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Migration flows are common in the US-Mexico border region. However, it has never been so complicated for Latinas/os to cross northwards as it is today. This is due not only to political factors, but also to worsening environmental conditions. Migration, environmental degradation, toxicity and vulnerability are all entangled issues in the US-Mexico border region, as Lucha Corpi's novel Cactus Blood (1995) depicts. When analyzed from an eco-cosmopolitan perspective, the migrant character in the novel, understood as a "stranger"–in the sense of an in-between, insider-outsider character that makes boundaries porous–discloses an environmental awareness that she can use to face her own vulnerability, while at the same time revealing the (global) networks responsible for the environmental degradation and toxicity of certain places, such as the US-Mexico border region. A socio-environmental revision of Cactus Blood–a novel written a quarter of a century ago–highlights issues that are extremely pertinent to confront contemporary challenges. ; Ayuda Juan de la Cierva-Formación; proyecto RTI2018-097186-B-I00 (Strangers and cosmopolitans: alternative worlds in contemporary literatures); GRUPIN IDI/2018/000167; GIECO-Instituto Franklin.

Los flujos de migración son comunes en la zona fronteriza entre Estados Unidos y México. Sin embargo, para las personas de origen latino cada vez resulta más complicado cruzar la frontera hacia el norte. Esto se debe no solo a factores políticos sino también al empeoramiento de las condiciones medioambientales. La migración, la degradación medioambiental, la toxicidad y la vulnerabilidad son aspectos que están ligados en la zona fronteriza entre EE. UU. y México, como muestra Lucha Corpi en su novela Cactus Blood. De acuerdo con un análisis eco-cosmopolita, la inmigrante de la novela, entendida como una "extraña" –en el sentido de un personaje que está en medio, dentro y fuera, de modo que hace que los límites se vuelvan porosos– muestra una concienciación medioambiental que le puede servir para enfrentar su propia vulnerabilidad. Dicho análisis sirve a su vez para mostrar las redes (a nivel global) responsables de la degradación medioambiental y la toxicidad de ciertos lugares, como dicha zona fronteriza EE. UU.-México. Una revisión socio-medioambiental de Cactus Blood –escrita ya hace un cuarto de siglo– sirve por tanto para mostrar aspectos que resultan tremendamente pertinentes para afrontar retos contemporáneos. ; Migration flows are common in the US-Mexico border region. However, it has never been so complicated for Latinas/os to cross northwards as it is today. This is due not only to political factors, but also to worsening environmental conditions. Migration, environmental degradation, toxicity and vulnerability are all entangled issues in the US-Mexico border region, as Lucha Corpi's novel Cactus Blood (1995) depicts. When analyzed from an eco-cosmopolitan perspective, the migrant character in the novel, understood as a "stranger"–in the sense of an in-between, insider-outsider character that makes boundaries porous–discloses an environmental awareness that she can use to face her own vulnerability, while at the same time revealing the (global) networks responsible for the environmental degradation and toxicity of certain places, such as the US-Mexico border region. A socio-environmental revision of Cactus Blood–a novel written a quarter of a century ago–highlights issues that are extremely pertinent to confront contemporary challenges.

This book is a bilingual, interdisciplinary volume which proposes alternatives to the myth of human exceptionalism and suggests overcoming the so-called Anthropocene while imagining just futures. This collection of essays offers critical reflections in different areas: philosophy, politics, literary analysis, artistic practice, and pedagogy. It tackles issues such as the cultural consequences of climate change, posthumanism, eco-trauma and eco-speculation, (plastic) pollution, and the relevance of art education and radical hope, among other topics. Applying the prespective of the Biblioteca Benjamin Franklin collection, this volume considers how these issues are addressed on both sides of the Atlantic. [Publisher's text]