Dying for a Cup of Coffee? Migrant Deaths in the US-Mexico Border Region in a Neoliberal Age
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14650040601168826
ISSN1557-3028
Autores Tópico(s)Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
ResumoAbstract Well over 4,000 unauthorised migrants have lost their lives in the U.S.-Mexico border region since 1995. These deaths have occurred at the intersection of a dramatically strengthened U.S. boundary policing enforcement apparatus and persistent and arguably growing out-migratory pressures in Mexico and beyond. A number of the deceased have come from coffee-growing and -harvesting households and regions in Mexico and Central America, areas devastated by unstable commodity prices that reached their lowest point in a century in 2000–2001. This article explores the discursive and empirical interrelationship between a neoliberalised international coffee market, an increasingly policed U.S.-Mexico boundary, and migrant deaths. In doing so, it finds evidence to suggest that there is a causal link between the international crisis in prices received by coffee bean producers, out-migration by individuals in households and communities dependent on the coffee sector for their livelihoods, and migrant fatalities. It thus illustrates that the age of neoliberalism is one in which processes of nationalisation, liberalisation, and regulation exist simultaneously in space and time, the intersection of which in a world of deep inequality sometimes produces untimely death for those on the global socio-economic margins. Finally, the article highlights the limitations of extant research on this matter and lays out an agenda for future investigation. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author extends his thanks to Dereka Rushbrook of the University of Arizona, and three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and criticisms. Notes 1. E. Lee, At America's Gate: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2003). 2. S. R. Bailey, K. Eschbach, J. M. Hagan, and N. Rodriguez, 'Migrant Deaths at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1985–1994' (Houston: Center for Immigration Research, University of Houston, January 1996); B. Curry, 'Hunt for Better Life Leads Aliens to 'Season of Death',' Los Angeles Times (16 June 1986, 1); K. Eschbach, J. Hagan, and N. Rodriguez, 'Causes and Trends in Migrant Deaths along the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1985–1998' (Houston: Center for Immigration Research, University of Houston, 2001); and J. Wambaugh, Lines And Shadows (New York: William Morrow and Company Inc. 1984). 3. K. Eschbach, J. Hagan, and N. Rodriguez, 'Deaths during Undocumented Migration: Trends and Policy Implications in the New Era of Homeland Security', in J. Fugolo (ed.), In Defense of the Alien: Proceedings of the 2003 National Legal Conference on Immigration and Refugee Policy (New York: Center for Migration Studies 2003) pp. 37–52; R. Marosi, 'Border Crossing Deaths Set a 12-Month Record', Los Angeles Times (1 Oct. 2005), available at http://www.dailynewspaper.ws/29995-border-crossing-deaths-set-a-12-month-record.html, accessed 21 Nov. 2005; E. Montes, 'Migrant Deaths Down Along Border', ABC News (3 Oct. 2006), available at http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2524719, accessed 11 Dec. 2006. See also W. Cornelius, 'Controlling "Unwanted" Immigration: Lessons from the United States, 1993–2004', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31/4 (July 2005) pp. 775–794; and the section on border deaths on the website of the Latin American Working Group: http://www.lawg.org/countries/mexico/death-stats.htm. Regarding the difficulties associated with assessing migrant deaths over time, see J. Nevins, 'Thinking Out of Bounds: A Critical Analysis of Academic and Human Rights Writings on Migrant Deaths in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region', Migraciones Internacionales 2/2 (July–Dec. 2003) pp. 171–190. 4. See S. Castles and M. J. Miller, The Age Of Migration (New York: Guilford Press 2003); P. Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2000); and J. Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the "Illegal Alien" and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (New York: Routledge 2002). 5. L. A. Urrea, The Devil's Highway: A True Story (New York: Little, Brown, and Company 2004). 6. See, for example, M. Wallengren, 'Coffee Crisis Sends Mexico Producers to Death in Mexico', Dow Jones Newswire (29 May 2001), available at http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/dowjones052901.html, accessed 7 Dec. 2005. See also K. Ellingwood, Hard Line: Life and Death on the U.S.