December 11, 2023 • 23 mins
How do media representations of US–Mexico border tunnels shape immigration discourse, public policy, and anti-immigrant violence?
To help us think through how these tunnels are represented and often overrepresented in US media, in episode 158 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Ideas on Fire author Juan Llamas-Rodriguez about his new book Border Tunnels: A Media Theory of the US–Mexico Underground.
For all of their visual obscurity and inaccessibility, tunnels are hypervisible in media representations not only of the US–Mexico border region but also the bodies—both real and imagined—that are associated with the borderlands.
In the conversation, Juan shares his research into how border tunnels are represented in video games like first-person shooters, television news coverage like Anderson Cooper 360°, copaganda reality shows like Border Wars, and action films like Fast and Furious.
They also discuss why it is so important to think infrastructurally about media production and how designers and activists are using speculative design to reimagine what the US–Mexico borderlands are and the role of tunnels in that process.
Finally, they close out the conversation with Juan’s challenge to both media makers and media consumers alike to accept responsibility for the material consequences of representation and use it to create a world where the free movement of people across and beyond all borders is celebrated and realized.
Transcript, teaching guide, and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/158-juan-llamas-rodriguez
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome to Imagine Otherwise, thepodcast about bridging art, activism,
and academia to build more just futures.
I'm Cathy Hannabach.
Today we're talking about the visualpolitics of border tunnels between
Mexico and the United States.
To help us think through how these tunnelsare represented and often overrepresented
in US media, I'm excited to have on theshow today Ideas on Fire author Juan
(00:29):
Llamas-Rodriguez, whose new book BorderTunnels: A Media Theory of the US–Mexico
Underground was recently publishedby the University of Minnesota Press.
When our team was working on this book,I was struck by Juan's argument that
visual representations of tunnels, infact, play a huge role in shaping border
policy and anti-immigrant sentiment.
(00:50):
For all of their visual obscurity andinaccessibility, they're hypervisible
in media representations not only ofthe US–Mexico border region but also
the bodies—both real and imagined—thatare associated with the borderlands.
In our conversation, Juan shareshis research into how border tunnels
are represented in video games likefirst-person shooters, in television news
(01:14):
coverage like Anderson Cooper 360, incopaganda reality shows like Border Wars,
and in action films like Fast and Furious.
We also discuss why it's so importantto think infrastructurally about media
production and how designers and activistsare using speculative design to reimagine
what the US–Mexico borderlands are andthe role of tunnels in that process.
(01:39):
Finally, we close out our conversationwith Juan's challenge to both media
makers and media consumers alike toaccept responsibility for the material
consequences of representation,and, in fact, to use it to create
a world where the free movementof people across and beyond all
borders is celebrated and realized.
(02:00):
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you for inviting me.
So your new book analyzes the politicsof media representations of border
tunnels along the US–Mexico border.
What are some of the key themesthat you saw emerging in your
research into that project, intohow those representations work?
(02:21):
So I would say one of the key motivatingfactors for starting this research was
noticing how border tunnels seem to beshowing up everywhere in all sorts of
media representations about the US Mexicoborder, from telenovelas on Telemundo to
Hollywood films to local news reports.
(02:41):
And very quickly I began torealize that border tunnels were
overrepresented in media compared totheir significance within unauthorized
movements across the US–Mexico border.
So this kind of became an opportunitynot not to simply to fact check
or state that, you know, this isinaccurate, but rather to ask why.
(03:04):
What makes border tunnels asort of favored media figure in
all these different instances?
And that led me to explain one ofthe key themes of the book, which is
that the tunnels', the structures',physical characteristics lead to
creative forms of recording andediting and representing it in media.
(03:26):
The more that I worked on this, themore that it became clear that border
tunnels actually offered me an ideallimit case to build an argument about
how our political and social ideas aboutthe space of the border are inextricable
from their media representations.
(03:47):
As opposed to something like the borderwall, which those who live near the
border can see more readily or have adifferent relationship to than those
who live very far away from the border,border tunnels are inaccessible to most
publics, near or far away from the border.
So it kind of became this limit caseabout how central media is in how
(04:11):
we imagine border tunnels to exist.
