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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/31/border-wall-rio-grande-valley/">https://theintercept.com/2019/03/31/border-wall-rio-grande-valley/</a></font>
<h2 class="Post-feature-subtitle" data-reactid="135"><a
class="Post-title-link"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/31/border-wall-rio-grande-valley/"
data-reactid="136">How Trump’s Border Wall Perpetuates the
Legacy of Colonialism on the Rio Grande</a></h2>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Aaron Miguel Cantú - March
31, 2019</div>
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<blockquote>
<p><b>Starting in the late 19th century, Mexicans who
had inherited property through Spanish land grants
saw their acreage claims dwindle as they were
divided among descendants. Ranchers were
dispossessed of their lands by white brokers
unwilling to lend them capital, as well as through
theft and fraud. Lynch mobs, police, and Texas
Rangers later maintained wealth and property lines </b><b><a
href="https://thenewinquiry.com/the-chaparral-insurgents-of-south-texas/">through
brutal violence</a></b><b>. A racialized
underclass of fieldworkers, </b><b><a
href="https://www.texasobserver.org/the-making-of-the-magic-valley/">enlarged
by refugees</a></b><b> fleeing the Mexican
Revolution, became the underpinning of an
Anglo-dominated agricultural economy.</b></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Congress has already sent nearly $3 billion to Trump
for a border barrier, including up to 37 miles in
Hidalgo and Starr counties. Almost half of that, $1.34
billion, was allocated for the Rio Grande Valley, the
compromise outcome of the longest government shutdown in
history. Trump then declared a national emergency in
February, giving him the power to direct <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-wall-exclusive/exclusive-in-budget-trump-to-ask-congress-for-86-billion-for-border-wall-idUSKBN1QR0CW">$6.1
billion more</a> from other federal agencies for the
wall (though<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/politics/national-emergency-lawsuits-trump.html">
over a dozen state</a> attorneys general are
challenging the executive order in court). In March, the
government submitted notices of condemnation for
hundreds of mostly Hispanic landowners in the valley
whose property it wants for the wall.</p>
<p>Earlier in the evening, Basaldú and I sat with two
other Valleyites downhill from the earthen levee where
the border wall is slated for construction. A Border
Patrol agent slowly cruised by, glaring down at us.
Under <a
href="https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/border-wall-prototype-designs">CBP’s
plan</a>, the campsite and the cemetery would be
stranded in a no man’s land behind the wall, and would
be damaged by an enforcement zone resembling a permanent
military outpost with a utility road, sensors and
cameras, bright lights, and frequent patrols. The agency
wants to build 772 total miles of barrier along the
border, which it estimates would <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-wall-exclusive/exclusive-in-budget-trump-to-ask-congress-for-86-billion-for-border-wall-idUSKBN1QR0CW">cost
$18 billion</a>.</p>
<p>“I got to grow up in the valley without the wall, and I
see my little cousin who is 1 and has to live with
increased militarization,” said Rebekah Hinojosa, a
local organizer whose ancestors are buried near an
already-built border barrier in Cameron County. “That
hurts. Deeply.”</p>
<p>Last year, Hinojosa started working with other local
activists to hone anti-wall messaging and convened
groups of people to make banners for protests along the
wall’s proposed path. She sees this work as part of a
growing movement to repel powerful interests encroaching
on the valley. Since 2015, she’s also organized to
prevent liquified natural gas companies from building a
complex of export terminals where the Rio Grande meets
the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>“The LNG fight and border wall fight are very
connected,” Hinojosa explained. “Families and friends
are going to hearings to stop LNG, they’re organizing to
stop the border wall, it’s all part of the same system
impacting our region.”</p>
<p>For now, the coalition organizing against the wall is
small, especially relative to the full power of the
federal government. Much more widespread is a sense that
the wall perpetuates a legacy of class and racial
subjugation in the valley. Patricia Rubio, an
outdoorswoman who sleeps at the camp at least once a
week, acknowledged that being from the valley often
means carrying several generations’ worth of loss and
even shame.</p>
<p>Her aunts and uncles were migrant fieldworkers and
“grew up with low self-esteem and fear to express
themselves” in Spanish, said Rubio, also an adopted
Carrizo/Comecrudo tribal member. “I grew up hearing
stories about beatings or lynchings. Those stories need
to stay alive and we can’t be ashamed of them.” She
feels a sense of responsibility to confront the types of
powerful interests that immiserated her ancestors.</p>
<p>The wall’s construction fits into a longer legacy of
the valley as a sacrifice zone, which started when
Spanish colonists arrived in the 18th century and
continued after the U.S. government relegated Mexicans
here to second-class American citizenship. Yet for all
the suffering the wall is causing locals who feel
unheard, for some it’s also producing a sense of
groundedness once lost to the dislocations of history.</p>
<h3>In the Government’s Sights</h3>
<p>The notice in the local newspaper taken out by the U.S.
