The Borderlands
THE BORDERLANDS An Encyclopedia of Culture and Politics on the U.S.–Mexico Divide
Edited by Andrew G...
213 downloads
1511 Views
3MB Size
Report
This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form
The Borderlands
THE BORDERLANDS An Encyclopedia of Culture and Politics on the U.S.–Mexico Divide
Edited by Andrew G. Wood
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The borderlands : an encyclopedia of culture and politics on the U.S.-Mexico divide / edited by Andrew G. Wood. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-33996-7 (alk. paper) 1. Mexican-American Border Region—Encyclopedias. I. Wood, Andrew Grant, 1958F786.B74 2008 9720 .1003—dc22 2007041060 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright C 2008 by Edited by Andrew G. Wood All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007041060 ISBN: 978-0-313-33996-7 First published in 2008 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10
9
8
7
6
5
4 3
2
1
To my nephews Charlie and Ian Wood, part of a new generation of borderlanders
v
C ONTENTS Alphabetical List of Entries
ix
List of Entries by Topic
xi
Acknowledgments
xv
Introduction
xvii
Chronology
xix
The Encyclopedia
1
Selected Bibliography
301
Index
313
About the Editor and Contributors
317
vii
A LPHABETICAL L IST Adams Onıs Treaty Agribusiness Agua Caliente Resort and Casino The Alamo American G.I. Forum Anthropology of the Borderlands Anzald ua, Gloria (1942–2004) Architecture Art Austin, Stephen F. (1793–1836) Aztlan The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1983) Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1832–1918) Barbed Wire Big Bend National Park Big Four Border Arts Workshop Border Industrialization Program Bracero Program ~ez (ca. 1490– Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar N un ca. 1557) California Gold Rush (1848) California Proposition 187 Californios Catholic Church Central American Migration Chavez, Cesar (1927–93) Cheech and Chong (Richard ‘‘Cheech’’ Marin [1946–] and Thomas Chong [1938–]) Chicana/o Movement Chinatowns Cinco de Mayo
OF
E NTRIES
Cinema Cisneros, Henry (1947–) Cities and Towns Colonias Colorado River Communications Corona, Bert (1918–2001) Cortina War (1859) Coyotes Cuisine Culture de Anza, Juan Bautista (1736–88) de Coronado, Francisco Vazquez (ca. 1510–54) de O~ nate, Don Juan (ca. 1550–1626) del Rıo, Dolores (1904–83) Disease Domestic Workers Drug Trafficking Economy Education Environmentalism European Immigrants and Communities Filibusters Filipinos Flores Magon Brothers Folklore Foreigners Expelled from Mexico Freemasonry Gadsden Purchase (1853) Galarza, Ernesto (1905–84) Gamio, Manuel (1883–1960) Garza, Catarino Erasmo (1859–95)
ix
Alphabetical List of Entries Great Depression (1929) Health Houston, Sam (1793–1863) Huerta, Dolores (1930–) Immigration Legislation Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Internment Camps Jackson, Helen Hunt (1830–85) Labor Labor Unions Land Grants League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Legal Issues Literature Louisiana Purchase (1803) Low Riders Manifest Destiny Maquiladoras McWilliams, Carey (1905–80) Media Mexican Diaspora Mexican Revolution (1910–17) Migration Militarization Mining Minutemen Missions Monroe Doctrine Mormon Colonies in Mexico Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) Murieta, Joaquın (ca. 1829–53) Music Narvaez, Panfilo de (?–1528) Native Americans Nepomuceno Cortina, Juan (1824–94) North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Oil Companies Operations Organizations and Governmental Agencies Paredes Manzano, Americo (1915–99) Petr oleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) Pico de Jes us IV, Pıo (1801–94) Plan de San Diego Policy
x
Political Participation in the Mexican Border States Polk, James K. (1795–1849) Popular Saints and Martyrs Presidios Prohibition (1915–33) Protected Areas and Parks Pueblo Revolt (1680–96) Queer Perspectives Radio Railroads Ranching La Raza Unida Remittances Repatriados Rhetoric Rio Grande Rivera, Tomas (1935–84) Salton Sea Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de (1794–1876) Santa Fe Trail Serra, Fray Junıpero (1713–84) Seven Cities of Cıbola Sinarquismo Slavery Social Movements Sports El Teatro Campesino Tejanos/as Terrazas Family Texas Rangers Texas Revolution (1835) Tomochic Rebellion (1891–92) Tourism Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861–1932) United Farm Workers of America Urrea, Teresa (1873–1906) U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48) Villa, Francisco, ‘‘Pancho’’ (1878–1923) War of the Gran Chichimeca (1540s–1590s) Water Issues Women of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua Women Workers, Mexican and Mexican American World War II, Latino Military Service Zoot Suit Riots (1943)
