Browsing by Subject "Mexican American Border Region"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Downtown revitalization along the US-Mexico Border : a case study on Brownsville, Texas
    (2011-05) Gonzalez, Ramiro, 1982-; Kahn, Terry D.; Rhi-Perez, Pablo
    This analysis of the Downtown areas in US- Mexico Border Cities such as Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, and San Diego will chronicle the history and foundation of each city and also the current revitalization efforts underway in many of these cities. Brownsville, Texas is one of those cities located along the border with a rich history and a unique downtown that some have called the New Orleans on the Rio Grande. The architecture has a heavy New Orleans influence thereby making this downtown the most unique in the Rio Grande Valley. Revitalization Efforts in Brownsville continuously resurface only to be unsuccessful due to many variables including the lack of political will to take on perhaps the biggest challenge to face Brownsville. Nonetheless, revitalization of this area must occur and in order to fully understand the intricacies of Downtown Brownsville one must look back in time to see what exactly made Downtown Brownsville so special. This report will seek those answers and give positive and realistic recommendations that could assist in the revitalization of Downtown Brownsville.
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    Fear and discipline in a permanent state of exception : Mexicans, their families, and U.S. immigrant processing in Ciudad Juarez
    (2011-05) Bosquez, Monica Dolores; Sletto, Bjørn; Hale, Charles
    The United States recently completed the construction of a new Consulate compound in an underdeveloped site in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Mexican applicants for U.S. Immigrant Visas, particularly those who had previously entered the United States without inspection, are sent to the facility to apply through a mandatory personal interview. The interview process necessitates highly invasive medical exams at designated militarized facilities, followed by a series of interviews with consular officers. Applicants, many of whom are visiting Juarez for the first time, must wait in the city for days or weeks as they attempt to navigate the requirements. Even as the city has become more violent, the U.S. Consulate mission in Juarez has become an economic driver as it processes more immigrant visas than any other U.S. Consular office in the world. It is also the largest U.S. Consulate building on the planet and the immigration complex is drawing new migrants who are both seeking asylum through it and aiding in its construction. U.S. immigration policies and the administrative procedures that accompany them also serve to discipline immigrant visa applicants long before they arrive in Juarez as they navigate a system built on penalties and waivers. The effects of these policies transcend borders and citizenship, impacting not only the immigrant applicant, but their U.S. families as well. The normalization of violence towards Mexicans and their families is becoming entrenched in a culture of impunity, both in Mexico and the United States. The immigrant processing and maquiladora manufacturing that take place in Ciudad Juarez play a specific role in U.S. / Mexico relations and are representative of the intersection of immigration policy, labor desires, and neoliberal and post-neoliberal policies of structural violence. The United States has developed, in Juarez, an economic development and security program and immigrant processing center concomitantly and Mexico has worked lockstep to fortify this position. I examine this historical occurrence, and the experiences of immigrant applicants and their families, using Foucault’s theories of discipline.
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    Schooling in times of dystopia : empowering education for Juárez women
    (2011-05) Cervantes Soon, Claudia Garbiela; Foley, Douglas E.; Valenzuela, Angela; Brown, Keffrelyn; Balli, Cecilia; Luykx, Aurolyn
    Young women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico are coming of age in an era of feminicides, drug wars, impunity, and fear. This ethnographic study examines the ways in which Preparatoria Altavista, a public high school, in one of the most marginalized areas of Juárez, attempts to empower subaltern young women through its critical and social justice philosophy of education. The study draws from critical pedagogy, socio-cultural theory, and feminist scholarship to offer a unique analysis of how hegemonic ideas are resisted and/or inscribed pedagogically, politically, and institutionally at Altavista. Secondly, the study examines how the school’s constructions of democratic and social justice education interact with the current dystopic context of Juárez and discourses about Juárez women to provide a framework with which a group of young women author their identities and practice forms of resistance. The ethnographic fieldwork took place in the 2009-2010 academic year. The methods included unstructured ethnographic interviews with teachers, administrators, and numerous students, as well as semi-structured interviews and an auto-photography technique with nine girls. The study identifies three interrelated aspects that characterize the transformative pedagogy of Preparatoria Altavista: freedom and autonomy, authentic caring relationships, and the cultivation of critical discourse and activism. Together, these core values promote the school’s ultimate goal for its students – autogestión, or the ability to self-author empowered identities; read their world; and initiate and develop socially transformative projects. Considering the school’s context, as well as the many challenges inherent in the dystopic Juárez of today, the study also identifies a typology of four different paths to the girls’ identity and agency development: the Redirectors, the Reinventors, the Redefiners, and the Refugees. This typology is based on various ways and degrees to which the young women in this study authored the self as they negotiated the messages from the multiple figured worlds that they inhabit. The study seeks to counter sensationalist, criminalizing, and dooming narratives about Juárez youth, as well as stereotypical and objectifying depictions of Juárez women by offering a nuanced analysis of their experiences, perspectives, identities, and forms of agency. The study also seeks to offer a language of possibility and hope for urban schools and contexts of civil unrest through critical pedagogy.