UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Coloniality and Border(ed) Violence: San Diego, San Ysidro and the U-S///Mexico Border Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/38g6w7s6 Author Hernandez, Roberto D Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Coloniality and Border(ed) Violence: San Diego, San Ysidro and the U-S///Mexico Border By Roberto Delgadillo Hernández A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Ramón Grosfoguel, Chair Professor José David Saldívar Professor Ignacio Chapela Professor Joseph Nevins Fall 2010 Coloniality and Border(ed) Violence: San Diego, San Ysidro and the U-S///Mexico Border © Copyright, 2010 By Roberto Delgadillo Hernández Abstract Coloniality and Border(ed) Violence: San Diego, San Ysidro and the U-S///Mexico Border By Roberto Delgadillo Hernández Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Ramón Grosfoguel, Chair Considered the “World's Busiest Border Crossing,” the San Ysidro port of entry is located in a small, predominantly Mexican and Spanish-speaking community between San Diego and Tijuana. The community of San Ysidro was itself annexed by the City of San Diego in the mid-1950s, in what was publicly articulated as a dispute over water rights. This dissertation argues that the annexation was over who was to have control of the port of entry, and would in turn, set the stage for a gendered/racialized power struggle that has contributed to both real and symbolic violence on the border. This dissertation is situated at the crossroads of urban studies, border studies and ethnic studies and places violence as a central analytical category. As such, this interdisciplinary work is manifold. It is a community history of San Ysidro in its simultaneous relationship to the U-S///Mexico border and to the City of San Diego. In addition, it considers multiple forms of both direct and symbolic violence often overshadowed by attention to drug violence: the annexation dispute in the 1950’s (territorial); the 1984 McDonald’s Massacre of predominantly Mexican patrons (corporeal/racial); a subsequent fight over a memorial monument (cultural/symbolic); the resurgence of vigilante-like anti-immigrant groups (ideological); and critical responses by cultural producers to the very existence of the border wall. In sum, it considers the relationship between coloniality, nation-state borders and violence to understand the region’s role in an increasingly globalized world. In analyzing the varied responses by local residents, this study thus considers broader theoretical issues of raced/gendered violence, power, and nation-state borders. It challenges two established assumptions in much of the literature on border cities: 1) the normative descriptor "San Diego-Tijuana" as a proper name for the region, and 2) a related insistence on "San Diego-Tijuana" as an exception in relation to other U.S. counterparts among border cities. In doing so, my dissertation unsettles the demarcation of San Diego as a border city, given its location and relationship to San Ysidro and the U-S///Mexico border? In this dissertation, San Ysidro functions as a lens to study the U-S///Mexico border, as San Ysidro is emblematic of globalizing processes, where local dynamics intersect and often conflict with regional, transnational, and global political/economic interests embodied in free trade policies said to make borders increasingly irrelevant. The case study of San Ysidro reveals, however, the contradictory nature of fortified yet permeable nation-state boundaries and surrounding border regions. 1 Para mi madre y padre que me trajeron a San Ysidro i Table of Contents Coloniality and Border(ed) Violence: San Diego, San Ysidro and the U-S///Mexico Border Dedication i List of Figures iii Preface iv Acknowledgements vi Vita vii Introduction Coloniality of Power, Violence and the U-S///Mexico Border 2 Chapter 1 The Logics of Municipal Annexations at the fringe: Territorial Violence and the Structural Location of a Border(ed) Barrio 21 Chapter 2 The 1984 McDonalds Massacre and the Politics of Memory: On Murders, Monuments and Militarization 47 Chapter 3 At Home in the Nation: Contested Citizenship and the Structural Embeddedness of Vigilantism on the U-S///Mexico Border 76 Chapter 4 Sonic Geographies: “We Didn’t Cross the Borders, the Borders Crossed Us” 103 Conclusion The Future of the U-S///Mexico Border at San Ysidro 126 References 130 ii List of figures 1. Map of San Ysidro in relation to San Diego 1 2. Map, Changing Municipal Boundaries in a Town in Alabama 34 3. Map, City of San Diego, City Council Districts 40 4. McDonalds Massacre Memorial Monument 