-Mexico Border (New York: Pantheon 2004). 7. One notable exception is J. Ross, 'They Don't Call it StarBUCKS for Nada', The Texas Observer (20 Dec. 2002). 8. E. Mekay, 'Agricultural Subsidies Lock-in Coffee Farmers', Inter Press Service (11 March 2004), available at http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/1687.html, accessed 15 Nov. 2005. 9. See W. Cornelius. 'Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of U.S. Immigration Control Policy', Population and Development Review 27/4 (2001) pp. 661–685; Cornelius, 'Controlling "Unwanted" Immigration' (note 3); B. O. Hing, 'The Dark Side of Operation Gatekeeper', U.C. Davis Journal of International Law & Policy 7/2 (2001) pp. 121–168; American Civil Liberties Union and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, 'Petitioners Second Supplemental Memorandum Submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation v. United States of America' (9 May 2001). 10. N. C. Aizenman, 'Meeting Danger Well South of the Border', The Washington Post, (8 July 2006) p. A1; G. Thompson, 'Mexico Worries About Its Own Southern Border,' The New York Times (18 June 2006); J. Tuchman, 'Blood on the Tracks and Lives Laid Down on the Line', The Observer (London) (2 May 2004), available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1207917,00.html, accessed 21 July 2006. 11. Regarding the concept of the territorial trap, see J. Agnew and S. Corbridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory And International Political Economy (New York and London: Routledge 1995). 12. Growing out of and in reaction to world-systems analysis, a commodity chain approach appreciates that one cannot limit one's analysis of a commodity to a particular nation-state, while the entire world economy (the "world-system") is too big an entity to interrogate from a practical perspective (among others). The strengths of such an approach are many: it is heavily empirical; it highlights an international division of labor, while clarifying the division of benefits (and detriments often) associated with the making and selling of a particular commodity; and it is very much geographical in that it demonstrates the nature of relationships between supposedly discrete locations. See J. M. Talbot, Grounds For Agreement: The Political Economy of the Coffee Commodity Chain (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 2004). 13. Ibid., Chapter 5. For an historical overview of the long-terms shifts in control of the coffee trade see S. Topik, 'The Integration of the World Coffee Market', in S. Topik and W. G. Clarence-Smith (eds.), The Global Coffee Economy In Africa, Asia, And Latin America, 1500–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) pp. 21–49. 14. S. Topik and W. G. Clarence-Smith, 'Introduction: Coffee and Global Development,' in S. Topik and W. G. Clarence-Smith (eds.), The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia, And Latin America, 1500–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp. 1–17. 15. Talbot (note 12) p. 2. 16. See N. Rowling, Commodities: How the World Was Taken to Market (London: Free Association Books 1987) pp. 99–123. 17. Topik and Smith (note 14) pp. 2–3. 18. For an overview of these efforts, see Talbot (note 12) Chapter 3. Significant portions of the rest of this section have previously appeared in J. Nevins, 'Restitution over Coffee: Truth, Reconciliation and Environmental Violence in East Timor', Political Geography, 22/6 (Aug. 2003) pp. 677–701. 19. Quoted in Talbot (note 12) p. 58. 20. T. Ayikama, 'Coffee Market Liberalization Since 1990', in T. Ayikama et al. (eds.), Commodity Market Reforms: Lessons of Two Decades (Washington, DC: The World Bank 2001) p. 83; R. H. Bates Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of the World Coffee Trade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1997); and S. Ponte, 'The "Latte Revolution"?: Winners and Losers in the Restructuring of the Global Coffee Marketing Chain' (Working Paper, Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, June 2001). 21. Bates (note 20). 22. Quoted in Talbot (note 12) p. 60. 23. See Talbot (note 12). 24. Bates (note 20) pp. 127–128. Also see M. Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World (New York: Basic Books 1997). 25. See J. K. Black, United States Penetration of Brazil. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1977); and N. Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Boston, MA: South End Press1993). 