More From Our Geographers

Sociologist Ellwyn Stoddard, while not a geographer, provides a geographical perspective in his study of the borderland region surrounding Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas.

Read more of our interview with Ellwyn Stoddard.

Well, I have suggested that the borderlands is a fourth world… This borderlands is a place where the most powerful military and economic nation on earth is next to a developing, rapidly developing nation. And therefore, along the border, we have developed a system in which we are a united borderlands.

Our mayors get together in informal luncheons and decide, "Hey, there's going to be a road put up to the border here." "Well, we will probably put one up to there too. I'll have my man talk to you tomorrow about it." And then when the federal funds come for a bridge, they find, look at this, there's two roads that accidentally just came and, came up to the river, and they build a bridge and its right on line. Now, this kind of symbiotic relationship has to exist.

We are Siamese twins. And whether we like each other or not, we are in an economic, political, social, cultural bed together…we operate as a single unit, a fourth nation. And we have to sort of disguise what we're doing to our two nations because these local people have to integrate their plans, whereas the constitution of Mexico and the UnitedStates says that we have no say, we can make no treaties and no agreements; [they] must be made by the federal government. Yet, we cannot survive without having some kind of informal plans, informal networks, informal policymaking, in which local people get together to solve common problems.