Rare Earth
Letter from Sierra Blanca
Gallium is deemed the number one highest priority of Critical Minerals by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of the Interior. It also plays a role in future autonomous vehicle capabilities for multinationals like Volkswagen.
A desert mountain near Sierra Blanca, Texas, holds one of the largest deposits of rare earth minerals in the United States, including the nation’s largest deposit of gallium.
It’s about twenty miles from the Mexico border, within the binational United States-Mexico La Paz Agreement area, and on top of an aquifer. I travel frequently to and through Sierra Blanca and analyzed the La Paz Agreement from a policy and international affairs perspective. In the 1990s, the La Paz Agreement was a reference point in a debate on transporting nuclear waste to the area.
The visual, a collage, was a counterpoint to my analytical work. Exports of gallium and germanium, two rare earth elements used in semiconductors and electric vehicles, had just been restricted by China when I made the image.
