LETTER: SpaceX opposed

I am deeply concerned about the SpaceX launch site expansion and its economic, cultural and environmental impacts on the region. I am a daughter of the Texas border, was born and raised in Laredo and have lived in Brownsville for the past five years. I am an artist, cultural worker, a first-generation American, a Mexican woman and someone who deeply cares about the future of Brownsville.

Amid border surveillance, detention facilities, mass deportations, separation of families, the expansion of a border wall and COVID-19 in a region with one of the highest poverty rates in the nation, a billionaire has settled with his dream here and has built his own playground.

Elon Musk just became the wealthiest human being on earth. This billionaire set his eyes on our region, our land, our home, jumped to buy cheap property and swayed local politicians to support bypassing state environmental policy.

As I watch my community struggle, now more than ever, to put food on the table, a billionaire is in our periphery, buying up sacred land, displacing communities (Boca Chica Village) and failing to monitor local wildlife and vegetation.

SpaceX’s vision is to colonize Mars, making this planet habitable for humans in the anticipation that Earth could no longer support human life. SpaceX has colonized Boca Chica. In a place where both Spanish and English is spoken in a sea of brownness, I observe White male SpaceX employees with binoculars savoring the landscape and commodifying our sacred land. SpaceX navigates unaware and entitled in their new playground.

What will our future look like? Why does one person, with the most money in the world, get to imagine and dictate what the future should look like for us?

Boca Chica is sacred, and the community is slowly losing access. People are connected to land, culturally and spiritually. The Esto’k gna tribe is native to this land. We cannot separate land, people and culture. Access to this beach is important.

When I go to Boca Chica Beach I see brown joy; I see working-class laborers enjoy the ocean with their families. I see my community happy, being nourished by the water and embraced by the sunlight.

I will always hold in my memory the first time I visited the delta. The river flowing into the ocean; it was almost like the river was releasing all its tension and pain into the vastness of the sea.

This is a healing place. Boca Chica provides us an oasis, a point to dream for a better future amid border and immigration policy chaos and tragedy.

We continue to survive in a militarized system that continually calls us criminals, that thinks nothing of us, that only uses us as labor and profits off of our bodies and deaths. That water embraces us; it tells us we belong. This water, this delta, connects us to our loved neighbors, and for some of us our mother land. As I dip my feet into the Gulf Coast delta, feel the river water moving into the ocean, and I feel at home.

Losing this precious place will mean losing life, losing our soul, losing what deeply keeps us grounded. SpaceX is painful to experience.

The colonization of land and resources is repeated history. As I watch the developments, my anxiety grows.

What are the economic benefits for the working-class folks? Can my working-class community members also have the opportunity to dream?

I am not thankful to SpaceX for those cleaning staff positions. I am not thankful to SpaceX for those day laborer positions. I want to see my community, the families, their children be set up in a place where they can pursue their purpose, their dream, and what they love.

We are at a critical point in our history, where we can change the course of our future here on earth. Why are we not working and placing our resources into preserving our planet, this home of ours that gives us everything we need to survive? We have oxygen here. The extraction of our planet is violent and forced, and so will the building of technology to make it possible for humans to survive on Mars.

Brownsville is full of natural resources and nature, and this makes it possible, in very difficult circumstances, for us to survive. Border policy and militarization continuously threatens our life. The land, our nature, makes it so that we are able to breathe and sustain ourselves in this harsh political climate.

Could we possibly apply those genius engineer brains to figuring out how to not compromise local land and natural habitat for many living species, including humans? Could we possibly expand our reach and knowledge of the universe without destroying homes and displacing brown people?

There has been talk of privatizing Boca Chica Beach. I am against any commercialization or privatization of Boca Chica Beach. I am against any further expansion of the SpaceX facility. I am against SpaceX having the power to restrict access to Boca Chica Beach and the delta. I am against Boca Chica employees exerting dominant energy over that land and beach entrance, further restricting access. I am against SpaceX employees feeling or claiming ownership over Boca Chica Beach.

Nansi Guevara, Brownsville