Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona

¿No Vale Nada la Vida?

***All seats for the Noche Cultural have been filled, however seats for the conference are still open. Click the link above to register***

In summer 2007, the cacophonous discourse on immigration and border security that had gripped the US’s media attention for months took an unprecedented turn. For the first time in more than a decade of heated immigration debate, two divergent statistical measures converged, thus revealing the underbelly of a deeply troubled policy: while the number of law-enforcement apprehensions at the border showed a significant decrease, the number of deaths among migrants crossing the Arizona desert was the highest ever.

Studies clearly demonstrate that increased US immigration policy enforcement has resulted in a twenty-fold increase in desert immigrant deaths since 1990 (25 documented recovered remains from 1990-99 versus 802 for 2000-05).  Ironically, the meanings, causes, and consequences of this situation ---as a veritable humanitarian crisis in our midst-- are rarely the focus of sustained public debate. 

Severely under-appreciated among the general public, media outlets, and policy makers and enforcers are the cultural dimensions (the beliefs, attitudes and ideologies about life, death, work, family, and opportunities and various forms of vernacular wisdom and practical knowledge) that compel migrants to risk their lives even on the face of death-certain scenarios.  While on the one hand these cultural resources help strengthen the resolve towards survival and dignity of many migrants, on the other hand, the governmental and administrative policies in place blatantly manipulate these cultural values to the benefit of a contradictory status-quo. For example, in the 1990s Border Patrol’s official policies deliberately “counted on” the harsh desert to serve as deterrence without addressing the underlining causes of migration that would in fact, seemingly defying logic, compel people to risk their lives attempting to cross the great Sonoran Desert.

This symposium is an opportunity to engage in reflective dialogue that bridge academic, popular, artistic, and policy-making concerns, languages, and strategies. Scholars from a variety of disciplines will address different dimensions of death in the migratory experience, including its representation in the media, political rhetoric on both sides of the border, interpretations of death in popular culture, and the impact that “traditional folk knowledge” has on the decisions of migrants. Scholars will share the stage with artists and social justice activists. Our aim is to reveal hidden connections between cultural responses and policy effects up to now misunderstood, or downplayed, or simply ignored in the national immigration debate.

For more information contact:
Colin Deeds (520) 626-7242 (colind@email.arizona.edu)