|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
villages/hispanic/ AP Headlines Update Page
 |
Grand jury indicts 7 in NY immigrant killing |
|
|
Juanes sweeps Latin Grammys with 5 wins |
|
|
Hispanic
students juggle lives with school |
|
|
Spain turns to Latinos to fill military ranks |
|
|
Hispanic leaders endorse Richardson for cabinet |
villages/hispanic/ AP Headlines Update Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
New opportunities section added
to our Career Center
New QuickSearches
by location and industry, salary tools, more at the
Career Center
|
|
|
Minutemen Mobilize Whites Left Behind by Globalization
By Roberto Lovato, HispanicVista
Cross the white picket fence of the Minutemen offices in Tombstone,
Ariz. and you're immediately aware that the federal government
denied the local media mogul his constitutional right to bear arms.
And, the sign on the front door adds, “ Minutemen founder Chris
Simcox trains his infrared scope on the border. BEWARE of his armed
bodyguard who is still exercising his second amendment rights.”
"What can I do for you?" asks the wiry, nervous Chris Simcox with a
boyish smile, the leader and founder of the Minutemen volunteer
border patrol I visited late last summer. When my local guides told
him we were there to ask him about his Minuteman work, he seemed
suddenly to move to the beat of media personality mode. Dressed in
jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap, he swaggers into the tour of
the home of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, one of the main papers in this
former mining town. The Tumbleweed also doubled as the command
center of a movement whose members trace their gun-wielding brand of
frontier justice to Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and other heroes of the
OK Corral, a movement that has garnered media attention far beyond
the 1,200 person circulation (Tombstone's population is 1,504) of
California-born Simcox's successful newspaper.
He begins the walk-through by pointing to several snapshots on the
wall, photos of Latino immigrants tied up and looking like nervous
chickens I've seen in crowded, colorful markets they left in the
poorer, war-ridden parts of Mexico and Central America.
"Those are pictures of some of the illegals we caught and handed
over to immigration," says Simcox, as if proudly displaying the deer
heads adorning more than a few of the homes in the gun and
Harley-heavy Tombstone that calls itself "The Town Too Tough to
Die."
Some civil rights organizations report that the Minutemen have
pistol-whipped and, perhaps, even shot, migrants they encounter.
Two inverted flags — one Mexican, one U.S. — hang on the white wall
opposite the pictures. "That's an international distress signal,”
says Simcox. “It's about two governments that aren't doing anything
about an urgent problem. So we are," he adds.
Before I can process the surprisingly global perspective behind
Simcox's statement, he yanks me back down to the reality of life 25
miles from the border. "Did you hear about the accident this
morning?" Simcox asks me, referring to an 11-car pileup in which six
people were killed (James Lee, 74, and Emilia Lee, 71, of Huachuca
City and four undocumented immigrants who remain nameless in local
media reports with headlines like "Illegals-Smugglers Crash Kills
6"). "It was serious this time: real citizens died," he said.
My encounter with Simcox doesn't fit very well with the rather
simplistic explanations of the Minutemen as a bunch of new,
gun-slinging racists. Rather, my experience reflects the need to use
a more sophisticated lens than what has passed for critique among
immigrant rights activists and many Latino organizations.
Some of the overlooked characteristics of the Minutemen include:
global weltanschauung, a nuanced media sensibility, and a dangerous
political sense that's managed to spread sentiments that serve the
interests of elites who benefit from the racial and class conflicts
that the Minutemen have made an industry of.
The Minutemen are far from being the fringe white men with guns of
much media lore. More than an armed movement, Simcox and his cohorts
have converted themselves into a nimble, media savvy organization
for whom the guns are props. Their main goal is not to "protect" the
physical borders of the United States: their primary political
objectives have more to do with protecting the borders of white
privilege and the notions of citizenship that are being transcended
by a global society.
Their tactics also serve the interests of elites like George W. Bush
and military industrialists as they wrap themselves with, and rally
much poorer people around, the flag of extreme nationalism.
That the Minuteman organization is housed out of a newspaper in a
tourist town whose primary theatre involves a weekly reenactment of
the gunfight at OK Corral is no simple coincidence.
The Minutemen's initial rhetoric of "civilization" versus the
"savage" has given way to the more moderated rhetoric of "citizen"
("Concerned Citizens Leading the Effort to Secure our Borders")
versus "terrorist" that has been the main political currency of the
Bush administration. In line with this switch, Simcox and his
organization have tried to diversify the overwhelmingly white
Minutemen to include Latino spokespeople.
Beyond its rants, the official Minuteman website now includes
opportunistic framing of their work. A recent headline about their
Arizona activities reads, "Minutemen Civil Defense Corps starts
Secure Our Borders operation early to aid Border Patrol helping with
Katrina relief." Below the headline is a banner asking web surfers
to donate to efforts to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Their savvy use of the media, combined with the strategic use of
public events, makes the Minutemen more effective than previous
racist organizations. At the same time, their mix of mainstream and
old school, anti-immigrant sentiments makes their message palatable
to an audience (especially aging white males) that is ravaged by
economic and political globalization. Unlike the previous generation
of white supremacists who eschewed and even attacked the federal
government, the Minuteman strategy complements the anti-immigrant
work of local, state and national politicians like California
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo
(R-CO), who regularly praises them as "heroes."
Prior to the advent of the now dominant tourist economy in
Tombstone, the livelihood here was based on silver mining, farming
and the military. Such occupations as explorer, rancher and soldier
informed the sense of frontier manhood that the current low-paying
jobs in the region don't. While their names harkens to simpler,
richer, whiter days in Tombstone, the region's biggest employers —
Adobe Lodge, Best Western Lookout Lodge, William Brown Holster and
Old Tombstone Historical Tours — hardly provide the economic muscle
that underwrote the frontier days recalled by the Minuteman
nostalgia.
Wearin' guns and cowboy outfits for a living is real different from
bein' a "real cowboy." The Minutemen provide an opportunity for
some, mostly aging white men, to root their sense of themselves in
the storied, violent traditions celebrated in the movies.
Like blacks, Indians and Mexicans of the frontier days, immigrants —
"illegals," "gangsters," rumored (but still unseen) Latino
"terrorists" and other threats conjured by the imaginary of white
fear — provide the necessary contrast to the white citizen who is
doing his part to defend the "values," "way of life" and
"civilization" that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is feverishly
recruiting the children of Latino immigrants to defend.
In a white populace devastated by the decimation of its cities,
towns and job base, the workings of the Minutemen provide victims of
globalization an opportunity to feel they're "doing something."
Seen from this perspective, the white picket fences and white walls
of the Tombstone Tumbleweed provide an appropriate symbol of the
elite, global interests that gate the physical and mental borders of
a populace in the throes of perpetual war.
Rather than explain the labyrinth of this most complex of political
and economic moments, elites stand silent while the shock troops of
white fear focus political and cultural debate around more
simplistic "us versus them," "good versus bad" dichotomies that
harken back to the good ole days that never really existed.
Simcox's "real citizens" are wearing costumes of actors in an old,
even ancient story of domination and plunder at the expense of the
barbarian Other.
This article originally appeared in The Public Eye Magazine.
Other Recent Readings of Interest
•Immigrants’ Rights Groups Say Minutemen Failed to Curb Illegal
Immigration
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=29eda2fe494075e510d03bcf18c0a2d7
•Incidental Tourists: Bordertown youth feel Minutemen will make no
difference in California
http://sprawlmagazine.com/articles/7-11-05border.html
•Watching the Border Watchers: What the Minutemen Look Like From the
Streets of Oaxaca
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=e2ad04c6d2eb189f930db6d6aadb3002
•Latino Media, Politicians React to Governor's Praise of 'Minutemen'
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=f2f87cb2064080e15f0af3af8b475b3e
|
