Periodically, the Latinx Files will feature a guest writer. This week, we’ve asked Alex Rivera to fill in. Rivera is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker and a 2021 MacArthur fellow.
His work focuses on migration, globalization and technology. He’s an associate professor in the Sidney Poitier New American film school at Arizona State University, based in Los Angeles. If you have not subscribed to our weekly newsletter, you can do so here.
Freedom itself may be on the ballot this year — it’s definitely on the soundtrack. Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” her 2016 anthem , is in heavy rotation in Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaign ads and at rallies. When it plays into the second verse, however, an unusual notion is expressed as Beyoncé sings, “I’m a riot across your borders.
” The line, delivered in a lyrical flow invoking various freedom-seeking acts — “I break chains,” “I wade through waters” — places transgressing borders alongside other forms of self-liberation. This is, by far, the most profound thing being said about migration on any American political stage these days. The current immigration debate is so intensely focused on border control that the notion of freedom-deserving migrants may seem crazy — like the kind of thing that can only be said in art.
In actuality, however, the idea has a wide and deep intellectual history. On the left, political scientists have long condemned militarized border controls as immoral, likening .
