MEXICO CITY — "The wall" does not yet exist, and it may never be built, but already the proposed 700 miles of fencing and electric sensors loom like a new Berlin Wall in the Latin American imagination.
The plan for a barrier along the border with Mexico was approved by the U.S. House in December and is scheduled to be debated by the Senate next month. \o7
El muro\f7, as it is called in Spanish,\o7 \f7has been in the news for weeks not only in countries such as Mexico and El Salvador that are increasingly dependent on the money migrants send back home, but also those farther away, such as Argentina and Chile. Across the region, \o7el muro\f7 is seen as an ominous new symbol of the United States' unchecked power.
"The U.S. government has fostered an atmosphere of collective paranoia, given a green light to its spies ... and institutionalized torture," Salvadoran novelist Horacio Castellanos Moya said. "The only thing missing was a wall."
The brainchild of Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the measure calls for two "layers of reinforced fencing," new lighting, cameras and underground sensors similar to those in place near San Ysidro, Calif. One new stretch would seal off nearly the entire 350-mile length of the Arizona-Mexico border.
"Our nation has lost control of its borders," Sensenbrenner said on the House floor when introducing the bill in December. An estimated 1 million people cross illegally into the United States each year.
The bill proposes elevating illegal crossing from a misdemeanor to a felony, and includes new provisions to curb hiring of undocumented workers.
"Large majorities of Americans support efforts to restore the security of our nation's borders," Sensenbrenner said. The House later approved the bill by a vote of 239-182.
South of the proposed barrier, news of the vote has been greeted with expressions of confusion, sadness and official concern. The foreign ministers of 11 Latin American countries who met Feb. 13 in Colombia agreed to formulate a plan to lobby the U.S. Senate to kill the proposal.
Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, whose center-right government is close to the Bush administration, made an unusually strident statement about the bill last month.
"It seems to us a real affront that a government that calls itself a friend and regional partner only wants our money and our products, but treats our people as if they were a plague," Stein said.