26. Quoted in Bates (note 20) p. 128. 27. See Talbot (note 12) pp. 86–91; Bates (note 20); G. Dicum and N. Luttinger, The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop (New York: The New Press 1999); and Pendergrast (note 24). 28. See Chomsky (note 25); G. Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy 1945–1980 (New York: Pantheon Books 1988); S. Shalom, Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing U.S. Intervention after the Cold War (Boston: South End Press 1993). Also see P. Bennis, Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN (New York and Northhampton, MA: Olive Branch Press 2000). 29. See S. Babb, Managing Mexico: Economists from Nationalism to Neoliberalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2001). 30. Talbot (note 12) pp. 85, 91–97. Regarding Mexico, see J. Ross, The Annexation of Mexico: From the Aztecs to the I.M.F. (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press 1998). 31. See Talbot (note 12). 32. C. Charveriat, 'Bitter Coffee: How the Poor are Paying for the Slump in Coffee Prices' (Oxford: Oxfam Great Britain, May 2001); Oxfam America, 'The Coffee Crisis Continues: Situation Assessment and Policy Recommendations for Reducing Poverty in the Coffee Sector' (April 2005) p. 24, available at http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/research_reports/crisis_continues. See also Ponte (note 20); and Talbot (note 12). 33. Ponte (note 20). 34. Charveriat (note 32). 35. P. Varengis et al., 'Dealing with the Coffee Crisis in Central America: Impacts and Strategies', Policy Research Working Paper 2993 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, Research Development Group, March 2003) p. 3. 36. Oxfam America (note 32). 37. S. Homes and G. Smith, 'For Coffee Growers, Not Even a Whiff of Profits', Business Week (9 Sep. 2002), available online at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_36/b3798006.htm, accessed 21 Nov. 2005. 38. A. Bartra, 'Rebellious Cornfields: Towards Food and Labour Self-sufficiency', in G. Otero, Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State and Civil Society (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing and London: Zed Books 2004) p. 22. 39. L. Carlsen and E. Cervantes, 'When the Coffee Crisis Hits Home', published online by the Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center (Feb. 2004); available at http://www.americaspolicy.org/citizen-action/voices/2004/0402coffee.html, accessed 22 Nov. 2005. Contrasting the scene at a Starbucks in an upscale neighborhood of Mexico City, one observer wrote in 2002 of "the grim, daily existence of 360,000 mostly Indian coffee farmers who work small plots carved from the jungle mountains of southern Mexico. Sometimes walking six hours from patch to village with a hundred pounds on their back, Indian farmers produce 5,000,000 sacks (134 pounds each) in a good year… . For recompense, coffee farmers and their families suffer endemic malnutrition; they have the lowest income levels and the worst health and educational statistics in Mexico" (Ross, note 7). 40. L. Hernández Navarro, 'To Die a Little: Migration and Coffee in Mexico and Central America', published online by the Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center (13 Dec. 2004); available at http://www.americaspolicy.org/reports/2004/0412coffee.html, accessed 22 Nov. 2005. See also R. Boudreaux, 'Looking North With Pride, Fear', Los Angeles Times (1 May 2006). 41. M. Perez Monterosas, 'Las Redes Sociales de la Migración Emergente de Veracruz a los Estados Unidos', Migraciones Internacionales 2/1 (Jan.–June 2003) pp. 106–136. 42. D. Adams, 'Waking Up to World Coffee Crisis', St. Petersburg Times (11 Aug. 2002). 43. F. Mestries Benquet, 'Crisis cafetalera y migración internacional en Veracruz', Migraciones Internacionales 2/2 (July–Dec. 2003) pp. 121–148. 44. Perez Monterosas (note 41). 45. J. M. Lewis, 'Strategies for Survival: Migration and Fair-Trade Organic Coffee Production in Oaxaca, Mexico'(Working Paper 118), (San Diego: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, June 2005), available at http://www.ccis-ucsd.org/PUBLICATIONS/wrkg118.pdf. Interestingly, Lewis finds that continued engagement in the coffee sector and out-migration are not mutually exclusive survival strategies. Migration can and often does provide a source of capital that can make coffee production more economically viable. 46. Varengis (note 35) p. 6. 47. Ibid., pp. 6–8. 48. Ibid., p. 9. 