Southern District of Texas is 24 pages long and
addressed to nearly 300 parties “whose whereabouts
cannot be determined or who could not be personally
served.” The message for all of them is the same: The
government will seize their land “to construct, install,
operate, and maintain roads, fencing, vehicle barriers,
security lighting, and related structures,” mostly as
part of 8 to 12 miles of barrier in Starr County.</p>
<p>It’s the second time the notice has been published in
the newspaper; after the third time, defendants will
only have 20 days to respond before the government
begins taking their property.</p>
<p>Efrén Olivares, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights
Project, has been advising low-income landowners as the
state pursues their land. He’s been in talks with a
dozen people interested in litigation and said a
nationwide network of pro bono lawyers is preparing to
take on more cases.</p>
<p>“These are going to be long, drawn-out battles,”
Olivares said. “Eminent domain law is very, very
favorable to the government, but even within that, we’re
hoping to make sure the government goes through hoops to
get the land.”</p>
<p>Earlier, Olivares led a bilingual information session
in Roma, a stone’s throw away from Mexico. Olivares
explained to a packed room that while federal agents can
legally be on private property to patrol for migrants,
landowners can charge a fee for surveyors and
contractors to be on their land. Some appeared
frustrated at these nuances. One man, who did not want
to give his name, realized that he’d given surveyors
permission to be on his land for 18 months without
receiving compensation.</p>
<p>Maria Luisa Cavazos’s land is in the government’s
crosshairs. A retired nurse who now lives in McAllen,
Cavazos is one of dozens of owners of a 15-acre strip of
land in Los Ebanos, a tiny community in Hidalgo County
that has been coiled around the river since the 19th
century. The land was left to the estate of her late
grandmother, Maria Dolores Peña de Flores, and now the
feds want 1.2 acres of it to build a road easement
through the property.</p>
<p>Cavazos, now an elderly woman, said her family stopped
farming the land over 40 years ago, after her father and
uncle were hired to pick crops for major agribusinesses.
It was fertile, supporting crops like cantaloupes,
squash, cotton, and corn. It’s since been mostly vacant,
and the federal government began sending letters out to
Flores’s descendants in December 2016 asking that they
accept a total of $2,900 for the land and waive future
appeals. The offer would come out to about $50 of
compensation for each descendant.</p>
<p>It’s almost certainly a low-ball offer. An
investigation by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune <a
href="https://www.texastribune.org/2017/12/14/border-land-grab-government-abused-power-seize-property-fence/">found</a>
that the federal government routinely skirted
regulations when it paid South Texas landowners during
the last round of fence-building under the Bush and
Obama administrations. Appraisers for the Army Corps of
Engineers were not beholden to certain federal
regulations requiring they offer an amount that
reflected the land’s true value, including its irrigable
and farming capacity. Back then, Cavazos sold a
different tract of land to the Department of Homeland
Security for just $300. To get more money this time
around, she would have to hire a lawyer to do her own
independent appraisal, but she’s overwhelmed at the
prospect.</p>
<p>“I don’t believe they should take away that land,”
Cavazos said on her driveway, her eyes welling with
tears as she recounted memories. “When I lived there
when I was young, the illegals would knock on your door
and ask for food, and if we had leftover food for our
supper, my mom would give it to them.”</p>
<p>While federal data <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/trump-border-wall-arrests/?utm_term=.bc1581209b07">shows</a>
apprehensions of migrants entering the country without
authorization are below historic levels set in the
2000s, they’ve grown since 2000 in CBP’s Rio Grande
Valley sector, where apprehensions are highest
nationally. In Los Ebanos, the river’s banks on the
American side can rise several feet high, posing a
challenge to people scrambling ashore. Border Patrol
agents as well as local and state police are always
swarming the village.</p>
<p>Cavazos’s cousin Mirta Trigo also lived in Los Ebanos
as a child. Trigo said some of her family members still
use the land for Easter celebrations, and she’s more
resistant than her relatives about the government’s bid
for it. When she received the letter asking her to
voluntarily forfeit the property, she didn’t sign it.
