Passing – Two Publics in a Mexican Border City (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith) - Hardcover

Yeh, Rihan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022651188X ISBN 13: 9780226511887

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2018

Synopsis

Tijuana is the largest of Mexico's northern border cities, and although it has struggled with its share of the US's dramatic escalation of border enforcement, it nonetheless remains deeply connected with California by one of the largest, busiest international ports of entry in the world. In Passing, Rihan Yeh probes this border's role as a shaper of Mexican senses of self and collectivity. Building on extensive fieldwork, Yeh examines a range of ethnographic evidence: public demonstrations, internet forums, popular music, dinner table discussions, police encounters, workplace banter, intensely personal interviews, and more. Through these everyday exchanges, she shows how the promise of passage and the threat of prohibition shape Tijuana's residents' communal sense of "we" and throw into relief longstanding divisions of class and citizenship in Mexico. Out of the nitty-gritty of everyday talk and interaction in Tijuana, Yeh captures the dynamics of desire and denial that permeate public spheres in our age of transnational crossings and fortified borders. Original and accessible, Passing is a timely work in light of current fierce debates over immigration, Latin American citizenship, and the US-Mexico border.

About this title

About the Author

Rihan Yeh is professor at the Centro de Estudios Antropologicos of the Colegio de Michoacan in Mexico.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Passing

Two Publics in a Mexican Border City

By Rihan Yeh

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2018 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-51188-7

Contents

Note to the Reader, 
Methods/Debts, 
Introduction, 
I: Passage/Prohibition. Overview, 
1: The Line, 
2: Inés's "I", 
The Assembly Plant, 
3: The Place Where Anything Can Happen, 
4: "They Say" in the Country Club, 
II: Prohibition/Passage. Overview, 
5: Clase Media and Pueblo before the Law, 
The Visa Interview, 
6: Passes, 
7: The Street Is a River, 
8: The Stone, 
Conclusion, 
Acknowledgments, 
Appendix: Interview Excerpts from Chapter 2, 
References, 
Index, 
Footnotes, 

CHAPTER 1

The Line

The court wants nothing of you. It receives you when you come, and it dismisses you when you go.

FRANZ KAFKA, The Trial

The Line is a busy place. This is where people wait to enter the United States through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the most traveled port, it is said, in the world. At the time of my fieldwork, San Ysidro saw on average 110,000 crossings daily: 110,000 presentations of visas, passports, green cards, IDs; 110,000 mostly muted exchanges, sometimes nothing more than a nod from the officer to pass one through (Blum 2007). Even with twenty-four lanes for vehicular traffic, the wait to cross could take hours and still can today, despite a massive expansion undertaken in 2011. The hustle is stifled but relentless. Cars idle at a standstill, pedestrians shuffle forward, but all attention is on the opportunity that could save or make another moment of waiting. Women in heels run to beat others to the end of the line. Behind the wheel, with her big glasses and curly gray hair, Inés signals to the young man in the next lane over, asking if he'll let her merge in before him. His eyes meet hers, expressionless; the slightest shift of his head tells her no. A moment later he is not quick enough to close the gap when the car ahead of him rolls forward, and Inés noses in anyway.

The hustle of the crossers is stifled, but that of the hawkers is not. All sorts of people come and go, and all sorts of people try to make money off them. The teeming crowd, the sheer range of types rubbing shoulders, immediately attracts ethnographic attention: hawkers of blankets and popsicles and newspapers and kitsch, indigenous beggars in their traditional shawls, security guards armed with Mace ("Keep walking, please"), middlemen for dentists and doctors, real estate salesmen, burrito vendors, criers for last-stop liquor shops, and young fellows in smocks darting through traffic to deliver mochaccinos. These characters do their best to divert the attention of the crossers facing north, shuffling or edging their cars forward foot by foot, a more or less orderly crowd of potential consumers. Businesspeople in suits, homeless people with their towering shopping carts, housewives, gangsters, schoolchildren, construction workers, college kids, church groups, competition bikers, families on holiday — the list of crossers runs on as endlessly as the line itself. Even as they edge their way forward, keeping tabs on each other out of the corners of their eyes, they are themselves the spectacle of the Line — as, for instance, on postcards (see figures 1.1 and 1.2), in radio and Internet updates on wait times, or on the Line's own television channel, where surveillance-style takes of crossers are continuously broadcast.

If the crossers at the Line form a public in passage, however, they do so in the first instance in relation to the US state. In Tijuana, legal access to the United States ratifies socioeconomic status within Mexico; the US state becomes the authoritative source in which to anchor social value. This process begins, perhaps, in such simple address as that of the notices Customs and Border Protection issues to "the traveling public." As described above, this public would seem to include a range of social types too various to classify. In fact, however, its members belong to a single basic category. They are the documented: US citizens, permanent residents, or holders of other visas. They are those who have already undergone some prior process of obtaining recognition from the US state. Members of all categories reside on both sides of the border, and they cross in an immense variety of patterns, for an immense variety of reasons. In all their variety, though, they are categorically distinct from their "other" — the undocumented. When the undocumented appear at the Line, it can only be with a certain stigma. They are picked out of the crowd, interrogated, held, and marked, all in front of and as if on view for the "traveling public."

