The Ghost of Harlon Carter Still Haunts Us

After a week of writing pretty dark posts about cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's efforts to establish autocracy in the United States, I wanted to write something a little more lighthearted today. Unfortunately, inspiration for such a post never arrived. In an effort to clear my mind of the torrent of depressing news that normally engulfs me these days, last night I sat down to listen to a new album by the Drive-By Truckers. It wasn't a new album, exactly, but rather an old album to which they added some live recordings, slapped the label "Deluxe" on, and re-released it, convincing people like me to hand them our money. I found myself enjoying the song titled "Ramon Casiano" even though the lyrics were uncomfortably close to the news headlines from which I was seeking temporary escape. This got me wondering about exactly who was Ramon Casiano and why there is a song about him. That, dear readers, led me down a rabbit hole which, if you are kind enough to follow, I will take you down with me.

The first two lines of "Ramon Casiano" are "It all started with the border" and "And that's still where it is today". While these lyrics were written sometime around 2016, they remain quite relevant today. Trump's road to the presidency, of course, "all started with the border" with Trump demonizing Mexican immigrants as "rapists" who bring crime and drugs. Moreover, with deportations and the border dominating the news, "that's still where it is today". Beyond this, the song serves as a history lesson, though less about Ramon Casiano and more about Harlon Carter. Carter is not mentioned by name in the song and I had not previously heard of him, but his ghost still haunts us today.

As told in the song, in 1931, Ramon Casiano was a 15-year-old Hispanic boy living in Laredo, Texas. He and two friends got into a confrontation with 17-year-old Harlon Carter, who believed that the three boys might have information about the theft of the Carter family's car. Carter, who was armed with a shotgun, ended up shooting and killing Casiano. Carter was tried, convicted, and sent to jail. However, the Texas Court of Appeals overturned his conviction. If things had ended there, this would simply be a forgotten tragedy of the sort that happens all too frequently in the United States. However, this is not where things ended. At least not for Harlon Carter.

Carter would join two organizations and have a tremendous influence on each of them. The first was the National Rifle Association. At that time, the NRA was primarily devoted to encouraging gun safety and marksmanship. Carter rose to become the head of the NRA's lobbying arm until unseating the old guard leadership and becoming the head of the organization. As the leader of the NRA, Carter transformed it into the powerful lobbying organization that categorically opposes gun control that we know it as today. Consider how many of the characteristics of Carter's shooting of Casiano are reflected in the current NRA agenda and characterize more recent events? The armed, unauthorized pursuit of individuals whose minority ethnicity made them suspect was repeated almost exactly by George Zimmerman when he confronted Trayvon Martin. Like Carter, Zimmerman "stood his ground" and, also like Carter, the courts ended up excusing Zimmerman. Carter could be the archetype of, as blogger Laura Smith writes, "race-based violence and white impunity."

The second organization that Carter joined was the Border Patrol. Just as he had in the NRA, Carter rose to be the head of the organization. As related by Smith, Carter told the Los Angeles Times that he would wage "all-out war to hurl… Mexican wetbacks back into Mexico." Carter led the campaign to remove undocumented immigrants that became known as "Operation Wetback." Trump has long been a fan of Operation Wetback and has frequently cited it as a model for what he would like to implement now. The Harlon Carter of our time may well be Trump's border czar, Tom Homan. As journalist Zach Roberts explains, Homan has associated with "white nationalists and racist conspiracy theorists" and has promoted the "great white replacement theory". Operation Wetback became notorious for the civil rights abuses for which it was responsible. This included the removal of legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens. We are already seeing incidences of immigration officials detaining U.S. citizens and it appears that Trump's deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador included individuals who were legally in the country. Trump has also been attempting to deport legal permanent residents who are guilty of nothing more than engaging in speech that Trump dislikes. Under Homan's leadership, masked immigration officers have been grabbing people off the street, shipping them to distant detention centers, and trying to deport them as quickly as possible. This is the legacy of Harlon Carter.

The fact that one man could be almost singularly responsible for establishing the foundation of both America's rampant gun problem and its draconian anti-immigration measures is almost unbelievable. Even more so given that this came after the cold-blooded killing of another boy. In many ways, Harlon Carter's story is America's story, and, frankly, it is not a good one. It is simply amazing to me that rather than learning about this in a history class, I had to learn about it from a song. As much as I enjoy the Drive-By Truckers, the next time that I want to relax, I might choose an artist less likely to inspire a political blog article. For instance, maybe Macklemore.