And in that process, it also becameimportant to demonstrate how the creative
decisions that go into showcasing theborder, or really any contentious space,
are sometimes tangential to the topicitself, and yet, they have all these
important implications for how we cometo understand the topic nonetheless.
(04:35):
In the book, you introduce aparticular methodology for studying
what is essentially, as you pointout, inaccessible to to most of us,
including to researchers, right?
And you argue methodologically forthe importance of what you call
thinking infrastructurally about bordertunnels, particularly the ways that
the materiality of those tunnels andthe symbolic or mediated discourses
(04:57):
about them are always working together.
I'm curious, what are some examplesfrom this project where that kind
of infrastructural thinking helpsus understand the ways that these
tunnels work in media maybe and beyond?
Right.
Yeah.
So broadly the book looks at two types ofborder tunnel representations: those made
(05:22):
primarily with live action footage andthen those created entirely with computer
generated imagery and in the middle ofthe chapter on special effects and action
films kind of does a little bit of both.
So, in the case of live actionfootage, the physical characteristics
of border tunnels limit howthey can be captured on camera.
(05:43):
So they're a very sort of crampedspace, usually there's very little
lighting, there are all these safetyconsiderations that crews have to take in.
So accounting for these physicallimitations, thinking about the structure
itself helps us understand the creativedecisions made by by media makers to turn
(06:06):
their footage into compelling television.
I started by mentioning that inthe first chapter how TV reports
can't rely on the usual tropesfor making compelling television.
There's no way they can do a livereporting on a tunnel because they
can't access it until it's been, youknow, secured and approved by CBP.
(06:29):
There's no way to do any long shots,right, because the space is very cramped.
So that helps us understand allthe creative considerations from
mixing different types of footage,smartphone footage, steadicam, drones,
to the post-production elementsthat shape these representations,
like voiceover or editing.
(06:50):
And then on the other hand, in thecomputer generated tunnels, you
don't have physical limitations.
The video game Call of Juarez createstunnels that are far wider, far higher
than anything you could ever createunder the US–Mexico borderlands.
Yet we still need to acknowledge theinfrastructure that creates these
tunnels, the very technology thatallows for their design and for their
(07:14):
sort of computational reproduction.
And that automated reproduction, thefact that you can algorithmically
create these very long, repetitive, sortof automatically made, hallways that
represent the tunnels when you put this inthe service of a specific game genre, like
the first-person shooter, that also hasimplications for how we come to perceive
(07:37):
and understand the function of tunnels.
So when I'm proposing thinkinginfrastructurally, infrastructural
thinking means that to criticallyanalyze what audiovisual media is doing.
It means not only paying attentionto its images and sounds but also
(07:59):
taking into careful consideration itsconditions of possibility, both the
sort of physical characteristics of theworld it's trying to capture and the
materiality of the technology that iscreating those media representations.
You talk a lot in the various chaptersof the book about how all representations
(08:21):
of the border, and of border tunnelsin particular, invariably take a
political stance on a wide variety ofborder issues, everything from state
violence to the policing of migrantsto militarization, to a whole host
of various border political issues.
What are some of the ways that theserepresentations of tunnels shape
(08:45):
actual border policy and vice versa?
Yeah.
The main concern, I think, as I wasbuilding this entire project was how is
just the fact that border tunnels areoverrepresented in media already shaping
the kind of policies and the fundingand the resources that are moving into
(09:07):
we need to focus on the tunnel problem.
During the Obama years, there used to bea specific section on White House reports
on what are we doing about the tunnels?
And that kind of went away after 2016.
But
for a more specific example, one of theshows that I analyze is Border Wars,
which was this hugely popular serieson National Geographic, it spawned
(09:31):
endless replicas in the last decade.
And people who have written aboutBorder Wars have always made the
argument that this serves—itsentertainment, but it's really just
propaganda for the many units underthe US Department of Homeland Security.
And that is true.
But the producers never reallymade a secret of that fact.
The goal of the show was to presentthe stories of those who work in
(09:52):
these border policing units, BorderPatrol, Coast Guard, ICE, whatnot.
So I make the argument that part ofwhy we see a rise in these types of TV
content, especially during the Obamayears, is as a response to the growing
immigrant rights activist movements,which were very new, media savvy, and
(10:13):
very smart about how using media couldaffect change and change public opinion.
