Coloniality of the US-Mexico Border: Power, Violence and the Decolonial Imperative - Roberto D. Hernandez

National borders are often taken for granted as normal and necessary for a peaceful and orderly global civil society. Roberto D. Hernández here advances a provocative argument that borders—and border violence—are geospatial manifestations of long histories of racialized and gendered colonial violence. In Coloniality of the U-S///Mexico Border, Hernández offers an exemplary case and lens for understanding what he terms the “epistemic and cartographic prison of modernity/coloniality.” He adopts “coloniality of power” as a central analytical category and framework to consider multiple forms of real and symbolic violence (territorial, corporeal, cultural, and epistemic) and analyzes the varied responses by diverse actors, including local residents, government officials, and cultural producers.