ABSTRACT

Familias Unidas del Chamizal is a community organization in El Paso, TX that works to increase awareness around the issues of education, environmental racism, development, and public health. In 2019, the El Paso Independent School District launched an initiative to close several schools due to low enrollment, forcing students in Barrio Chamizal to relocate to Frederick Douglass Elementary, which borders a designated industrial zone and is surrounded by two major recycling plants. In response, Familias Unidas has organized to reverse the decision and call attention to the discriminatory practices of the school district. We take the public advocacy efforts of Familias Unidas as an instrumental case study to trace the intersections of health communication, Latinx communication, and environmental racism along the U.S.–Mexico border. Utilizing an intersectional borderlands health communication approach, we draw on publicly available texts to trace the argumentative strategies employed by Familias Unidas to mobilize community members. Familias Unidas rhetorically constructs a public health crisis in the borderlands by connecting the school closures to larger coalitional struggles concerning the environment, citizenship, race/ethnicity, language, and class. We identify three rhetorical strategies – familia, comunidad, and (in)justicia – employed by Familias Unidas to shape their public argument(s).

摘要

Familias Unidas del Chamizal 是德克萨斯州埃尔帕索的一个社区组织，致力于提高人们对教育、环境种族主义、发展和公共卫生问题的认识。2019 年，由于入学率低，埃尔帕索独立学区发起了一项关闭几所学校的举措，迫使 Barrio Chamizal 的学生搬迁到毗邻指定工业区并被两个主要回收厂包围的 Frederick Douglass 小学。作为回应，Familias Unidas 已组织扭转这一决定，并呼吁关注学区的歧视性做法。我们将 Familias Unidas 的公共宣传工作作为一个工具性案例研究，以追踪美墨边境沿线的健康传播、拉丁裔传播和环境种族主义的交叉点。利用跨界边境健康交流方法，我们利用公开文本来追踪 Familias Unidas 为动员社区成员而采用的辩论策略。Familias Unidas 通过将学校停课与有关环境、公民身份、种族/民族、语言和阶级的更大联盟斗争联系起来，在边境地区修辞上构建了一场公共卫生危机。我们确定了三种修辞策略—— 种族/民族、语言和阶级。我们确定了三种修辞策略—— 种族/民族、语言和阶级。我们确定了三种修辞策略——familia, comunidad和(in)justicia –受 Familias Unidas 雇用来塑造他们的公开论点。