L IST
OF
E NTRIES
Arts and Humanities Anthropology of the Borderlands Architecture Art The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1983) Border Arts Workshop Cinema Cuisine Culture Education Folklore Literature Low Riders Music Popular Saints and Martyrs Queer Perspectives Radio Rhetoric Sports El Teatro Campesino
Economy and Labor Agribusiness Barbed Wire Border Industrialization Program Bracero Program Domestic Workers Drug Trafficking Economy Health Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Labor
BY
TOPIC
Labor Unions Land Grants Maquiladoras Migration Mining North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Oil Companies Railroads Ranching Remittances Slavery Tourism Women Workers, Mexican and Mexican American
Events California Gold Rush (1848) Central American Migration Cinco de Mayo Cortina War (1859) Great Depression (1929) Louisiana Purchase (1803) Mexican Revolution (1910–17) Political Participation in the Mexican Border States Prohibition (1915–33) Pueblo Revolt (1680–96) Texas Revolution (1835) Tomochic Rebellion (1891–92) U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48) War of the Gran Chichimeca (1540s–1590s)
xi
List of Entries by Topic World War II, Latino Military Service in Zoot Suit Riots (1943)
Institutions Catholic Church Missions Organizations and Governmental Agencies Petr oleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) Presidios
Legislation Adams Onıs Treaty American G.I. Forum California Proposition 187 Gadsden Purchase (1853) Immigration Legislation Legal Issues North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Operations Policy Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
People Anzald ua, Gloria (1942–2004) Austin, Stephen F. (1793–1836) Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1832–1918) Big Four ~ez Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar N un (ca. 1490–ca. 1557) Californios Chavez, Cesar (1927–93) Cheech and Chong (Richard ‘‘Cheech’’ Marin [1946–] and Thomas Chong [1938–]) Cisneros, Henry (1947–) Corona, Bert (1918–2001) Coyotes de Anza, Juan Bautista (1736–88) de Coronado, Francisco Vazquez (ca. 1510–54) de O~ nate, Don Juan (ca. 1550–1626) del Rıo, Dolores (1904–83) European Immigrants and Communities Filibusters Filipinos
xii
Flores Magon Brothers Foreigners Expelled from Mexico Galarza, Ernesto (1905–84) Gamio, Manuel (1883–1960) Garza, Catarino Erasmo (1859–95) Houston, Sam (1793–1863) Huerta, Dolores (1930–) Jackson, Helen Hunt (1830–85) McWilliams, Carey (1905–80) Mexican Diaspora Murieta, Joaquın (ca. 1829–53) Narvaez, Panfilo de (?–1528) Native Americans Nepomuceno Cortina, Juan (1824–94) Paredes Manzano, Americo (1915–99) Pico de Jes us IV, Pıo (1801–94) Polk, James K. (1795–1849) Popular Saints and Martyrs Repatriados Rivera, Tomas (1935–84) Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de (1794–1876) Serra, Fray Junıpero (1713–84) Tejanos/as Terrazas Family Texas Rangers Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861–1932) Urrea, Teresa (1873–1906) Villa Francisco, ‘‘Pancho’’ (1878–1923)
Places Agua Caliente Resort and Casino The Alamo Aztlan Big Bend National Park Chinatowns Cities and Towns Colonias Colorado River Protected Areas and Parks Rio Grande Salton Sea Santa Fe Trail Seven Cities of Cıbola
Political Programs Manifest Destiny Militarization
List of Entries by Topic Monroe Doctrine Plan de San Diego
Social and Environmental Problems Disease Internment Camps Water Issues Women of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Minutemen Mormon Colonies in Mexico Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) La Raza Unida Sinarquismo Social Movements United Farm Workers of America
Social Movements Chicana/o Movement Environmentalism Freemasonry Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Technology Communications Media Railroads
xiii
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS This work would not have been realized without the generous efforts of my assistant editor Carly Sheffield who has more than helped ‘‘corral the cats,’’ read through countless drafts, and generally kept things headed in the right direction. Thanks also to Toy Kelley for help early on as well as editor Wendi Schnaufer at Greenwood Press for her enthusiastic support throughout this process. I also gratefully acknowledge all the contributor-colleagues for their hard work in researching and writing the entries. This volume is truly a collective effort and one we all hope will prove useful in promoting a greater understanding of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.
