Divided Landscapes

Abstract

The U.S.–Mexico border is not only a line of control over human mobility but a wound inflicted on the living world, fragmenting habitats and silencing ecosystems. Divided Landscapes brings together the visual and written work of photojournalist Guillermo Arias Camarena and historian Viviana Mejía Cañedo to examine the environmental and symbolic violence of the border. Arias’s photographs (selected from his collection, El muro y el paisaje destruido / The Wall and the Destroyed Landscape) reveal the stark imposition of border infrastructure on fragile ecologies. Mejía’s essay (first published here) situates these landscapes within longer histories of geopolitical asymmetry, displacement, and resistance. The portfolio invites readers to see the border as a contested site, certainly of violence, but also of memory, resistance, and the possibility of reimagining division as dialogue.