The Border is a Water Story: US/MX Borderlands and the Poetics of Dispossession
 
There is a place where water and land meet in uneasy embrace, where the river pulses like a wounded heart, swelling and retreating with the tides of human power and consumption. This is the Delta del Río Colorado, stretching from the US/MX border to the Sea of Cortez—a landscape suspended between living memory and forced abandonment, between the ecological and the political. It is more than a geographic feature; it is a watery borderland, both literal and metaphorical, where the politics of migration, water rights, and Indigenous justice converge.
The Delta is a fragile landscape, vital for migratory birds, people, and the delicate balance between fresh and saltwater. Yet, it is also a battleground, scarred by U.S. imperialism and resource extraction. Once flowing freely into the Sea of Cortez, the Colorado River now embodies the legacy of a century-long project of extraction, control, and division. The land speaks in a language of loss and defiance, its beauty not found in untouched nature but in the resilience of life amidst devastation. The landscape is a patchwork of dried marshlands and withered wetlands, veins of water once teeming with life now fading into shadow. Here, the poetry of the Delta is not written in ink, but in the rhythms of the water, the rustle of reeds, and the shifting paths of migration. Once an environmental and cultural lifeline, the river has been reduced, diverted, and dammed to feed the insatiable thirst of cities and agriculture in the Global North.
The beauty of the Delta lies not in idyllic landscapes, but in the persistence of life where it shouldn’t be, in the fight to survive in a place that human forces have tried to render obsolete. The wind carries the whispers of ancestors and the ghosts of lost ecosystems. Each ripple in the water, each bent reed, speaks the quiet language of survival—resistance, untold stories, deeply felt.
​Yet, there is also an elegiac quality to the Delta, as if the land mourns its own slow erasure. The environmental degradation is palpable—not only in the toxic sediments that choke the water but in the silenced voices of those bound to this land, to its rhythms, and to its suffering. The Delta's pulse is that of a body; and if water is a form of cultural transference and memory, what does it mean that this pulse is disappearing? 

In the early 20th century, the United States engineered what can only be described as a process of imperialism through water. The construction of dams and diversion projects on the Colorado River was part of a broader national strategy to assert control over the Southwest, a region of vast ecological and economic importance. The 1922 Colorado River Compact, a document that divided the river's waters between the U.S. and Mexico, set the stage for the extraction and exploitation of this vital resource. At its core, the Compact was a tool of U.S. imperial ambitions: it prioritized industrial agriculture, urban development, and Western expansion, sidelining indigenous land rights and the basic needs of the natural ecosystem itself.

The imperial project didn’t stop with the Compact. The U.S. federal government began constructing a network of dams—such as the Hoover Dam and the Imperial Dam (north of Morelos Dam)—both engineered to regulate the river’s flow, control flooding, and generate hydroelectric power for burgeoning Western cities. This system of dams and canals, which diverts approximately 89% of the river’s water for agricultural and urban use before it reaches Mexico, and only 1% of the river meets the Sea of Cortez, drastically reshaping the Delta. By the time the river reached its Delta, its once-thriving ecosystem had already been drained, diverted, and dammed to support U.S. economic interests.

U.S. imperialism in the Delta is also embedded in the history of land dispossession. Indigenous peoples—such as the Cocopah, the Quechan, and the Kumeyaay—were pushed off their lands as settlers moved in, establishing new states and cities. The U.S. government’s actions in the Delta reflected its broader patterns of colonial violence, from the forced displacement of indigenous communities to the relentless extraction of natural resources to fuel economic growth. Native communities had their rights to land, water, and culture stripped away, just as the river’s natural flow was diverted for profit.

The political ecology of the Delta is inseparable from U.S. imperial history. The extraction of the Colorado River is, in many ways, a continuation of the broader project of empire building: expanding borders, controlling resources, and exploiting landscapes for capital. As cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las Vegas grew, fueled by an unquenchable thirst for water, the Delta became collateral damage. The river’s waters, once vital to communities that depended on them for fishing, agriculture, and cultural practices, were reallocated to serve the desires of distant urban centers.

Colorado River Crossing at Algodones, MX (2024).  Photo: Mary Stephens

Borderlands and the Politics of Dispossession
The Delta is not just where nature meets industry; it is a borderland produced by the politics, exclusion, and exploitation. Its boundaries are not defined by rivers or roads, but by policies that treat land and water as a resource to be extracted. The story here is one of displacement, dispossession, and reconfiguration, as governments and corporations mostly from the US fragment the land for their own gain.

The Colorado River, once a lifeblood for vast wetlands, now lies divided and drained. Its course has been rerouted, its waters diverted to fuel the growth of distant cities and industries. Once a thriving estuary flowing into the Sea of Cortez, the Delta now stands as a symbol of border politics—where life’s flow is strangled to serve powerful impertial interests.

The river’s manipulation reflects the political ecology of the U.S.-Mexico border, where water is treated as a commodity, negotiated in treaties for national gain. But these waters, diverted for profit, are also the waters that sustained indigenous peoples like the Cocopah, the Quechuan, Kumeyaay, and Tohono O'odham. Their struggles for water rights have often been ignored by state governments, even as they fight to preserve the river that nourishes their traditions, cultures, and ways of life.  Reduced to a bargaining chip, the river’s flow reflects the devaluation of the lives of those who depend on it. The Cocopah, or "River People," have long lived in the heart of the Colorado River Delta, their lives intricately tied to its waters and the fertile land it once nourished. The river was not only a source of sustenance but a cultural lifeline, shaping their knowledge, songs, and stories. Yet today, the Cocopah's connection to the river and the land is threatened by the complex web of colonialism, resource extraction, and border politics. With their people divided between three separate reservations--one in the United States, in Arizona, and two in Mexico—the Cocopah straddle both sides of a border that has fragmented their land and their resources. This division, imposed by colonial borders and policies of exclusion, has created significant barriers to cultural continuity.
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Language loss has further deepened this rupture. Cocopah, a Yuman language, is endangered, with fewer speakers remaining on both sides of the border each year. The erasure of their language is tied to the suppression of their culture and relationship to the water, a story familiar to many Indigenous communities living in border regions. The Cocopah’s struggle to preserve their language and heritage resonates with the experiences of other border Indigenous groups—such as the Tohono O'odham, the Kumeyaay, and the Yaqui—who also face the challenges of navigating multiple sovereignties, preserving cultural practices, and resisting colonial legacies.
 
The Delta is where environmental and human migration intersect. As climate change and resource scarcity accelerate, communities along the border face displacement—forced out by drought, flood, and industrial encroachment. Many of these communities, Indigenous, African American, and Mexican, are pushed to the margins by ecological collapse and punished by border enforcement that criminalizes their migration.
In this space, the intersection of environmental justice and border politics is painfully clear. The people most vulnerable to ecological collapse and state violence are those who have endured the legacies of colonialism, racialization, and economic exploitation. They bear the heaviest toll of the Delta’s slow death.

Delta de Río del Colorado / El Doctor (2024): Photo: Mary Stephens

Cultural Practice and Renewal in Borderlands
The recent history of water rights in the Delta is a history of dispossession—and, like other parts of the US-Mexico borderlands (Douglas/Agua Prieta, El Paso/La Ciudad Juárez, and Yuma, San Luis del Río Colorado, among others), the Delta is site of vibrant feminist cultural renewal. Across this fragile region, the work of Indigenous women and women's curatorial collectives have been the bearers of cultural memory, the protectors of ecosystems, and the architects of resistance. These women are reimagining relationships with the land, with water, and with each other. Their cultural labor—whether through art, storytelling, language revitalization, or community organizing—directly challenges the political and economic forces that have sought to erase both the landscape and the people who have lived on it for centuries. This feminist intervention is not only about survival but about the reclamation of sovereignty, space, and narrative.