xv
I NTRODUCTION Officially, the U.S.–Mexico borderline extends nearly 2,000 miles from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico and includes an area 62.5 miles (100 km) north and south of the present international boundary. What we define here as ‘‘the borderlands,’’ however, extends beyond this narrow determination. Generally, this encyclopedia encompasses the vast territory of the present-day U.S. Southwest (Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California) as well as the northern Mexican states (Tamaulipas, Nuevo Le on, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California). Today, the borderlands is a dynamic, transnational region well integrated into our rapidly changing global economy and culture. In fact, this fascinating corner of the larger North American continent has nearly always been a busy intersection through which people of different cultures have passed, if not decided to stay. Beginning with the late Pleistocene Age when huge bestiary roamed vast forests and plains, waves of migrants made their way across the Bering Straight, into present-day Alaska and Western Canada and down into the North American continent. Thus dawned an evolving, several-thousand-year period of Native American history in which an extraordinary number of indigenous cultures flourished. Sixteenth-century exploration and settlement by the first Spanish colonizers later introduced European and African peoples to the region. Headquartered in Mexico City, the Spanish gradually brought their own ideas (law, religion, government, property), institutions (missions, presidios), and economic and labor (mining, ranching, agriculture) practices to the colonial northern frontier. With the Wars of Independence and ensuing incorporation as part of the Mexican nation in 1821, the borderlands became a place of increased conflict and contestation. Mid-nineteenth-century conflict between Anglos and Mexicans led to the establishment of Texas as an independent state and subsequent loss of approximately half of Mexico’s national territory to the United States. Ever since, the history of the region has seen a persistent negotiation among Native American, Mexican, Anglo, African, and Asian residents on both sides of the international boundary. As this volume attests, the region has a rich history—one that has seen a remarkable change in the forging of a unique borderlands culture over time.
xvii
Introduction Much like any other ‘‘frontier’’ area of the world, the history of the borderlands reveals countless situations in which misunderstanding, conflict, and violence have arisen. From present-day headlines and talk radio screeds, one might assume that the borderlands is, and has always been, a desperate, hate-filled, and dangerous place. No doubt, politicians, civic groups, and media outlets on both sides of the border rightly concern themselves with the difficult issues of migration, drug smuggling, poverty, corruption, and security. Still others worry about jobs, environmental degradation, cultural autonomy, and often just plain matters of day-to-day survival. Yet despite the many controversial issues, one also sees many examples of crosscultural cooperation, innovation, and peaceful coexistence across the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. A place of vibrant human expression and bold experimentation mixing elements of many different cultures, the region, much like the landscape itself, is a place of constant recombination and renewal. The aim of this encyclopedia is to provide information on a large number of important historical and cultural topics on the borderlands in this same spirit of positive collaboration. In developing this reference work along with a host of creative and talented contributors, I have encouraged participating scholars to use their expertise to develop the entries in ways they saw fit. Some scholars are of Mexican descent while others are academics who study the borderlands but live outside North America. Hopefully their voices have helped make this an informative and balanced reference resource.
About the Encyclopedia This encyclopedia provides coverage on a broad range of general topics and important figures as a way to provide students and general readers with a solid sense of the U.S.–Mexico border history, culture, politics, lifestyles, and more. The alphabetically organized encyclopedia contains 151 entries, each of them ‘‘signed’’ by the author. Biographical profiles are relatively few but do include entries ranging from key sixteenth-century Spanish explorers to central political, social, and cultural figures of the more than 500-year recorded history of the borderlands until today. Topical entries run the gamut from art, cuisine, education, environment, legislation, radio, religion, slavery, sports, tourism, and water to the Minutemen, queer perspectives, repatriados, and Mexican and Mexican American women workers. Alphabetical and topical lists of entries in the front matter allow readers to find topics of interest quickly, as do numerous cross-references and the index. Those looking for more in-depth coverage will find many helpful suggestions in the Further Readings sections as well as in the Selected Bibliography. A chronology and variety of illustrations complement the text.
xviii
C HRONOLOGY 25,000 B.C.E.
Sandia people leave earliest evidence of human existence in New Mexico. 10,000–9,000 B.C.E. Clovis people hunt megafauna in Southwest. 9,000–8,000 B.C.E. Folsom people settle in the Southwest after last ice age. 8,000 B.C.E.–1,500 C.E. Millions of native peoples flourish throughout the Americas. Early 1500s Spanish initiate exploration and colonization in the Americas. 1531 The Virgin de Guadalupe appears to Juan Diego in Tlateloco, Mexico. 1540–42 Spaniard Francisco Vazquez de Coronado takes expedition into the Southwest. ~ez Cabeza de Vaca shipwrecked on 1542 Spanish explorer Alvar N un Galveston Island, Texas. 1544 Dominican Priest Bartolome de Las Casas named Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico. 1546 War of the Gran Chichimeca between Spanish and native peoples in central-north Mexico begins. 1579 English privateer Francis Drake makes landfall north of San Francisco Bay. 1598 New Mexico founded by Juan de O~ nate. 1609 First Spanish settlement established in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 1680 Pueblo Revolt by native peoples in New Mexico against Spanish repression begins. 1696 Second Pueblo Revolt begins. 1706 Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded. 1776 Spanish presidio built at Tucson, Arizona. 1786 New Mexico governor Juan Bautista de Anza negotiates peace with the Comanches. 1803 Louisiana Purchase is negotiated. 1810 ‘‘Grito’’ of Mexican independence against the vice-regal government of New Spain issued by Father Manuel Hidalgo in the town of Dolores, Guanajuato, Mexico.
