Why Walls Won't Work Repairing the US-Mexico Divide

Today, when one thinks of the border separating the United States from Mexico, what comes to mind is a war zone - with violent, poverty-ridden towns, cities, and maquiladoras on one side and an increasingly militarized network of barriers and surveillance systems on the other. But as theacclaimed urbanist and geographer Michael Dear reveals in this fascinating book, it was not always this way. In fact, from the end of the Mexican-American War until the late twentieth century, the border was a very porous and loosely regulated region. In this sweeping account of life within the United States-Mexican border zone, Dear traces the border's long history of cultural interaction, beginning with the numerous Mesoamerican tribes of the region. But, as Dear warns in his bracing study, this vibrant zone of cultural and social amalgamationis endangered both by highly restrictive American policies and the violence along Mexico's side of the border. Through a series of evocative portraits of contemporary border communities, he shows that a "third nation," occupied by both Americans and Mexicans, still exists, and the potential forcultivating it remains. Combining a broad historical perspective and a commanding overview of present-day problems, Why Walls Won't Work is a major intellectual intervention into one of the most hotly contested political issues of our time.

Michael Dear is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California-Berkeley. He is the author of The Postmodern Urban Condition; co-author of Landscapes of Despair; and editor of From Chicago to LA: Making Sense of Urban Theory.

Preface

1. MONUMENTS, MEXICO AND MANIFEST DESTINY
2. MAPS WITHOUT BORDERS: CONTINUITY & CONNECTION IN EARLY TIMES
3. FROM FRONTIER SETTLEMENTS TO TRANSBORDER CITIES
4. LAW AND ORDER AT THE BORDER
5. THIRD NATION BEFORE THE WALL
6. THIRD NATION OF THE MIND
7. FORTRESS USA
8. MEXICO: NARCO-STATE OR FAILED STATE?
9. THIRD NATION INTERRUPTED
10. WHY WALLS WON'T WORK
11. AFTER THE WALL, WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

Endnotes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
List of figures
List of tables