Bilingual Child-Language Acquisition along the United States—Mexico Border: The El Paso—Ciudad Juárez—Las Cruces Triangle

The Rio Grande, which forms the United States—Mexico border for much of its course, receives diverse pollutants from both urban and agricultural areas, most notably in the sister cities of El Paso (TX, USA)—Ciudad Juárez (CHI, Mexico). This study aimed to describe regional trends in water quality in waters near the El Paso–Ciudad Juárez metroplex and to examine the potential for water quality improvement through the use of a created wetland. Very few differences in nutrient chemistry were found among drains, canals and the Rio Grande, with the exception of elevated chloride and lower phosphorus levels found in the drains. Overall, chloride concentrations increased with distance downstream, likely due to concentration of salts via evaporation from irrigated agriculture. A wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) contributed substantially to total phosphorus and nitrate levels, which, together with ammonia, tended to exceed state criteria for water quality downstream of the WWTP outflow. The created Rio Bosque wetlands reduced nitrate concentrations in the water, possibly via denitrification enhanced by algae; algae increased in biomass as water flowed through the wetlands. However, the diversion of water for irrigated agriculture, resulting in the absence of water, and thus aquatic plants, in the wetland in the summer has limited the ability of this wetland to improve regional water quality.

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Forgotten Border Actors: the Border Reinforcers. A Comparison Between the U.S.–Mexico Border and South American Borders

Journal of Political Ecology ◽

10.2458/v9i1.21635 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 69 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Alejandro Grimson ◽

Pablo Vila

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

El Paso ◽

The United States ◽

Ciudad Juarez ◽

South American ◽

The Social ◽

Mexico Border ◽

History Of ◽

Good Neighbor ◽

The U.S

This article is a critique of two different types of essentialisms that have gained widespread acceptance in places as distant as the U.S.-Mexico border and different Mercosur frontiers. Both essentialisms rely on metaphors that refer to the concept of "union," and put their emphasis on a variety of "sisterhood/brotherhood" tropes and, in particular, the "crossing" metaphor. This kind of stance tends to make invisible the social and cultural conﬂict that many times characterizes political frontiers. The article wants to reinstall this conﬂictive dimension. In that regard, we analyze two different case studies. The ﬁrst is the history of a bridge constructed between Posadas, Argentina and Encarnación, Paraguay. The second is the community reaction toward an operation implemented by the Border Patrolin 1993 ("OperationBlockade") in a border that for many years was considered an exemplar of the "good neighbor relationships" between Mexico and the United States, the frontier between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Key Words: U.S.-Mexico border, Operation Blockade, Mercosur frontier, political frontier, Argentina, Paraguay, Mexico, United States, Posadas, El Paso , Encarnación, Ciudad Juárez, Border Patrol.

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