Learning to Stand on Shifting Sands: Sonoran Desert Capitalism, Alliance Politics, and Social Change offers a comparative analysis of activisms, labor organizing, and production practices in southern Arizona between 1999 and 2003. Using a combination of political economy, queer/feminist theory, transdisciplinary critical cultural studies, and discourse analysis, the research analyzes the broad social and ideological contexts, the tactics, the contradictions and the attempts and lost opportunities for building broader alliances for radical social change in contemporary Arizona. The case studies reckon with this experience, arguing that: Arizona's migrant workers have been strategically produced via media practices, border militarization, "development" discourse, and global production practices as flexible post-NAFTA commodities that enable formidable nationalist and heteronormative representation and political economic practices within the Sonoran desert border region. That local activism and labor organizing draws upon neoliberal "development" discourse strategies, and also breaks from these strategies in ways that suggests that the terms of production and exchange might be usefully applied towards outcomes that are outside of profit accumulation. That alliance practices that take structures and discourses of domination into account in estimations of value, even in production, can promote broader collaborations between activist organizations, cultural identities and single-issue politics. A politics of alliance that accounts for the interdependence of seemingly disparate practices of production, social oppression and culture might help invigorate contemporary grass roots struggles and promote social transformation.

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) remains a salient public health issue along the U.S./Mexico border. This study seeks to identify the social and structural factors, which are associated with TB disease burden in the binational geographic region. Identification of barriers of treatment completion provides the necessary framework for developing evidence-based interventions that are culturally relevant and context specific for the U.S./Mexico border region. Methods: Retrospective study of data extracted from medical charts (n = 439) from Yuma County Health Department (YCHD) (n = 160) and Centro de Salud San Luis Rio Colorado (n = 279). Patients currently accessing TB treatment at either facility were excluded from the study. Chi-square, unadjusted odds ratios, and logistic regression were utilized to identify characteristics associated with successful TB treatment in this population. Findings: The study population was predominantly male (n = 327). Females were more likely to complete TB treatment (OR = 3.71). The absence of drug use and/or the absence of an HIV positive diagnosis were found to be predictors of TB treatment completion across both clinical sites. Forty-four percent (43.59%) (n = 85) TB patients treated at CDS San Luis did not complete treatment versus 40.35% (n = 49) of TB patients who did not complete treatment at YCHD. Moving from the area or being deported was the highest category (20.78%) for incomplete TB treatment in the population (n = 64) across both clinical sites.

The terrorist attacks upon the United States of America, as perpetrated by Al Qaeda operatives on September 11, 2001, has resulted in profound changes of policy and_ action in Washington. The blissful ignorance of many was awaken to the shattering reality of the threat from unconventional warfare at the hands of extremist organizations. The following review and analysis of terrorism at the U.S.-Mexico border seeks to assess the threat on a more personal basis. All too often we associate terrorism with the Middle East and Asia, not coming to grips with realities faced close to home on a daily basis. The terrorist acts of violence by both criminal and religious extremist groups are resulting in a massive loss of life throughout the world. This paper seeks to address those acts of terror and violence on our southern border. While international terrorist groups have yet to succeed in another attack on American soil, many experts believe that it is now only a matter of time.

The United States and Mexico share responsibility in preserving the quality of their international river system, the Rio Grande / Río Bravo, and several international treaties govern the quantity of water each country must give and take. Because no treaty establishes joint standards for the quality of the river, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) was created in 1993 as a declaration of principles and objectives concerning the conservation and the protection of the environment as well as a guide of concrete measures to further cooperate on these matters. One particular goal of the NAAEC was to improve water quality in the US-Mexico Border Region, ensuring a clean, safe, and reliable water supply for the area. Although the US and Mexican federal governments have made substantial technical and financial commitments through binational agencies like the North American Development Bank (NADB) and the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC), few empirical studies have assessed the impact of binational expenditures on wastewater infrastructure in this region. This report uses longitudinal panel data regression models to estimate the impact of capital expenditures on water quality made by binational, federal, and state water quality management institutions from 1995 to 2012. This analysis considers expenditures made on both sides of the Rio Grande watershed that constitutes the international border, beginning with El Paso, Texas and ending in the Gulf of Mexico. / text

