Homeland Security: Unbuilding Bridges
July 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Bill Guerra Addington already fought to keep a nuclear waste dump out of his backyard in Sierra Blanca; now he’s fighting the Department of Homeland Security to keep a small footbridge that spans the Rio Grande on his alfalfa farm.
“I fought the Sierra Blanca nuclear dump and now I’m fighting Homeland Security — it’s just one thing after another,” says Addington.
To visit the Big Bend area is to be floored by the beauty and vastness of the Chihuahuan Desert region. The people who live there value their independence, but they also value their neighbors, whether those neighbors be Mexican or U.S. citizens.
In such a vast and remote area, your neighbor can mean the difference between life and death. Some small communities along the Rio Grande have been there since the 17th century. And for several hundred years, families have crossed back and forth to visit relatives and health clinics, to work and to buy food.
The footbridge that connects Addington’s farm with Mexico is used by Mexican farm workers and U.S. residents who want to visit Mexico. Without the bridge, either group would have to drive 140 miles round-trip to cross at a federal port of entry. And if Homeland Security has its way, that’s exactly what will happen.
Henry Miller, a property owner in Candelaria, about 100 miles east of Addington’s farm, said his town had its bridge seized and dismantled by Homeland Security last month. Miller and five high school buddies from Midland (class of ‘63) bought a majority of the town several years ago.
“It’s just a great place to get away, to go hunting and shoot dove and quail,” he says.
The metal suspension bridge was built in the 1950s to link the desert towns of Candelaria (pop. 50) in Texas and San Antonio del Bravo (pop. 150) in Mexico.
“The bridge kept the communities going. People would cross over on Friday to buy food, visit with friends then go back on Sunday,” Miller says.
See local historian Glenn Justice’s Web site for pictures and history of the Candelaria bridge. Justice describes a recent incident in which a man on the Texas side survived a heart attack because he was able to get across the bridge to the doctor in San Antonio del Bravo.
Miller says that drug and immigrant smuggling were never an issue with the small bridge. Besides there’s a Border Patrol office at the top of the hill overlooking the span, he says.
“We used to have about 70 kids attending school in that building, but it was taken over by the Border Patrol a few years ago,” Miller says.
Before the bridge was destroyed by the Border Patrol, Miller and his buddies received an ominous letter from the Department of Homeland Security directing them to dismantle it. “They said if we didn’t do it, they would fine us $3,000 for every person who crossed the bridge,” he says.
Miller says he and his partners declined to destroy the link between the two communities.
“What would the communities think of us, if we did such a thing?,” Miller asks. “It’s a humanitarian issue when you have to travel eight hours round trip to get from Candelaria to San Antonio del Bravo if you do it the way Border Patrol wants it.”
So Miller and the other five owners were summoned to Austin for a meeting with Homeland Security, “We had been told we’d be meeting with several head honchos,” he says. In the end, only Dan Harris, assistant patrol agent for the Marfa sector, showed up.
“At that moment Defense Secretary Robert Gates was touring West Texas and the Marfa sector,” Miller says. “So [the other officials] didn’t come because of his visit.”
Bill Brooks, public information officer for the Border Patrol’s Marfa sector, says there are six bridges that require removal in the 510-mile border sector.
“This law has been on the books for a long time,” Brooks says. “We’re human beings who are concerned for our neighbors, but these are not federal ports of entry.”
Brooks says Border Patrol is giving landowners six weeks to remove the bridges. He explains that the bridges used to be allowed as Class B ports of entry, but not since 9-11.
The Candelaria bridge now sits in pieces at Border Patrol headquarters in Marfa. “We’re just waiting to see what the landowners want to do with it,” Brooks says.
Miller says the crackdown is another blow for small Big Bend communities barely carving out a living. He says he’s considering hauling the broken bridge back to town as a protest against the militarization of the border.
“It’s devastating for the locals and I am afraid these communities will dry up,” he says. “And guess who will take over the homes and ranches? The drug dealers, because there won’t be anyone around anymore to keep them out or inform on them.”
July 26th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I never imagined that I would live to see America dying . . . of greed, fear and paranoia—all a product of deliberate misrepresentation by an unbelievably pathologically evil, corrupted, criminal human foulbrood.
But what is truly not funny is the pathetic spectacle of the United States of America, a nation with the greatest political legacy that the world has ever known, letting itself be gnawed to death by the greed in a corrupt system that can be so easily fixed.
[Molly Ivins - Star Telegram.com]
“The Few who control the Many through Opinion have simply made themselves invisible.” [Gore Vidal]
Molly . . . what did you mean by “so easily fixed?” How?
July 30th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
I hope Melissa Del Bosque will cover the ongoing disparities. Please see below, put out by Margo Tamez today. There is a border wall hearing for Eloisa Tamez tomorrow. I can provide contact info for the Tamez ladies. Thank you.
