Line in the Sand: A history of the US-Mexico Border.
Rachel St John’s Line in the Sand – A History of the Western US-Mexico border begins in the early 19th century, whereby two adolescent nations attempt to demarcate their national boundary with each other. And, up until her recollections of the great depression of 1930, and the apparent effects it had on the border, St John is vigilant, fastidious and stoic throughout; creating an overall rich and fascinating history of the border itself, the surrounding borderlands and the people that constitute its meaning. However, from this point (1930) onward, Line in the Sand tragically falls short of what it ‘says on the tin’. What we are left with is a festering frustration regarding almost 80 years’ worth of history that gets leap-frogged to bring us to the present. And, when I say ‘present’, I mean up to 2011. The book should be aptly renamed ‘Line in the Sand - A History of the Western US-Mexico Border (Until 1930).’
For example, the proliferation of technology and drug smuggling and the events of September 11th, 2001, which changed the very nature and semantics of the ‘border’ to all Americans, are almost entirely overlooked. The pedantry with which she recalls events before 1930 is inconsistent with her often rushed and muddled attempts to bring us up to date. Her failure to recall and speculate the significance of such events disconnects her with contemporary audiences and formulates a glaringly obvious ‘watershed’ moment within the text; after which, her readers feel as if they have been ‘led on’ to an underwhelming and abrupt end.
This being said, Rachel St John is brilliant in the way she brings the border to life. Her meticulous research, factual reinforcement and the auspicious use of ethnographic examples personify her history of the Western US-Mexico border creating a truly colorful and three-dimensional narrative.
Throughout the book, in every chapter, St John uses the personal histories of individuals to anthropomorphize the socio-political significance of the border. Through her persistent storytelling she is able to “reflect the geographical expression of individual and social identities” at the border (Cosgrove, D. 2002. P.3). For example, her selection of the rape and subsequent suicides of the Peteet family on the 30th January 1926 was particularly powerful in reflecting the genuine fear that many people felt about the Mexicans and what they felt was an “assault American family values” (pp.154).
Ethnographies, such as the very sad case of the Peteet family, can evoke certain sympathies, and sometimes foster fractious opinion. Aware of this, St John is excellent when it comes to presenting “a truly transnational history of the US-Mexico land border” (Ngai, M. 2011). In fact, St John is exemplary in maintaining a privation of bias throughout. Positionality is so important when translating a multinational history. St John was, at the time of writing, an associate professor of history at Harvard University. She is American, and yet posits opposing views next to each other in the text and gives equal weight tothem both. This contributes to an air of impartiality throughout her work.
Similarly, St John doesn’t focus solely on the afflicted from Mexico and the United States. Rather, she alludes to the afflictions of all migrants alike. For example, the experiences of both the Chinese, as well as eastern European migrants are documented to an almost chiasmic effect with their Mexican and American counterparts. She is particularly sensitive in delineating the origins of racial tensions and stereotyping as well as the many other forms of structural violence that reinforced these views. Although the mass-migration of cheaper, Mexican laborers into the US in the 1910’s threatened the employment of western Americans, she writes collaterally: “Mexican immigrants... became incorporated into this racial hierarchy, but also reinforced American characterisations of Mexican’s as poor, uneducated, unsanitary and racially inferior.” (pp.182).
Not only does St John present a wonderfully personal depiction of the border; she is concise, complex and compelling when describing the conceptual nature and theory of the border itself. Throughout Line in the Sand, the meaning and significance of the US-Mexico Border are appropriated with an inherent understanding of the “kinopolitical” forces at hand; specifically of the ‘Fence’ and the ‘Wall’. Although there is no escribed link to the work of Thomas Nail, St John draws heavily on his theories about the “regimes of social force” (Nail, T. 2016). For example, she writes “...in the absence of a permanent physical barrier marking the line, armed soldiers performed the border.” (pp.136) Similarly, Nail, in his chapter The Wall, discusses the role of soldiers at the border, arguing that they are a “centrifugal social force – organized, assembled and directed outward from a centralized power” (pp.68). St John is using the US-Mexico Border as an example of how borders not only represent the territorial extent of centralized power but also, their role as manifestations of state power and sovereignty.
Whilst there is so much positivity to take from St John's book, I cannot help but feel that Line in the Sand suffers from its prolusion to the recent events and attitudes of the president, Donald Trump. The current discourse surrounding the construction of a ‘Wall’ and the racist justifications for its construction is extremely similar to the discourse used during American prohibition. Calls for the construction of a fence stretching the length of the border in the early 20th century was, similarly, at the tip of congress’s tongue, but in a way that was derogatory and xenophobic to those who belonged outside of the US. The same patterns emerged during Trump’s ‘Wall’ campaign: “When Mexico sends its people ... they're sending people that have lots of problems... They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists...” (CBS News, 2015).
In the 1920s, politicians such as Texas Democrat John C. Box vilified Mexican immigrants to promote the construction of fences along the border. St John summarises the anxieties of politicians like Box: arguing that they feared that“Mexican immigrants would undermine and degrade the racial purity of white America” (pp.139). Here, St John is referring to the Mexican ‘vice’ industry, which allowed for Americans to indulge in almost all of the promiscuous behaviours that the prohibition banned. An industry characterized by drugs, alcohol, and prostitution was legal in Mexican border towns and was said to a malignant and infectious trait of Mexican immigrants coming into the US. In effect, they were seen as a “grave menace to the health and wellbeing of American Communities” (pp.155). Whilst St John recalls this event with great detail, she is haunted by the apparition of events happening today. Trump’s ‘Wall’ is a physical upgrade of the fence, yet all the markers of an overtly xenophobic, and racist protectionist policy are the same.
By no fault of her own, Line in the Sand misses out on many-a juicy parallel with the modern era. If the book could talk it might share the begrudging feelings of the eponymous Richard III in Shakespeare’s classic: “...Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time” (Shakespeare, W. n.d.).