49. United States Congress, 'The Coffee Crisis in the Western Hemisphere', Hearing before the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventh Congress, July 24, 2002 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office 2002). 50. R. Rice, 'Coffee Production in a Time of Crisis: Social and Environmental Connections' SAIS Review 23/1 (Winter–Spring 2003) p. 231. 51. Oxfam America, 'The Coffee Crisis Continues: Situation Assessment and Policy Recommendations for Reducing Poverty in the Coffee Sector' (April 2005) p. 24, available at http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/research_reports/crisis_continues. The report cites as its source R. Rivera et al. El Impacto de la Crisis de Café en El Salvador (San Salvador: Fundación Nacional para el Desarollo [FUNDE] 2003). 52. 'Cahabón en la miseria y olvido,' Prensa Libre (2 May 2003). Quoted in G. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2004) p. 191. 53. G. Hadden, 'Coffee Collapse Sparks Central American Exodus to U.S.', National Public Radio (29 Sep. 2003), available at http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1447891.html. 54. United States Congress (note 49) p. 11. 55. C. Bacon, 'Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Can Fair Trade, Organic, and Specialty Coffees Reduce Small-Scale Farmer Vulnerability in Northern Nicaragua?' World Development 33/3 (2005) p. 502. 56. Regarding coffee production in Guatemala, see M. Laslett, 'A Bitter Taste: Struggling for Just the Minimum', NACLA's Report on the Americas 34/6 (May/June 2001) pp. 8–11; and F. J. Daniel, 'Guatemala Farm Rape Clouds Free Trade Debate,' Reuters (29 July 2004), available at http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/2402.html, accessed 15 Nov. 2005. See also D. McCreery, 'Coffee and Indigenous Labor in Guatemala, 1871–1980', in S. Topik and W. G. Clarence-Smith (eds.), The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, 1500–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) pp. 191–208; and D. Wilkinson, Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin 2002) pp. 68–69, 76–77. 57. For a broad discussion of neoliberalism, see S. Sawyer, Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2004). For a brief overview of the development of neoliberalism in Mexico, see G. Otero, 'Mexico's Double Movement: Neoliberal Globalism, the State and Civil Society', in G. Otero, Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State and Civil Society (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing and London: Zed Books 2004) pp. 1– 17. See also Ross, The Annexation of Mexico (note 30); and Babb, Managing Mexico (note 29). 58. See M. E. Martínez Torres, 'Survival Strategies in Neoliberal Markets: Peasant Organizations and Organic Coffee in Chiapas', in G. Otero, Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State and Civil Society (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing and London: Zed Books 2004) 169– 185. 59. S. Polaski, 'Jobs, Wages, and Household Income,' in D. Papademetriou et al. (eds.), NAFTA's Promise and Reality: Lessons from Mexico for the Hemisphere (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Nov. 2003) pp. 17–19; available at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/nafta1.pdf, accessed 29 Nov. 2006. 60. One estimate states that US corn was sold in Mexico between 1999 and 2001 at 30 percent or more below the cost of production. See Polaski (note 59) p. 17. 61. See E. Fitting, 'Importing Corn, Exporting Labor: The Neoliberal Corn Regime, GMOs, and the Erosion of Mexican Biodiversity' Agriculture and Human Values 23 (March 2006) pp. 16–17; and A. Nadal, 'The Environmental and Social Impacts of Economic Liberalization on Corn Production in Rural Mexico' (Oxford, UK and Gland, Switzerland: Oxfam Great Britain and WWF International, Sep. 2000), available at http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/NadalOxfamWWFMaizeMexico2000.pdf. See, also, B. Lambrecht, 'Displaced Mexican Corn Farmers Are Streaming into Missouri', St. Louis Post-Dispatch (7 Nov. 2005); and Oxfam America, 'Dumping Without Borders: How US Agricultural Policies Are Destroying the Livelihoods of Mexican Corn Farmers' (Aug. 2003), available at http://www.oxfamamerica.org/pdfs/corn_brief_082703.pdf. Bartra (note 12) pp. 18–36; and J. H. Cohen, 'Community, Economy and Social Life in Oaxaca, Mexico: Rural Life and Cooperative Logic in the Global Economy', in G. Otero, Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State and Civil Society (Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing and London: Zed Books 2004) pp. 154–168. For a contrary analysis of the relationship between the Mexican corn sector and NAFTA, see D. Papademetriou, 'The Shifting Expectations of Free Trade and Migration,' in D. Papademetriou et al. (eds.), NAFTA's Promise and Reality: Lessons from Mexico for the Hemisphere (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Nov. 2003) pp. 51–52, available at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/nafta1.pdf, accessed 30 Nov. 2006. 