Juggling Currencies Across Borders (Mexico/US): An Ethnographic Film

Magdalena Villarreal, Joshua Greene, and Lya Niño (CIESAS-UABC)

This research project entailed a keen exploration of currency flows in two border areas: first, the twin cities of Mexicali, Mexico and Calexico, U.S., and second, Sabinilla a rural community in the mountains of Jalisco that has close ties with the Mexican diaspora in Hawaii. One of the key issues that emerged was the velocities of currencies circulating in multiple directions across national borders. This played a critical role in the social construction of value and in forging and managing local and transnational socio-economic relationships. 

As part of the project, the research team produced an ethnographic film titled, Juggling Currencies, that shows the ways people juggle and mobilize several social currencies in their everyday lives and the impact it has on employment, remittances, income and costs of living. The video poetically juxtaposes socio-economic practices of negotiating and converting different social currencies with footage of jugglers and other circus performers at the Periplo Festival Internacional de Circo 2015 filmed in Guadalajara, Mexico. 

In the video we encounter commuters between Mexicali and Calexico that resort to using diverse currencies. We might think that money flows predominantly from the U.S. to Mexico, but this is not necessarily the case. Those living in these border areas earn a living on both sides of the international dividing line, and much of these earnings are spent in the U.S. on commodities that are then transported to Mexico. Our research findings show that a great portion of these cross-border transactions involve non-monetary currencies such as goods and services, but also information. Most of these are exchanges are undocumented and in fact unknown, but as the video depicts, they involve multiple currencies traveling at different velocities.

Border Crossing

Enrique, for example, who finally has double nationality, after having sought American citizenship for many years. He resides in both countries: his children study in the U.S. and he works in Mexico, so he commutes back and forth at least twice a week. His hard-earned pesos are mostly spent in the U.S. acquiring groceries, electronics and other supplies for his house. In order to make ends meet, he lends out his social security number that is a social currency. Because the person borrowing his number is an agricultural worker in the U.S., Enrique can register work history in the U.S., and thus be eligible for credit to buy property, receive tax returns, and increase his earnings upon retirement. 

Bringing Goods Home from Calexico

Enrique is extremely careful with his documents because he does not want to lose his American citizenship. He does not rent out his social security number, nor does he seek unemployment benefits, both of which could earn him quick short-term cash. Instead he prefers to keep this circuit at lower ‘speed’ in order to earn medium and long-term benefits by prioritizing the value of his legal status and also by reinforcing the social networks that enable and ensure the continuation of these transactions in the future. This contrasts with ‘higher-speed’ currency exchanges involving gains and losses from the everyday fluctuations in the value of the peso. People living on the border state that the first thing they check when they wake up is the value of the peso.

The video also takes viewers to rural Sabinilla in Western Mexico where local and translocal networks are used for countless activities: from one brother helping another to plant his field in exchange for the loan of a horse, to distant relatives paying coyotes for helping their family cross from Mexico into the U.S., to the Mexican Diaspora in Hawaii sending remittances to their family in Sabinilla for improving their homes and expanding livelihood opportunities. These networks and exchange circuits are also social currencies operating at different velocities to activate and channel resources for resolving problems. 

Sabinilla

In addition, we get a sense of the particular challenges, contingencies and temporal rhythms of life in Sabinilla. For instance, we meet Doña Elba and her daughter Chave. Every morning Elba waits for the old beat-up tortilla truck that comes bouncing down the village roads. The truck picks up the villagers’ milk and sells them tortillas; vastly inferior machine-made tortillas that come from the neighboring town of San José. The villagers in Sabinilla do plant their own

maize but it is mostly grown to subsidize the price of keeping cows. The milk of these cows is shipped off on the same truck that brings the tortillas. The liters of milk vended less the kilos of tortillas bought are recorded in a ledger and the remaining balance is paid to the farmer at the end of the week. The tortilla truck is the conduit through which Sabinilla is nested in the broader economy as farmers trade their milk for mass-produced tortillas. It also demonstrates the vulnerability of folks in Sabinilla. Villagers like Elba are constantly worried when the truck is late or does not show up because milk is highly perishable. Even though the milk could be used to make cheese, it is more laborious and requires skill. More importantly the sale of cheese is slower than that of milk, and would therefore disrupt regular weekly cash flows. 

These excerpts provide a flavor of the people, places, stories and social and economic issues presented in this film that illustrates the various ways people juggle and negotiate the temporalities and velocities of different social currencies in their everyday lives.

Link to blogpost #1: “Juggling Currencies in Transborder Contexts (Intro)"

Link to blogpost #2: "Juggling Currencies in Transborder Contexts: Field Notes from Sabinilla and Calexico (Part 1)"

Link to blogpost #3: "Juggling Currencies in Transborder Contexts: Field Notes from Sabinilla and Calexico (Part 2)"

Link to film: "Juggling Currencies" (40min)