Abuse of Power at the Border

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Abuse of Power at the Border
The issue of abuse at the United States’ borders is a common problem that has been present for a very long time and is still affecting people from different parts of the world. Leslie Marmon Silko aims to address this same issue in her article, “The Border Patrol State.” In this article, the Silko talks about the injustices such as racial discrimination that the Mexican-Americans and other Native Americans face at the U.S-Mexican border in the hands of the authorities there. The story took place in the United States near the U.S-Mexico border because the author talks about her experiences travelling between U.S and Mexico. She also gives the experiences of other people of color in this same place. This article was first published in the year 1994 in the Nation magazine. Silko uses metaphors, symbolism, and personification and uses the rhetorical aspects of pathos, ethos and logos to show that there is misuse of power by the border authorities.
Silko uses figures of speech such as metaphors in her essay to support the fact that there was abuse of power and authority by the U.S border officials against the Mexicans and the Chicanos. For example, the author says, “with racism a trump card to be played again and again, shamelessly, by both major political parties (Silko, 4). In this case, the author has called racism a trump card because she believes that the border authorities used the idea of race to mistreat the Mexicans and Chicanos at the border. This was intentionally aimed at locking out people from these two groups from getting into the United States. The author also shows the use of racism as a trump card used by the border patrol officers when she notes that out of the 80 percent population of Chicanos and Mexicans living in South Tucson city, at least one in every five of them had been exposed to ill-treatment by the border authorities (4). This is a clear indication that indeed, the abuse of power by the border officers was directed against people of particular races.
Symbolism is another technique that has been used by the author to indicate the abuse of power by border officers. In the article, Silko talks about an iron curtain that was used to keep people or illegal immigrants from getting in to the United States. She says, “Now that the Iron Curtain is gone, it is ironic that the U.S government and its Border Patrol are constructing a steel wall ten feet high to span sections of the border with Mexico.” (4). The iron curtain in this case is used to act as a symbol for the strong border that the U.S was constructing with the aim of locking the Mexicans, the Chicanos and immigrants from other places from getting into the United States. Keeping in mind that in most cases the people of color were the ones often checked thoroughly at the border, it therefore leads to the fact that the iron curtain was a symbol for the endless attempts by the U.S government to control the number and type of people entering America. The government was using the border officers to achieve this purpose.
Apart from the mentioned, the article also uses personification to pass across its message of abuse of power. In her story...