62. See D. S. Massey, J. Durand, and N. J. Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation 2002). Also see D. Papademetriou (note 61), pp. 39–59. 63. See P. Andreas, 'The Escalation of U.S. Immigration Control in the Post-NAFTA Era', Political Science Quarterly 113/4 (1998–1999) pp. 591–615; and D. S. Massey, and K. E. Espinosa. 'What's Driving Mexico-U.S. Migration? A Theoretical, Empirical, and Policy Analysis', American Journal of Sociology 102/4 (Jan. 1997) pp. 939–999. 64. At the same time, however, the Clinton administration claimed that the passage of NAFTA would actually help realise the goal of boundary enforcement: by creating better, high-paying jobs in Mexico – so went the argument – NAFTA would lead to less immigration from Mexico to the United States. See, for example, J. Reno, 'Consider NAFTA a Border Control Tool', Los Angeles Times (22 Oct. 1993) p. B11. 65. U.S. Congress, Subcommittee on International Law, Immigration, and Refugees of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 103rd Congress. Immigration-related Issues in the North American Free Trade Agreement, Nov. 3, 1993 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office 1994) p. 36. Nevertheless, upon ending her tenure as INS head in November 2000, Meissner wondered aloud, "What drives people from one place to somewhere else, taking all kinds of risks? It's one of the fundamental questions of our time" (quoted in Migration News, Dec. 2000, available at http://migration.ucdavis.edu.mn/more.php?id=2251_0_2_0, accessed 6 Dec. 2005). 66. That said, the actual extent to which NAFTA in and of itself has fueled rural out-migration is a subject of considerable debate. Demetrios Papademetriou (note 61, p. 52) concludes that NAFTA has only played a "minor role." Larger structural factors processes that predate NAFTA, such as the longer-term liberalisation and deregulation of the rural economy, are far more important, he contends. 67. For an overview of those phenomena and developments, see Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper (note 4). 68. Thanks to Aaron Bobow-Strain of Whitman College for making me appreciate the need to ask such questions. 69. See Lewis, 'Strategies for Survival' (note 45); and the website of Just Coffee at http://www.justcoffee.org. 70. Regarding the complex and often contradictory relationship between the simultaneous "opening" and "closing" of the boundary, see Andreas, Border Games (note 4); M. Coleman, 'U.S. Statecraft and the U.S.-Mexico Border as Security/Economy Nexus', Political Geography 24/2 (Feb. 2005) pp. 185–209; and Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper (note 4). 71. Regarding structural violence, see J. Galtung, 'Violence, Peace, and Peace Research', Journal of Peace Research 6/3 (1969) pp. 167–191; Nevins, 'Restitution over Coffee' (note 18); and J. Nevins, A Not-So-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2005). 72. A. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2002) p. 75. For a discussion of boundary enforcement as a form of violence, see J. Nevins, 'A Beating Worse than Death: Imagining and Contesting Violence in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands', AmeriQuests 2/1 (2006) pp. 25, available at http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/ameriquests/viewarticle.php=id=73&layout=abstract. 73. See Nevins, 'Restitution over Coffee' (note 18). 74. D. Massey, 'Power-geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place', in J. Bird et al. (eds.), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (London: Routledge 1993) pp. 59–69. 75. See A. Paasi, 'The Social Construction of Peripherality: The Case of Finland and the Finnish-Russian Border Area', in H. Eskelinen and F. Snickars (eds.), Competitive European Peripheries (Berlin and New York: Springer 1995) pp. 236–258; and A. Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border (Chichester, UK and New York: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. 1996). Paasi borrows the concept of social spatialisation from R. Shields, Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London and New York: Routledge 1991).
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