xix
Chronology 1812 1812–15 1819
1821 1821 1823 1824 1835–36 1838 1845 1846–48 1848 1853 1854 1855 1862 1862 1863 1867 1869 1873 1874 1876
1883 1884
1886 1891 1891 1900
xx
Russian traders found Fort Ross, north of San Francisco, California. War of 1812 The Adams Onıs Treaty is drafted, in which Spain cedes East and West Florida to the United States and defines the boundary of Louisiana with Spanish Mexico. Independence in Mexico Santa Fe Trail, running from Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico, opens. Mexican government issues Stephen F. Austin a land grant to colonize the Brazos River area in present-day Texas. First Mexican national constitution Texas Revolution General Winfield Scott heads up forced relocation of Cherokee to Indian Territory. Texas becomes part of the United States. War between Mexico and the United States James Marshall discovers gold in the American River near Sacramento, California. Gadsden Purchase negotiated, in which territory in southern Arizona and New Mexico is bought from Mexico. Miners discover copper in Arizona. Preserved head of legendary Californian bandit Joaquın Murieta sold at auction. Ten-year war between Apache natives and settlers in Arizona begins. Cinco de Mayo–Mexican battle of Puebla against French forces Barbed wire is developed. Mexican Liberal leader Benito Juarez and his followers regain control of Mexico. Transcontinental Railroad is completed. Healer and political figure Teresa Urrea (Ni~ na de Cabora), born in Rancho de Santana, Ocoroni, Sinaloa, Mexico. Anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon born in Oaxaca, Mexico. Mexican rebel Juan Nepomuceno Cortina imprisoned by Mexican government after long resistance to Anglo settlement in Texas. Chinese Exclusion Act suspending Chinese immigration to the United States goes into effect. Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel Ramona is published. The work calls attention to the plight of Mission Indians in Southern California. Apache Chief Geronimo surrenders to General Nelson A. Miles at Skeleton Canyon, in southern Arizona. Catarino Garza rebellion begins along the Texas-Mexican border. Tomochic Rebellion begins in Chihuahua, Mexico. Massive hurricane hits Galveston, Texas.
Chronology 1904 1910 1910–20 1914 1916 1917 1919 1919–33 1924 1928 1930s 1938 1939–45 1941 1942 1943 1945 1948 1953 1954
1960s 1962 1963 1964 1965 1965 1968 1968 1968
First U.S.-Mexico Border Patrol is established. Angel Island port of entry opens in Bay of San Francisco. Mexican Revolution President Woodrow Wilson sends troops to invade Veracruz, Mexico. Mexican revolutionary Francisco ‘‘Pancho’’ Villa invades Columbus, New Mexico. United States enters into World War I. Grand Canyon National Park is established. Prohibition in effect Immigration Act is established to formally admit and tax Mexicans coming into the United States. Agua Caliente Resort and Casino is established in Tijuana, Baja California. Thousands of Mexicans in the United States are ‘‘repatriated’’ to Mexico. The Mexican oil industry is nationalized. Approximately 350,000 Mexican Americans serve in World War II. Mexican actress Dolores del Rıo begins a romance with movie star and director Orson Welles. Executive Order No. 9066 is issued, allowing for the internment of Japanese Americans. ‘‘Zoot Suit’’ riots in Los Angeles, California World’s first atomic bomb is detonated in southern New Mexico. Latino World War II vets organize G.I. Forum to protest discrimination by Anglos after the war. Operation Wetback realizes the deportation of nearly 4 million people of Mexican descent from the United States. Film Salt of the Earth, which gives an accurate representation of Mexican American and Anglo workers and their wives confronting the owners of a zinc mine during a bitter strike, is released. Chicano movement begins. Caesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta start organizing farm workers in California. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Bracero Program (the ‘‘guest-worker’’ program) ends. Immigration and Naturalization Act restricts immigration into the United States. Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales forms the Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado. Tlateloco massacre of hundreds of students and protesters by police in Mexico City Summer Olympics is held in Mexico City. Thousands of students in East Los Angeles protest to call attention to inferior schools and youth counseling.
