Barrio Libre: Criminalizing States and Delinquent Refusals of the New Frontier

by Gilberto Rosas

The city of Nogales straddles the border between Sonora, Mexico, and Arizona. On the Mexican side, a group of marginalized youth calling themselves Barrio Libre (Free ‘Hood) employs violence, theft, and bribery to survive, often preying on undocumented migrants using the city’s sewer system to cross the border. In this book, Gilberto Rosas draws on his in-depth ethnographic research among the Barrio Libre to understand how the gang operates, why its members have embraced criminality, and the role that neoliberalism and security policies on both sides of the border have played in the youth’s descent into Barrio Libre. Rosas argues that although these youth participate in the victimization of others, they should not be demonized. They are complexly and adversely situated. Many are migrants driven to Nogales by the effects of NAFTA. Shadowing the youths through the spaces they inhabit and control, he shows how the militarization of the border actually destabilized the region and led Barrio Libre to turn to even more violent activities like drug trafficking. By focusing this population and their thickening delinquency, Rosas asserts the importance of capitalism and criminality in shaping of perceptions and realities of race, sovereignty, and resistance along the U.S./Mexico border.


Gilberto Rosas is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

"In this raw and compelling ethnography, Gilberto Rosas grapples with the violence, racism, and determined attempts by border youth to build their own sense of freedom in the cage of the US-Mexico border and its economy of escalating inequalities. Barrio Libre is a significant contribution to border and borderlands studies, one that enriches our understanding of the lives of youth."—Lynn Stephen, author of Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon

"Gilberto Rosas's exploration of the seamy underbelly of neoliberal state sovereignty in the sewer tunnels beneath the US-Mexico border takes us to a vexed and murky place, both ethnographically and theoretically. His work invites us to consider provocative and urgent questions about the deep complicity between policing and criminality, and the racialized relegation of human life to abjection and unnatural death on the new frontier. Rosas's insistence upon directing our critical gaze to a dark and dank place of subjection, power, and violence ought to instigate vital new lines of debate in the study of border enforcement and subjectivity within the wild zones of state power."—Nicholas De Genova, coeditor of The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement

Genres: Anthropology

200 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2012

Reviews

[Noelle]

Rosas’ ethnography follows the Mexican youth who inhabit and terrorize the Barrio Libre (“Free ‘Hood”) on the US-Mexico border. These cholo/as (gangsters) stalk the sewage passageway connecting Ambos Nogales (Nogales, Arizona and Sonora) and supplement their incomes by (or financially depend solely on) mugging chúntaros (rural migrants) as they try to cross illegally into the States. Rosas deems this place “the new frontier.” This frontier, he asserts, is the site of the exercising and (re)making of sovereignty, but it is neoliberal sovereignty as propagated by its intrinsic and perpetual incompleteness as it must continually redraw borders and therefore (re)generate frontiers (18, 55).

This book is a wonderful departure from typical ethnographic-style setup. It sets apart ethnographic events amidst the deep anthropological analysis and often lets those episodes speak for themselves. I appreciated the ability to reflect on them in my own way.

[Peter]

Gilberto Rosas is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois. In 2012, Rosas published Barrio Libre: Criminalizing States and Delinquent Refusals of the New Frontier. Barrio Libre means the free neighborhood in Spanish (Rosas 8). The Barrio Libre connects the two parts of Nogales, the part in Sonora and the part in Arizona (Rosas 5). Rosas’ ethnographic study is of a population of teenagers from Mexico and Central America who travel between the two cities in the early 21st Century. These teenagers make money by being involved in the criminal economy, including targeting new financial migrants from Mexico and Central America. Rosas treats his subjects with respect. Rosas was a director of a non-governmental organization that worked with this population (Rosas 25). I agree with the Goodreads reviewer named Noelle that the book is a well-done ethnographic study of this population. This book gives a reader the context to understand this population as of 2012, including history, culture, and economics. The book also draws the study into the larger context of a post-September 11, 2001, world. Rosas’s book has a section of notes, an index, photographs, and a bibliography. Rosas’ book, Barrio Libre, is an older book. The relationship between Mexico and the United States has changed since 2012. Rosas’ book was thoughtful about a population living on the border between the United States and Mexico in 2012. I found the review by the Goodreads reviewer named Noelle helpful in writing this ‘review.’
Works Cited:
Rosas, Giberto. 2023. Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the United States-Mexico Border. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press.