Approaching the booths for pedestrian crossing, the single line splits into several. All eyes are intent on the routine of processing, gauging which officer is moving crossers through the quickest, watching for any peculiarities or setbacks. All eyes catch the flash of the bright orange slip referring a crosser to secondary inspection; all eyes follow the officer as he or she leaves the line unattended to escort the suspect back to the counter where the preliminary grilling takes place. This area is in full view, a backdrop to the officers' booths as crossers wait to show their papers and, with luck, answer just a question or two (Where are you going? What are you bringing with you from Mexico?). As they hurry past, they might hear snippets of the interrogation: "Me no believe you!" exclaims an officer in broken Spanish, with all the bluster of amateur theatricals. Failing this preliminary interrogation, the undocumented are gathered and displayed even more conspicuously for what they are: failed crossers caught trying to pass. It is not uncommon to see lines of twenty or so of them being led back into Mexico, through those waiting to cross north. They are chained together, handcuffed, and they carry behind their backs little plastic bags filled with their belongings. People surreptitiously sneak glances or look away, an uncomfortable audience. Those in cars and buses, more concealed, may stare. One wonders which of them will join the show.

* * *

This chapter consists, at one level, of a fairly elementary exercise. It traces the articulation of "we" through a set of examples involving different communicative genres and different scenes of public sociality. In each, it shows how collective subjectivities situate themselves in relation to the Line and the difference it stages between documented and undocumented passage: a difference at the root of differentiated citizenship (Holston 2008) within Tijuana, between people who are all formally Mexican citizens. Some of these articulations of collective subjectivity are more explicit, some more deeply ensconced in the basic presuppositions of interaction; some are also sure of themselves as others are not. "We" circulates through an uneven terrain of concrete, institutionally shaped contexts to which social actors have differential access and in which they have different parts to play. As more marginal, unformed "we"s move into arenas not their own, their footing slips. For the trespass of introducing an alternate "we," marginal subjects may face literal violence — or, anticipating sanction, they may flail for some more conciliatory voicing. In contrast, the stronger "we"s, secure in their own domain, echo into each other across the contexts and genres central to the regulation of public life in Tijuana. They form Tijuana's dominant public.

This chapter focuses on one unprecedented day when these opposed "we"s crystallized with special clarity: May 1, 2006, when local involvement in the movement for immigrants' rights in the United States briefly succeeded in shutting down the port of entry. On this day, the Line's usual mess of colorful activity evaporated. Pedestrian crossers straggled through, and the lanes of traffic stood empty, leaving room for the staging of a confrontation between documented and undocumented Tijuana. While revealing the exclusion of the undocumented in both the United States and Mexico, this confrontation also revealed the predicament of documented Tijuana vis-à-vis the US state. This predicament, as I will discuss at the end of the chapter, is that of any subject who stands — like K in The Trial (to whom the words of this chapter's epigraph were spoken) — before a Law that must be understood finally as a mystified absence, a fetish object that, all too terribly, would simply dismiss one and vanish should one have the temerity to turn away from it. When documented and undocumented face each other as collective subjects here, they do so within the empty structure of the Law, the infinite deferral of encounter with authority, of which the Line is such a fitting mise-enscène.

Let me begin, though, with some basics. The most common document for border crossing is the "laser visa," and at the core of the dominant tijuanense public lies the idealized figure of the upstanding, visaholding Mexican citizen. This figure has a long history. Since 1918, what would become the US-issued Border Crossing Card has functioned in one form or another as a sort of special pass for Mexican border residents (Wilson 1918). In 1998, the card was merged with the regular tourist visa for all Mexicans, and the laser visa was born. At the border, the visa is deeply imbued with all the significance of local belonging, all the echoes of northern, border-dwelling, Baja Californian, tijuanense identity and pride. It is good for ten years, allows travel within twenty-five miles of the border (more in Arizona and New Mexico), and, crucially, does not permit employment in the United States. By 2006, when I was doing my fieldwork, over 8.5 million Mexican citizens held one, more than 8 percent of the national population, and they were being granted at the rate of about 700,000 more per year. In Tijuana, the percentage of visa holders is much, much higher. Consular statistics imply that, at that time, fully a third of residents of the Baja California peninsula held visas, and, within the peninsula, these residents are undoubtedly clustered near the border, above all in Tijuana, which is not just where a third of the peninsula's population lives, but also where the US consulate is located, making the application process immensely more accessible. Even these grossly inadequate statistics make it easier to understand why the myth that it is easy for someone from Tijuana to get a visa is so widespread. The visa, and membership in the "traveling public," is virtually a requisite for local belonging. Not just that — having or not having legal access to the United States provides one of the most fundamental idioms of social distinction. Consumption, education, and all the regular signs of status revolve around it. As the marker of distinction and belonging, though, the visa smuggles its own premises into Tijuana's system of social recognition: fundamentally liberal premises of territorial sovereignty and citizenship and a personal relationship with the United States that is also a permanent renunciation of relation, for to achieve this status, one must prove one does not want to emigrate there. As a supplement authorizing proper citizenship in Tijuana, the visa is vital for understanding how the May 1 demonstration played out.