xxi
Chronology 1968 1968 1972 1972 1985 1986 1987 1988 1990 1992 1993 1993 1994 1994 1994 1994
1994 2000 2000 2001 2001 2004 2004 2006 2007
xxii
Musical group Los Tigres del Norte moves to San Jose, California, from Sinaloa, Mexico. Texas Rangers Hall of Fame is established in Waco, Texas. Comedy duo Cheech and Chong release self-titled debut album. Watergate scandal revealed. Mexico City earthquake kills thousands. U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) goes into effect. Iran-Contra scandal breaks. President Ronald Reagan’s administration is caught smuggling guns and drugs. Office of National Drug Control Policy is created to combat drug trafficking. Mexican writer Octavio Paz wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. African American motorist Rodney King is beaten by police in Los Angeles, sparking riots. Bill Clinton is elected forty-second president of the United States. Widespread killing of women in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua begins. North American Free Trade Agreement signed to promote ‘‘free trade’’ among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Zapatista Rebellion calling for human rights begins in Chiapas, Mexico. Operation Gatekeeper is launched to stem the tide of undocumented immigration from Mexico into the United States. California Proposition 187 passes. The legislation seeks to deny undocumented immigrants public services. It is later deemed unconstitutional. Mexican peso crisis Vicente Fox Quesada is elected president of Mexico. Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives launches Latin Virtual Gallery Web site George W. Bush is inaugurated as forty-third president of the United States. Attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon Californian Jim Gilchrist founds the Minuteman Project to unofficially monitor the U.S.–Mexico and U.S–Canada borders. Chicana writer and activist Gloria Anzald ua dies. Felipe de Jes us Calderon Hinojosa takes office as president of Mexico. U.S. lawmakers fail in their efforts to realize immigration reform legislation. Spurious talk of building a wall across the entire U.S.–Mexico border continues.
D
Adams Onıs Treaty. Mexico and the United States are divided by a geographic line that is one of the longest in the world. Before the present boundary, New Spain claimed territory to just above the Bay of San Francisco, including the territories that are now the states of Utah, Nevada, part of Colorado, and Kansas. To the east, Spain controlled land in what is now the state of Florida. In between, France claimed the Louisiana territory. The thirteen English colonies spanned from present-day Maine to Georgia. When the 1783 treaty of Paris acknowledged the independence of the thirteen American colonies, the new republic undertook significant westward expansion. In 1795, the U.S. government contrived to obtain from Spain, through the Pinckney Treaty, the acknowledgement of parallel 31 as the boundary with Spanish Florida. In 1800, when news of the retrocession to France of the territory of Louisiana through the treaty of San Ildefonso reached the United States, its government sought an alliance with England to fight France. At that moment, the Napoleonic government offered the sale of the territory of Louisiana, which covered the land from the boundary of British Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase resulted in the acquisition of approximately 530 million acres from France. Many in the United States saw the deal as an important and inevitable step in extending the nation from Atlantic to Pacific. When Napoleon invaded Spain in 1809, hundreds of Americans crossed the border into west Florida. A year later, they presented a list of complaints against the Spanish government. In July 1810, Americans attacked Mobile, Alabama, and proclaimed an independent republic. Several months later, they petitioned the U.S. government to annex the territory. Shortly thereafter, President James Madison ordered the annexation on October 27, 1810. Eventually, U.S. officials decided on the purchase of Florida. In 1813, negotiators began drafting a treaty. Spanish foreign minister Luis de Onıs and U.S. statesman John Quincy Adams served as commissioners in realizing the deal. In part, what needed to be achieved was the demarcation of a borderline between the two countries. Toward this end, officials determined that Florida and Louisiana were U.S. property while Spain would control territory reaching from Texas to California. The boundary ran from the Sabine River north from the Gulf of Mexico to the 32nd parallel north, north to the Red River, crossing west to the 100th meridian, then north again to the
1
A
Agribusiness Arkansas River, west to its headwaters, then north to the 42nd parallel north, and then along the 42nd parallel to the Pacific Ocean. U.S. negotiators called the treaty the Transcontinental Treaty, because Spain ceded its claim to Oregon and allowed the U.S. to extend its reach to the Pacific shores. The boundary drawn on maps left for Spain the territories of what are now the states of Utah, Nevada, part of Colorado, and a portion of Kansas. Those lands had never been colonized, although much of them had been explored in the name of the King of Spain. Several members of Congress objected to the ratification of the treaty, because it left the huge territory of Texas in Spanish possession. Negotiations ended in February 1819 in Washington, D.C., but ratification would not occur until 1831. In the meantime, Mexico became an independent republic in 1821. Almost immediately, its governments realized the importance of having a secure border with the United States. The boundary set by the Adams Onıs (or Transcontinental) Treaty had not been ratified and therefore became a source of trouble when Joel Roberts Poinsett arrived as the first American envoy. Poinsett made his Mexican hosts aware of the fact that part of his mission included the establishment of a clear boundary with the new nation. His government did not reject the Adams Onıs Treaty but sought, after the independence of Mexico, new negotiations. The then–Minister of State, Lucas Alaman, rejected doing so until more geographic evidence could be obtained. He refused to open a road to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which would facilitate the trade between Santa Fe and Missouri. Poinsett considered that the Mexican government was too sensitive to discuss the boundary. In December of 1826 a rebellion took place in the newly opened territory of Texas. Several Mexican politicians accused the United States of interfering. Secretary of State Henry Clay asked Poinsett to present a petition to the Mexicans as a way to buy a part of the territory. The U.S. government worried that the boundary stood too near the city of New Orleans. Endless discussions followed and Poinsett finally decided not to press for a new boundary. In 1829, a new U.S. minister named Anthony Butler arrived in Mexico City. Butler had instructions to buy Texas to establish a more precise boundary along with numerous petitions to move the dividing line further south. Mexico, in turn, passed a colonization law forbidding the entrance of more American settlers into Texas. The problems at the boundary seemed endless when the Mexican Senate, in 1831, ratified the Adams Onıs Treaty. It thus stood until 1848 when the U.S.–Mexican War and the subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo rendered the treaty obsolete. See also Louisiana Purchase; Manifest Destiny; Monroe Doctrine. FURTHER READINGS: Brooks, Philip C. Diplomacy and the Borderlands: The Adams-Onıs Treaty of 1819. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939.
