ENGLISH:
“Enforcing Ecology: Geographies of the Cattle Fever Tick”
Journal of the Southwest 62(4)
Winter 2020
“From the eradication period to the contemporary moment of concern, tick fever changed in popular understanding from an endogenous affliction, a natural part of the landscape, to an invasive threat from Mexico. This was made possible by producing the U.S.-Mexico border as an ecological line, and using the border’s two functions to reinforce one another. Reading tick science and eradication-related agency documents from 1884 to the present, this article traces how the ‘fever
line,’ at first determined climatically as the area above which there wer fewer than 200 frost-free days, was made congruent with the U.S.-Mexico border, and how that border fever line both enabled and was reinforced by metaphors used to describe the disease. Applying the language of
quarantine to ecology transformed a porous and shifting isotherm into a bright-line border, in turn enabling the rhetoric of “threat,” ‘illegality,’ ‘vigilance,’ and ‘invasion’ now used to justify wall building.”
ESPAÑOL:
“De Garrapatas, Muros y Metáforas”
Revista Nexos, Agosto 2019
“Cinco décadas de esfuerzos por parte del gobierno de Washington lograron reducir el hábitat estadunidense de las garrapatas Boophilus a una muy tarkovskiana ‘Zona de Cuarentena Permanente’ a lo largo del río Bravo. En años recientes, sin embargo, al parecer los vampiros han vuelto, salvo si hemos de creer al gobierno norteamericano. El documento del USDA señala que entre 2003 y 2004 el número de infestaciones reportadas en áreas de Texas fuera de la zona de cuarentena aumentó casi 500%. El texto atribuye el cambio al creciente número de ‘animales que entran a los Estados Unidos ilegalmente’.”
“Enforcing Ecology: Geographies of the Cattle Fever Tick”
Journal of the Southwest 62(4)
Winter 2020
“From the eradication period to the contemporary moment of concern, tick fever changed in popular understanding from an endogenous affliction, a natural part of the landscape, to an invasive threat from Mexico. This was made possible by producing the U.S.-Mexico border as an ecological line, and using the border’s two functions to reinforce one another. Reading tick science and eradication-related agency documents from 1884 to the present, this article traces how the ‘fever
line,’ at first determined climatically as the area above which there wer fewer than 200 frost-free days, was made congruent with the U.S.-Mexico border, and how that border fever line both enabled and was reinforced by metaphors used to describe the disease. Applying the language of
quarantine to ecology transformed a porous and shifting isotherm into a bright-line border, in turn enabling the rhetoric of “threat,” ‘illegality,’ ‘vigilance,’ and ‘invasion’ now used to justify wall building.”
ESPAÑOL:
“De Garrapatas, Muros y Metáforas”
Revista Nexos, Agosto 2019
“Cinco décadas de esfuerzos por parte del gobierno de Washington lograron reducir el hábitat estadunidense de las garrapatas Boophilus a una muy tarkovskiana ‘Zona de Cuarentena Permanente’ a lo largo del río Bravo. En años recientes, sin embargo, al parecer los vampiros han vuelto, salvo si hemos de creer al gobierno norteamericano. El documento del USDA señala que entre 2003 y 2004 el número de infestaciones reportadas en áreas de Texas fuera de la zona de cuarentena aumentó casi 500%. El texto atribuye el cambio al creciente número de ‘animales que entran a los Estados Unidos ilegalmente’.”
Caroline Eaton Tracey writes about the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. She speaks and works in English, Spanish, and Russian. Her first book, SALT LAKES, will be published by W.W. Norton.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant. In 2024, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant. In 2024, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline Eaton Tracey escribe sobre el medioambiente, la migración, el arte y la literatura en México, el Suroeste de Estados Unidos y su frontera. Habla ingles, español y ruso. Su primer libro, SALT LAKES, será publicado bajo el sello de la editorial W.W. Norton.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers. En 2024, recibió una beca para escritura sobre el arte de la fundación Andy Warhol.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers. En 2024, recibió una beca para escritura sobre el arte de la fundación Andy Warhol.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.