Timothy J. Dunn has brought a vital theme to the table of scholarly discussion; namely, the defensive configurations and resources by which the United States deals with the large northward flow of Mexico-to-U.S. immigration. The topic embraces pioneer Herbert Eugene Bolton’s inquiries on the ethnic structure of the southwestern United States in a contemporary context. Is the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848 really over? How will multicultural society function in the United States? Is NAFTA symbol or substance of the region’s North Americanization process? And what, truly, is the NAFTA process? These and other questions emerge from Dunn’s smoothly written narrative.
Dunn lays out his cognitive presentation in five sections: his two operant paradigms; the U.S. mechanisms for controlling the Mexican border between 1978 and 1988; these same processes during the period 1989-92; the antidrug war in the southwestern United States between 1981 and 1992; and a short section with conclusions. A 12-page section on theoretical and methodological considerations appears as an index and should be read with the first section to enhance the reader’s understanding.
Historically, the author perceives the mejicano population of the U.S. southwestern sunbelt as a forcibly suppressed minority that is economically useful but culturally and politically feared. The U.S. Army doctrine of low-intensity conflict, articulated in the 1980s as a guideline for visualizing warfare on a three-level scale, he perceives as a comprehensive national strategy for military domination of the latino and other non-Caucasian peoples of Latin America south to the Panama Canal.
The second section contains an excellent description of the increased police and paramilitary resources brought to bear on the flow of illegal immigration during the Carter and Reagan administrations. The third section continues this discussion for the Bush years and describes little-known linkages between federal military and police assets, National Guard and other state security assets, and the security systems of municipal and county law enforcement departments. The fourth section surveys the antidrug campaign, linking it to the total picture of population control measures against the latino populace. The final section brings all the previous evidence into the contemporary NAFTA environment, presenting that movement in regional trade treaties as another system by which to control the latino worker for the benefit of the U.S. economy.
Dunn’s description of the murky line between police and military efforts in massive border control strategies is an important contribution to scholarship. The U.S. Army abandoned the low-intensity conflict strategy as this book was being printed; that strategy never had enthusiastic support or universal application when it was in vogue. But challenging any military-based solution to illegal border migration is an appropriate task for scholars. Clearly, transcendental issues of economic justice and human rights must speak loudly in any lasting solution to the U.S.-Mexican border problem. Dunn stresses these issues forcefully but does not include the sovereignty question. That leaves the reader with the conclusion that present policy is wrong but that no solution exists save the cancellation of U.S. sovereignty over the right of national citizenship. Dunn also shows little patience with the notion that mass illegal migration produces its own crime problems, illegal drugs being just one of these, on both sides of any long border.
Other volumes in Latin American studies have challenged the militarization of the Caribbean, the arming of Central America, the heightening of golpismo as a by-product of military assistance training programs, and the militarization of the drug war in the Andes. The present book belongs to this literary genre and now brings control measures for the U.S. border with Mexico to the discussion. This volume would have made a stronger contribution if the author had resisted the temptation to sermonize repeatedly, and with little factual evidence, that militarization of the southwestern United States is part of an unperceived master plan to dominate the latino population. The topic is already emotional, and it deserves scholarly objectivity to raise the level of the discussion.
