US Targets Lipan Apache for More Abuse at Border

By Brenda Norrell

The US made new threats about the condemnation and seizure of Lipan Apache lands in Texas for the US/Mexico border wall, as the abuses of Indigenous Peoples in the borderzone continues unabated. President Obama continues the genocidal borderland policies of the Bush administration.

The Lipan Apache announcement came this week at the same time that a US Border Agent shot and killed a man, Solis Palma, 28, throwing rocks east of Douglas, Arizona. The practice of US Border Agents murdering rock throwers mirrors the genocidal practices of Israeli soldiers shooting rock throwers, including children, at the border of Palestine.

The Lipan Apache in Texas have been targeted for the seizure of their land, while wealthy white land owners in the Texas borderlands benefit from US white supremacist policy.

The Lipan Apache said, "Indigenous peoples along the Texas-Mexico border — more than many other impacted groups — are burdened in multiple ways and disproportionately on all border wall construction projects because their communities have already been consistently targeted for State violence, militarization, repression and dispossession as a matter of the normative policies of the neo-liberal and settler State.

"The ‘third world’ conditions of the Texas border communities are directly related to the structural violence which goes hand-in-hand with the the settler state and settler constitutionalism dominating the region’s violent race, gender, and class politics. The normalization of the Texas-Mexico border communities as 'sacrifice zones' is so deeply internalized within the consciousness of South Texas' white citizenry that the scale of the violence and injustice is invisible to them."

Margo Tamez, and her mother Eloisa Tamez, continue to fight the United States' condemnation and seizure of their lands for the US/Mexico border wall in federal court.

Eloisa Tamez said, “The health of our elders is severely threatened by this singling out of our small community — and our elders — in El Calaboz and the possibility of further dispossession.”

"Numerous experts debating and writing about this case agree that the border wall mega-project and continuous dispossessions against numerous traditional and poor communities disproportionately targets the most vulnerable. Texas’ border counties are the poorest in the nation. The wall currently stands on the No. 1 and No. 2 most impoverished counties in the entire U.S., according to the last five years census reports. Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Presidio counties are often analyzed and cross-compared to many developing nations -- globally," Lipan Apache said in a statement.

Read the entire statement:

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2010/01/indigenous-elders-singled-out-for-new.html

Border Agent Kills Rock Thrower near Douglas, Ariz.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/metro/323912.php
Mexico probes Border Agent's murder of 28-year-old Solis Palma:
http://www.isria.com/pages/7_January_2010_46.php
Videos from Palestine border:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAR-0XL9n-g