Fortress mentality meets have-nots with guns

National Catholic Reporter, March 24, 1995 by Gary MacEoin

Do you feel safe in your car? If not, you're in good company. A current growth industry in the United States is bullet-proofing automobiles without changing their external appearance. It's quite expensive, $50,000 or more for a complete job, as little as $3,000 for passenger-side window and door, the side drivers judge most vulnerable. The latest trend in women's fashions is the bulletproof vest, suitably disguised. It's understandable in a country where homicides are six to seven times the average for 15 other Western countries.

A pervasive fear is something recent in the United States. Life in the suburbs was quite different as recently as 1953 when I moved with my family from Manhattan to Nutley, N.J., 10 miles west of the Lincoln Tunnel. We soon learned that if we ran out of milk, butter or whatever, we could call neighbors and be told they were going out but the back door was open and the refrigerator full.

The doors, front and back, have long been dead-bolted in Nutley and just about everywhere. More concrete manifestations of the fortress mentality, the sense unfortunately well justified -- that the have-nots were threatening the well-being of the haves, would appear here only later. But they were already visible in the countries to our south, and I wondered then how long we would take to catch up.

As editor in the 1950s of a Spanish-language magazine read by big landowners and agroindustrialists in all Latin America, I traveled extensively in the region. One of the first indications I noticed of the fortress mentality was the transformation of U.S. embassies.

Glass doors and plate-glass windows gave way to blank walls. The welcome mat for all visitors was replaced by metal detectors and a prohibition of cameras or tape recorders. Concrete pillars, usually disguised as flower pots, began to circle the buildings as a protection against would-be suicide car bombers.

A recent visit to Dublin, Ireland, revealed an additional line of fortifications around the U.S. Embassy since last year. (Today, only Havana -- officially called the U.S. Interests Section -- retains the open look.)

My magazine in the late 1950s provided another peek into the future. A new advertiser offered custom armoring of automobiles, guaranteeing protection from rifle fire by means of modifications that would not show. The result, of course, was escalation to the bazooka, as Nicargua's ex-dictator Anastasio Somoza learned in Paraguay some time later.

In Nutley about the same time came another preview of tomorrow. A new telephone exchange was surrounded by a high metal fence topped with barbed wire. Fair enough, I thought. The telephone exchange is a key to riot control.

Gradually, other indicators appeared in Nutley and across the country. My first encounter in the United States with a metal detector -- long before they sprouted at airports -- was in the New York Times building. A guard checked my credentials where formerly I entered freely.

Architecture gradually adjusted. Blank walls began to replace windows in many supermarkets. New banks often provided only one entrance, protected by an armed guard. High walls, topped with coiled razor wire rather than the broken bottles common in Latin America, shot up in residential areas. And now we are preparing for custom armoring of automobiles.

California, as in many things, leads the way. Mike Davis graphically describes in City of Quartz -- Los Angeles -- the proliferation of monumental public and corporate fortresses. Flanking them are residential walled enclaves "guarded by gun-toting private police and state-of-the-art electronic surveillance."

The precautions are logical, granted that there are enough M-16s and AK-47s on our streets to equip the army of a middle-sized country. But if we only deal with symptoms, we will inevitably follow Latin America into deeper and deeper social turmoil and alienation of the people.

Behind the symptoms lies a problem, namely, a broad and growing segment of the population without education, dignity or hope of meaningful jobs. If we continue to ignore it, we will learn -- like Somoza -- that bazookas penetrate armored cars.