Abstract

MENESES, Guillermo Alonso. Violence associated to the undocumented crossing of the Mexico-USA border. Nueva antropol [online]. 2005, vol.20, n.65, pp.113-129. ISSN 0185-0636.

In the Mexico-U.S.A. border region, since 1993 there has been an increased number of detentions and deaths of immigrants who enter ilegally into the U.S.A. One of the factors that caused these problems has been the aggressive control of that country's southwestern border. Another factor is the persistence of the Mexican and Latin American immigrants in going to work to the U.S.A., no matter that they must enter by dangerous areas and risk their own lives crossing the border. From the perspective of socio-cultural anthropology, this work analyzes statistical data and ethnographic information to give a general view of the problems faced by immigrants and to select evidences that allow us to distinguish the different types of violence and the actors engaged in such situations. This may help to explain why more than three thousand undocumented migrants have died in the Mexico-USA border region, in the period between 1993 and 2003.

Keywords : border; undocumented; migration; border patrol; violence.

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