But she doesn’t have the money to hire a lawyer and
isn’t expecting to get much more from the federal
government.</p>
<p>“I don’t want the wall there, the land is part of us,”
Trigo said. “The government doesn’t care what we think,
it’s true they don’t listen to us <em>porque</em> we’re
the Mexican people, we’re Mexicans.”</p>
<h3>Decades of Dispossession</h3>
<p>Both Trigo and Cavazos were born in the U.S., but their
self-recognition as Mexican speaks to a collective
cultural identity that held strong for a century after
the Rio Grande Valley became a territory of the U.S.
After the 1840s, through a sustained effort spanning
decades, Anglo settlers in the valley gained power as
bankers, merchants, teachers, and other roles with local
influence. “Mexicans,” or Tejanos, were relegated to
roles like artisans, laborers, and struggling ranchers.</p>
<p>Starting in the late 19th century, Mexicans who had
inherited property through Spanish land grants saw their
acreage claims dwindle as they were divided among
descendants. Ranchers were dispossessed of their lands
by white brokers unwilling to lend them capital, as well
as through theft and fraud. Lynch mobs, police, and
Texas Rangers later maintained wealth and property lines
<a
href="https://thenewinquiry.com/the-chaparral-insurgents-of-south-texas/">through
brutal violence</a>. A racialized underclass of
fieldworkers, <a
href="https://www.texasobserver.org/the-making-of-the-magic-valley/">enlarged
by refugees</a> fleeing the Mexican Revolution, became
the underpinning of an Anglo-dominated agricultural
economy.<br>
</p>
<p>
These developments created second-class citizens out of
those who had long lived on the land. Schools reinforced
this hierarchy, Ramiro Ramírez remembered, punishing him
and other small children if they spoke Spanish in class.
Today, Ramírez’s <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/01/21/border-wall-gravesites-cemetery-texas/">family
church and two cemeteries in Hidalgo County</a>, once
a stop on the Underground Railroad after his ancestors
arrived from the Deep South, will be ripped up by the
border wall’s planned construction. Unlike the Jackson
Ranch and Cemetery, which is located on the same
property as the Jackson Ranch Church and only inters
Jackson family members and descendants, the Eli Jackson
Cemetery down the street became a community burial
ground in the last century. Ramírez saw the land grab as
part of a long tradition of anti-Mexican racism
emanating from the valley’s power structure.</p>
<p>“All the vestiges of your culture, you start to
perceive them as being bad, the food, the language, the
clothing, the values,” Ramírez said of his upbringing,
as he stood inside the endangered historic chapel built
by his ancestor Martin Jackson. “We thought we could
progress and be in the melting pot, but we couldn’t
change the way we looked.”</p>
<p>Having visibly dark skin, or other physical features
associated with Indigenous American or African ancestry,
can make U.S. citizens in the Rio Grande Valley targets
for harassment by border officials. Max Muñoz, the
director of operations at the National Butterfly Center
in Mission, is an American-born citizen who has been
profiled and chased by Border Patrol agents half a dozen
times over the last two years. The center, a nature
preserve with more than 250 species of butterfly and
other wildlife that <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/11/09/new-border-wall-will-destroy-butterfly-center-texas-state-park/">may
be cleaved by the border wall</a> despite
congressional protections, has become a nucleus of
resistance against its construction.</p>
<p>Once, an agent stopped Muñoz’s truck and demanded to
see identification for his two daughters, who were small
children. A helicopter was called after Muñoz refused to
comply. Another time, an agent warned Muñoz that he was
going to “find” and “catch” him in the future. He has
stopped taking his family to the center for recreation,
opting for nature trips to Austin instead — six hours
away.</p>
<p>“I know I shouldn’t, but I don’t want to expose my kids
to that,” Muñoz said. “I try not to put racism in their
minds, but they see I’m getting stopped. I say [to
them], maybe it’s because there’s an order to intimidate
people away from the river.”</p>
<h3>The Valley’s Forgotten Tribes</h3>
<p>The history of powerful forces uprooting people in the
valley stretches back centuries. Conquistadors raided
Native communities and enslaved whole families, and
later the Spanish empire brought them to Catholic
missions to eradicate their tribal identities.
