Introduction to Animal Thoughts: A Blog Assignment

This blog has been created for my comparative history of ideas class called Suffering: Animals, Violence, and the Consequences of Silence taught by Professor María Elena García at the University of Washington. I am taking this class as an elective for my Master of Arts in Cultural Studies program in which I am focusing on various aspects of Latino culture in the United States. One element of my research is studying the effects of the border wall that divides the desert throughout the borderlands region. Why then, you may ask, am I taking a course called Suffering?

The history of the border wall is directly linked to the implementation of NAFTA policies in 1994, which is the same year that the Clinton Administration began Operation Gatekeeper. The Patriot Act came along eight years later under the Bush Administration and that's when security really began to heighten and long stretches of fortified border wall were planned and constructed in an effort to prevent undocumented human migration into the U.S. under the guise of the "war on terror". This effort has been a colossal waste of billions of tax dollars, as research has proven that the wall only serves to slow down the average migrant group by about five minutes. With the increase in border patrol and security monitoring, many groups led by coyotes and other individuals choose to go around the wall, forcing them to cross through hostile mountainous desert terrain.

Thousands of people die every year in an attempt to exercise their human right to work after having their livelihoods disappear in order to accommodate the economic whims of the U.S., but the death toll on animals in the region is rarely even mentioned as a factor of the crisis. While my capstone research will likely explore one or more of the dynamics of the human element of this ongoing international predicament, the environmental impact of the wall has been devastating to wildlife and fragile ecosystems throughout this vast desert region. Endangered species are further challenged by catastrophic damage to the ecosystem, and I believe the animal suffering in this region must also be highlighted. The wall that was constructed in order to keep humans out fails in that effort, yet serves to cut off animals from food and water sources and their natural migratory patterns.

I hope you enjoy Suffering with me.