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Chapter 9 Corruption in the US Borderlands with Mexico: The "Purity" of .Society and the "Perversity" of Borders Josiah MeC. Heyman and Howard Campbell Introduction: Corruption in an Ideologically "Pure" Setting A key theme of this book (notably the introduction), as well as the literature that leads up to it (Heyman and Smart 1999; Nuijten 2003; Schneider and Schneider 2003; Abraham and van Schendel 2005)1 is that a strict division between the clean and the corrupt-the legal, bureaucratic, and rational versus the illegal, informal, and irrational-is excessively simple. In our view, it is better to begin by aiIalYzing social-political processes that produCf characteristically mixed or perverse outcomes in government activities, containing both elements 'of formal policy adherence and other elements, of policy incompleteness, subversion, and hidden agendas, including (but not limited to) corruption. Itis likeWise important to understand 'how such ambivalent realities are justified and 'mystified by ideologies of good versus bad, clean versus corrupt. , We take this perspective in examining corruption'on the US side of the US Mexico border. The standard journalistic and law enforcement framework is that Mexico is the source of illegality and corruption, while the US is the target oftp.ese illegal activities and itself is clean. Yet, there is significant evidence of corruption on the US side, not just in the sense that Mexican smuggling organizations subvert US state operations (though this is certainly true) but also in the senSe that withiti the US rules are ignored and bent through a variety of transactions and relationships. It is interesting how these phenomena occur and are understood in a,context of strong ideologies of rationality and cleanliness. Corruption is commonly viewed as a flaw, a limitation, or a failure of isolated individuals-the "bad apple" explanation. This is particularly important in maintaining the ideological purity of the US side. The individual component of corruption exists, without question. But our perspective is' that individual acts of corruption occur within and are revealing of wider social processes. First, we 1 See also the extensive literature review on corruption in Harris (20tH: 1-32). 192 Corruption and the Secret of Law show that acts of corruption happen repeatedly, in patterned ways, rather than rarely and idiosyncratically. Second, and more important, we demonstrate that individual and overt cases of corruption in the US are surrounded by systematic processes undermining the-letter and spirit of the law and connecting the legal and the illegal. By paying attention to this "penumbra" of corruption, we come to understand the recurrence of corrupt acts on the US side of the border. Relatively clear acts of corruption (for example, US border officers accepting or extracting favors for overlooking law violations) form part of a wider universe of phenomena, that also includes tolemted illegalities (for example, employment of undocumented labor), ambiguously legal actions (for example, under-enforcement of the law), and legal activities with questionable connections (for example, the use of "mysterious" money in commerce and banking). Corruption in this perspective emerges within a network of fluid transactions and arrangements along the border. We explore why the US-Mexican border has this particular chamcter, not because it is a strange and stigmatized place, but because it has a particular role in a division of labor with respect to the interiors of the United States and Mexico. Our attention is drawn to the movement of money, commodities, and people between the two nations and the role of the borderlands in mediating such flows. Side-by-side with these flows, we note the density of the state apparatus in this region, the enormous material and symbolic performance of law and bureaucratic power, and the constant presence of police agencies that people in the borderlands simply take for granted. To combine those two perspectives, we take apart the seemingly .massive and reified US state apparatus, viewing it as fractured and interpenetrated by other forms of social organization and action (see Abrams 1988; Hansen and Stepputat 2001; and the introduction-to this volume). The relationship of the state to the processes and bearers of cross-border flows ends up being fragmented and contradictory rather than characterized by a coherent rational legality. We also suggest that the visibly flawed and extreme qualities of the border do important symbolic work for the rest of US society in understanding itself as pure. When we look at representations of border corruption in a "rational" society, we see first, that corruption is treated as deviance mther than an outcome of wider processes; second, that the border and Mexico are represented as source of corruption, a kind of anti-state, rather than the necessarily ambiguous part of larger wholes; and third, that the bureaucratic machinery of the US state at the border is a bastion of order (subject to inexplicable moments of deviance) poised against these anti-state forces rather than a complex