This paper addresses how food systems and transboundary food supply chains are mediated and shaped by (cross-) cultural and geopolitical borders that function as selective filters. We focus on the ways in which the political boundary in a formerly cohesive foodshed generates "edge effects" that affect (1) food safety, and (2) food waste, particularly in desert communities adjacent to the U.S.-Mexico border. We hypothesize that as these various boundary lines get "out of register" with one another, their dissonance creates both unexpected impacts as well as opportunities for positive change. This initial analysis demonstrates how multiple (and often permeable) social, economic, and ecological edges intersect with food supply chain vulnerabilities and economic opportunities at the border. Drawing on examples from food safety and food waste surrounding the "Ambos Nogales" port of entry on the Arizona-Sonora border, we document the ways in which the border produces ecological and social edge effects that are dissonant with the official legal boundary.

This dissertation examines an important, but understudied period in Mexican-U.S. migration history during the 1940s and early 1950s. The joint introduction and sanctioning, by the U.S. and Mexican governments, of the bracero program also initiated a large illegal migration of agricultural workers to the United States. This was a period characterized by high levels of temporary legal migration and illegal migration, as well as intense levels of immigration enforcement. These simultaneous processes confound a simplistic view of U.S. history as a sequence of alternating periods of immigration expansion and restriction. U.S. immigration law and policy does not resemble a pendulum swinging first one way then the other; rather, both expansion and restriction characterized the 1940s and early 1950s. This study focuses on South Texas and El Paso, both border regions with dominant agricultural economies as well as a significant presence of Border Patrol officers. By focusing on these border regions, this dissertation examines the relationship between immigration laws and policy and the agricultural labor relations between growers and workers on the ground. This dissertation is concerned with state formation on the U.S.-Mexico border, and its relationship with labor mobility. The process of state and border formation did not originate in the central seats of federal authority, Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, to be applied and exerted on the furthest reaches of their territories. Growers and workers created, negotiated, and experienced and challenged the power and meaning of the border in the agricultural fields during daily interactions. Individual Border Patrolman made the border every day in the choices they made about where and where not to patrol, and which friendships to make and maintain. The border was simultaneously a federal and a local space. As the introductory anecdote suggested, the different sites of power were continually at work and intertwined. The Border Patrol did not have to be present to have an effect on the power dynamics in the moment. These interconnecting authorities, each shaping the other, and workers negotiations of such dynamics are what I term the social space of agriculture on the border. Growers often projected themselves in opposition to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and government intervention, arguing that it disrupted their access to Mexican laborers. In truth, the presence of the Border Patrol, and the threat of deportation the police force carried, was crucial in shaping the social space of agricultural production and securing growers’ undocumented labor force. / text

Background: Mexican-American women are a burgeoning population and are at increased risk for heart disease. However, there are no studies published yet describing acute myocardial infarction (AMI) symptoms unique to this Hispanic subgroup. Aims: Guided by vulnerability theory, the aims were to describe Mexican-American women's perceptions of the AMI symptom experience and to measure their self-reported acute and prodromal MI symptoms. Methods: A convenience sample of eight Mexican-American women mean age 63 years (range 41-78 years) with recent AMI from the U.S.-Mexico border region participated in a semi-structured interview and completed the McSweeney Acute and Prodromal Myocardial Infarction Symptom Survey (MAPMISS). Qualitative description was used to analyze codes from interview data and descriptive statistics to analyze the MAPMISS responses. Results: Mexican-American women's symptom experience was incongruent with what they knew to be symptoms of a heart attack. They attributed AMI symptoms to non-cardiac causes and did not think they were having an MI. Women self-managed symptoms and delayed seeking health care until symptoms became severe. "Asphyxiatia" (asphyxiating) and "menos fuerza" (less strength) were the most commonly described symptoms in the interviews. On the MAPMISS, Mexican-American women reported a mean of 11.25 (range 5-22) acute and 8.75 (range 0-17) prodromal symptoms. Sleep disturbance and weakness and nausea were the most frequently reported prodromal and acute symptoms, respectively, as measured by MAPMISS. Prodromal leg pain was reported with more frequency than prodromal general chest pain. Conclusions: Delays in seeking health services by Mexican-American women in the U.S.-Mexico border region reflect (1) the difference in their actual MI symptoms compared to preconceived ideas of a heart attack, (2) different terms used to describe their MI symptoms, and (3) not initiating healthcare services themselves. These findings can be used to inform Mexican-American women and healthcare providers in the U.S.-Mexico border region about the unique experiences of Mexican-American women. The findings that participants were not able to recognize or attribute their AMI symptoms suggest that heart health education should be tailored to Mexican-American women and targeted to Mexican-American families and communities.

