In Texas, Bush legacy sours

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

SOUTH TEXAS -- South Texans woke up to dismal skies this morning, as the rain was falling and the news came that the US filed suit Monday to seize the first of 102 private lands of people and city governments to build the US Apartheid Border Wall between Texas and Mexico.

The Berlin Wall has come down, and the Apartheid Wall between Palestine and Israel is a place of constant violence, conflict and death.

The United States, however, will seize private lands to build the border wall, going against its longstanding claims to be the world's champion in the fight against racism and apartheid.

The people of South Texans are ready to fight, in court and in the world's media. As people here say, migrants can always go under, over or around a border wall.

Lipan Apache like Eloise Garcia Tamez are refusing to allow surveyors on their land. On Monday, the US filed the first lawsuit against land owners, against the City of Eagle Pass, to seize lands for the border wall. There are 102 landowners in Texas, Arizona and California refusing to turn over their private lands.

Jumano Apache Enrique Madrid points out in Redford, Texas, where a young goat herder was murdered by a US Marine, this is not just a wall that the U.S. is building. It is a militarized zone.

Soldiers and border agents shoot to kill. While US soldiers and border agents rape and kill people walking across these lands, the news media is silent.

While National Guardsmen, Airforce pilots, a police officer and prison guard are sentenced to prison in Arizona for smuggling cocaine from the border, as exposed by the FBI's Operation Lively Green, the news media is silent. So many National Guardsmen wanted to smuggle drugs that the sting operation was halted.

In the end, the fragments of border wall under construction across the Southwest -- which can't even be built in the rugged mountains and canyons -- will prove only to be a source of profit to those benefiting from television news' migrant xenophobia and the Bush-friendly corporations seizing contracts.

In the end, whether formally convicted or not, President Bush will be remembered as a war criminal, whose administration promoted torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Bush will be remembered for torture in secret prisons and the US will be remembered by the world for the terrorism it has induced.

In Texas, where Bush likes to claim he is a real Texan, he will be remembered as the president who filed lawsuits to seize private lands to build the US Apartheid Border Wall and opened the floodgates to a militarized zone of violence.

Photo: San Antonio's River Walk/Brenda Norrell