Incredible if you think that this map has been sketched for a decade already, but slowly it seems to be completing itself. More than ever we are going to live in a "walled alive" world.
A few stretches here, some stretches there may change, but the general picture of this "world wall" remains and is disconcerting: the rich countries are building the largest gated community in the world.
You rarely get the chance to see it in its entirety: in the news, in the succession of current events, we see flashes that together do not shed light. And then the separate pieces do not necessarily belong to a single puzzle, to a single design. Perhaps to a single trend, yes.
The various walls, erected in different ways, at different times and by different administrations, each have their own peculiarities, but in the end they are all there for the same reason: keeping the poor out of the door of the "evolved world".
Open parenthesis: Berlin. Closed parenthesis.
For a brief period that began in November '89, it seemed that history could take another path. I still remember the epic, happy destruction of the Wall that divided Berlin in two. Those breaches looked like windows to the future: windows that closed just 12 years later, with 11 September 2001.
The culture of suspicion and the fear of "others" have been a driving impetus for the race to close ports, borders, even the mind of the West.
Here are the 6 main divisions that make up a "cage", a world wall: inside there is 14% of the population that holds 73% of the economic resources, outside there is 86% of the population that holds 27% of the economic resources.
The demilitarized zone
Since 1953 this 250km long and about 3km wide strip has cut the two Koreas in two, which despite the recent openings are still formally at war;
The Australian Defense Force
The Australian Defense Force (ADF) patrols the waters north of Australia to keep boats of refugees and displaced persons at bay;
The barrier between the USA and Mexico
Although it is the workhorse of the Trump administration, a barrier that divides the US from Mexico along all the more than 3000km of the border has already been started with Clinton. After 11/XNUMX, construction intensified, with thousands of migrants dying trying to get past it.
The blocks in Ceuta and Melilla
Ceuta and Melilla are the two Spanish enclaves in Morocco: the point where Europe meets North Africa, and since 1993 (with European funds) it has rejected it. "Intelligent" barbed wire defenses, stuffed with sensors, which are periodically the scene of scenes more similar to traps than to flows of human beings.
The West Bank Barrier
In 2002 Israel began working to physically separate from the Palestinians: why? Always the same, the fight against terrorism. The wall, made of concrete and well beyond the "official" borders between Israel and Palestine, ended up including 9% of the Palestinian territory: a sort of annexation, the Palestinians argue.
The political curtain of Schengen
Here too the border is changing and is in fact moving: physical walls are not included (even if some countries have already feared them) but the goal is always the same. Who is inside has no limitations, at least formally, compared to who is outside. Six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe has built a larger and more invisible one just 6km away.
Obviously, and unfortunately, there are many other walls, but these give a good idea of the area considered by the "world wall", or should I say fence.
How many walls
There are wall "minors" also within this western area, such as that of Euros, born in 2012 to divide Greece and Turkey. Or like the city of Nicosia, divided by a wall like that of Berlin.
Then there are walls that divide "poor" nations from each other, such as the one India is building to physically divide itself from Bangladesh (in an area with strong risks of war with Pakistan, war that could also involve nuclear weapons).
Other walls divide communities within the same nation, such as the 99 "walls of peace" that separate Catholics from Protestants in Belfast, or the divisions that in Brazil keep rich sections of the population away from poor ones.
