Borders In the Head: Comparing Mexican and Berlin Wall

In order to understand previous and contemporary political conflicts about borders and walls through history education in both formal and informal environments, it is imperative to comprehend what has happened. For example, the role of both individual and collective aspects should be taken into account. However, it is equally essential to consider where a certain event has happened.

Territories in Historical Conflicts

This is due to the fact that this “where” usually refers to a specific territory which is under dispute. Naturally, when the term “territory” is used, one does not simply mean a specific part of the world with certain features. Rather, the term denotes something much more complex. For example, “territory” may signify how that territory was politically organized and how political and military battles were carried out for that particular territory.

In other words, the focus on territories should also highlight historical developments which are related to the disputes of different social groups around different parts of the world. This focus is of interest because if history education were to neglect the diverse connotations of the term “territory”, students and citizens might gain the wrongful impression that present territories and their political units have not changed across time. Such changes are usually pointed out by historical maps. Unfortunately however, such maps have failed to attract much attention from researchers in history education, albeit certain textbooks have provided a few exceptions. For example, Sebastián Pla has considered in this blog journal how the United States invaded Mexico and conquered a substantial part of its territory by the middle of the nineteenth century, thereby influencing the history of the two countries since then.[1]

Trump’s Wall: A Territorial Conflict

It is well known that President Donald Trump is trying to accomplish one of the most controversial goals announced in his presidential campaign, namely the construction of a wall measuring five thousand kilometers in length which would cover the entire border with Mexico. This decision also includes the intention to make Mexico pay for the costs of constructing the wall. The motivation for such a goal is to defend the North American territory from illegal Mexican immigrants by preventing them from entering the United States.

The announcement of this project was accompanied not only by decidedly negative and xenophobic depictions of Mexican citizens as dangerous and violent criminals, but also by the highly controversial decision to prevent refugees from several countries to arrive in the United States. Most of these actions have been rejected by a considerable section of the public such as the academic community, non-governmental organizations, and politicians from around the world. Nonetheless, the truth is that Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States by approximately fifty million people. Therefore, it could be concluded that the majority of people who voted for Trump regarded these ideas and decisions to be not only feasible, but even desirable.

Personally, I believe that we are dealing in this case with a representational entity which contains both social and historical dimensions of an undeniably historical origin. By this term, we mean both its historical origin as such as well as its historical origin as imagined by a section of the public. This is to say that this wall is attempting to become a physical border (a wall itself) replacing the symbolic and imaginary one. In other words, national borders are not merely physical barriers between countries. Usually, there is an agreement in place among nations which recognizes the existence of an imaginary line separating two or more countries, without this line necessarily being physical. In most cases, the line has no real existence. For example, there is a city in North America where the border constitutes a section of a library which includes both an American part and a Canadian part.[2]

In fact, there are no walls which separate nations from around the world, except for some specific and also highly controversial cases such as in Israel. Whilst border checkpoints, where passports and other documents are checked, represent a physical entity, most of the countries employing them do not attempt to carry out such checks alongside the entire border. Here lies, therefore, one of the possible areas of confusion amongst those who voted for Donald Trump with regards to their expectations. I believe that this is underlined by the inability to separate the physical and symbolic dimensions of the border.

Lack of Historical Literacy

It is also important to note that previous initiatives of building walls along borders have been strongly criticized by American politicians as well as by democratic world leaders. The most famous case is probably that of the Berlin Wall, which was a symbol not only of the division of Germany but also the division of the world in two blocks—the communist sector and the capitalist sector. As the wall was built by the communists, this was regarded as a dictatorial act which implemented a literal conception of a political border. It is extremely paradoxical that President Trump is now championing a similar proposal.

What do Trump’s motives have in common with those of the former East German and Soviet authorities? Whilst it is difficult to answer such a question, it would be reasonable to apply a tentative approach. The Berlin Wall was built to prevent German citizens from escaping from the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany. Trump’s wall, however, professes to prevent Mexican and other Latin American citizens from entering the United States. Therefore, the two walls are of a wholly opposite nature even though they are identical in terms of their conceptions about borders. This is to say that both cases share common ground in at least two theoretical approaches. Firstly, both walls were originally intended to transform the national border into a physical and tangible entity rather than a symbolic one. Secondly, they both intended to prevent people from freely moving between the nations’ borders. This second approach closely resembles the idea of criminalizing immigrants who merely chose to live in a foreign country.

Borders, 3 Facts

Ultimately, it appears that both Trump’s administration and its supporters are displaying a notorious lack of historical literacy with regards to at least three facts.

Firstly, the present borders are the consequence of both political and military actions across history. Secondly, they do not possess an essential meaning. This is to say that they are neither everlasting nor immutable. On the contrary, they denote symbolic entities which mean that they have been established on the basis of conventions and negotiations amongst societies and governments. Thirdly, it is therefore futile to transform them into entities with physical constraints. In conclusion, a last point could be also provided from the perspective of civic education, this is to say that the porosity of borders alludes to human rights which should not be violated as they represent possibilities of a better life for other human beings.

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Further Reading

• Crampton, Jeremy W. “Maps as social constructions: power, communication and visualization.” Progress in Human Geography 25/2 (2001): 235–252.
• Herzog, Tamar.”Historical Rights to Land: How Latin American States Made the Past Normative and What Happened to History and Historical Education as a Result.” In Palgrave Handbook of Research in Historical Culture and Education, edited by Mario Carretero, Stefan Berger, and Maria Grever, 91–108. New York: Palgrave, 2017.
• Kamusella, Tomasz. “School History Atlases an Instruments of Nation-State Making And Maintenance: A Remark on the Invisibility of Ideology in Popular Education.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2/1 (2010): 113–138.

Web Resources

• Old Maps Online. http://www.oldmapsonline.org/ (last accessed 6 June 2017).
• BBC. “The Berlin Crisis and the construction of the Berlin Wall.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/places/berlin_wall (last accessed 6 June 2017).

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[1] Sebastián Plá, “History Education in Times of Trump,” Public History Weekly 5 (2017) 15, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2017-9124 (last accessed 6 June 2017).
[2] Sarah Yahm, “The U.S.-Canada Border Runs Through This Tiny Library,” Atlas Obscura, July 7, 2016,http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-us-canada-border-runs-through-this-tiny-library (last accessed 6 June 2017).

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Image Credits
Mains au ciel, Berlin wall © Jeanne Menjoulet (2016), via Flickr.

Recommended Citation
Carretero, Mario: Borders In the Head: Comparing Mexican Wall and Berlin Wall. In: Public History Weekly 5 (2017) 23, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2017-9457.

Editorial Responsibility
Judith Breitfuß / Thomas Hellmuth

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