So this kind of TV, reality TVcontent, was a strategy to make the
border policing apparatus the maincharacter again, which could lead to,
you know, more political capital andmaybe increased budgets, and so forth.
(10:33):
And in this specific case of mediaabout border tunnels, these kinds of
shows actually serve to cast the borderagents as the real people in danger,
to show how they were always at risk ofphysical harm when they were trying to
go into those tunnels and thereby justshifting the conversation about harm
(10:55):
to the agents rather than the migrantswho were basically the ones who were
being physically harmed at the time.
And one of the interesting, one of themost interesting, pieces of information
I found, which I think speaks to howmedia creators are always aware of the
impact that these productions have onbroader public opinion and policy, is
(11:19):
I was interviewing one of the formercommunications directors for CBP.
He mentioned that officers that wouldbe featured in Border Wars were always
subject to more thorough background checksthan those they had gone through in order
to get hired as Border Patrol agents.
So, producers of the show and thecomms teams for CBP, they knew that
(11:43):
the goal of selling the stories ofthese officers on the show would
be undermined if the officers onscreen became a publicity liability.
So being known as corrupt, or affiliatingwith white supremacist groups, or having
a history of domestic violence, thesewere not necessarily disqualifying for
(12:04):
getting hired in border policing agencies,but they were disqualifying for being
featured on television, or at least thatwas the case in 2013 when the show began.
That's really interesting.
I mean, it's a PR issue, right?
It's we don't want to look bad,even in in quasi-fictionalized
(12:25):
but but kind of reality TV genre.
Exactly.
Yes.
The whole goal of the show is for usto look good, so we need to make sure
that all the things that would makeus look bad are dealt with, which,
part of the argument is like, why areyou not focusing on those things not
being dealt with in the real world?
(12:45):
Exactly.
Yeah.
This actually brings me to my nextquestion quite nicely because I think
the TV news chapter and the reality TVchapter are both looking at conservative
representations of the border.
So representations of border tunnelsthat seek to do the work of the
(13:05):
state and shore up up the ideologyand the violence of the state.
But you also have this chapter onspeculative design, where you're
looking at some really interestingprogressive projects that also
engage with representations ofborder tunnels, but they're trying
to do something very different.
And you note that a lot of theseprojects center sustainability and kind
(13:29):
of use that lens of sustainability.
I'm curious what sustainabilitybrings to those kinds of progressive
multimedia projects and how doesit help us push back against those
more conservative or xenophobic orstate-based representations of tunnels?
So that chapter actually also grewout of my frustration with speculative
(13:54):
art and design projects that were atleast claiming to be doing that, to
reimagine and resist the border wall.
But they never went so far as toimagine the dissolution of the wall.
And US federal policy to today stillholds that the provisions of something
(14:17):
like the Clean Water Act or the CleanAir Act can be suspended if there is a
need for new border constructions for thesake of quote unquote national security.
So it is very much privilegingthis militarization over
any sort of sustainability.
And in the borderlands, everyone fromIndigenous activists to environmental
(14:39):
scientists to residents at the borderare all advocating that there is no
sustainable way to maintain the ecosystemsof the borderlands as long as there
continues to be construction of borderbarriers, whether those barriers are steel
walls or fences or high-tech surveillancesystems of any of those sorts.
(15:01):
So the frustration was that any sortof speculative or artistic project that
didn't actively imagine the undoing ofthe current physical border divisions
was mostly just perpetuating the statusquo or beautifying it, in the words of
one of the projects that I analyzed.
And then that leads me to look atdifferent kinds of multimedia projects
(15:24):
that instead are using the existence ofborder tunnels to think about different
spatial configurations of the borderlands.
So how do we look at the underground notonly as a different physical space but
also a different space of possibility?
(15:45):
The one that I find the most generativeand that I dedicate quite an amount amount
of time to actually acknowledges thecurrent devastation that has come from
border enforcement and the constructionof border divisions, and proposes that we
take the ruins of the present, the factthat there's already been some irreparable
(16:08):
damage to the borderlands because ofall the construction for the border
divisions, and use those as the startingpoint to imagine different futures.