Cristina Lizárraga, a Tohono O'odham woman from Caborca and Sonora's first Indigenous tourism leader, embodies this spirit of what feminist Bolivian scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui calls "suma qamaña," a concept from the Andean world that refers to the idea of "living well" or "living in harmony." This philosophy, central to indigenous communities in the Andes, and has parallels within many Indigenous knowledges, is about balance, mutual respect, and coexistence with ecology (6, Cusicanqui). As an artist and educator, Lizárraga facilitates educational programs that teach the history of the Salt Pilgrimage from the perspective of the Tohono O'odham people. For Lizárraga, her work is form of cultural rescue; a way to reclaim practices and knowledge long erased by colonial intervention. She explains, "The greatest threat to the O'odham people is the erasure of our culture and relationship to land and water on both sides of the 'border'. When we trace these historic steps, we also renew the path in present day. Our feet and our speaking fortify the traces of knowledge."
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In the face of overwhelming forces of colonialism, resource extraction, and ecological collapse, the Delta refuses to be a passive victim. Resistance here takes many forms—from grassroots organizing to legal challenges, from cultural revitalization to direct action on the banks of the river. These are the voices of those who refuse to be silenced, whose very existence defies the forces bent on erasing their histories. They demand justice not only for the land, but for the planet as a whole.

Another key artistic and cultural initiative is Archivo Familiar del Río Colorado, a collaborative archival project with founding gallery partner, Planta Libre. Through mapping, photography, and film, the Archivo documents the stories and histories of people who have lived in the Delta for generations, and delves into the intertwined relationships between people, ecosystems, settlements, and the sacred waters of the Colorado River Delta. For the Archivo artists, "water is not just a resource—it is a transhistorical element, existing before and beyond human history, yet imprinted with the traces of every community it touches. Water holds memories of every struggle, every season, and every soul that has lived along its banks."

But renewal in the Delta is not simply about returning the land to its previous state; it is about reimagining the relationship between humans and the environment. In this landscape, borders—of race, nation, and power—must be challenged. These borders are not just physical; they are cultural, political, and ecological. In a pueblo on the northern edge of the Delta in San Luis, Sonora, a group of Cucapah elders gathers to teach their youth the Cucapah language, now endangered and spoken by fewer than 500 people in both the U.S. and Mexico. Alongside them is the leadership of Amelia Chan Diaz and other elders who formed the Cucapah Language School and who guide the community in continuing both traditional and contemporary practices. For the community, the Cucapah language and the river are held in similar regard, as words and water intertwine in the linguistic structure and as a cultural lifeline. 
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​The work of cultural preservation is the work of resistance—a demand for environmental justice that is no longer a distant ideal, but a tangible reality for the people whose lives are bound to this land. The struggle to restore the Delta is also a struggle to restore the sovereignty and knowledge of the communities who have lived here for generations. It is a fight to protect their histories and their futures, against the relentless forces of extraction, displacement, and ecological destruction. The river may be shrinking, but the resolve of those who call this land home remains as constant as the flow of water—ever pushing forward, never yielding.

Cristina Lizarrga - Tohono Explorando (2024): Photo: Mary Stephens

​Conclusion: Borders, Water, and Justice
Border/Arte's research trip to the Delta was more than a journey into the heart of a sacred but degraded landscape; it was a confrontation with the politics of borders, power, and environmental injustice. The cultural and artistic work in the Delta advances many possibilities for policy change that prioritize indigenous communities and people who have called the Delta home for generations. 
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Reclaim Water Sovereignty: Empower Indigenous communities to manage and protect water resources, ensuring ancestral knowledge guides restoration efforts and sustainable practices.
Restore Ecological Justice: Prioritize ecosystem restoration, centering Indigenous stewardship of land and water to heal the Delta's fragile ecology.
Cultural Revitalization: Support Indigenous-led cultural programs to preserve languages, traditions, and practices tied to the Delta, fostering intergenerational knowledge transfer.

The Delta is a place where poetry and politics are inseparable—a place where the land itself bears the scars of colonialism, racism, and capitalist exploitation. Yet it is also a place where resistance persists, where the struggle for water is as much about cultural sovereignty as it is about survival. The poetry of the Delta, the story of survival etched into its mud and reeds, will endure as long as those who call it home refuse to let it fade.

Cucapah Language School (2024): Photo: Amelia Chan Diaz (With permission)

1) Cusicanqui, Silvia Rivera. Suma Qamaña: La Historia del Futuro. Publisher Name, 2012.
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