Eco-Cosmopolitan Strangers: Migration, Toxicity and Vulnerability in the US-Mexico Border Through a Revision of Lucha Corpi’s Cactus Blood

Abstract

Migration flows are common in the US-Mexico border region. However, it has never been so complicated for Latinas/os to cross northwards as it is today. This is due not only to political factors, but also to worsening environmental conditions. Migration, environmental degradation, toxicity and vulnerability are all entangled issues in the US-Mexico border region, as Lucha Corpi’s novel Cactus Blood (1995) depicts. When analyzed from an eco-cosmopolitan perspective, the migrant character in the novel, understood as a “stranger”–in the sense of an in-between, insider-outsider character that makes boundaries porous–discloses an environmental awareness that she can use to face her own vulnerability, while at the same time revealing the (global) networks responsible for the environmental degradation and toxicity of certain places, such as the US-Mexico border region. A socio-environmental revision of Cactus Blood–a novel written a quarter of a century ago–highlights issues that are extremely pertinent to confront contemporary challenges.