So, in that case, what the lens ofsustainability is doing is trying
to get us to reframe and think aboutsustainability as prioritizing repair
(16:33):
and as prioritizing care for theborderlands, rather than this sort of
corporatized sustainability that isreally just sort of quote unquote green
alternative to border wall construction.
There is no version of, well, this borderwall that we've created is actually
more carbon neutral, that isn't justgoing to have all sorts of negative
(16:56):
externalities to the border walls anyway.
So how do we use multimedia to imagine,first, in this contain small way, a
different way of thinking about theborderlands that isn't about division
and that is more about thinking ofthese interconnected life systems.
And from there, start to imagine howto change the above ground as well.
(17:22):
So this brings me to my favoritequestion that I get to close
out every conversation with.
And I think we saw hints of it rightthere in these kinds of projects
that you were just mentioning.
So I'll ask you a question that'sat the heart of this podcast.
So in the spirit of imagining otherwise,when you do this kind of work, when
you teach your students about thiskind of work, when you do all the
(17:44):
kinds of projects in the world thatyou're invested in, what is that
world that you're working toward?
What kind of world do you want?
It's a great question.
I will say the most immediate goal I thinkI'm working toward, and this is part of
the project of the book and also partof the courses that I teach on media and
(18:08):
migration, is to get those involved inmedia, whether it's media makers, students
who are hoping to become media makers,media consumers, media critics, to get
all of us to acknowledge, to become awareof, our involvement and responsibility in
(18:29):
how contentious and politically chargedissues like borders get discussed.
So that means on the production side,for example, realizing that creative
decisions that are made solely forthe sake of attracting eyeballs or
prioritizing what's going to selland what's going to get clicks, all
(18:50):
of these have real life consequencesbeyond the representation itself.
We cannot separate thosetwo types of effects.
It also means acknowledging that goodintentions are not enough if we are not
critical and conscientious about howmedia forms and conventions can perpetuate
(19:15):
and fuel harmful, harmful ideas.
While I was finishing the revisions of thebook was also the moment where there all
of this rhetoric of quote unquote migrantcaravans and how they were sort of,
quote unquote, swarming into the border.
I was at this panel where I asked a TVreporter um, how felt the responsibility
(19:41):
when they sent crews to the border andbasically just had a reporter standing
there where there was nothing but createdan entire news report around waiting
for that caravan to arrive and how justbuying into that rhetoric to begin with
already gave some sort of credence.
So, I think the goal that I'mmoving toward is to get media
(20:03):
producers to realize thatresponsibility and that involvement.
And definitely students who are interestedin getting into those industries, hoping
that they go in knowing about them andhoping to affect some change there.
More broadly, the world that I want is aworld where the free movement of people is
(20:25):
a social norm, is a legal and social norm,where we no longer criminalize people for
moving across the world, where encounterswith social and cultural differences are
seen first and foremost as opportunitiesfor collaboration and mutual growth.
And I think one of the main goals thatI hope to illustrate by exploring all of
(20:51):
these representations of border tunnelsand how they aid in the state project is
that the world that I want to see is onewhere we as a society do away with this
destructive attachment to the artificialconstruct of nation-state borders.
And what I mean by that is that we nolonger make political decisions based
(21:16):
on militarizing the border as themost important thing and choose that
everything else must suffer for it.
In that last chapter, I get to thepoint of basically saying that buying
into this idea that reinforcing orclosing the border will actually
(21:36):
save the nation-state is also doomingthe people and the environment of
the borderlands themselves to die.
So valuing the closing of theborder as the most important
thing is actually a detriment toeveryone who lives in that area.
So unless we do away, I want to seea world where we do away with this
(21:58):
sort of destructive attachment.
Because if we don't, we will onlycontinue to perpetuate violence against
marginalized and disenfranchisedpeople, against the environment,
and against the very infrastructuresthat could actually make a world
a more livable place for everyone.
(22:19):
Well, thank you so much for beingwith us today and sharing all of
these ways that you imagine otherwise.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for joining me for thisepisode of Imagine Otherwise.
A big thanks to Juan as wellfor sharing his research.
We really loved indexing his newbook, Border Tunnels, and you
(22:41):
can grab your copy now from theUniversity of Minnesota Press.
You can learn more about thatbook in the episode show notes on
our website at ideasonfire.net.
The show notes also include a transcriptand teaching guide for the episode with
related books, interviews, and resources.
