Trafficking Nature and Labor Across Borders: The Transnational Return of US Environmental History

Nogales is the shared name of two towns in North America that have grown up in the Sonoran desert; they are separated and united by the international border between the United States and Mexico. Until the early twentieth century, people who frequented Brickwood's Saloon in Nogales, Arizona would literally be standing on the border if they moved close to its south wall (it had to be knocked out to make room for a border marker put up in 1894). A lot of alcohol flowed north over the borderline at Nogales during prohibition. Much illicit traffic in people and goods continues to flow through Ambos Nogales (as the two towns are collectively known). Yet there is also a tremendous amount of licit traffic that goes through America's Port of Entry at Nogales—$2.5 billion worth of fresh produce—tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, peppers, eggplant, mangoes and more, much of it organically grown. These goods came over the border in Mexican trucks in 2011, supplying a healthy dose of fruits and vegetables to American consumers in the winter months. Meanwhile, Mexican workers from places like Oaxaca make a perilous passage through the desert to enter the United States, heading to fields and groves in California or Georgia or Washington or countless other places to harvest fruits and vegetables for Americans or perform other work vital to the so-called American way of life. Over 6,000 migrants, lost or left behind by coyotes, have perished of dehydration in the crossing in the last decade trying to make it to America's fields and other opportunities for work, as other less environmentally punishing border zones in California and Texas have been hardened with walls and intensive surveillance regimes.

Participatory Mapping for Community Health Assessment on the US-Mexico Border

In this paper, we present partial results and discussion of a community environmental health project in Nogales to illustrate how participatory mapping was applied to an existing project that had been participatory and community-based since it was initiated over six years ago. The GIS portion of the project was arranged via a partnership with the University of Arizona's Center for Applied Spatial Analysis (CASA) and was initially conceived as a means by which we could assemble a spatial database for Ambos, Nogales that would not only facilitate this project's immediate goals, but would also serve as a long-term GIS-data resource for the ongoing projects operating in and around Nogales associated with the University of Arizona's Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA). While we are interested in the spatial analytics of the GIS data and the potential for future work in this arena, our primary focus for this paper is on the practice of mapping and the interaction in response to/with these maps that emerged as part of this process. Integrating a mapping component into an existing participatory research project was an opportunity to conceptualize how participatory mapping might be added to (or perhaps already occurring in) a community-based research context, as well as to consider how effective or useful this addition might be in aiding analysis, facilitating project goals, and promoting continued interaction with research participants. But before we can talk about the process and outcomes, first, a bit more information on the context itself.

When the R and the CBP Clash: Research in Schools

This paper speaks to a potential dilemma between the R and the CBP of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) within the context of a partnership called the Asociación de Reforestación de Ambos Nogales (ARAN). We focus on the relationship between students and educators from the University of Arizona (UA) and two high schools from Nogales, Sonora, Mexico that constitute part of this organization. ARAN has been influenced by but not restricted to a framework of CBPR where community members and academics engage in all aspects of research.