Border Stories: Why Do Nations Build Walls?*
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 04.26.07 | 8:53 AM ET
Because of fear and the desire for control, writes Charles Bowden in a terrific story in the May issue of National Geographic. Bowden primarily focuses on the barriers between the United States and Mexico, but he ties them to a historical trend—a trend, generally, of failure. “Walls are curious statements of human needs,” he writes. “Sometimes they are built to keep restive populations from fleeing. The Berlin Wall was designed to keep citizens from escaping from communist East Germany. But most walls are for keeping people out. They all work for a while, until human appetites or sheer numbers overwhelm them.”
I didn’t expect anything less than stellar photos to go with Bowden’s story, and I wasn’t disappointed. The magazine has posted a photo gallery with 16 images of the U.S.-Mexico border by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, as well as some field notes about how they got their shots. (Via Foreign Policy Passport)
* Update April 30, 9 a.m. ET: Tim Weiner looks at walls from a different angle in Sunday’s New York Times. “These are walls of war — the architecture of long struggle,” he writes. “Hard to erect, harder to maintain, they are never stronger than the political skill of their designers.”
Related on World Hum:
* Searching for ‘Random Weirdness’ on Mexico’s Southern Border Highway
* World Borders Redefined
* The Meaning of Borders
Photo of the U.S.-Mexico border by davidlud via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Casey Kittrell 04.27.07 | 10:36 AM ET
Absolutely agree on Bowden and borders. His “Exodus” piece in last September’s Mother Jones was one of the best magazine stories I read last year. Hoping to turn it into a book for UT Press.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/09/exodus.html