The personal, financial, and environmental costs of a border wall in Big Bend, locals revive opposition after Trump's announcement of a refinery in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley fights back after ICE shooting and raids, plus The Border Chronicle is seeking new paid subscribers!
“We love Big Bend the way it is. It does not need to change. We do not feel any danger, and we don’t want it to look like other places. And nothing makes a person who lives out here more mad than the idea of looking at a damn fence.”
Environmental advocates and residents say the long-proposed refinery threatens air quality and public health in a region already ringed by heavy industry.
Tohono O’odham Mike Wilson’s story gives us a compelling, personal, and geopolitical glimpse into the borderlands across a history of militarization, resistance, and transformation.
Hello, cherished readers. In case you missed it, it’s The Border Chronicle’s third anniversary! On Tuesday, we sent out this post celebrating just that. To make this a sustainable endeavor, we need more paid subscribers. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, please consider doing so. We depend on you!
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How does one go from a U.S. Special Forces Green Beret in El Salvador to doing humanitarian aid work on the border? This is where Tohono O’odham Mike Wilson begins this podcast conversation, with a profound and personal story of transformation. It happened at the height of the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in 1989, when Wilson accepted an invitation to eat dinner at a family’s house in Sonsonate, where he was stationed. At first Wilson took this as part of a military tactic to win the hearts and minds of the local population. But little did he know that it was his heart and mind that would be changed.
In this conversation, Wilson is joined by University of Washington political scientist José Antonio Lucero, a native of El Paso and chair of the UW’s Comparative History of Ideas Department. Lucero is the coauthor of their compelling and extraordinary new book What Side Are You On? A Tohono O’odham Life Across Borders. We conduct this audio interview in the same style of the book, with Wilson talking about his life story and the portrait it paints of the borderlands, and Lucero framing it in a broader geopolitical and historical context.
There is much to cover, since Wilson’s story starts with growing up indigenous in the segregated mining town of Ajo, Arizona in the mid-20th century, to the grave consequences of U.S. foreign policy in Central America in the 1980s, to the militarization of the border in the 1990s and 2000s, and finally to the humanitarian aid work that he still does to this day. We talk about all this, with the added bonus of hearing their thoughts on the U.S. elections and what it means for the borderlands.
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“We love Big Bend the way it is. It does not need to change. We do not feel any danger, and we don’t want it to look like other places. And nothing makes a person who lives out here more mad than the idea of looking at a damn fence.”
ICE raids and detentions, together with a high-profile killing, have led Rio Grand Valley residents to mobilize—including even some local Republicans.
Walking from a blasted mountain top--a planned site for new border wall construction--to a makeshift military camp along the border in a remote part of southern Arizona led to a tense yet revelatory moment.
"I understand what people are going through because I lived it myself."
Independent news, culture and context from the U.S.-Mexico border.
