It’s a place like few in North America. 100 acres of private land have been converted into an ecological reserve — the National Butterfly Center — along the border river. An ecological reserve where we hear the birds sing as we had even forgotten they could do. A unique ecosystem that hosts more than 230 species of butterflies and endangered reptiles, such as the Texas gopher and the horned toad. Over there, there is always a breeze winding through the reeds, caressing the milkweeds and embalming the shores as it plays in the groves of mesquites and lockers. There, at the edge of the Rio Grande Valley, along the meanders of the river that Mexicans call the Rio Bravo because it cannot be tamed, there is always this feeling of being a little at the end of the world. …
Far from the ratiocinators of Washington, far from power, far from the wealth of the rest of the state. For a long time, the region was left on its own, relegated to being among the worst in the country when it comes to development. But that was before. Of course, today, people are still poor there. And petrochemical complexes have scarified the valley despite local opposition, destroying ecological treasures and archaeological sites.
However, for a decade, explains Professor Terence Garrett, of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, the region has been the terrain of border experimentation: mass surveillance technologies are tested there with cameras, electronic towers and peacekeeping forces. of order, coupled with military equipment inherited from arms transfers from the Pentagon, which have transformed the state police. The border zone, which has always been on the outskirts, is an area outside of common law where new “defense” methods have been tested… as recently as this week, with the deployment of a robot dog to patrol along the border.
But, for four years, this region has become a construction site while the banks of the Rio Grande are “bulldozed” to erect border walls. At the expense of the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act, to which the Department of Homeland Security was able to waive to speed up the construction process. Without expropriation or permission, in 2017, contractors even began work on the property of the National Butterfly Center: in 2020, a federal appeals court found that this work violated the right to private property. At the same time, the center has launched a lawsuit against the builders of nearby private walls because of their extraordinary dangerousness, as they are precariously erected on sand. It was then that the National Butterfly Center came into the crosshairs of the radical right. In cyberspace, conspiracy theorists have made this protected territory the theater of their migratory fantasies. Militias (Three Percenters, Oaths Keepers) showed up in uniform. Threatening messages have multiplied.
However, that all changed over the past weekend, when the first rally of the We Stand America movement was held in nearby McAllen, backed by several pro-Trump groups with key QAnon players including Michael Flynn — this former general, convicted of collusion with Russia, pardoned by Trump, who wanted to mobilize the army to invalidate the result of the election.
The center then temporarily closed its doors for two days, in the face of growing threats from “caravans of patriots”, from this gathering, near the property. Then it reopened. And closed sine die the next day, after Kimberly Lowe, candidate in the Republican primaries for the position of representative of the 9and district in Virginia, came forward asking to see the burials of the bodies and the “illegal crossings”. Because the National Butterfly Center has fallen into a delirious spiral shaped by QAnon, Steve Bannon and Brian Kolfage (the latter having personally benefited from the fundraisers organized to build the private walls – and having been condemned): the Center would facilitate entry into the American territory of migrants, would harbor human trafficking and the sexual trade of children and women. However, everyone in the United States remembers the “Pizzagate”, when a New York restaurant, at the heart of a pedophile conspiracy theory, became the scene of a shooting because of a man who thought to save children. It turns out that Lowe claimed on Facebook to have seen the corpses and the hordes of migrants corroborating doctored photos on social networks. It was then that the police recommended that the director of the center be armed: the volunteers and agents of the center were no longer safe. We had to close.
Why talk about this event? Because it shows, according to Melissa del Bosque of the border chronicle, the turn taken by this election year. Arguing that “every state is a frontier state,” We Stand America wants to make immigration the heart of the Republican hype. Other events are planned, and the organization’s website suggests slogans like “Stop the invasion”, “No to the vaccination obligation”, “No to the exploitation of children”, “Stop the cartels “… Their rhetoric is thus a clever mix of fantasies of electoral fraud, fear of migration and pedophile conspiracies.
This rhetoric will therefore be that of the radical candidates in the Republican primaries. It could become that of the Republican Party when some of those will be dubbed. It will take root in Washingtonian politics if they are actually elected to mid term, next November. And at that point, fear may well end up having the wings of the last butterfly.