Man Camps, Detention Centers, and the Whirlwind of Patriarchal Violence

from Earth First! Newswire

In other news from the “this system cannot be reformed” front, a South Texas man camp that serviced an oil field is being converted to the US’s largest family detention center.

In the wake of the Senate report emerging from the CIA’s torture program taking place in Abu Ghraib and other “black sites,” it is important to contemplate the terrible treatment faced by migrants in the detention center complex around the US.

Migrants are placed in overcrowded cells in unmarked detention centers placed throughout the country, often run by private corporations with little to no accountability whatsoever. There are frequent reports of sexual assault, hunger, and disappearance, as very little paper trail follows people as they are transferred around the complex and eventually deported.

On the other side of things, “man camps,” which are temporary residential areas for workers, are notorious centers of sexual assault, drug abuse, and general patriarchal abuse.

The new facility will hold some 2,400 people—almost twice as many as the existing three detention facilities combined. The company running the center is Corrections Corporation of America, which was sued successfully by the ACLU in 2007 for overcrowding, and was accused in 2011 of fostering sexual assault against Central American women inmates.

The 50-acre compound rests about 70 miles south of San Antonio, and boasts medical facilities, classrooms, a library, email, and playgrounds—all so that mothers and their children can feel happy and at home while being ripped from their livelihoods and deported to a place they’ve never known.

As the US militarizes its free trade policies that led to the dispossession of millions of small farmers in Central America and further displacement through the expansion of the drug war, it has systematically brutalized those who have come across borders in search of a better life. The extraction of a work force from Central America to work in the US under highly oppressive conditions is perhaps analogous to the extraction of raw materials like oil from the Bakken Shale for export.

Many migrants to the US are also escaping the effects of climate change caused by industrial economies based on fossil fuel extraction, moving full circle from the Bakken to migration to detention in a whirlwind of patriarchal violence.

Check out these related Newswire posts: