U.S. Migration, Translocality, and the Acceleration of the Nutrition Transition in Mexico

Migrant flows are generally accompanied by extensive social, economic, and cultural links between origins and destinations, transforming the former's community life, livelihoods, and local practices. Previous studies have found a positive association between these translocal ties and better child health and nutrition. We contend that focusing on children only provides a partial view of a larger process affecting community health, accelerating the nutrition transition in particular. We use a Mexican nationally-representative survey with socioeconomic, anthropometric, and biomarker measures, matched to municipal-level migration intensity and marginalization measures from the Mexican 2000 Census to study the association between adult body mass and community migration intensity. Our findings from multi-level models suggest a significant and positive relationship between community-level migration intensity and the individual risk of being overweight and obese, with significant differences by gender and with remittance intensity playing a preponderant role.     

Troubled Encounters: Payments for Ecosystem Services in Chiapas,Mexico

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is a well-established conservation policy approach worldwide. Where forests are owned and managed by rural and indigenous communities, PES initiatives often aim to incentivize the joint adoption of forest protection and sustainable management practices. However, not all communities might have the will or capacity to maintain such practices over the long term. This article examines a PES programme in a rural community of Chiapas, Mexico. It shows that while a majority of the community's landowners have engaged in PES through two distinct working groups, a large share of the community forests remain outside the PES programme, and many landowners resist the extension of PES rules to non-targeted forests. The authors argue that this incipient form of fragmented collective action on forest management results from challenged leaderships, and from PES accommodating a history of increasing individuation of the commons. This accommodation, however, has ignited social conflict, reified tenure inequalities, and failed to strengthen local institutions to enable them to legitimately deal with the contested interests that underpin the fate of community forests. This article shows the limits of PES when parachuted into a context of uneven land tenure, weak collective action and contested leaderships.     

The Infrastructures of Internal Colonialism: State,Environment, and Race in Lerma,Mexico

This article explores the relations between infrastructures, labour, and internal colonialism in Lerma, Mexico. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research of two hydraulic projects there, the article argues that infrastructures are productive of the racial, environmental, and political relations that constitute internal colonialism both historically and contemporarily. I show how these infrastructural projects imagined and produced colonial relations between the environment, racialised workers, and the nation-state, and how these colonial logics endure today through infrastructures and the forms of racialised labour that maintain them. In doing so, this article contributes to literature that interrogates the relations between infrastructure and coloniality by focusing on how infrastructural labour makes internal colonialism enduring. The article concludes by reflecting on how the labour practices that make internal colonialism enduring also point to ways of producing infrastructures otherwise.     

Colonialism, Past and Present, in New Mexico

San Jose de las Huertas was established as a land grant community by the Spanish crown in 1765 and occupied for about 60 years. Many of its residents returned to the area after a brief respite, to found the village of Placitas, which exists today. Archaeological excavation at Las Huertas, documentary research and oral history from descendants of the original settlers reveal the shifting impact of different colonialisms, each accompanied by an image of modernity. Spanish demands were attenuated by distance and waning power. American impositions are more problematic, involving a new political economy, conflicts over land and water, as Placitas converts to a bedroom suburb of Albuquerque.     

墨西哥,仙人掌的王国

<正>仙人掌原产于美洲,从美国的北部到南美洲的南部,分布很广,种类也很多。墨西哥位于北美洲南部,绝大部分属热带高原、海洋水汽难以到达闭塞的内部,北部又在副热带高气压带控制范围,年降水量少,荒漠分布很广。严峻的环境似乎给人和植物的生存都带来巨大的挑战,干旱缺水永远都是不毛之地的代名词,可是恣意生长的仙人掌却装点了这片土地。     

墨西哥,仙人掌的王国

<正>仙人掌原产于美洲,从美国的北部到南美洲的南部,分布很广,种类也很多。墨西哥位于北美洲南部,绝大部分属热带高原、海洋水汽难以到达闭塞的内部,北部又在副热带高气压带控制范围,年降水量少,荒漠分布很广。严峻的环境似乎给人和植物的生存都带来巨大的挑战,干旱缺水永远都是不毛之地的代名词,可是恣意生长的仙人掌却装点了这片土地。     

Northwest Mexico: The Prehistory of Sonora,Chihuahua, and Neighboring Areas

This article surveys research in Northwest Mexico (Sonora and Chihuahua), with an emphasis on the Early Agricultural period to the Late Prehistoric period. Middle range societies that are diverse in scale and organization characterize this region. Significant advancements in our understanding of these societies have been made in recent years, but substantial challenges remain in building interpretative frameworks that account for both regional diversity and incorporate macroscale interactions. Topics covered in this review include the adoption of agriculture, population movements, bases of social differentiation, and interactions between organizationally disparate groups. These issues demonstrate the relevance of the Northwest to research on the organization of middle range societies.