Imagine Otherwise episodes make forgreat syllabus additions, and our
(23:02):
teaching guides are designed to helpstudents and researchers explore
the vibrant worlds of progressive,interdisciplinary scholarship.
This episode of ImagineOtherwise was produced and
edited by me, Cathy Hannabach.
You can find Ideas on Fire andImagine Otherwise on Instagram at
@ideasonfirephd, as well as on Mastodon,Bluesky, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.
(23:27):
You can subscribe to the show on ourwebsite at ideasonfire.net as well
as all of your favorite podcast apps.
Welcome to Imagine Otherwise, thepodcast about bridging art, activism,
and academia to build more just futures.
I'm Cathy Hannabach.
Today we're talking about the visualpolitics of border tunnels between
Mexico and the United States.
To help us think through how these tunnelsare represented and often overrepresented
in US media, I'm excited to have on theshow today Ideas on Fire author Juan
(00:29):
Llamas-Rodriguez, whose new book BorderTunnels: A Media Theory of the US–Mexico
Underground was recently publishedby the University of Minnesota Press.
When our team was working on this book,I was struck by Juan's argument that
visual representations of tunnels, infact, play a huge role in shaping border
policy and anti-immigrant sentiment.
(00:50):
For all of their visual obscurity andinaccessibility, they're hypervisible
in media representations not only ofthe US–Mexico border region but also
the bodies—both real and imagined—thatare associated with the borderlands.
In our conversation, Juan shareshis research into how border tunnels
are represented in video games likefirst-person shooters, in television news
(01:14):
coverage like Anderson Cooper 360, incopaganda reality shows like Border Wars,
and in action films like Fast and Furious.
We also discuss why it's so importantto think infrastructurally about media
production and how designers and activistsare using speculative design to reimagine
what the US–Mexico borderlands are andthe role of tunnels in that process.
(01:39):
Finally, we close out our conversationwith Juan's challenge to both media
makers and media consumers alike toaccept responsibility for the material
consequences of representation,and, in fact, to use it to create
a world where the free movementof people across and beyond all
borders is celebrated and realized.
(02:00):
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you for inviting me.
So your new book analyzes the politicsof media representations of border
tunnels along the US–Mexico border.
What are some of the key themesthat you saw emerging in your
research into that project, intohow those representations work?
(02:21):
So I would say one of the key motivatingfactors for starting this research was
noticing how border tunnels seem to beshowing up everywhere in all sorts of
media representations about the US Mexicoborder, from telenovelas on Telemundo to
Hollywood films to local news reports.
(02:41):
And very quickly I began torealize that border tunnels were
overrepresented in media compared totheir significance within unauthorized
movements across the US–Mexico border.
So this kind of became an opportunitynot not to simply to fact check
or state that, you know, this isinaccurate, but rather to ask why.
(03:04):
What makes border tunnels asort of favored media figure in
all these different instances?
And that led me to explain one ofthe key themes of the book, which is
that the tunnels', the structures',physical characteristics lead to
creative forms of recording andediting and representing it in media.
(03:26):
The more that I worked on this, themore that it became clear that border
tunnels actually offered me an ideallimit case to build an argument about
how our political and social ideas aboutthe space of the border are inextricable
from their media representations.
(03:47):
As opposed to something like the borderwall, which those who live near the
border can see more readily or have adifferent relationship to than those
who live very far away from the border,border tunnels are inaccessible to most
publics, near or far away from the border.
So it kind of became this limit caseabout how central media is in how
(04:11):
we imagine border tunnels to exist.
And in that process, it also becameimportant to demonstrate how the creative
decisions that go into showcasing theborder, or really any contentious space,
are sometimes tangential to the topicitself, and yet, they have all these
important implications for how we cometo understand the topic nonetheless.
(04:35):
In the book, you introduce aparticular methodology for studying
what is essentially, as you pointout, inaccessible to to most of us,
including to researchers, right?
And you argue methodologically forthe importance of what you call
thinking infrastructurally about bordertunnels, particularly the ways that
the materiality of those tunnels andthe symbolic or mediated discourses
(04:57):
about them are always working together.
I'm curious, what are some examplesfrom this project where that kind
of infrastructural thinking helpsus understand the ways that these
tunnels work in media maybe and beyond?