Angela Moyano Pahissa Agribusiness. Agribusiness is characterized as the large-scale business operations of farming and agriculture and entails the full array of commerce and business that is involved in the production of food. This includes farming and all aspects of agriculture that are directly and indirectly related to food production, such as the supply of seed, chemicals, and machinery required for agricultural endeavors; the storage of agricultural commodities; and the wholesale and retail distribution, processing, and sale of agricultural products. Agribusiness also refers to the commercial interrelationships between the producers and the consumers of agricultural goods.
2
Agribusiness Agribusiness is often used synonymously with corporate farming and is seen as leading to the eradication of the small or family farm. This is especially true along the U.S.–Mexico border, particularly in the border area known as the ‘‘Rio Grande Valley’’ in Texas and as ‘‘La Fronteria’’ in Mexico. While ‘‘the Valley’’ encompasses the Texas counties of Cameron, Hidalgo, Willacy, and Starr, La Fronteria includes the northernmost expanse of the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, which are situated along the Rio Grande. This region of the border is abounding with prime agricultural production land. Because of historical flooding by the Rio Grande, the Valley and La Fronteria comprise a delta containing alluvial sandy, loam, and clay soils capable of tremendous agricultural output. The combination of advanced irrigation systems and modern agricultural technologies with the normal sunlight received by this area of the border has led to a growing season of up to 354 agricultural production days, generating as many as four harvests per year. Among the essential products produced by border agribusiness are citrus fruits, especially Texas and Ruby Red grapefruit and Valencia and navel oranges in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. The border region also produces onions, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, beans, potatoes, sorghum, cotton, and an assortment of nuts among a large variety of other agricultural goods. As early as end of nineteenth century, the U.S. government was taking actions that benefited agribusiness to the detriment of small family farmers. Included among these were the construction of dams and the implementation of homesteading policies, which resulted in bankrupt family farms that were purchased by agribusiness concerns for pennies on the dollar. In California, agribusiness was already the principal employer of Mexicans as early as the 1920s. Here, the corporate concerns created an artificial oversupply of agricultural workers, which kept wages low and working conditions oppressive, through its recruitment and distribution practices. Agribusiness was also the primary opponent of any efforts to organize farm labor. On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented. NAFTA is a trilateral trade agreement among United States, Canada, and Mexico that has created the globe’s largest free trade zone. The trade agreement allows commercial organizations to construct and operate new manufacturing facilities, to engage in production, and to buy and sell other commercial firms anywhere within the three participating countries. This has directly led to increasing opportunities for cross-border agribusiness growth and development. An immediate result of this arrangement is that border agribusiness has become even more global and economically dominant along the border. While NAFTA lowered taxes, tariffs, and quotas between the United States and Mexico, the extensive escalation of cross-border agricultural international business concerns has created new border issues. Prime among those issues is the streamlining of border crossings. Simplifying border commerce is especially important for agribusiness, which deals heavily with perishable goods and products. Agribusiness has also identified the need for uniform agricultural standards and grading that would eliminate much of the bureaucratic red tape leading to delays in product transport across the border. The improvement of border transportation and the creation and refinement of international, bilingual communication networks are also of utmost worth for the agribusiness economic sector. Finally, agribusiness seeks to make agricultural production agents and marketing firms among the most developed economic institutions in border area.
