Flood Justice in the US-Mexico Borderlands: Ambos Nogales (En Español) by Southwest Center

Journal of the Southwest Radio is proud to present this series about flood justice in the US-Mexico Borderlands. Hosted by Lucas Belury, these bilingual episodes address the environmental, demographic, and political factors shaping the paradoxical issue of flooding in arid lands. The first episode, an interview with Dr. Adriana Zuniga-Terán, discusses green infrastructure, equitable policy and flood vulnerability in the border cities of ambos Nogales. Lucas Belury is a second-year Ph.D. student in the School of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona. His research challenges environmental racism by integrating remote sensing for flood detection with the lived experience of marginalized Latinx communities along the US-Mexico border. Utilizing the human-centered design concept of co-production, in which research and community members are equal contributors of knowledge production, he collaborates with community-based flood justice advocacy organizations in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and Northeastern Mexico. Through these partnerships, his research supports community-based organizations in their challenge against environmental racism and structural inequality.

The 2023 edition of Tucson Meet Yourself honored the Corrido and one of its most prominent researchers and writers, Dr. Celestino Fernandez. He was interviewed by Dr. Estevan Azcona, musicologist and associated research scientist at the Southwest Center, as local corridistas played some of his compositions. “Running tales” inspired by real events, Corridos amplify voices often muffled by dominant culture. A composer of over 50 corridos, Fernandez recently released Corridos de Celestino, a double album featuring corridos on immigration, the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and the massacre of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, among other events.

Gabriel Dozal discusses his debut collection, The Border Simulator, where the U.S.-Mexico border is redefined as a place of invention; crossing it becomes a matter of simulation. The poems accompany Primitivo, who attempts to cross the border, an imaginary boundary that becomes more real and challenging as his journey progresses; and his sister, Primitiva, who lives an alternate, static life as an exploited migrant worker in la fabrica. He chats with Taylor about the experience of writing and living the borderlands, and shares the process of translating the work, completed by Natasha Tiniacos. Gabriel is a writer and educator from El Paso, Texas. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Arizona and he is a poetry editor for DIAGRAM. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Iowa Review, Guernica, The Brooklyn Rail, The Literary Review, The Volta, and elsewhere.

Dr. Bellante is a geographer whose research and teaching focus on food justice, food systems, and global environmental change. Bellante lived and worked in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas for six years before returning to the U.S. to pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in human-environmental geography. Her research centered on small-scale Chiapas corn farmers struggling with a changing climate and neoliberal economic policies. Dr. Bellante teaches several undergraduate courses, from an introduction to critical food studies to food justice, ethics and activism. She also co-leads the university’s Food Systems Research Lab with Dr. Gigi Owen, staff scientist with Climate Assessment for the Southwest.

Tara Plath is a PhD student in the Film & Media Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara. She holds an MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BFA in Sculpture and BA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an interdisciplinary practice-based researcher whose ongoing research uses mapping and open-source investigation techniques to challenge state violence, surveillance, and militarization at the US southwest border in Arizona. In a conversation following the end of Title 42, Tara and Taylor discuss the compounding crises of disappearance and death in the Sonoran Desert; border militarization and the weaponization of humanitarian aid as part of Border Patrol’s long-term strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence. Plath’s transdisciplinary research and activism helps us better visualize the devastating effects of the occupation of Indigenous land throughout the Sonoran Desert and beyond, while offering methods and platforms for transborder solidarity.

Dr. Nicolás Pineda Pablos is a researcher in El Colegio de Sonora, Hermosillo. He has a doctorate in public policy and community planning from the University of Texas at Austin and wrote his dissertation on Mexican urban water policy. Since that time, he has continued to focus on water issues across Mexico, from the northern border states to the Yucatán Peninsula. Pineda is indeed one of Mexico’s foremost experts on urban water, with numerous publications, several of which are the result of long-term collaborations with researchers at the University of Arizona. In this interview, Dr. Pineda reflects on the current state of water in Sonora’s capital, Hermosillo, a desert city that, much like Tucson, is faced with profound challenges, not least of which are a swiftly warming and drying environment, ongoing drought, and the threat of ever-more more powerful storms.

