Beyond the Border: National Park Service Collaboration with Mexico

As we celebrate America’s “best idea” the popular focus on the National Park Service obscures its activities and influence on counterparts around the world. The National Park Service has been a conceptual model, inspiration, source of capacity-building, guide to management and planning, and general point of departure for similar systems from Cambodia and Guatemala to Georgia and Kenya. Technical assistance teams have traveled abroad and protected area professionals and managers have trained in the United States under NPS auspices. The Sister Parks Initiative links specific protected sites abroad with National Park Service units in long-term collaborations. This is particularly true of sites in Canada and Mexico as the shared border and other interests encourage cooperation. Indeed the National Park Service has more Sister Park relationships with Mexico than with any other country.

This presentation addresses NPS experience and accomplishments in Mexico. Given the breadth and complexity of the relationship between the National Park Service and its Mexican partner, the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology sand History, known as INAH for its Mexican acronym) we will draw primarily from two cases: (1) the successful effort to create a productive collaboration between Mesa Verde National Park and the Archaeological Zone of Monte Alban, both World Heritage Sites, and (2) the ultimately unsuccessful  attempt to create a cross-border World Heritage Site linking El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro from Mexico City to El Paso with El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail from the border to Santa Fe. Exploration of the US-Mexico experience demonstrates that well-crafted formal agreements by themselves are insufficient to assure success, meaning such agreements work best when supported by the same vision and individual commitment  that characterizes NPS engagement with parks within the United States.