Sunday, April 3, 2005
Minuteman Project: A grotesque caricature of patriotism
By: CHRISTIAN RAMIREZ
(snip)
NAFTA assures goods and merchandise a safe and orderly system of crossing the border. Not surprisingly, in the thousands of pages that make up the NAFTA document, there are no provisions that afford human beings the freedom of movement that capital and products have enjoyed since 1994. To the contrary, the ink on NAFTA had not yet dried when Operation Gatekeeper was launched in San Diego in October 1994 by the federal government in an attempt to push undocumented migration from the urban areas located along the borderlands to the inhospitable deserts and mountains of the Southwest.
Recently, White House and federal legislators have used the U.S.-Mexico border as the most recent gimmick in the war against terror in their efforts to continue to play on the fears of the American public. Top-level Cabinet officials and federal representatives have tirelessly repeated the unsubstantiated notion that somehow, all of the sudden, the next al-Qaida attack will have had its origins from the border ---- this without having had any congressional hearings, without any evidence presented dealing with the issue, and without there having been any public investigation on the matter. In fact, the rhetoric from Washington serves only to escalate tensions along the borderlands to unprecedented levels.
(snip)
According to the Arizona Daily Star, Chris Simcox, a leader of the Minuteman Project, was convicted on federal weapons charges for practices similar to those that the Minutemen will engage in for the month of April. Another key figure among the so-called Minutemen is Roger Barnett, who in March 2004 kicked a woman and shouted obscenities at her while holding her at gunpoint in a remote location along the Arizona-Mexico border. In October 2004, Barnett was accused of pointing an AR-15 assault-rifle at a group of two men and three children, all U.S. citizens, because apparently Barnett confused the group with "illegal aliens." But the grass-roots character of the Minuteman Project does not end there. A who's who among the extremist groups of the United States is also planning to join the Minutemen in Arizona this month, including the Aryan Nation, which has called the Minutemen Project "a white pride event," and the swastika-waving National Alliance.
The fact is that the so-called Minutemen have nothing new to say. Their hate-filled language and actions have always been part of the border reality. For the most part, society forces these extremists' manifestation to its fringes. Sadly, the message of hate and violence that the Minutemen are promoting has received the receptive ear of the mainstream media and a nod of approval from local, state and federal authorities in Arizona. The Minutemen Project is at best a grotesque caricature of patriotism. If these paramilitary groups have it their way, they will inject even more violence and chaos to our already troubled border.
When society has generated such a hostile climate that it allows extremist organizations to be perceived as genuine and legitimate, that's when we have to stop and wonder if the path this country is taking is not leading us to an abyss.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/04/03/opinion/commentary/17_24_244_2_05.txtChristian RamÌrez is a human-rights advocate and the area director of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego.
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