48 5. Map of San Ysidro with McDonalds Detail 58 6. Photo of the front of the McDonalds following the shooting 67 7. Photo of the McDonalds site being bulldozed 68 8. Makeshift Monument raised at the site of the McDonalds 69 9. McDonalds Monument at Southwestern College 72 10. McDonalds Monument with Steel Fence 73 11. Plaque in front of the Memorial Monument 74 12. Plaque in front of the Memorial Monument with shadow 74 13. Anti-Driver’s License Campaign Billboard 78 14. Here Legally Shirt worn at anti-immigrant rallies 78 15. Lead pages to Samuel Huntington‘s “Hispanic Challenge” 79 16. Map depicting troop movements across the border 82 17. Map with comments on Congressman Dreier proposal 83 18. Lalo Alcaraz, Never Forget, 2002 101 iii Preface “This is my home this thin edge of barbed wire” -Gloria Anzaldúa Growing up in the border town of San Ysidro, only blocks from the border wall, I often looked out my elementary classroom window and would see Border Patrol agents in my school playground chasing people who looked like me. This same image would repeat itself through junior high school and high school and has stayed with me as a reflection of my own presence in this country: perceived as “immigrant” and “foreign” despite my formal status as a citizen. The image would be reinforced when on my way home from school I was often stopped by the Border Patrol myself and constantly asked where I was from, where was I going, what was I doing? The terrifying schoolyard scenes constituted my first knowledge of and lesson in the existence of uneven social structures, power, and inequality. The Border Patrol’s intense questionings in turn led me to develop my own questions. Seeking answers from elected officials in San Diego seemed like a fruitless endeavor as their attention was elsewhere. I did not allow these experiences to deter me however. Nor did I erupt with rage, though I certainly could have. I did not know it then, but already at the time my own questions were seeking to understand the systemic and structural factors that accounted for such scenarios. While I have very vivid and clear images of the above experiences forever engraved in my thoughts, my own memory was born on July 18, 1984, when a gunman stormed a McDonalds within two blocks walking distance from my childhood home and killed over twenty, wounding another eighteen, predominantly Mexican patrons and employees. I cannot clearly remember anything before that day, but I remember that day. I remember how that day brought into focus the migrants I would see running across my schools’ soccer fields; brought into focus the Border Patrol officers otherwise so close to my face that their faces would blur. That summer afternoon, in essence, brought focus to my two-pronged question: Why are Mexicans in this border town hunted down and/or killed at a moment’s notice? Today, I can look back and say with clarity that I knew all too well, up close and personal, the idea posed by Ruth Wilson Gilmore about racism as “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” In San Ysidro, Mexicans are hunted down and many die. I did not want to be hunted down. I did not want to die. I was born in Guadalajara. At little over two weeks old my parents brought me to San Ysidro. When they crossed the border themselves in the mid-1960’s, they did not go to Los Angeles or other popular destinations to the north. They stayed close to the border that they too knew as home. My mother had been born in Guadalajara as well, but would spend her formative teenage years on the other side of la frontera in Tijuana. The border was a familiar place to her. My father was also from the border, but one further south, from southern Chiapas near the Mexican border with Guatemala. As life iv long fronterizos, San Ysidro was home to them and later to my sister and myself. Upon going into labor with my sister however, they headed south, to Tijuana, countering the anti-immigrant logic of “anchor babies”. When I came along my family was in Guadalajara for an uncle’s wedding, otherwise I too would have made the voyage south in my mother’s belly to be born in Tijuana. This “thin edge of barbed wire” we call home is San Ysidro; others call it the busiest border crossing in the world, yet to me it is a small predominantly Mexican town on the northern side of the U-S///Mexico border. San Ysidro is also the most southwestern point of the continental United States. It is in this regard the culmination of a long historical process that entailed the ongoing expansion of the United States’ national-territory and the relocation of its boundaries to locations further west and south.