“El Agua de Dios”: Community, Colonization, and the Mormon Environmental Transformation of Northern Mexico, 1880-1950

Sarah Sears' research examines the environmental and social impacts of transnational migration from the U.S. West to northern Mexico between 1880-1950. In this talk, Sarah uses Mormon colonization as a case study to show how negotiations over nature--specifically the occupation, use, and management of northern Mexico's land- and waterscapes--shaped encounters between foreigners, Mexican intermediaries, and Indigenous and mestizo smallholders. Following these communities through the first decades of Mexico's revolutionary land and environmental policy reform, she shows how Mormons articulated their post-revolutionary citizenship and belonging through their relationship to the natural environment and their participation in Mexico's nineteenth-century colonization programs.