mixture of both opponent and participant in these processes. Corruption, then, should not happen according to the "rational" view, yet in reality it has to happen, for two definite reason~: to carry out tmnsactions demanded by the larger society and toprovide a contrastive, deviant label (the sinful border, the broken border, the corrupt border) to protect the self-view of US society and state. To explore the paradox of corruption in a supposedly mtional state, then, is to draw attention to wider issues, including the incompleteness of strong states and strong societies, the presence of ambiguity, flu an sk~ an of bo bo int an jOl bo pa', W( rel; Tb Th uil the sev qui citi SUI cb( spe bee dirt (tb. bOl the im} for in. Mi: of i of Un are eer Tra 193 lyS, rather than :monstrate that d by systematic ~cting the legal ption, we come ae border. ficers accepting wider universe employment of er-enforcement (for example, ruption in this arrangements this particular ecause it has a of the United .es, and people ing such flows. paratus in this d bureaucratic Ie borderlands take apart the fractured and l (see Abrams volume). The ier flows ends by a coherent of the border tanding itself 1 a "rational" nanoutcome Ited as source guous part of rs state at the iance) poised )th opponent Jen according te reasons: to a contrastive, .er) to protect ,rruption in a including the )f ambiguity, Corruption in the US Borderlands with Mexico fluidity, and transactionality in them, and the particular roles of border cultures and social relations in such formations. We begin this chapter with an overview of the US-Mexico border, and then sketch the major ways in which the US interior is linked to various illegal and ambiguous flows across this boundary. We then look more locally at the agencies of the US state, the kinds of laws they do and do not actually enforce at the border, and the interactions of the national state with local society in the US borderlands. We take particular note of the way that "mysterious" financial and interpersonal transactions are constitutive of this region. After presenting our analytical overview, we offer several case studies, partly ethnographic and partly journalistic, to demonstrate two points: that corruption on the US side of the border is systematic rather than a matter· ofa few "bad apples," and that individual patterns of corruption are linked to regional and nationallbinational processes. We finish by returning to our main analytical themes considering the paradoxical relationship of strong states/societies with their frayed outer edges. The US-MexicoBorder Context The US~Mexico'bolder is almost 2,000 miles in length. Parts of it are densely urbanized; witp binational metropolitan complexes of many hundreds of thousands, and in two cases (San Diegoffijuana and EI Paso/Ciudad Juarez) several million, in population. On the other hand, long sections of the border are quite remote, spauning rugged desert and mountain country, broken by small twin cities at minor crossing points. It is worth emphasizing that most crossings are surrounded by a settlement on both sides, rather than being lonely bureaucratic checkpoints some distance from settled towns, and that we can thus properly speak of a distinctive regional border society in each nation. In ,part, this is because substantial econotnic complexes are located along the border, depending directly and indirectly on daily border crossing; These include the maquiladoras (the massive band:of global export assembly plants on the Mexican side of the border), many legal as well as undocumented migrants commuting between the two nations (but more from Mexico to the US), tourism and shopping, and import/export conunerce. The seale, of. daily crossing is quite impressive. The single port of EI Paso, for example,in2005.,had 7.6 million pedestrian entrants, 29 tnillion passengers in 16 million personal vehicles, 740,000 trucks, and 144,000 rail containers. 2 Mixed with the vastvolume of legitimate trade and visiting are substantial flows of illegal commodities (for example, drugs) and entrants who violate the terms of their visas (for example, by working without authorization) once inside the United States. In addition, sections of the border between official ports of entry are subject to ilIegal-entrances (mostly to the US) of an unknown number, but certainly numbering in the tnillions. The border region is thus bost to a huge state 2 Data accessed (20 December 2006) on tile searchable website of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (http://www;transtats.bts.govlbordercrossing.aspx). - ._-- http://www;transtats.bts.govlbordercrossing.aspx 194 Corruption and the Secret ofLaw presence in both nations, but especially in the United States. This state presence is fundamentally inspectorial and regulatory, and thus concerned with law enforcement in a broad sense, but it must address the examination, registration, and authorization of enormous legal flows as well as interdict a large variety of illegal acts and goods. The standard perception of the US-Mexico border as the location of a huge punitive police apparatus is correct, then, but also misleading insofar as