This article combines elements of a personal essay with travel writing, in which geographers have expressed renewed interest. Constructed not through contemplations of the mind but from lived corporeal experience, it reflects both fieldwork discomforts and moments of somatic exhilaration when the mind reacts, producing the epiphany of a new idea or insight. The article follows two researchers who travel through insecure parts of Mexico in an effort to understand how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has affected the Mexican cattle sector and implications for its forest biomes. Land cover change data show a decline in Mexico’s deforestation rate, and the authors hypothesize that agricultural intensification enabled by the neoliberal reforms of NAFTA are responsible. The article starts with a road trip from Culiacán—home of the Sinaloa cartel—and ends in Chiapas, where the Zapatistas rebelled against NAFTA in 1994. At the Guatemalan border they confirm the unchecked flow of about 1.4 million contraband calves from Central America, on their way to Mexican feedlots. The authors estimate that the herd producing this number of animals would require as much as 100,000 km² of pasture, presumably formed on mostly forested lands. Thus, deforestation in Mexico might be on the decline but only because its post-NAFTA beef supply chain has displaced it elsewhere. The authors reject their hypothesis about agricultural intensification. The article concludes with a speculation about the melding of Mexico’s corporate and criminal organizations into a cartel economy.

本文结合了个人文章和旅行写作的要素，地理学家对此表达了新的兴趣。它不是通过思考来构建的，而是从生活中的有形经验中构造出来的，它既反映了野外工作的不适感，又反映了当大脑做出反应时产生的躯体兴奋的时刻，产生了新思想或新见解的顿悟。本文跟随两位研究人员穿越墨西哥不安全的地区，以了解《北美自由贸易协定》（NAFTA）如何影响墨西哥养牛业及其对森林生物群落的影响。土地覆盖变化数据表明，墨西哥的森林砍伐率下降了，作者们认为，北美自由贸易协定的新自由主义改革促成了农业集约化。本文从从锡那罗亚州卡特尔的故乡库利亚坎出发，到1994年Zapatistas叛乱反对NAFTA的恰帕斯州开始旅程。在危地马拉边境，他们确认了来自中美洲的约140万只违禁品犊牛的未经检查的流动。他们前往墨西哥育肥场的方式。作者估计，生产这种数量的动物的牧群将需要多达100,000公里牧场中的²个，大概是在大部分林地上形成的。因此，墨西哥的森林砍伐可能正在减少，但这仅是因为其在《北美自由贸易协定》之后的牛肉供应链已将其转移到其他地方。作者拒绝接受有关农业集约化的假设。文章最后以关于墨西哥的公司和犯罪组织融入卡特尔经济的猜测作为结尾。