Right.
Yeah.
So broadly the book looks at two types ofborder tunnel representations: those made
(05:22):
primarily with live action footage andthen those created entirely with computer
generated imagery and in the middle ofthe chapter on special effects and action
films kind of does a little bit of both.
So, in the case of live actionfootage, the physical characteristics
of border tunnels limit howthey can be captured on camera.
(05:43):
So they're a very sort of crampedspace, usually there's very little
lighting, there are all these safetyconsiderations that crews have to take in.
So accounting for these physicallimitations, thinking about the structure
itself helps us understand the creativedecisions made by by media makers to turn
(06:06):
their footage into compelling television.
I started by mentioning that inthe first chapter how TV reports
can't rely on the usual tropesfor making compelling television.
There's no way they can do a livereporting on a tunnel because they
can't access it until it's been, youknow, secured and approved by CBP.
(06:29):
There's no way to do any long shots,right, because the space is very cramped.
So that helps us understand allthe creative considerations from
mixing different types of footage,smartphone footage, steadicam, drones,
to the post-production elementsthat shape these representations,
like voiceover or editing.
(06:50):
And then on the other hand, in thecomputer generated tunnels, you
don't have physical limitations.
The video game Call of Juarez createstunnels that are far wider, far higher
than anything you could ever createunder the US–Mexico borderlands.
Yet we still need to acknowledge theinfrastructure that creates these
tunnels, the very technology thatallows for their design and for their
(07:14):
sort of computational reproduction.
And that automated reproduction, thefact that you can algorithmically
create these very long, repetitive, sortof automatically made, hallways that
represent the tunnels when you put this inthe service of a specific game genre, like
the first-person shooter, that also hasimplications for how we come to perceive
(07:37):
and understand the function of tunnels.
So when I'm proposing thinkinginfrastructurally, infrastructural
thinking means that to criticallyanalyze what audiovisual media is doing.
It means not only paying attentionto its images and sounds but also
(07:59):
taking into careful consideration itsconditions of possibility, both the
sort of physical characteristics of theworld it's trying to capture and the
materiality of the technology that iscreating those media representations.
You talk a lot in the various chaptersof the book about how all representations
(08:21):
of the border, and of border tunnelsin particular, invariably take a
political stance on a wide variety ofborder issues, everything from state
violence to the policing of migrantsto militarization, to a whole host
of various border political issues.
What are some of the ways that theserepresentations of tunnels shape
(08:45):
actual border policy and vice versa?
Yeah.
The main concern, I think, as I wasbuilding this entire project was how is
just the fact that border tunnels areoverrepresented in media already shaping
the kind of policies and the fundingand the resources that are moving into
(09:07):
we need to focus on the tunnel problem.
During the Obama years, there used to bea specific section on White House reports
on what are we doing about the tunnels?
And that kind of went away after 2016.
But
for a more specific example, one of theshows that I analyze is Border Wars,
which was this hugely popular serieson National Geographic, it spawned
(09:31):
endless replicas in the last decade.
And people who have written aboutBorder Wars have always made the
argument that this serves—itsentertainment, but it's really just
propaganda for the many units underthe US Department of Homeland Security.
And that is true.
But the producers never reallymade a secret of that fact.
The goal of the show was to presentthe stories of those who work in
(09:52):
these border policing units, BorderPatrol, Coast Guard, ICE, whatnot.
So I make the argument that part ofwhy we see a rise in these types of TV
content, especially during the Obamayears, is as a response to the growing
immigrant rights activist movements,which were very new, media savvy, and
(10:13):
very smart about how using media couldaffect change and change public opinion.
So this kind of TV, reality TVcontent, was a strategy to make the
border policing apparatus the maincharacter again, which could lead to,
you know, more political capital andmaybe increased budgets, and so forth.
(10:33):
And in this specific case of mediaabout border tunnels, these kinds of
shows actually serve to cast the borderagents as the real people in danger,
to show how they were always at risk ofphysical harm when they were trying to
go into those tunnels and thereby justshifting the conversation about harm
(10:55):
to the agents rather than the migrantswho were basically the ones who were
being physically harmed at the time.