3
Agua Caliente Resort and Casino Border agribusiness lobbies for international agricultural policies from NAFTA partner governments that will establish regulatory legislation in its favor, especially laws dealing with agricultural imports, loosening legal restrictions, and ensuring contract enforcement and property ownership rights. Agribusiness seeks the establishment of a bilingual border agricultural agency favorable to its international interests. Agribusiness interests in Mexico have prospered profoundly under the NAFTA. However, the rapid growth of agribusiness south of the Rio Grande has not been of benefit to the campesinos (small family farmers) who have not been able to compete with the wealth and modern productive abilities of agribusiness. Because the campesinos lack the necessary financial and technical resources and the access to larger more regional and global markets, they are forced into making losing contractual farm labor agreements, which require the locals to grow and sell their agricultural products to the contractor agribusiness interests. The results have been to drive small farming families off the land and push them to the colonias (poor settlements) of Mexico and the border and to the barrios (ethnic neighborhoods) of American cities. See also Economy; Land Grants; Ranching; United Farm Workers of America; Water Issues. FURTHER READINGS: Acu~ na, Rodolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 5th edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004; AREC Research Currents. ‘‘Friend or Foe? Cross-border Trade in Arizona and Sonora.’’ November 2006. http://cals.arizona.edu/arec/dept/currents/article6.html; Burnham, J. C., and Epperson, J. E. ‘‘An Analysis of Foreign Direct Investment in the U.S. Fruit and Vegetable Industry.’’ College of Agricultural and Environmental Studies, The University of Georgia, Research Bulletin Number 436, January, 1999; Echanove, Flavia, and Steffen, Christina. ‘‘Agribusiness and Farmers in Mexico: The Importance of Contractual Relations.’’ The Geographical Journal 171, no. 2 (June 2005): 166–76; Griffin, Richard W. ‘‘Political Opportunity, Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: The Case of the South Texas Farm Workers.’’ The Social Science Journal 29, no. 2 (1992): 129–52. In Motion Magazine. ‘‘Immigration and Human Rights on the U.S./Mexico Border. Part 3: The Needs of Agribusiness.’’ November 2006. http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/border3.html.
Richard W. Griffin Agua Caliente Resort and Casino. A forerunner to the pleasure palaces on the Las Vegas Strip, Agua Caliente was a sumptuous and stupendous recreational and gaming resort opened in Tijuana in 1928, patronized by kings and queens, movie stars and moguls, maharajas and diplomats, millionaires and social elites, as well as less prominent but still monied ordinary people anxious to see and be seen. Though closed by presidential edict against gambling after only seven years of colorful and storied existence, its reputation and lore remain a lynchpin of border culture. U.S. Prohibition along with other social reforms generated by the Progressive movement at the early part of the last century caused ‘‘sporting folks’’ to look south of the border for new outlets. Tijuana—governed by a renegade revolutionary general anxious to make ‘‘deals’’ for a price—beckoned, and monied investors, both American and Mexican, responded. Together they built a mish-mash (some would say a delectable fare) of dingy bars, exquisite nightclubs, gaming joints, whorehouses, opium dens, elaborate casinos, fine (and not so fine) restaurants, and bawdy beer halls along the town’s main street. In sum, they created a veritable Never-Never Land of pleasure, if not for Peter Pan.
4
Agua Caliente Resort and Casino Tourists of all stripes—hucksters, flimflammers, prostitutes, gamblers, rogues, and racketeers, along with ‘‘respectable citizens’’ out for a slum, and the occasional civic or political leader ‘‘gone astray’’—swarmed into the business zone in search of fulfillment, fun, and quick profit. Then in 1926, three wealthy Americans already known to and experienced in sports entertainment and gambling teamed with the district’s governor, Abelardo Rodrıguez, to form a syndicate that would finance and build a spectacular recreational gaming complex to rival, even surpass, Europe’s best at Monte Carlo and Deauville. The Americans became known as the Border Barons: Wirt Bowman, Nogales, Arizona, banker and exporter-importer, with Democratic Party political ambitions, who had holdings in Mexican mining and real estate, but most important to the new enterprise, personal contacts with ranking Mexican politicians ascending to the president himself; James Crofton, a young, brash, adventuresome Oregonian who had acquired experience and money while running gaming establishments in border towns like Naco as well as larger Nogales; and the unflappable Baron (his given name) Long, a sportsman who ran several popular Los Angeles nightclubs frequented by the Hollywood and sports stars before buying the heralded Grant Hotel in San Diego, and investing in the burgeoning, if rickety, thoroughbred horse track just below the international line at the Tijuana crossing. With Governor Rodrıquez a more or less ‘‘silent partner’’ who purchased the site known for its bubbling hot springs (hence, Agua Caliente), the Barons built a luxurious resort of architectural splendor on what was formerly desolate, arid lands covered with scrub brush. Architecture of the complex was au courante California Spanish mission revival, while