Can tourism build peace? How is tourism helping build peace on the U.S.-Mexico border? How does conservation relate to building peace on the U.S.-Mexico border?
When many people think about the U.S.-Mexico border, they picture walls, immigration debates, and political conflict. Every month, U.S Border Patrol apprehends thousands of people at the U.S-Mexico border, with 8,268 apprehended in March 2026. There are also tensions surrounding the 1944 Water Treaty, with Mexico struggling to maintain its water deliveries. Yet in one remote corner of the border, a different story is unfolding—one centered on cooperation, conservation, and community relationships.
In the Big Bend-Río Bravo region, where Texas meets the Mexican states of Coahuila and Chihuahua, residents, tourism operators, conservationists, and park managers are quietly building connections across the international boundary. Their efforts show how tourism can become an unexpected tool for peacebuilding.
Our recent research explored how these cross-border relationships develop and what they mean for the future of the region. Through interviews with tourism and conservation stakeholders on both sides of the border, we found that tourism is doing much more than bringing visitors to the area. It is creating opportunities for dialogue, trust, and cooperation around shared environmental resources.
A Border Defined by Nature
Unlike many parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Big Bend-Río Bravo region is dominated by mountains, deserts, canyons, and protected natural areas. The Rio Grande (known in Mexico as the Río Bravo) forms the international boundary. The region contains a network of national parks, protected areas, and wildlife habitats on both sides of the river. Wildlife regularly crosses the border. Black bears, birds, and other species do not recognize political boundaries. Rivers, ecosystems, and landscapes are shared resources that require cooperation if they are to be protected. These shared natural resources provide the foundation for tourism. Visitors come to hike, raft, observe wildlife, experience local culture, and enjoy some of the most remote landscapes in North America. Because nature itself crosses the border, many residents see cooperation as a practical necessity rather than a political choice.
Tourism Creates Shared Interests
One of the strongest themes that emerged from our research was the widespread enthusiasm for collaboration. Residents on both sides of the border recognized that tourism creates economic opportunities while encouraging environmental protection. Many communities in the region depend heavily on visitors who come to experience the area’s unique landscapes and culture. For example, residents of the Mexican village of Boquillas del Carmen benefit directly from visitors who cross the border from Big Bend National Park. Tourism supports guides, restaurant owners, transportation providers, artisans, and families throughout the community. But tourism’s value extends beyond economics. Stakeholders repeatedly described how tourism creates reasons for people from different backgrounds to communicate and solve problems together. Park managers, conservation groups, business owners, and community leaders often share the same goal: maintaining healthy natural resources that visitors want to experience. This shared interest creates opportunities for cooperation even when larger political relationships may be strained.
Building Relationships Around a Campfire
Perhaps the most striking example of peacebuilding in the region comes from a practice known as “down-river seminars.” These multi-day river trips bring together tourism operators, conservation professionals, park staff, and other stakeholders from both countries. Participants spend several days rafting together through the canyons of the Rio Grande. The trips are not formal diplomatic meetings, which would require a lengthy bureaucratic process to obtain all the necessary travel and visa approvals. Instead, these down-river seminars are opportunities for stakeholders to talk as neighbors and colleagues as they engage in what is considered a legally acceptable and permissible border activity that does not require a passport or tourist visa: river tourism.
During these seminars, participants discuss challenges such as visitor management, environmental protection, river access, and conservation. Conversations happen around campfires rather than conference tables. Several interviewees explained that these informal gatherings often accomplish more than traditional meetings because participants leave behind official titles and institutional barriers. The result is relationship-building based on trust, shared experiences, and mutual respect. These relationships often become the foundation for future cooperation.
Solving Problems Together
Peacebuilding is not always about resolving major conflicts. Often, it involves finding practical ways to address shared challenges. The Big Bend-Río Bravo region faces many such challenges. Water shortages, tourism seasonality, infrastructure limitations, wildlife management, and economic development all require ongoing cooperation. Stakeholders described numerous examples of collaborative problem-solving.
Tourism operators and government agencies have worked together to develop policies that allow river recreation while respecting border regulations. Conservation organizations collaborate across the border to protect wildlife habitat. Community leaders advocate for improvements that can benefit residents while preserving natural resources. In many cases, the solutions are informal and locally driven. Rather than waiting for national governments to create large-scale agreements, people in the region often focus on what they can accomplish through personal relationships and community partnerships. This bottom-up approach was one of the most important findings of our research.
The Importance of Trust
Many participants emphasized that successful cooperation depends on trust. In a remote region where protected areas, private lands, tourism businesses, and local communities overlap, formal rules alone are not enough. Personal relationships play a critical role. Landowners, tourism operators, conservation agencies, and community leaders often rely on years of trust-building to coordinate activities and manage resources effectively. These relationships help people navigate differences and work toward common goals. Peacebuilding scholars frequently identify trust as a key ingredient for long-term cooperation. The experiences of stakeholders in the Big Bend-Río Bravo region strongly support this idea.
Challenges Remain
The region still faces significant obstacles. Economic inequalities, political tensions, border regulations, limited infrastructure, and environmental pressures all create challenges for tourism and conservation efforts. Many communities on the Mexican side have fewer tourism opportunities and less access to infrastructure than neighboring areas in the United States. Water scarcity continues to create concerns throughout the region. Border crossing procedures can also complicate collaboration. Despite these difficulties, stakeholders generally expressed optimism about the future. Rather than focusing exclusively on barriers, many participants emphasized opportunities for expanding tourism, strengthening partnerships, and improving access to shared natural resources.
Peacebuilding Through Everyday Cooperation
One of the most important lessons from this research is that peacebuilding often happens through ordinary activities. People do not need formal peace treaties to build peace. When tourism operators work together across a border, when conservationists coordinate wildlife protection efforts, when community members host visitors from another country, and when stakeholders gather to solve shared problems, they are helping create conditions that support peaceful relationships. These efforts may not receive international headlines. They may not involve national leaders or major diplomatic initiatives. Yet they contribute to something equally important: building trust, understanding, and cooperation between communities.
The Big Bend-Río Bravo region reminds us that peacebuilding is not only something that happens in government offices. It can also emerge along rivers, in protected areas, around campfires, and through the everyday work of people who share a landscape and a desire for a better future.
Keywords: US-Mexico border, US, United States, Mexico, border, border patrol, ICE,
Connor Clark
Connor Clarkis an Assistant Professor in the Arch H. Aplin III ’80 Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management & Tourism at Texas A&M University. His research examines how tourism can be leveraged as a tool for community development and conservation, with a focus on building resilience and capacity in emerging destinations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork across the United States and Latin America, his work integrates destination management, entrepreneurship, and natural resource stewardship to generate solutions for sustainable tourism development. His research emphasizes applied, community-engaged approaches that support stakeholder empowerment, strengthen local economies, and enhance the long-term sustainability of tourism systems.
