The slums of Aspen: immigrants vs. the environment in America's Eden

Abstract

Environmentalism usually calls to mind images of peace and serenity, a oneness with nature, and a shared sense of responsibility. But one town in Colorado, under the guise of protection, passed a resolution limiting immigration, bolstering the of the wealthy and scapegoating Latin American newcomers for the area's current and future ecological problems. This might have escaped attention, save for the fact that this wasn't some rinky-dink backwater. It was Aspen, Colorado, playground of the rich and famous and the West's most elite ski town. Tracking the lives of immigrant laborers through several years of exhaustive fieldwork and archival digging, The Slums of Aspen tells a story that brings together some of the most pressing social problems of the day: crises, immigration, and social inequality. Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Naguib Pellow demonstrate how these issues are intertwined in the everyday experiences of people who work and live in this wealthy tourist community. Developing the idea of environmental privilege - the economic, political, and cultural power that some groups enjoy, which enables them exclusive access to coveted amenities such as forests, parks, mountains, rivers, coastal property, open lands, and elite neighborhoods - they argue that this odd marriage of and nativist groups occurs because of population fears - both want fewer people, especially if they are the brown sort. They situate Aspen, along with all of Colorado's Roaring Fork Valley, as a microcosm of a toxic convergence of immigration and politics in the American West. Offering a new understanding of a little known class of the superelite, of low-wage immigrants (mostly from Latin America) who have become the foundation for service and leisure work in this famous resort, and of the recent history of the ski industry, Park and Pellow expose the ways in which Colorado boosters have reshaped the landscape and altered ecosystems in the pursuit of profit and pleasure. Of even greater urgency, they frame how degradation and immigration reform have become inextricably linked in many regions of the American West, a dynamic that interferes with the efforts of valorous causes, often turning away from conservation and towards insidious racial privilege.