The wall of shame: Mobilization, immigration and reputation

Despite the developmental and integrationist premises of the wall in Posadas, locals fretted about the harm it might do to the region’s economy. Activists described it in anfi'-integrationist terms and dubbed it a “wall of shame”. Governmental silence about the wall prior to its consummation is one reason for this ironic twist; people turned to transnational discourses on border walls to interpret the one in Posadas. Thus, diverse ideas about immigration and crime shaped the wall’s meanings after its completion even though anti-globalization

Argentina's wall on the Paraguayan border 59 insecurities played little part in causing its construction. For Argentina, the larger consequence of the Posadas wall was to delegitimate border walls in general. In 2015, the Fernandez de Kirchner government provided no justification for the wall in Posadas. In 2016, President Macri's new director of EBY criticized the wall and promised to address popular displeasure with it. The following year, Macri rejected calls to build other border walls despite 85% public approval of his January 2017 decree restricting immigration rights (Poliarquia Consultures, 2017). These outcomes resulted from a sequence of mobilizations and debates that linked local, national and international discourses, strengthened border-wall stigma and embarrassed officials who supported these walls. In what follows, I will trace this process from 2015 protests against the Posadas wall to the proposal of border walls in 2017, debates about Macri’s national decree and the impact of these debates on national border policy.

Mobilizing shame across borders

Local opponents performed a politics of shame (see Kulick and Klein, 2003) by transforming popular insecurities about the wall and projecting them onto the wall and its builders. They did so through a transnational narrative that symbolically distanced the Argentine government from MERCOSUR and continental incorporation, and associated it with exclusionary border walls in Berlin, along the US-Mexico border and within Israel/Palestine. In doing so, they portrayed Argentine officials and border walls as out of touch with local conditions, regional dynamics and global trends.

This can be illustrated with three examples. First, a Posadas-based anti-wall petition on change.org eventually collected 8,000 signatures from people on both sides of the border (Marty, 2015; Duca, 2019). One petition statement read.

With MERCOSUR folly operational, it is truly shamefol that state authorities, sitting at a desk in the capital city [Buenos Aires] and ignorant of borderland realities, have built a perimeter wall that obstructs the free movement of both Argentine citizens and foreigners, especially Paraguayans.

(Marty, 2015)

After describing the wall’s negative consequences and demanding its removal, the petition suggested that the wall’s authors had emulated “the US far-right reactionary Donald Trump”, who promised to wall off the entire Mexico-US border (Marty, 2015). Other critics chimed in on Twitter, with one saying, “The Berlin Wall is going up. It separates the border center from downtown Posadas” (Marty, 2015). Another posted a photo of the Posadas wall and commented, "The Israel-Palestine Wall? Nope. It’s Posadas, Misiones. Customs Area” (Redaccion Ultima Hora, 2015). Second, a public demonstration by environmentalists, human rights activists and displaced persons continued in this vein. Coalesced in the Provincial Anti-Dam Committee, they decided to hold their yearly protest day at the Posadas wall. With “No more walls separating peoples”

as their main slogan, demonstrators peppered the concrete structure with “Wall of Shame” posters and portrayed it as inhibiting continental integration and neighborly relations between Posadas and Encarnacion (Renoldi, Millan and Carisimo, 2017: 73). This performance linked disapproval of the wall to their long-standing fight against Yacyreta. In a third example, 18 labor federations from Argentina and Paraguay met in Posadas, where they condemned the wall and voted to petition the upcoming MERCOSUR presidential summit. Their action generated an official statement by the Southern Cone Labor Confederation Coordinator. Arguing that migration is a human right recognized in MERCOSUR conventions, the statement said.

The wall constitutes a shame for the states party [to MERCOSUR]. We demand that authorities ... initiate actions to dismantle the wall that poses an obstacle to consolidating the free movement of citizens and foreigners and goes against the declared aspirations of MERCOSUR for an effective regional integration.

(Redaccion Agenda CTA, 2015)⁷

These creative deployments of shame and embarrassment were fairly effective. First, “wall of shame” became the default public label for the Posadas wall, especially in the media. Second, no one outside of EBY with major reputational stakes spoke positively about it. Third, several local leaders publicly questioned the wall while provincial and national legislators requested official explanations for it (Redaccion Agenda Hoy, 2015; Gobierno de Argentina, 2015). In early 2016, the new director of EBY promised "to soften this barrier to MERCOSUR integration” (Redaccion Primera Edition, 2016), as the city councils of Posadas and Encarnacion resolved to transform the wall into a mural celebrating cross-border fraternity (Redaccion Agenda Hoy, 2016). However efficacious, this opposition to the Posadas wall did not function in isolation. As noted in the chapter introduction, "wall of shame” originated in 1960s' Germany as an allusion to the Berlin Wall. In contemporary South America, it became a reporting meme and instrument of protest. In 2007, when Brazilian President Lula da Silva learned of a wall going up on a Brazilian border with Paraguay, he canceled the project and ordered the wall's removal. Like Argentine Presidents Kirchner and Fernandez de Kirchner, Lula da Silva strongly favored integrating South America and reducing dependence on Western powers. At a press conference on his decision, Lula said, “enough of Berlin, enough of Mexico-US, enough of the Gaza Strip. We don’t want more walls!” (Redaccion Ultima Hora, 2015). A second instance occurred in 2009, when the San Isidro district of Buenos Aires built a fence on its boundary with the San Fernando district. Gerardo Amieiro, the mayor of San Fernando, condemned the project, saying, “This anachronistic Berlin wall is a discriminatory offense that impedes the right of free movement, and to get to schools and health clinics”. The article quoting Amieiro referred to the fence as a "wall of shame" in the title, and President Fernandez de Kirchner ordered San Isidro to halt its construction (Redaccion El

Economista, 2009). A wall in Lima, Peru dividing neighborhoods by class and race is a third example. Originally built in the late 1980s, this wall has since undergone expansion and “has come to be known as Lima’s muro de verguenza, or wall of shame” (Campoamor, 2019: 30).

In sum, resistance to the Posadas wall was transnational in citing international border walls elsewhere and harnessing a wall-defiant repertoire of continental reach. Extension of this dissent from international boundaries to intra-urban ones is a third way in which this protest architecture is both local and global, even while applied in national political arenas.