Colonization disrupted foodways and brought fatal
diseases, increasing some Indigenous peoples’ dependence
on the church’s abusive authority. The life-giving lands
along the Rio Grande delta once supported at least 31
separate tribes in South Texas and Northeastern Mexico.
There’s almost no public memory in the valley of most of
them now.</p>
<p>Juan Mancias, the chairman of the Carrizo/Comecrudo
tribe of Texas, who has taken a lead in organizing
against the wall, told The Intercept that his
grandfather helped him keep his connection to South
Texas alive. The Carrizos and Comecrudos, names given by
the Spanish, were each comprised of two bands in the
valley. There’s nothing in settler historical archives
after 1825 about the Carrizos as a distinct group, and
the last known fluent speakers of the Comecrudean
language were recorded near Reynosa, across the border
from McAllen, in 1886.</p>
<p>Mancias, 64, grew up in the Texas panhandle after his
ancestors moved there for work. He believes many in the
valley have Carrizo and Comecrudo heritage, but after
centuries of cultural genocide by the Catholic church
and two settler nations, there’s little way to confirm
it except oral history that isn’t extensively recorded.
“It would have been lost for me if I hadn’t asked my
grandfather what was really happening, or my older
cousins and aunts and uncles, or my mom, who is 94,”
Mancias said.</p>
<p>Without a land base, the tribe has had to ally with
property owners in the wall’s path. In January, Mancias
started connecting with the Butterfly Center, Ramiro
Ramírez of the Eli Jackson Cemetery, and Fred Cavazos
(no relation to Maria), owner of 77 riverside acres in
Madero, who has been featured in <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/11/24/trump-border-military-deployment/">The
Intercept</a>, the <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trumps-border-wall-threatens-to-end-texas-families-250-years-of-ranching-on-rio-grande/2018/09/08/92e721d2-b12d-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html?utm_term=.6b351b6aab65">Washington
Post</a>, and <a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/trumps-border-wall-threatens-loma-lomita-chapel/583447/">The
Atlantic</a>. With the Ramírez family’s permission,
the Carrizo/Comecrudo have occupied the Eli Jackson
Cemetery and more recently started an encampment at the
Butterfly Center; Cavazos said that Mancias has a key to
his property to set up a possible third resistance camp
in the future.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>The Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe is not recognized by the
federal government, but is a voluntary association
registered as a nonprofit to collect and administer
funds. The tribe held a fundraiser in early March, and a
GoFundMe page overseen by Mancias brought in more than
$20,000 over the last two years — the result of
tenacious social media boosting. The donations fund the
tribe’s activism, which has produced impressive results:
In 2017, Mancias traveled to France with other local
activists to <a
href="https://www.ran.org/press-releases/bnp_paribas_makes_sweeping_announcement_to_cut_business_with_tar_sands_pipelines_and_lng/">confront</a>
BNP Paribas over the bank’s liquified natural gas
investments in the valley. The bank divested shortly
thereafter.</p>
<p>“Everything we get, we put it back into the tribe,”
Mancias said. “Our profit is to make people know we’re
here and we’re not going anywhere. We’re on our lands,
and that’s the only radical thing we’re trying to do.”</p>
<p>Recently, Mancias accompanied Ramiro Ramírez and his
sister, Sylvia, to a local restaurant where they met
with Raul Ortiz, the chief of CBP’s Rio Grande Valley
sector. According to Sylvia Ramírez, Ortiz assured the
group that the government would not seize their land for
at least six months, and possibly not for a year. (A