The School Garden Workshop (SGW) is an immensely impactful program in the University of Arizona and Tucson Unified School District communities… as well as throughout the city of Tucson and greater southern Arizona region. School gardens can be powerful educational tools. SGW enables teachers to tap into their students’ energy and curiosity through integrating active, hands-on lessons in conventional academic subjects, like math, science, and language arts. Equally important as conventional and practice-based learning spaces, school gardens foster cooperation, autonomy, and social justice. In this conversation, we hear more from Moses and Carly about SGW and some of the myriad ways the gardens affect the next generation of learners. Hosted by Taylor Miller; post-production and edition by Carlos Quintero

Dr. Marcela Vásquez-León is the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of Anthropology in the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona. She has conducted research and outreach for over two decades with smallholder agricultural and fishing communities throughout Latin America and the U.S. Southwest. Her focus includes collective organization, common property resources, and rural development. In this episode of the JSW Radio Podcast, we speak with Dr. Vásquez-León about the impact of efforts to protect the endangered vaquita marina on fishing communities in Mexico’s upper Gulf of California. Scientists and international non-profit organizations, working in tandem with the Mexican government, have invested significant intellectual, financial, and human resources in the upper gulf and on the vaquita. Vásquez-León argues, however, that their efforts have resulted in the near total collapse of what was once a robust fisheries economy and, thus far, have produced few demonstrable successes. Her analysis of the situation, based on years of work with local fishing communities, points to the disparities and injustices that so often result from conservation programs that focus on protecting a single species without considering the deeply entangled “natures” and “cultures” that such efforts both affect and produce. Ultimately, it is not an argument against protecting ecologies and environments but rather a push for a view and approach that considers relationships between human and non-human worlds.

Dr. Tom Sheridan is a research cultural anthropologist in the Southwest Center and professor in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology. Sheridan has been a longtime student of ranching and ranch lands in southern Arizona, which led him, starting in the 1990s, to participate in the development of Pima County’s Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, the SDCP, one of the most innovative and successful county-led conservation efforts in the United States. Tom is currently researching and writing a book on the SDCP, including on the larger land-use and conservation dynamics shaping the region starting in the late 20th century, a convergence of forces that led to the successful development and implementation of the Plan. This interview with Dr. Sheridan is the second installment of our two-part series focused on conservation in Southern Arizona. The first was with Brian Powell, who now serves as a Pima County Parks Superintendent with Pima County’s Natural Resource, Parks and Recreation department, and who for several years was pivotal to developing the county’s biological monitoring program.

Brian Powell, currently a Parks Superintendent with Pima County’s Natural Resource, Parks and Recreation department, has spent the past two decades working to understand and protect biodiversity in the Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona. In 2007, he was tapped by Maeveen Behan to develop a biological monitoring program for Pima County. In this interview, Powell describes efforts leading to the county’s innovative approach to preserving open space, starting in the late 1990s – the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. This was a time of fast-paced housing development, particularly on Tucson’s northwest side, and environmentalists were pushing for stronger controls on growth. This interview is the first in a two-part series focusing on conservation in Southern Arizona.

Última entrega de una serie de tres lecturas bilingües extraídas del número de otoño de 2004 del Journal of the Southwest, un número especial que incluía la traducción del libro Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre el quehacer Antropológico, escrito por la doctora María Teresa Valdivia Dounce, investigadora y profesora del Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. A finales de los 70, Valdivia viajó con un equipo de médicos, agrónomos y trabajadores sociales del Instituto Nacional Indigenista para mejorar las condiciones de vida del pueblo Guarijío en la Sierra Madre Occidental. El libro es un registro auntobiográfico del trabajo de Valdivia apoyando a los Guarijíos en su lucha por la tierra contra los rancheros y agricultores no indígenas ("Yoris"), y es a la vez una meditada reflexión sobre el trabajo de campo en la antropología. La versión en español es leída por la Doctora Jéssica Retis, profesora de periodismo en la Universidad de Arizona.

Last episode of a three-part bilingual excerpt taken from the autumn 2014 issue of Journal of the Southwest, a special issue featuring a translation of the book, Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre El Quehacer Antropológico, written by Dr. María Teresa Valdivia Dounce. Dr. Valdivia is a researcher and professor in the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In the late 1970s, Valdivia traveled with a team of medical doctors, agronomists, and social workers, all in the employ of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional Indigenista, to improve the living conditions of the Guarijío Indigenous people of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Valdivia’s book is both an autobiographical account of her efforts to help the Guarijíos in their land struggle with non-Indigenous ranchers and farmers (“Yoris”), and a thoughtful reflection on fieldwork in anthropology. Reading the Spanish-language version is Dr. Jéssica Retis, a professor of journalism at the University of Arizona.

Dr. Maribel Álvarez is the Jim Griffith Chair in Public Folklore in the University of Arizona Southwest Center, Associate Dean of Community Engagement in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and an Associate Research Professor in the School of Anthropology. She founded the Southwest Folklife Alliance, a non-profit organization that supports folklife throughout the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico and directs one of the largest folklife festivals in the United States, Tucson Meet Yourself. As a public folklorist and a professor, Dr. Álvarez straddles a line between the life of a scholar and that of a community leader and advocate for regional folk traditions. In 2018, she was honored by the American Folklore Society with the highly prestigious Américo Paredes Prize. Music: Lágrimas Negras. Bebo Valdés y Chucho Valdés. "Juntos para Siempre", Universal Music Spain, 2008.