And one of the interesting, one of themost interesting, pieces of information
I found, which I think speaks to howmedia creators are always aware of the
impact that these productions have onbroader public opinion and policy, is
(11:19):
I was interviewing one of the formercommunications directors for CBP.
He mentioned that officers that wouldbe featured in Border Wars were always
subject to more thorough background checksthan those they had gone through in order
to get hired as Border Patrol agents.
So, producers of the show and thecomms teams for CBP, they knew that
(11:43):
the goal of selling the stories ofthese officers on the show would
be undermined if the officers onscreen became a publicity liability.
So being known as corrupt, or affiliatingwith white supremacist groups, or having
a history of domestic violence, thesewere not necessarily disqualifying for
(12:04):
getting hired in border policing agencies,but they were disqualifying for being
featured on television, or at least thatwas the case in 2013 when the show began.
That's really interesting.
I mean, it's a PR issue, right?
It's we don't want to look bad,even in in quasi-fictionalized
(12:25):
but but kind of reality TV genre.
Exactly.
Yes.
The whole goal of the show is for usto look good, so we need to make sure
that all the things that would makeus look bad are dealt with, which,
part of the argument is like, why areyou not focusing on those things not
being dealt with in the real world?
(12:45):
Exactly.
Yeah.
This actually brings me to my nextquestion quite nicely because I think
the TV news chapter and the reality TVchapter are both looking at conservative
representations of the border.
So representations of border tunnelsthat seek to do the work of the
(13:05):
state and shore up up the ideologyand the violence of the state.
But you also have this chapter onspeculative design, where you're
looking at some really interestingprogressive projects that also
engage with representations ofborder tunnels, but they're trying
to do something very different.
And you note that a lot of theseprojects center sustainability and kind
(13:29):
of use that lens of sustainability.
I'm curious what sustainabilitybrings to those kinds of progressive
multimedia projects and how doesit help us push back against those
more conservative or xenophobic orstate-based representations of tunnels?
So that chapter actually also grewout of my frustration with speculative
(13:54):
art and design projects that were atleast claiming to be doing that, to
reimagine and resist the border wall.
But they never went so far as toimagine the dissolution of the wall.
And US federal policy to today stillholds that the provisions of something
(14:17):
like the Clean Water Act or the CleanAir Act can be suspended if there is a
need for new border constructions for thesake of quote unquote national security.
So it is very much privilegingthis militarization over
any sort of sustainability.
And in the borderlands, everyone fromIndigenous activists to environmental
(14:39):
scientists to residents at the borderare all advocating that there is no
sustainable way to maintain the ecosystemsof the borderlands as long as there
continues to be construction of borderbarriers, whether those barriers are steel
walls or fences or high-tech surveillancesystems of any of those sorts.
(15:01):
So the frustration was that any sortof speculative or artistic project that
didn't actively imagine the undoing ofthe current physical border divisions
was mostly just perpetuating the statusquo or beautifying it, in the words of
one of the projects that I analyzed.
And then that leads me to look atdifferent kinds of multimedia projects
(15:24):
that instead are using the existence ofborder tunnels to think about different
spatial configurations of the borderlands.
So how do we look at the underground notonly as a different physical space but
also a different space of possibility?
(15:45):
The one that I find the most generativeand that I dedicate quite an amount amount
of time to actually acknowledges thecurrent devastation that has come from
border enforcement and the constructionof border divisions, and proposes that we
take the ruins of the present, the factthat there's already been some irreparable
(16:08):
damage to the borderlands because ofall the construction for the border
divisions, and use those as the startingpoint to imagine different futures.
So, in that case, what the lens ofsustainability is doing is trying
to get us to reframe and think aboutsustainability as prioritizing repair
(16:33):
and as prioritizing care for theborderlands, rather than this sort of
corporatized sustainability that isreally just sort of quote unquote green
alternative to border wall construction.
There is no version of, well, this borderwall that we've created is actually
more carbon neutral, that isn't justgoing to have all sorts of negative
(16:56):
externalities to the border walls anyway.
So how do we use multimedia to imagine,first, in this contain small way, a
different way of thinking about theborderlands that isn't about division
and that is more about thinking ofthese interconnected life systems.
And from there, start to imagine howto change the above ground as well.
(17:22):
So this brings me to my favoritequestion that I get to close
out every conversation with.
