Re: "...contra la tropicalización, adaptación."

From an article composed by Ricardo Arana Camarena (of la Co-operativa orgánica/El zorro de la mesa/Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental) and published through El zorro de la mesa (web2.0 news publication started in delegación La Mesa, part of Diego de la Vega cooperative media conglomerate).
In reference to an informally developed garden project, occupying a plot of land which is blanketed by a network of jurisdictional authorities (i.e. 50 meters north of the jardín binacional de las plantas nativas, land is managed by cohort including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California State Parks, and the National Oceanic and Atmospherie Administration (the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve and Border Field State Park). Land immediately north of (and including part of) the garden is under the watch of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection; El parque del mar (the site where a large portion of the garden is located) is under the jurisdiction of the delegación de Playas de Tijuana.):

"...la idea de que ahora todas las plantas del jardín sean plantas nativas es importante, pues la gran mayoría de los tijuanenses desconocen los tipos de flora originales de la región como el Matorral Costero Californiano y otros. La importancia responde, evidentemente, a las tareas de educación, conservación y reparación ambiental que llevan a cabo estos grupos a lo ancho de la península. Es paradójico que en el lado estadounidense haya una zona de conservación para el Estuario del Río Tijuana y que el jardín de plantas nativas no pueda prosperar fácilmente y no por causas naturales sino más bien políticas; y que en el lado mexicano este tipo de jardín prospere en una zona en la que la planeación urbana recurre a los clichés 'costeros' de las palmeras y los malecones y la oferta comercial se reduce casi en su totalidad al coco helado y los tacos de mariscos."


In the passage above, Ricardo describes some of the complexities of the site, related, in part to distinct goals of each jurisdictional authority (e.g "(to) preserve, protect, and manage natural and cultural resources” in the case of the cohort managing the TRNERR; to “secure the homeland,” in the case of the CBP; to ensure the well being of residents of the delegación + to promote economic development, primarily through tourism, in the case of the autoridades presiding over El Parque del Mar).
There have been many moments, where spaces forming the (municipal) region (from Rosarito to Los Angeles) have been designed to materialize a mythic "sub-tropical" landscape (with the import of Carpobrotus edulis and Washgintia robusta, among other "exotic" plant species).  Albeit, the existing landscape is often referred to as a "desert," allowing space for the enactment of (environmentally as well as culturally problematic/destructive) development practices.  The conceptual reconstitution of the Californian Coastal Sage Scrub habitat as "Desert" (waiting to be developed or "used" or exoticized) seems like a contemporary analogue to the re-constitution of the space as a (vacuous/uninhabited) desert  to attract "settlers" to the area in the late 19th century.


To allure through possibilities presented by an available space" (the "desert"); alternatively, to allure through the fabrication of an "exotic" environ (the "sub-tropical")...the oscillation between the two strategies to "allure" (to "attract investment").  To allure, as coupled with erasure (erasure that is selectively obscured).