[sethreports] From the No Borders Camp: What It Is And Where We Are

[Seth Porcello]

 From the No Borders Camp: What It Is And Where We Are

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To Listen or Download:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/06/18458580.php
OR
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=25380

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What it is and where we are. This 5min9sec radio doc gives a quick  
introduction to the ideas behind the No Borders Camp, the purpose of  
the No Borders Camp, and then takes a sound walk through the border  
at Calexico with No Borders Camp participant Mario Alejandro Cobar.

The sound of a border is very often the sound of those who are  
divided trying to communicate; the human voices that break the  
silence.  When I was in the Golan Heights I recorded the sounds of  
families who were separated by the minefield between Israel and Syria  
shouting through bullhorns to each other on opposite sides.  They  
came in the mornings, when it was quietest, so that they could hear  
the echoes clearly as they bounced across the valley.  Here in  
Calexico/Mexicali the sound is not the shouting heard through a  
bullhorn, but the private whispers of loved ones and acquaintances as  
they lean into to wall.  But as is always the case, the sound of the  
border extends much farther than just the sounds heard at a barrier,  
or the echoes heard through a valley.  The sound of a border extends  
through the entire geography which it marks, and the entire world  
which it separates.  It is the sound of a border ballad as well as  
the border patrol, and it can be heard in the immigrant rights  
movement as well as the movement of migrants and farm workers through  
the Sonoran desert.  Borders have always been places of intense  
movement and interaction, where cultures meet and freely  
appropriate.   What's new about these borders, like the one in Golan  
and Fortress North America is that they attempt to interrupt that  
process.  Their sounds reflect this.  While it took Mario and I less  
than a minute to walk into Mexico, it took me almost 40mins to get  
back out afterwards, and that was with a US passport.  For many in  
Mexicali, this is a daily commute - which is to say that the border  
system is a part and an extension of the economic system in the  
southwest.  From migrant workers, to Maquiladora refugees, to small  
time entrepreneurs and smugglers buying low in Calexico and selling  
high in Mexicali, it is inherently a part of the neo-liberal ideology  
of free capital and stuck people.

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To hear more from the US Mexico Border, visit:
http://noborderscamp.org/en/no-borders-audio
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