“Border Interval”: Changes in Geography, Archeology, Environment and Public Perception about the U.S. - Mexico Border Wall.

Abstract

The implementation and construction of an ominous steel bollard border wall along the United States – Mexico borderlands during the Presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021), had drastically changed the context of the international border in culture, archeology, history, geography and appearance. Adding to this was the extreme environmental damage to streams, rivers, landscapes, monuments, animal and human migration routes; with the misnomer of the new border wall being the international border all bring together a paradigm change in border interpretations. The waiving of federal environmental and archeological laws allowed construction to go post haste without the usual checks and balances allowing considerable damage to the borderlands (Howe 2023b; Mumme and Brown 2017). Presidential Executive Order 13767 directed the United States (U.S.) government to begin wall building in 2017 until work was halted in 2021 under the current Joseph Biden Administration (Trump 2017). This thesis is a closer examination of former President Donald Trump’s administrations border wall construction on the western borderlands from New Mexico to California, but this thesis is focusing predominately on New Mexico. Examination will only be assessing the United States side of the border, as no wall construction was to have taken place in Mexico, presumably. The new geographical space between the actual international border monuments and the U.S. border wall is what is parenthetically called the “border interval.” Geographical boundary marker locations that are still in the United States are presumably interpreted as Mexican territory by a good percentage of the public (Howe 2023b). However, a new examination of this inaccuracy is the interpretation the steel bollard border wall has on the international border owing to these recent changes. A further question to examine, is what the public or people think is the border – the wall or the monuments - that tie into the previous point. In this respect, it is intended to demonstrate if this is a fallacy or a new interpretation in the public mindset based on a general misinformation consensus from research both socially and archeologically. This question leads into the second portion and main section of the thesis on historic international border monuments and the archeological information associated with such sites. This section will examine international boundary monuments in New Mexico where the border wall was built and the locality around Monument 40, where there currently is no wall but remnants of the Barlow-Blanco monument construction camp of the 1890s.