media spokesperson for CBP’s Rio Grande Valley sector
did not respond to emails and phone calls from The
Intercept to confirm this account.)</p>
<p>“I’m assuming they’re telling us what they know, and
they’re not pulling a fast one,” Sylvia conceded. “I’m
going to give them that until I know differently.” She
said her family had been “very appreciative” of the
Carrizo/Comecrudo encampment, which had no plans to
disband at publication time despite Ortiz’s longer
timeline.</p>
<p>On March 14, attorneys with the environmental nonprofit
Earthjustice filed a <a
href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5770315/3-14-19-Rio-Grande-International-Study-Center-v.pdf">joint
lawsuit</a> against Trump and administration officials
on behalf of the Ramírez family and the tribe, as well
as several other plaintiffs. It asks a federal judge to
strike down the national emergency declaration and
enjoin the president from using emergency funds to build
the wall.</p>
<h3>A History That Needs to Be Told</h3>
<p>Sitting around a smoldering mesquite log at Yalui
Village one Sunday afternoon, several young men played
prayer music from a phone and smoked cigarettes. Their
discussion turned to peyote, whose cacti buttons produce
a medicinal hallucinogenic effect and were once <a
href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/button-pushers/">found</a>
in abundance in South Texas prior to the war on drugs. A
peyote button is on the seal of the Carrizo/Comecrudo.
At its center is the Aplomado Falcon, an endangered bird
found in the region.</p>
<p>A flag bearing the seal of the American Indian Movement
— the Indigenous liberation group started in 1968 —
flaps in the wind, alongside flags of the
Carrizo/Comecrudo and the Texas-based Society of Native
Nations. Nearby, a camper served chili to others out of
a large grease pan. The camp’s kitchen, mostly composed
of several coolers and cooking equipment underneath
yellow tarp, had recently been visited by a pack of wild
boars. Clouds of insects are omnipresent, and field mice
are innumerable enough that someone brought a cat to
hunt them down.</p>
<p>The valley is one of the most biologically <a
href="https://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/lower-rio-grande-valley-national-wildlife-refuge-texas/">diverse</a>
regions in the country, but pressures from human
settlement have destroyed 95 percent of its natural
habitat. Last October, Homeland Security Secretary
Kirstjen Nielsen waived 25 laws under the 2005 Real ID
Act, including protections for endangered species and
migratory birds, to expedite the wall’s construction. A
<a
href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/68/10/740/5057517">study</a>
by Stanford University researchers found that 34 percent
of ground and freshwater animals living along the
U.S.-Mexican border would have their habitats bisected
by the barrier, leading to possible extinction for some.</p>
<p>Nielsen also waived laws meant to protect Native
American grave sites and other spiritual lands, which
only apply to tribes the government recognizes. All
others, including the Carrizo/Comecrudo, are at the
mercy of the settler state as voluntary associations
without special protections, but Mancias says that
lacking official recognition can be liberating. Without
any blood quantum requirements to limit tribal
membership, for example, the tent for the
Carrizo/Comecrudo can be as wide as the tribe wants it
to be.</p>
<p>The people buried at the Eli Jackson Cemetery, who lie
for eternity near where the campers sleep for now, may
not be directly related to Mancias, but his conception
of relations is broad enough to consider everything with
roots in the land to be a relative. “There’s a history
that needs to be told,” Macias said. “It’s not about
them recognizing if we’re Indian, it’s that we recognize
if we’re Indian.”</p>
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