Monumental Friendship: Friendship, Militarization, and Religion at the San Diego-Tijuana Border

Date of Award

Fall 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Religious Studies

First Advisor

Lofton, Kathryn

Abstract

If militarization suggests aggression and defensiveness, and friendship implies peace and amity, how can both be held sacred in the same place at the same time? This dissertation looks at the history of Boundary Monument No. 258, which marks the westernmost point of the U.S.-Mexico land border, to explore how the site has been sacralized through both friendship and militarization. It traces the monument's history from its origins soon after the Mexican-American War as the inception point of the new US-Mexico border, until 2020, when access to the vicinity was indefinitely restricted on the U.S. side. In 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon dedicated the area immediately around the monument as International Friendship Park and proposed the border park be a binational recreational area for both Mexicans and Americans. In practice, Friendship Park/Parque de la amistad has remained divided by border infrastructure constructed by the US This dissertation focuses on the US side of Friendship Park. It explores how rituals of friendship and militarization have been performed to consecrate the site as sacred to both the US nation-state and civilians, immigrant rights activists in the San Diego-Tijuana region who, starting in the late twentieth century, fought to assert the sacrality of binational friendship at this site to resist border militarization. Friendship at this site, however, has also been sacralized by the state and imperial actors at various points in the monument's history as a mode of statecraft. At Boundary Monument No. 258, layered and sometimes competing processes of sacralizations have created a multidimensional sacred space. Because friendship and militarization (along with related sacralizations) simultaneously exist as contesting understandings or forms of sacralities, rituals reinforcing one often trigger a responding ritual reinforcing the other. These dual sacralities reinforce each other at this site due to their dueling natures. The presence of this polarity leads those invested in the sacrality of the site to (re)assert their understandings as to why the site is sacred. This is done through rituals and reinterpretations of the site's significance in contestation of performances establishing rivaling sacralities.

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