Fracturing Landscapes: Maps, Artifice, and the Illusion of Power and Control in the US-Mexico Borderlands

This paper examines the relationship between border fences and the natural environment along the U.S.-Mexico border. Over the course of the twentieth century,the U.S.-Mexico border transformed from a “line in the sand” to a place of increasing physical presence. The twentieth century brought customs stations and fences to channel bodies through a federally regulated space. Over time, fences and check points transformed into walls, buildings, and a network of roads built to control the movement of dynamic nature: people, animals, and pathogens