Dr. Sallie Marston is professor emeritus in the School of Geography, Development, and Environment at the University of Arizona, where she held the distinguished title of regents professor before retiring in May of 2021. Marston is the author of numerous influential publications in political and human geography and has mentored more than 50 graduate students. Her research and writing on the politics of scale have shaped how we understand this pivotal concept in the discipline of geography, and in the social sciences more broadly. Marston’s many creative research collaborations with other scholars, as well as with students, writers, and activists, give her research a rare combination of breadth and depth. She is a scholar’s scholar, an innovative pedagogue, and a lovely human being.

Ésta es la segunda entrega de una serie de tres lecturas bilingües extraídas del número de otoño de 2004 del Journal of the Southwest, un número especial que incluía la traducción del libro Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre el quehacer Antropológico, escrito por la doctora María Teresa Valdivia Dounce, investigadora y profesora del Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. A finales de los 70, Valdivia viajó con un equipo de médicos, agrónomos y trabajadores sociales del Instituto Nacional Indigenista para mejorar las condiciones de vida del pueblo Guarijío en la Sierra Madre Occidental. El libro es un registro auntobiográfico del trabajo de Valdivia apoyando a los Guarijíos en su lucha por la tierra contra los rancheros y agricultores no indígenas ("Yoris"), y es a la vez una meditada reflexión sobre el trabajo de campo en la antropología. La versión en español es leída por la Doctora Jéssica Retis, profesora de periodismo en la Universidad de Arizona.

This is the second of a three-part bilingual excerpt taken from the autumn 2014 issue of Journal of the Southwest, a special issue featuring a translation of the book, Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre El Quehacer Antropológico, written by Dr. María Teresa Valdivia Dounce. Dr. Valdivia is a researcher and professor in the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In the late 1970s, Valdivia traveled with a team of medical doctors, agronomists, and social workers, all in the employ of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional Indigenista, to improve the living conditions of the Guarijío Indigenous people of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Valdivia’s book is both an autobiographical account of her efforts to help the Guarijíos in their land struggle with non-Indigenous ranchers and farmers (“Yoris”), and a thoughtful reflection on fieldwork in anthropology. Reading the Spanish-language version is Dr. Jéssica Retis, a professor of journalism at the University of Arizona.

With this third installment of the JSW Radio Archive we begin a three-part bilingual reading taken from the autumn 2014 issue of Journal of the Southwest, a special issue featuring a translation of the book, Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre El Quehacer Antropológico, written by Dr. María Teresa Valdivia Dounce. Dr. Valdivia is a researcher and professor in the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In the late 1970s, Valdivia traveled with a team of medical doctors, agronomists and social workers, all in the employ of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional Indigenista, to improve the living conditions of the Guarijío Indigenous people of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Valdivia’s book is both an autobiographical account of her efforts to help the Guarijíos in their land struggle with non-Indigenous ranchers and farmers (“Yoris”), and a thoughtful reflection on fieldwork in anthropology. Reading the Spanish-language version is Dr. Jéssica Retis, a professor of journalism at the University of Arizona.

Con esta tercera entrega del JSW Radio Archive iniciamos una serie de tres lecturas bilingües extraídas del número de otoño de 2004 del Journal of the Southwest, un número especial que incluía la traducción del libro Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre el quehacer Antropológico, escrito por la doctora María Teresa Valdivia Dounce, investigadora y profesora del Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. A finales de los 70, Valdivia viajó con un equipo de médicos, agrónomos y trabajadores sociales del Instituto Nacional Indigenista para mejorar las condiciones de vida del pueblo Guarijío en la Sierra Madre Occidental. El libro es un registro auntobiográfico del trabajo de Valdivia apoyando a los Guarijíos en su lucha por la tierra contra los rancheros y agricultores no indígenas ("Yoris"), y es a la vez una meditada reflexión sobre el trabajo de campo en la antropología. La versión en español es leída por la Doctora Jéssica Retis, profesora de periodismo en la Universidad de Arizona.

This episode is part of a series exploring the ancestral geographies of what we refer to as the Southwest. Through interviews with Dr. Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert and Rosalie and Patty Talahongva, host Patricia Schwartz had the opportunity to re-learn critical aspects of history and hear from inspiring folks exploring decolonial futures through the telling of Indigenous stories.