And I think we saw hints of it rightthere in these kinds of projects
that you were just mentioning.
So I'll ask you a question that'sat the heart of this podcast.
So in the spirit of imagining otherwise,when you do this kind of work, when
you teach your students about thiskind of work, when you do all the
(17:44):
kinds of projects in the world thatyou're invested in, what is that
world that you're working toward?
What kind of world do you want?
It's a great question.
I will say the most immediate goal I thinkI'm working toward, and this is part of
the project of the book and also partof the courses that I teach on media and
(18:08):
migration, is to get those involved inmedia, whether it's media makers, students
who are hoping to become media makers,media consumers, media critics, to get
all of us to acknowledge, to become awareof, our involvement and responsibility in
(18:29):
how contentious and politically chargedissues like borders get discussed.
So that means on the production side,for example, realizing that creative
decisions that are made solely forthe sake of attracting eyeballs or
prioritizing what's going to selland what's going to get clicks, all
(18:50):
of these have real life consequencesbeyond the representation itself.
We cannot separate thosetwo types of effects.
It also means acknowledging that goodintentions are not enough if we are not
critical and conscientious about howmedia forms and conventions can perpetuate
(19:15):
and fuel harmful, harmful ideas.
While I was finishing the revisions of thebook was also the moment where there all
of this rhetoric of quote unquote migrantcaravans and how they were sort of,
quote unquote, swarming into the border.
I was at this panel where I asked a TVreporter um, how felt the responsibility
(19:41):
when they sent crews to the border andbasically just had a reporter standing
there where there was nothing but createdan entire news report around waiting
for that caravan to arrive and how justbuying into that rhetoric to begin with
already gave some sort of credence.
So, I think the goal that I'mmoving toward is to get media
(20:03):
producers to realize thatresponsibility and that involvement.
And definitely students who are interestedin getting into those industries, hoping
that they go in knowing about them andhoping to affect some change there.
More broadly, the world that I want is aworld where the free movement of people is
(20:25):
a social norm, is a legal and social norm,where we no longer criminalize people for
moving across the world, where encounterswith social and cultural differences are
seen first and foremost as opportunitiesfor collaboration and mutual growth.
And I think one of the main goals thatI hope to illustrate by exploring all of
(20:51):
these representations of border tunnelsand how they aid in the state project is
that the world that I want to see is onewhere we as a society do away with this
destructive attachment to the artificialconstruct of nation-state borders.
And what I mean by that is that we nolonger make political decisions based
(21:16):
on militarizing the border as themost important thing and choose that
everything else must suffer for it.
In that last chapter, I get to thepoint of basically saying that buying
into this idea that reinforcing orclosing the border will actually
(21:36):
save the nation-state is also doomingthe people and the environment of
the borderlands themselves to die.
So valuing the closing of theborder as the most important
thing is actually a detriment toeveryone who lives in that area.
So unless we do away, I want to seea world where we do away with this
(21:58):
sort of destructive attachment.
Because if we don't, we will onlycontinue to perpetuate violence against
marginalized and disenfranchisedpeople, against the environment,
and against the very infrastructuresthat could actually make a world
a more livable place for everyone.
(22:19):
Well, thank you so much for beingwith us today and sharing all of
these ways that you imagine otherwise.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for joining me for thisepisode of Imagine Otherwise.
A big thanks to Juan as wellfor sharing his research.
We really loved indexing his newbook, Border Tunnels, and you
(22:41):
can grab your copy now from theUniversity of Minnesota Press.
You can learn more about thatbook in the episode show notes on
our website at ideasonfire.net.
The show notes also include a transcriptand teaching guide for the episode with
related books, interviews, and resources.
Imagine Otherwise episodes make forgreat syllabus additions, and our
(23:02):
teaching guides are designed to helpstudents and researchers explore
the vibrant worlds of progressive,interdisciplinary scholarship.
This episode of ImagineOtherwise was produced and
edited by me, Cathy Hannabach.
You can find Ideas on Fire andImagine Otherwise on Instagram at
@ideasonfirephd, as well as on Mastodon,Bluesky, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.
(23:27):
You can subscribe to the show on ourwebsite at ideasonfire.net as well
as all of your favorite podcast apps.
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