Echoes of Eugenics in twenty-first century discourses of environmental protection in the U.S. southern borderlands

Abstract

This presentation draws attention to the ongoing resonance of eugenic anxieties in contemporary forms of environmental protection. To develop this argument, I begin with an outline of early twentieth century eugenic beliefs and practices, emphasizing how eugenicists’ concerns about contamination of the national body were mirrored by anxieties about preserving uncontaminated nature. I then turn to the early twenty-first century when anxieties about the national body once again intersected with nature protection, this time in relation to wilderness areas in the U.S. southern borderlands. I analyze a collection of texts about nature on the border that originate from a wide range of sources spanning the political spectrum. As I illustrate, most of the texts, no matter the source, use the language of purity, heritage, invasion, and contamination to narrate nature at the political boundary. The re-appearance of eugenic discourse, I suggest, serves to mediate between divergent political perspectives on border security and border protected areas, allowing for a convergence between seemingly distinct forms of nationalist expression. Tracing the persistence of eugenics, I suggest, sheds new light on the logics and mechanics of violence in the making of the US-Mexico border and the USA as a settler colonial society.