Borders real and imagined
Humans see borders everywhere, yet a lot of these have no physical substance. Lines of latitude and longitude, time zones, international and inter-state borders: all are products of our collective imagination.
The dingo fence in the photo crosses the red centre of Australia. Designed to keep dingoes out, or in, depending on your perspective, this goes on for hundreds of kilometers. Over time, it begins to sag as dingo numbers fall from overpopulation to the low number of an endangered species.
No fence can endure forever, but some in Australia have lasted more than a century. Between 1901 and 1907, three long fences were constructed to form the 1833-kilometer State Barrier Fence of Western Australia, designed to protect farm crops and livestock from wild animals. The names of sub-fences are instructive: the Emu Fence, the State Vermin Fence, and the Rabbit-Proof Fence. The latter gained fame with the 2002 film named after the fence. Based on the true story of stolen Aboriginal children using the fence to find their way home, the movie exposes horrific political and social acts based the imaginary boundaries between races that we find so abhorrent today.
No solid or physical fence can withstand the long test of time. During the “Mao Dynasty,” bricks from the Great Wall of China were scavenged for new building projects. Later, citizens were paid to return any of these they may possess, as the wall is now a lucrative source of touristic cash.
Much shorter than the Chinese border wall is the one built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to keep out the wild tribes north of then-Roman province of Britannia. Today Hadrian’s Wall is no more than a historic landmark in the United Kingdom, a country that straddles the once-fortified Roman barrier.
Though over a hundred people died trying to cross it illegally, the Berlin Wall that hived off part of Berlin for the East Bloc stood for a mere twenty-eight years. Similar walls and fences divide Israel and Palestine today. How long will these last?
Donald Trump’s vaunted wall between the US and Mexico is full of gaps. Though the talk about building such a wall is mostly hot air, the controversy surrounding the eviction of illegals is all too real, and points to other kinds of invisible borders between people and groups.
Prison walls are designed to keep dangerous people from mingling in society. Schoolyard fences are intended to keep ill-intentioned from encroaching on the children’s playground. Fenced and gated communities have the same goal.
Tariff borders are meant to protect the incomes and livelihoods of people in international trading zones, and passport controls are used to keep unauthorized persons, including refugees, out, which points once more to the social barriers that divide us from one another.
In the end, the most that can be said about fences and barriers is that they create an illusion of protection. And as New Zealand learned, despite what some politicians may hope or claim, no measure involving fences or borders can be guaranteed to exclude viruses.