Hungry for Change: Borderlands Food & Water in - Southwest ...

Hungry for CHange:
Borderlands Food and Water in the Balance
This publication was edited by Regina Fitzsimmons, Gary Paul
Nabhan, Jeffrey Banister and Maribel Alvarez of the Southwest
Center. Special thanks to Margaret Wilder of Latin American Studies
at the University of Arizona for planning assistance. The production
of this booklet was funded by the Confluence Center of the
University of Arizona and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Endowed
Program in Borderlands Food and Water Security at the Southwest
Center, University of Arizona. We are particularly grateful to staff
of the La Semilla Food Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico and West
Texas, and to our colleagues in Hermosillo, Sonora, including
Ernesto Camou Healy and the research faculty of CIAD, for their
many contributions. Special thanks to all the photographers and
writers contributing to this project, and to our collaborators outside
the university who are part of the Sabores Sin Fronteras Foodways
Alliance. This publication was designed by Paula Schaper and her
staff at WestWordVision and printed by Commercial Printers. Thanks
to Tim Tracy for making this publication available for download
online at the U of A Southwest Center (www.swc.arizona.edu),
Sabores sin Fronteras (www.saboresfronteras.com) and Gary
Nabhan’s website (www.garynabhan.com). To receive a hard copy
of this booklet, contact the Southwest Center of the University of
Arizona, 1052 North Highland Avenue, Tucson, Arizona 85721;
donations are requested to cover mailing and reprinting. Please
make checks out to the University of Arizona Foundation.
Cover Photo: © iStockphoto.com/Steve Burger
IntroductIon
Gary Nabhan
Maribel Alvarez
Jeffrey Banister
Regina Fitzsimmons
Food grows our future: Child at a Sonoran hot dog cart in Tucson | Photo Michael Jones
3
Welcome to the food system of the U.S.-Mexico border
—the geopolitical boundary with the greatest economic
disparity in the world. Stories written and spoken about
this unnatural rift in the landscape are the stuff of myth,
literary leaping or yarn spinning, depending on who tells
the tale. The U.S./Mexico border is also, for many, una
herida abierta—an open wound. It’s a third country altogether;
a ghostly apparition; America’s neglected playground;
el Norte—where the grass is always greener (if it
is alive at all), and so on.
Researchers have gathered data to account for the economic
and nutritional schism between the two countries.
But the numbers are often imprecise, for Mexico
and the United States rarely use the same measuring
stick. According to one report, the per capita income of
U.S. citizens ($45,989) is 5.6 times greater than that of
Mexican citizens ($8,143), with most Americans having at
least three times the buying power for food and drink
than their neighbors on the other side of the line.
And yet, when we look more closely at the border
region, we see that national averages hardly apply. In
counties immediately adjacent to Mexico, poverty rates
are twice as high as the rest of the U.S., while incomes in
Mexico’s northern border states are 75 percent greater
than in the rest of the Republic. Nevertheless, this still
puts the average income in U.S. border counties far above
the average income in the Mexican border states.
Such stark discrepancies become personal when
Mexicans witness the lavish consumption and unbelievable
waste of food (40-50 percent) by their neighbors
north of the border. On economic grounds alone, it should
be no surprise that there are at least five million undocumented
Mexican-born residents in the United States,
many of whom work in the farm, ranch and food service
sectors of the economy.
Meanwhile, 60 percent of all fresh winter-spring produce
eaten in the U.S. now comes from Mexico. Wal-Mart
is the largest single food retailer in Mexico, providing
more jobs than any other transnational corporation.
Viewed from just about every angle, Mexico is critical to
the U.S. food system, while the U.S. food system is increasingly
important to Mexico.
Given such differences and disparities in access to
healthy food, we are surprised by the lack of a transborder
food security and agricultural sustainability