Nearly two decades have passed since the strategic border security paradigm known as “prevention through deterrence” (PTD) took root in the landscape of Southern Arizona. The aim of PTD was to deter illicit migration by strategically amassing border security forces to funnel migrants into increasingly remote and treacherous territory where they would face increased risk. Indeed, risk was to be the prime factor of deterrence. Thousands of undocumented migrants died attempting to overcome those risks in an outcome known as the “funnel effect,” wherein migration patterns shifted to overcome bypass and overcome border security. When speaking about PTD taking root in southern Arizona, I mean that this geography is the locus of the funnel effect and has been since 2001. Southern Arizona represents the longest stretch of border walling in the United States and the highest concentrations of border security personnel and undocumented migration activity since the early 2000s. In this sense, this region is a useful point of focus for evaluating the outcomes and efficacy of the border security apparatus. Here, the PTD strategy has been physically tethered to the landscape as border security infrastructure has literally been dug into the ground. With the hundreds of border security infrastructure and wall projects have also come the hundreds of clandestine trails routed around them used by undocumented migrants, and hundreds of tons of left behind migrant survival materials like backpacks, water bottles, blankets, and rosaries. Over the years while border security has expanded, the evidence associated with migration has shifted in turn reflecting a dialectical engagement between the formal border security apparatus and the informal politics of migrants. While many scholars have studied either border security or the risks faced by migrants, few have looked at their mutual influence over time. This dissertation incorporated a multidisciplinary methodological approach, including ethnography, archival research, archaeology, and GIS technology. These methods allowed me to answer the following questions: What are the social and material effects of border enforcement policy on the ground? How have these changed over the 15 years of concentrated border enforcement in this area, both geographically and in terms of their volume and constitution? What are the stories, the experiences, and the tangible points on the landscape that mark these processes? I viewed the material signature of migration as a form of ruins both literally and metaphorically as they mark the scars of abandonment, loss, and failure. Following Walter Benjamin, I conceived of such ruins as an indictment of the political conditions that led to their formation. In the spirit of Benjamin, I also prioritized this form of marginalized material evidence. Questions of memory and materiality were also entwined with realities of absence and a search for fragmentary traces. I encountered this reality constantly in fieldwork, as when a place known to have been a major clandestine travel corridor for migration was often found completely cleared of all evidence of use. I also routinely walked past coordinates where migrant bodies were recovered, and where no evidence of that tragedy was left. A dialectical approach also highlighted how much more accessible and visible the actions related to the implementation of the United States border security were in relation to those of migrants. Further, the material evidence associated with migration was actively being removed, often as an environmental hazard. Thus, this project also came to encompass questions about the process of historical creation and heritage. Among those who live and work in the borderlands, this contemporary situation was already largely conceptualized in terms of its heritage potential. Will we remember this episode in history as we remember the Berlin Wall, or Japanese internment camps in the United States, as many of the border residents who participated in my project speculated? Certain public land managers along the border anticipated that their heritage future may well be as lands associated with the migration experience, circa the turn of the 21st century. It is acknowledged that this is a dark chapter of history. But, how does one curate history in the making? All of this inextricably links to issues of power. This is the power to decide what is culturally valuable or relevant, as well as the power to define historical narratives as they are made. Border security itself is about maintaining U.S. sovereignty, while defining the value of migrant lives and deaths as the border is secured. This is also a set of values that prioritizes border security over reform to the system that could facilitate labor migration. There is also a hierarchy to what survives between the monumental architecture of border security and the ephemeral tools and structures of clandestine migration. The latter are hidden and actively decaying while the former will stand the test of time. This dissertation analyzes the informal and the fragmentary side by side with the formal and monumental. What do decaying survival materials dropped by undocumented migrants, decaying migrant bodies in the wilderness, and hundreds of miles of clandestine smuggler trails in one of the most highly secured borderlands in one of the most powerful countries in the world say about power here? On a practical level, the accumulated evidence are read as an indictment of border security, revealing that the building of walls and surveillance structures have not stopped migration, though they have led to increasingly imperiled migrant journeys.