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245Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 47:2 Fall 2022 © University of California Regents

Border optics: surveillance cultures on the us-Mexico Frontier. By Camilla Fojas. New York: New York University Press, 2021. 208 pages. Hardcover $80.20, paperback 28.00.

In this history and analysis of the US-Mexico border as a visualized and mediated space, Camilla Fojas details how policing the border region has become a “performance for public consumption” (7). She draws attention to the ever-increasing forms of surveillance constructed or employed at the border and how the “security-industrial complex” (29) generates optics that are reproduced and circulated around the world. Fojas’s methodol- ogy engages historical discourses and mythologies as she dives into the visual archive of the western frontier and the border region. She finds common roots between the US Border Patrol agent and the ungovernable nineteenth-century Texas Ranger, who is memorialized to this day.

Fojas looks at mediated forms of the borderlands experience and how technologies of surveillance and policing have become ubiquitous in the border region. She describes how the security-industrial complex controls the visual space, almost as if it were a production set for a film or television program. The hyperreality of the images that are seen by the public makes the border all the more present. Fojas argues that the border is the culmina- tion of the US empire mythos and that through the media component of the security-industrial complex, the United States grants itself license to engage in genocide. The border is revealed as a deeply rooted ideological structure that is upheld by violent technologies such as the Predator B drone and violent policies such as forcing migrants to travel through ever-more dangerous areas.

The opening chapter begins with an exploration of what Fojas terms the “borderveillant media,” which she defines as “the operations of a vast network and infrastructure of oversight, control, and management of regions that symbolize the bounded and secure nation,” where the technologies of surveillance are ubiquitous (29). Fojas describes how the propaganda arm of the state is at work in docuseries that appear on popular networks ranging from Animal Planet to National Geographic to A&E. Spectatorship is incorporated into the network as average citizens become the eyes of the state, with each viewer assuming the role of a Border Patrol

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agent. The moral values that are impressed upon viewers by these shows are used to excuse policies like those in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Fojas states that viewers are trained “to acculturate . . . visual codes that ground the mood of suspicion and anxiety in practical scenarios that justify the violence of immigration policy, often masquerading as humanitarianism.” (35). In this way, “responsibilities replace rights in the definition of citizenship” (32) and the hundred-mile radius from the border becomes accepted as a place where rights can and must be suspended. She points out that consumers condone the stripping away of rights when they watch reality shows like Border Wars (2010–13) or Border Security: America’s Front Line (2016–).

In the following chapter, “Drone Futures: Alien versus Predator,” Fojas analyzes how the security-industrial complex normalizes the use of war technologies along the US-Mexico border. The Predator B drone, which Fojas calls the “master symbol of total surveillance,” is ever-present as it “hovers alone without any visible sign of its many operators on the ground, concealing its human engineers in a manner that enhances its perceived omnipotence” (63). The Predator B and other drones that surveil the region are not neutral and cannot be rendered as such. They are “the ultimate sign of US hegemony and imperial overreach, capable of crossing borders at will and without consequence” (65). Their use in what the media contrive as a “‘cat and mouse’ game,” which pits border security against migrants, erases the humanity of the “alien” that is being pursued (32). Surveillance of the border weaponizes the borderlands, and the response of the Global North is to fortify itself against the Global South.

“Wild Border: Surveillant Ecologies” focuses on the vast ecological and topographical diversity of the borderlands. Fojas reminds us not only of the durability of the mythos of “the West” as a wild region that needs taming but also as an uncontrolled area that is just beyond the state’s reach. Historically, as Fojas notes, “for the settler colonialist, the wilderness, like the frontier, shares symbolic resonance with the borderlands as places [that] . . . exist beyond culture and control,” which shapes the cultural and economic value of the region (101). The trope of the wild frontier provides a justification for effacing rights and personhood on the one hand and destroying natural habitats on the other. The Mexican “wilderness” is seen as separate from the American “wilderness,” however, and this is where the differences in the two countries’ views about their shared border become most evident. Whereas the United States sees the border region as a fantasy of expansion and discovery, Mexico views it with aversion

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and fear. Fojas brings environmental degradation to the fore when she notes how the routes used by migrants have been pushed into ever more rural, if not completely isolated, areas of the borderlands. New routes are weaponized against migrants when the United States charges migrants with environmental destruction.

“Imperial Border Optics” details how the perception of the border and its “defense” is central to the US stance in cultural and political arenas. Citing the “anxious demand to know everything beforehand, to exhaustively assess, understand, and anticipate risk” (123), Fojas notes the primary role of neoliberal capitalism in US efforts to control the border. The catchphrase “law and order” is employed to explain policies that cannibalize state and federal social programs and privatize government functions. Joining the United States in its efforts to police its borders are the other four members of the Five Eyes alliances, which is made up of security agencies from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The alliance, whose formation dates back to World War II, to develop a common strategy for policing migration around the world, creating “an expanded forcefield and fulcrum of imperial command” (124). The security regime requires absolute transparency from travelers, which may bring gender expression and performativity into conflict with their legal identification. To present oneself outside of the expected gender binary can result in severe consequences to root out supposed duplicity.

Chapter 5, “Border Futures: Seeing and Foreseeing,” turns to how the US Customs and Border Protection and its international alliance of border agencies sees a common future of “total surveillance and control of movement though all ports of entry” (147). Fojas shows how the principle of preemption foregrounds a future in which constant surveillance, which is ultimately destructive, reactive, and reactionary, is not sufficient. She looks at the ways in which the pursuit of a utopia of integrated global surveillance will require ever-more aggressive formulations of control in which racist ideologies gain strength. Fojas also considers the film Sleep Dealer, the book Lunar Braceros 2125–2148, and the television program Westworld as inspiration for resistance. The future is not necessarily bleak: a new consciousness is possible if “workers begin to resist their conditions of oppression and subjugation” (162).

Border Optics offers a comprehensive guide to the current border regime and its efforts to maximize profit from anxiety through the deployment of the borderveillant media. But Fojas also offers a reference point for beginning a migration away from border regimes for good. Border Optics

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is a welcome text for scholars and lay audiences who are interested in the ideological underpinnings and the cultural consequences of border policies in the United States and internationally. What is more, those who have read the collection edited by Holly M. Karibo and George T. Díaz, Border Policing: A History of Enforcement and Evasion in North America, will be able to see just how Fojas brings the topic up to date, offering a complementary read that places cultural and technological questions at center. Another book that in some ways offers a marked difference is Desert Duty: On the Line with the U.S. Border Patrol, by Bill Broyles and Mark Haynes. This volume explores the patriotism and sense of compassion of those who sign up to become Border Patrol officers. Fojas’s book presents an interesting counterpoint to Broyles and Haynes’s research, which looks at only fifty years. Scholars who are interested in border studies, Latinx studies, Chi- canx studies, media studies, and more will find much to consider in Border Optics, which offers fresh insights into how technology and media impact policing at the border.

Mark LaRubio, Arizona State University