The Border’s “Agent Orange” Controversy

by Frontera NorteSur, Newspaper Tree (El Paso)
March 21, 2009

With the clock ticking, a growing network of activists on both sides of the border are lobbying high officials to prevent aerial spraying of chemicals meant to destroy Carrizo cane between the southern Rio Grande twin cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo.

In the Vietnam War, the United States sprayed vast tracts of land with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange as part of a counter-insurgency strategy aimed at removing forest cover for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. Although the toxic dioxin released by Agent Orange was later blamed by US veterans’ groups and Vietnamese officials for illnesses and diseases that struck thousands of former US soldiers and upwards of four million Vietnamese citizens, the US Supreme Court recently refused to consider a case by pursued by Vietnamese plaintiffs against the manufacturers of Agent Orange.

Four decades later, on the US-Mexico border, the US Border Patrol intends to employ a chemical herbicide in order to eradicate stands of the Carrizo cane, an invasive plant that grows as tall as 30 feet and provides convenient cover for undocumented border crossers and smugglers. The variety of Carrizo cane that is common in the Laredo-Del Rio borderlands is from the region of Valencia, Spain. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.newspapertree.com/news/3575-the-border-s-agent-orange-controversy