by Juliana Birnbaum Fox
Apache activist Enrique Madrid meets with Berkeley City Council about indigenous rights on the U.S. – Mexico border. (photo by Juliana Birnbaum Fox)
Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington and Vice Mayor Max Anderson hosted a special reception with three indigenous leaders from the U.S. Ð Mexico border last week, where they discussed ongoing militarization and its impacts. Margo Tamez, Lipan Apache of southeast Texas, Enrique Madrid, Jumano Apache of southwest Texas and Michael Paul Hill, Chiricahua Apache of Arizona shared personal experiences about the construction of a border wall, and disruptions to family, community, religious, cultural and economic structures.
Earlier this year, the Berkeley City Council passed a resolution condemning the federal decision to commit over $1.2 billion toward construction of a border wall.
“The border wall will have devastating consequences on the environment, economy and on human lives, not just around the border area, but across the country,” noted Councilmember Worthington.
Since the passage of this resolution, opponents of the border wall have gained support from various other cities and counties.
Vice Mayor Max Anderson introduced the visitors, commenting that Berkeley was proud to oppose the wall, which “is not just bricks, mortar and surveillance cameras, but a symbolic effort to divide people targeting those with the smallest capacity to resist.”
Berkeley’s stance is spreading to other cities and towns,” said Enrique Madrid, indigenous community member, land owner in Redford, Texas and archaeological steward for the state’s Historical Commission. “State laws can be passed that would create a legal obstacle to federal military interventions.”
It was in Redford that a U.S. Marine shot and killed 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez, herding his sheep near his home in 1997.
“We had hoped he would be the last United States citizen and the last Native American to be killed by troops,” Madrid said.
Margo Tamez, an activist, poet and scholar, pointed out that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, passed this year, now guarantees the right of native people to their traditional territories. “We are not a people of walls. It is against our culture to have walls. The Earth and the River go together. We must be with the river. We must be with this land. We were born for this land.”
Tamez’ mother, Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez, was told that she would be taken to court and her lands seized by eminent domain if she didn’t allow surveys for the US/Mexico border-wall onto her property.
The proposed wall will have devastating consequences on the local environment sand will result in landowners and farmers losing their land and access to river water for irrigation,” Worthington wrote in his recommendation to the City Council. “It will also negatively affect the relationship between the US and Mexico as well as to indigenous nations.”