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to volunteer for a non-profit organization in California called CHIRLA (Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles). My involvement with this organization has opened my eyes to the reality of the current immigration problem between the United States and Mexico. So much disparity is evident along the border. On one side stands the United States- a hegemonic country that encompasses a stable economy, well-built infrastructures, and political clout. On the southern side of the border stands Mexico- a country that has suffered from the lack of development and years of economic crisis. How can two countries, separated by only a border, be so different in their political, social, and economical features? This question has ignited my interest in researching the relations between Mexico and the United States, as their close geographical relationship has significant implications on their economic, political, and social settings. Recent concerns about U.S.-Mexico relations have escalated, as the issue of illegal immigration has made its way to the priority list of both Mexican and American political leaders. Never before has the concern to end drug trafficking and to decrease the number of illegal immigrants seemed to have been so publicly scrutinized. The international community has also been giving more attention to violation of human rights in developing countries, specifically in the labor sector. Relations between the United States and its close neighbor, Mexico, will continue to exist and deeply impact both countries and their populations. Policy choices and economic decisions will be affected, as well as people's lives--creating a sensitive environment that may be vulnerable to conflict. However, it is undeniable that the United States needs Mexico as much as Mexico needs the United States. U.S.-Mexico relations will only continue to be affected by illegal immigration, human rights violations, and drug trafficking. The time is now to strengthen our relations with our neighbor in order to build a unified force against the dangers lurking on both sides of the border. The U.S.-Mexico border covers 2,000 miles, encompassing four American and six Mexican states. Over the years, the relationship between the two countries has become one of strong interdependence. My thesis will explore the deep connections between the economies and societies of the United States and Mexico. Regardless of the disagreements and challenges they encountered, the U.S. and Mexico indeed share a history. This history connects both nations, inevitably making one dependent on the other. The United States heavily relies on other countries for resources, especially from its neighboring country. However, the dependence of Mexico on the United States is much higher. The United States, being a world power, undoubtedly has an economic advantage over Mexico, a country that continues to suffer from domestic political and economic problems. My thesis will introduce the current political, social, and economical state of Mexico and how it is being affected by its relationship with the United States. My. argument is that even though Mexico continues to demonstrate cooperation at the border, problems with income inequality, illegal immigration, illegal drugs, and human rights violations will still remain a crucial setback in the relationship between United States and Mexico.

This study is dedicated to examine the concept of borders, geographical and otherwise, as instruments that are socially produced. It utilizes Gloria Anzaldua's theoretical framework of Borderlands theory as a set of processes that seek to attain the de-colonization of the inner self. The historical and spatial dynamics of the geographical border between Mexico and United States, largely shaped by the U.S. expansionist agenda, resulted in the Mexican lost of more than half of its territory and the subsequent stigmatization of Mexican-Americans/Chicanos as "foreign others," since they did not share with predominant Anglo-Saxons the same values, culture, religion, traditions and skin color. I argue that the later exploitation, exclusion, marginalization, and racism against Mexican-Americans/Chicanos informed Anzaldua's development of her Borderlands theory that seeks to attain liberation for any colonized identity. However, it is also my argument that the borderlands theory fails to account for meaningful political freedom since the processes that compose the theory are principally worked at the inner level, restricting the possibilities for a direct confrontation in the public sphere. / Master of Arts