In the United States, May 1 was planned as a general strike culminating a months-long series of demonstrations hailed as "migrants' mass entrance into the U.S. public sphere" (Fox 2006:1). Some called these demonstrations the largest mass mobilization in US history. Though the movement did not reverse immigration policy, its effects, as proof of a capacity for large-scale organization by those categorically denied the right to political participation, were immeasurable. The press stuck a lasting tag on that spring: it was the awakening of a "sleeping giant." Indeed, the occupation of public spaces across the country seemed the indication par excellence that the undocumented had come into their own as a collective political subject.

In Mexico, May 1 was planned as a boycott; it received a great deal of press and was taken up as a national affair, to the point that, in coverage of the demonstrations in the United States, the participation of immigrants from other countries was treated as a curiosity. Many calls for support were issued — all restricted to the notion that on May 1 one should not buy products from the United States — and celebrity adherences to the boycott were well publicized. In Tijuana, enthusiasm for the boycott ran high, and sentiments of allegiance to fellow Mexicans in the United States were strong. Ultimately, however, for many the impulse to join their expressions to the migrants' was hampered by a sense of social distinctions buttressed precisely by the US legal system that the May 1 strike sought to dispute. The political demands of the movement came into conflict with a basic acceptance of the border and the distinctions it draws between legal and illegal, documented and undocumented passage and populations.

The examples that follow show the differentiated system of genres through which the predicament of documented Tijuana (its contentious and ambivalent relation both to the United States and to the undocumented) emerges as the unstable basis on which it must articulate itself as a collective subject. The "we" of the documented, however, is not the only one that will make its appearance over the course of these pages. Whether in face-to-face interaction, in the production and circulation of texts, or simply in "doing line" (haciendo línea), two Tijuanas — two Mexicos, really — are evoked and re-created. In them, the split between citizen and "illegal alien" in the United States spills across the border, reconfiguring and intensifying social divisions within Tijuana.

The Flyer

I found the following flyer stapled to a telephone post in an older, working-class neighborhood:

El Gran Paro Americano 2006 The Great American Boycott 2006 Un día sin latinos A day without latins

It happens that on May 1 in the US the movie A day without Mexicans is going to be made reality, this means that no Latino will work on that day in the US and they have asked their compatriots for us not to buy anything American that day.

[They ask] this with the objective that they be recognized our right to work, to the education of our children and to medical services in that country.

What we're asking is that on May 1 nothing be bought in the country nor anything consumed in American chains, this means no Dunkin' Donuts, McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Sears, Krispy Kreme, Walmart, Costco, Office Depot, Home Depot and others. ... of the interminable list of American companies in Mexico.

I know it's an effort for everyone but it's the least we can do for those folks who are practically supporting our country with the remittances I hope you can make this little one-day effort (May 1).

A new show of force to put between the sword and the wall conservative legislators who still combat immigration reform.

THIS MAY 1 DON'T WORK, DON'T GO TO SCHOOL, DON'T PUT GASOLINE [in your car], DON'T BUY,DON'T SELL!! LET'S HIGHLIGHT HOW IMPORTANT WE MEXICANS ARE TO THE UNITED S TATES!!!

The text ends with a rousing call, a rhythmic series of exhortations in which the author for the first time addresses the reader directly as "you": "DON'T WORK, DON'T GO TO SCHOOL, DON'T PUT GASOLINE [in your car], DON'T BUY,DON'T SELL!!" It is a comprehensive call to all interested parties to participate in the boycott, and it attempts to interpellate the reader directly by using the familiar form of the second person singular, tú, expressed in the ending of each verb in the series. Immediately, in the next sentence, the text passes from singular to plural, still in the imperative mood, incorporating author and reader in the same social group: "WE MEXICANS." Whoever "you" might be, you must be part of this national "we," whose interests and actions span borders. The text convokes the boycott by invoking this cross-border national "we" and attempting to draw the reader into it. This articulation of "we" is preliminary. It looks to the future. It wants to pass into the mouth of the reader; it wants him or her to articulate it him or herself, on May 1, when "our" voice will resound before its true interlocutor, the society and government of the United States of America. Here, "we" refers reflexively to its own articulation in order to put itself into motion, to communicate its momentum, to continue its trajectory, to move the reader to take up "we" and voice it anew on the first of May.

For Greg Urban (2001), the articulation of "we" is essential for the formation of a modern imagined community. The national "we," he says, must be so amply disseminated as to be completely presupposable. Urban traces the use of "we" in one of the United States' foundational texts, the Declaration of Independence, to show how it emerges in counterpoint with the "they" of the British. In comparison, the flyer for the Great American Boycott achieves no such neat contrast between first and third persons. The final incorporation of "you" the reader into "we Mexicans" is a weak gesture after the vacillations that lead up to it. This "we" is vulnerable; its articulation is not conclusive. It reveals the doubts and hesitations that trouble the social group it tries to invoke.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022651188X
• ISBN 13: 9780226511887
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304