“Sin Miedo: Violence, Mobility, and Identity in el Paso del Norte”—René Kladzyk

View from Paso del Norte International Bridge, Juárez, Mexico.

Condon Hall
Room 360
UO campus

CLLAS and CSWS grantee master’s thesis presentation:

René Kladzyk, Geography Department

Together, the cities El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, form the largest international border metropolis in the world. While El Paso consistently ranks among the safest cities in the United States, Cd. Juárez’s recent and extreme escalation of violence has produced one of the world’s most dangerous locales. Within this starkly differentiated and transnational urban conglomeration, complex geographies of gender, culture, and identity have emerged, prompting the following questions: how is mobility shifting throughout el Paso del Norte in response to the heightened violence in Juárez, and what are the implications of these negotiations of mobility for fronterizo (borderlander) identity? By focusing on gendered mobilities in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, this study engages with cultural implications of the recent drug-conflict fueled exodus from Juárez into El Paso, articulating the negotiation of identities and daily geographies that characterize the divided lives of borderlanders.