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

Abstract

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.