Crossing the Border
Flipping the false rhetoric about undocumented immigrants on its head.
Some would have us believe that immigration at our southern border is causing all our problems and that the people who cross the border into the United States are exploiting the US.
As someone who studies California history, I find this amusing in a “funny, not funny” sort of way. Because what about the fact that white European settlers took every bit of the United States from Indigenous peoples? What about the fact that white European settlers took California from Mexico? And what about all the times white US Americans crossed the border in the other direction, from the United States into Latin America?
What? What are you talking about?
It’s true. There is a long history of US Americans crossing the border to exploit our neighbors to the south of us. Today I want to tell you about the first two instances that come to mind when I think about this: one national story and one California story.
United Fruit Company
The first instance that comes to mind is the United Fruit Company. During my undergrad at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, I studied for a history minor, and one of the courses I took was Political Economy of Latin America and the Middle East. It was an eye-opening study of two regions, their socio-economic structures, and how they are related and relate to the global economy. My history professor, Dr. Cameron Jones, assigned us the book Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. It’s a nonfiction book by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer about the CIA’s operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954.
Why would the United States, a nation that promotes democracy, overthrow a democratically elected government and pave the way for the installation of a military dictator and a civil war that killed over 200,000 people? The answer, as it usually is, is money. The US did so based on the lobby of a US American business trading in bananas, the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita). The US did so based on flimsy allegations the United Fruit Company made of a growing communist threat.
By the 1930s, United Fruit Company owned more land in Guatemala than any other single landowner. They took advantage of cheap land and cheap labor to build an empire. Their exploitation of Guatemala, its land, and its citizens led to the coining of the phrase “banana republic.” Locals called the company “El Pulpo,” which translates to “the octopus.”
When the democratically elected government began enacting land and labor reforms that would eat into United Fruit Company’s profits, the company mounted a misinformation campaign and lobbied the US government to intervene, resulting in the installation of a military dictator, a man United Fruit Company thought was more pro-business.
This is the story of just one country United Fruit Company dominated and exploited. The company also operated in countries including Cuba, Costa Rica, and Honduras. The ending of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is based on the 1928 massacre of striking United Fruit Company workers in the Ciénaga square in Columbia.
Agua Caliente Casino and Hotel
This one hits closer to home. In 1928, three wealthy US American sports promoters nicknamed, appropriately, the “Border Barons,” built the Agua Caliente Hotel and Casino and a racetrack just across California’s southern border, 18 miles south of the San Diego International Airport, just outside Tijuana, Mexico. Why in Mexico? Easy—Prohibition was in full swing, drinking was illegal in the US, and gambling and horseracing were illegal in California. Rather than abide by the law of the land, the Border Barons decided to take the vices of US Americans south of the border and to profit from them.
The Border Barons partnered with General Abelardo Rodríguez, the Governor and Military Commander of Baja California. Rodríguez owned the land the resort was built on. The foursome awarded the construction contract to Rodríguez’s brother, and word on the street has it that Mexican taxpayer funds were used to finance the construction.
Wealthy US Americans, Hollywood celebrities, and gangsters crossed the border into Mexico to circumvent US and California laws against gambling, horseracing, and drinking. Royalty and the elite flew in from all over the world. It’s been said the Agua Caliente Hotel and Casino was the inspiration for Las Vegas.
All ‘Bout the Money
I’m sure I could find many more examples, but I’m depressed enough without going down that rabbit hole.
When you study the history of racism and propaganda in the United States, “fake news” takes on a whole new meaning.
You’ll notice one thing both of my stories have in common—they’re both cases of the wealthy exploiting working class people to circumvent the law and to build more wealth.
Follow the money, and it’s easy to see who’s zoomin’ who.
I am rubber, you are glue …
In 2015, Donald Trump kicked off his presidential campaign in a speech during which he referred to undocumented Mexican immigrants as “criminals, drug dealers, rapists.”
As far as I know, he isn’t a drug dealer, but when Donald Trump, a convicted felon, calls people “criminals” and “rapists,” I am reminded of something my college psychology professor told us in 1986, at the height of televangelist Jimmy Swaggert’s heyday. Swaggert was known for his fire-and-brimstone preaching against sin and sinners.
“He’s projecting,” my psychology professor said. She predicted Swaggert would be embroiled in a scandal sooner rather than later, because the truth always comes out eventually.
The news about Swaggert frequenting prostitutes began to break two years later, in 1988. “I have sinned …,” Swaggert tearfully told his family, his congregation, and his television audience.
“Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another.”
—Psychology Today, “Projection,” accessed 11/07/2024
Trump’s lies about undocumented immigrants are a projection—he’s projecting his own character defects onto undocumented Mexican immigrants. His lies are a manipulation—he wants us to believe someone else, anyone else, is responsible for our hardships. They’re a misdirection—he wants to focus attention away from his greed and the greed of his billionaire cronies. Compared to what we’re living through now, the Teapot Dome scandal was a tempest in a teapot.
Resources
I’ve been reading about and researching United Fruit Company and the Agua Caliente Casino and Hotel for at least a dozen years, but some of the resources I used to refresh my memory for this piece are:
United Fruit Company (Wikipedia article), accessed 11/07/2024.
Agua Caliente Casino and Hotel (Wikipedia article), accessed 11/07/2024.
Tijuana’s Legendary Agua Caliente Hotel and Casino: A brief history of the “Monte Carlo en Tijuana” (and its fate) which opened in 1928 (San Diego Home/ Garden, 5/22/2019), accessed 11/07/2024.
Tijuana: Inspiration for Las Vegas (Talk Baja.com, 7/26/2022), accessed 11/07/2024