Our second Sawyer Seminar, “The US-Mexico Border Regime: Trauma, Hospitality, Art, and Protest,'“ was held at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley as a collaboration between Boston University and UTRGV, particularly their Schools of Social Work, Departments of Political Science and Literature and Cultural Studies, and the UTRGV Office of Global Engagement/International Programs and Partnerships. Our Sawyer Seminar team knew it was crucial and necessary to work with universities and organizations who were navigating the border policies and practices we were studying and to host seminars in the borderlands, themselves. This event brought together stakeholders from academia, NGO’s, legal fields, activism, and art, from the US and Mexico, for a memorable cross-sector and cross-border conversation.
Many panels sought to establish the foundations and definitions of US-Mexico border regimes with a focus on histories and policies. We learned from place-based, local perspectives and valued the unique history of the Rio Grande Valley as a geographical borderland. We heard from the crucial organizations responding to border management actions and policies such as the busing, detention, and housing of migrants – and their subjection to the new CBP-One App. Local border artists shared and discussed their work, and academics from Monterrey and Reynosa, Mexico shared their work on the trauma experienced by migrants.
Our first keynote speaker, Norma Pimentel, is Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley and runs the Humanitarian Respite Center; she was named amongst Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Our second Keynote lecture, “The Expanded Borderlands,” was delivered by Professor Ronald Rael, the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture at the University of California Berkeley. The London Design Museum awarded his creative practice, Rael San Fratello, (with architect Virginia San Fratello, the prestigious Beazley Award in 2021 for Teeter Totter Wall, a project he positioned amongst other approaches to Border Wall as Architecture during his talk.
Recording: