Smoke and Mirrors: Smelter Pollution and the Construction of Identity, Memory, and Sense of Place in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

The border community of Douglas, Arizona and Cananea and Nacozari, Sonora, Mexico has pivoted around copper mining since the early 20^th century. By the mid-1900s, this transnational copper industry, later coined the “Gray Triangle,” produced a severe air pollution problem in the region. In reaction to environmental damage and deteriorating public health concerned citizens on both sides of the border organized to legally enforce existing environmental regulations, such as the Clean Air Act of 1970 and its subsequent amendments of 1977.

Competing ideas of the borderlands’ identity and the centrality of copper in the region’s economy followed. Local, statewide, and national medias popularized the debate while the local public was forced to take sides.  In the 1970s and 80s both environmentalists and copper supporters sought to sway public opinion and influence political decision-makers by developing opposing environmental narratives, both closely linked to differing notions of the borders’ history, identity and sense of place.

Industry supporters positioned copper miners within the history of brave “pioneers” who battled the “barren landscape” and “savage Indians” to civilize the “open wilderness” with “development” and “progress.” They allied copper mining with mythic images of the “frontier” and linked western prosperity to the economic advantages provided by copper production. Those who opposed the smelters were forced to contest with this powerful legacy of copper mining in the region’s memory and the ever-so-popular “environment versus economy” argument used to discourage increased legislation aimed at protecting natural resources and public health.

In response, activists constructed counter narratives that tied environmental advocates to traditional community values and demonized the copper industry as a ruthless, exploitative profiteer. They challenged the fundamentality of copper smelting to the region’s economy and illustrated the financial advantages of clean air. Most importantly, they questioned the centrality of copper mining in the identity and history of the border and instead argued that area’s scenic landscapes defined its sense of place; and it was precisely those definitive landscapes that were being destroyed by smelter pollution.

Both stories were constructed with distinct agendas, motivated by disparate environmental interests and values, yet also considerate of a series of evolving narratives endemic to governmental agencies and local residents. A cultural analysis of the history of environmental activism in southern Arizona and northern Sonora illuminates the significance of competing environmental narratives and explores the multiple interpretations of identity, memory and sense of place in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.