E-mail: DHSOIGHOTLINE@dhs.gov
Fax: (202) 254-4292
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528
Attn: Office of Inspector General, Hotline
Office of the Inspector General
False Damage Claims: 1 (800) 323-8603
July 30, 2008
Dear Inspector General:
At this time I am submitting a testimony from my community members, the lineal descendent Lebaiye’ T’nde’ (Lipan Apache) people who are the aboriginal land title holders to territories of South Texas, the Rio Grande River and into northern Mexico. Currently, my family members reside in numerous counties of South Texas which have been horribly and negatively impacted by the ongoing flooding and infrastructural calamities in Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and other affected counties.
Reports from my mother, Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez (Lipan Apache) and other community members, as well as reports from local news reports, compel me to file an official complaint regarding the human rights, civil rights, and indigenous rights abuses occuring at this very moment against colonias, rancherias, unincorporated and incorporated communities all along the Rio Grande.
Many of the communities are undergoing great losses and tragedy, including loss of homes, livelihoods, livestock, crops, and who are currently still without the most fundamental needs to sustain life, i.e. potable water, food, medical supplies and medical attention. Elders, children, the working class poor people of the Rio Grande river front communities are the hardest hit in this ongoing devastation.
My mother and others have reported eye witness accounts of seeing D.H.S. sitting by idly, merely offering electrical fans at the local gas station, as a remedy for folks who do not have electricity, nor food, water, and are wading in a filthy infested stew of both animal and human waste and decomposition.
There are reports that helicopters of the Border Patrol and Army National Guard merely patrol over the border–but do not render aid to those who are in the most isolated and most hard-hit areas. Local news reports that there are countless colonias and rancherias of the poorest of the working classes who have still to be dealt with at all. Their physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual needs are being neglected in this horrendous human disaster. They have yet to see a speck of government, military, NGO, faith-based, or or communitarian aid to alleviate this calamity.
My mother and others are strongly critiquing the LACK of FEMA’s presence in rendering immediate and assertive aid to our poorest river front communities. Many of these communities are direct lineal descendents of the aboriginal people of this region–they are the land owners, who have legal title to live and to enjoy their freedoms on their own lands. They also have the civil rights and human rights of all other U.S. citizens in similarly declared disaster areas.
Finally, this testimony is a complaint against the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, President George W. Bush, and the infrastructure which supports their offices due to the fact that local land owners in Hidalgo County reported yesterday that INSPITE of this calamitous disaster which has brought South Texas counties, cities, and the International Water Boundary Commission and Mexico to its knees—that DHS has begun to build the unpopular border wall once again.
This is a sign of a tyrannical, cold and vampire-like government which instead of utilizing public resources towards rendering aid to the local governments and people, it is exploiting the local systems, institutions and populations at their greatest moment of vulnerability and humanitarian need.
I see DHS/Michael Chertoff and President George W. Bush as the primary perpetrators of heinous crimes against humanity, human rights abuse, indigenous rights abuses against my Lipan Apache people, my ancestors, our sacred sites, our ecological and biological resources, our mineral resources, and our water resources with their aggression against us up to the present moment, in regards to their focus on the increased militarization and imprisonment of our people and lands in the border wall project.
Currently, at this dark hour, as my people, our lands, our sacred sites, and all the plant and animal relatives are suffering due to an aggressive, institutionally racist policy of laissez-faire towards Native Americans, Mexican-descent peoples, and border communities, I see DHS/Michael Chertoff and President George W. Bush as perpetrators who are currently committing crimes against humanity and genocide against the Lipan Apache people of South Texas, other indigenous communities in South Texas, and Mexican-descent persons and communities living along the Rio Grande on the U.S. and Mexico side of this calamity. It has not gone unnoticed by the local communities how intensely the nation-states moved to protect their corporate investments–hotels, resorts, oil platforms, airforce jets and planes, and other ‘vital’ assets of the United States and its companies. At the same time, we have noted how deficiently and minimally the nation-states have responded to the humanitarian needs of the majority of the aboriginal land owners and original title land owners (with Spanish Land Grant and Treaty land ownership claims) in the region.
This is my testimony, from my heart and from the oral testimonies shared with me by my family members undergoing psychological terror due to the fact that they have to witness this further erosion of democracy and justice in the United States under the iron-fist of an unpopular government which clearly demonstrates they rule against citizens and take up hostile policies to further our demise.
Let it be known among you that the Lipan Apache Women’s Defense/Strength stands for the indigenous people and all oppressed groups on the Mexico-U.S. international border which violently dissects our natural traditional territories, a border which was aggressed against us without our free and prior informed consent–in the past and continued into the present moment.
Margo Tamez