Alterity and Security

In the U.S.-Mexico borderlands I have seen a popular T-shirt that shows an iconic, late 19th-century photograph of four rifle-carrying Apache warriors, including Geronimo (Goyahkl), standing defiantly in northern Mexico. The following words (penned by a Navajo intellectual and activist named Matthew Tafoya) appear above the image: ‘Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism since 1492.’ ¹ This phrase and image raise an important question for the academic study of security in the Americas: “security for whom?”