Caning the Border Patrol
By Char Miller

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world,” anthropologist Margaret Mead once asserted. “Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

One such micro organization, Barrio de Colores, may not have changed the world when it took on the mighty U.S. Border Patrol (BP), but it certainly forced the agency back on its heels, no mean feat.

Their clash revolved around the thick stands of Carrizo cane that grow along the Rio Grande River, in and around Laredo. The BP had proposed to eradicate a 1.5 mile stretch of the tall tangle-the plant can soar upwards of 30 feet–through aerial spraying; helicopters, armed with the herbicide imazapyr, were scheduled to lay down the toxin in late March.

They have yet to leave the ground: nearby residents quickly formed Barrio de Colores, through whose good offices they then filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the BP had ignored key environmental regulations. Strikingly, the agency stood down, and agreed to remove the cane through mechanical means and by hand-painting stumps with imazapyr.

The plaintiffs have every right to proud of their achievement, so quickly gained.

Theirs is, alas, an all-too-rare accomplishment. For more than three years grassroots organizations have challenged the Bush Administration’s decision to harden the border by any means possible.

From Texas to California, they rallied against bulldozers scraping wide swaths through urban neighborhoods, rural ranchlands, public parks, and wilderness preserves; opposed backhoes as they dug trenches so that construction crews could erect triple-thick chain-link fences and concrete walls; and tried to halt workers from stringing barbed wire, fitting high-intensity lighting, or mounting high-tech surveillance cameras atop the newly built infrastructure.

All to no avail. Just how unchecked federal power has been along the borderlands is captured in the chilling photographs of this now-fortified landscape-these stark images evoke nothing so much as the sinister Berlin Wall.

To complete the Cold War-like montage of a brutalized terrain and an abject population, scan the sky for helicopters. Some swoop along the border at night and with powerful infrared searchlights illuminate those crossing into the United States under the cover of darkness. Others choppers were to have made daytime sorties, targeting not undocumented migrants or smugglers but the noxious Carrizo cane.

So convinced was the Border Patrol of the rectitude of its decision; so compliant were local politicians who bowed before its authority, that it did not think twice about the consequences of launching helicopters in a scorched-earth campaign against the nonnative plant. As for the broad-spectrum herbicide it thought perfect for the job, imazapyr seemed so apt in part because of the martial monikers under which it is marketed– “Arsenal” and “Assault.”

By all accounts, it is deadly: when applied, imazapyr attacks foliage and roots, interfering with DNA synthesis and cell growth. Yet it is an indiscriminate killer. Although the Bush-controlled EPA re-approved imazapyr in 2006, the agency conceded that it is particularly lethal to rare and endangered species. It also affirmed that while the herbicide is not carcinogenic and has no known impact on human reproduction–an affirmation the BP used to justify its decision to employ it–direct contact may result in rashes, swelling, and other irritations.

The Critical Habitat Project has offered a more blunt assessment of the chemical compound’s possible effects: “one primary breakdown product of Imazapyr is quinolinic acid which is a neurotoxin and can cause symptoms similar to those in Huntington’s chorea such as loss of coordination and trembling.”

Such troubling information about imazapyr’s possible complications was what propelled those living in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo to mount a highly public, cross-border protest. It also undercuts BP spokesman’s blustery rebuttal of the agency’s critics: “We’re not out to ‘poison’ anybody. I find that word a little bit over the top,” spokesman Chuck Prichard said. “We’re just the guy that needed his house painted … This is the method they chose. Based on what we know this would be an effective, low-risk way to do this.”

House-painting: if only the Border Patrol’s plans had been so benign. But if they had been, why not just issue warnings to those living in Los Dos Laredos? Why not file an Environmental Impact Statement about imazapyr’s worrisome potential? The Border Patrol did not do so because it felt free to violate federal law, endanger public health, and pollute the earth in the name of homeland security.

Happily, its self-declared freedom of action was curtailed in this case-thanks to that small band of activists, “Barrio De Colores.”

Char Miller is visiting professor of history and environmental analysis at Pomona College, and author of Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas, and editor of On the Border: An Environmental History of San Antonio. His columns appear regularly in the Rio Grande Guardian.

Content is republished in full, with permission from the Rio Grande Guardian.

Related posts

• Laredo’s ‘Agent Orange’ Controversy (19)
• Laredo’s “Agent Orange” Controversy Update (0)
• Imazapyr: Laredo’s “Agent Orange” (2)
• Reconquista!: A Nativists Creation (14)
• It Was Bound to Happen, National Guardsmen Shoot Up a Family Gathering (6)

Tags: border, Border Patrol, herbicides, Homeland Security, imazapyr, Immigration, pesticides, Texas |  Print This Post |
functional