrants in their own house and their small one-room “casita;” and they adopted my Dad and his brother, my Tio Juan, as their sons.

To them the question “What is a ‘border’” would have been silly. They knew what it was and acted accordingly.

My grandparents are wiser than most of us. For us—myself first and foremost—we need to remember what a “border” really is before we can act accordingly.