interior decorations ran from Louis XV style furniture to art deco ceiling designs, accented by hand-painted Spanish tiles, and Middle Eastern urns and carpets. The lavish bathing area featured an Olympic-size swimming pool and tubs where patrons took mud baths and bathed in the medicinal waters of the hot springs, flowing at 114 degrees Fahrenheit. Off to the side were a championship 18hole golf course, bridal paths for saunters on thoroughbreds, a greyhound dog track, a pit for fighting roosters, and a beautifully designed thoroughbred horse racetrack billed as the most elegant in the world. Golf, bridge, and other tournaments drew the world’s best players and offered winners record rewards. So, too, did the racetrack. As is true of such all ‘‘recreational’’ sites, the plush casino provided the life’s blood for the entire operation. Roulette wheels, card games, dice tables, and slot machines generated millions of dollars that overflowed the coffers of the owners and investors and captured the attention of traditional blue bloods, the nouveau riche, Midwesterners who had sold their farms and moved to sunny California for respite and novelty, and mobsters looking to steer the flow of cash their way. Casinos are the raison d’etre of these resorts; everything else is meant to attract and keep clientele so their pockets can be emptied. Agua Caliente attracted visitors by the thousands; kept them there with a delightful diversity of entertainment, fashion shows, jazz bands, and Hollywood celebrities; and quite nonchalantly relieved them of their money. Few complained about their losses, and numbers came back for more. A day or two at Agua Caliente amounted to a genuine Roaring ’20s experience not to be missed. It is not easy to run a gaming resort, and Agua Caliente soon ran into difficulties. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression reduced patronage; stockholders rebelled and shuffled management. Bowman with income tax troubles decided to return to Arizona and party politics. Crofton was nearly killed in an airplane accident and
5
The Alamo concentrated increasingly on his cattle and horse farms. Long got himself trapped in a horse race betting scandal and moved toward major hotel interests in Los Angeles. Rodrıguez became Mexico’s interim president (1932–34). Mobsters robbed the company’s money car on its way to a San Diego bank, and persistently threatened the Barons with extortion and kidnapping. Mexican workers demanded fairer treatment and higher pay or they would strike. Internal turbulence could be contained and smothered, but nothing could be done about outside changes that affected their business. In 1931, Nevada legalized gambling, although it took a decade to develop the Strip. The next year, California reopened its horse racetracks to pari-mutual betting. And the year after that, the United States repealed Prohibition. Agua Caliente limped along with the Barons participation, even if they no longer controlled the enterprise. Crowds continued to revel in the splendor and novelty of the resort, but its star was fading. Then the hammer fell. A reform-minded Lazaro Cardenas became president of Mexico in 1934. His administration was determined to redistribute land, lessen the influence of the Catholic Church, brighten the lot of proletarians, make public education more practical, and moralize the populace. This last plank in his platform ended casino gambling. Agua Caliente struggled to stay open as a first-class hotel and recreational site, the Barons pleaded for an exception to the gaming edict, but when Cardenas refused to budge, they closed the complex. Mexican union workers attempted to run the resort without the casino but to no avail; they had little experience in running such a place, and patrons wanted to gamble. Finally, Cardenas tired of pleadings and reported infractions of his edict, expropriated the premises in 1938, and declared it a new technological secondary school. The Barons, all of them multimillionaires, hardly missed a beat and moved on to other financially successful pursuits. The technological school is among the best in Tijuana. The racketeer Bugsy Siegel, who visited Agua Caliente several times when it was in its prime, used the experience to establish the first casino-resort complex on the Las Vegas Strip. The horse racetrack continued to call itself Agua Caliente, revived under other investors, and ran for several more decades. Huge portions of The Grande Dame herself have been gobbled up by urban expansion, and the few remaining physical remnants have all but crumbled away (although restoration projects have been proposed). Nonetheless, rich and ghostly memories of the splendors of Agua Caliente are embedded in lore, both in Tijuana and far beyond. Its short-lived, glamorous presence is still venerated by some and far from forgotten by all. See also Tourism. FURTHER READINGS: Pi~ nera Ramırez, David and Ortiz Figueroa, Jes us. Historia de Tijuana, 1889–1989: Edicion commemorativa del centenario de su fundacion. 2 vols. Tijuana: Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, Centro de Investigaciones Hist oricas, UNAM-UABC, 1989; Vanderwood, Paul, Border Barons: Princes of Vice: America’s Joy Palaces Move South (forthcoming).
Paul J. Vanderwood
The Alamo. The Alamo is a mission site in San Antonio, Texas. In late 1835, residents converted it into a fortress on what was the location of one of the most significant battles in the Texas Revolution against Mexican rule. ‘‘Remember the Alamo’’ became the rallying cry uniting the Texans to fight for independence.
6
The Alamo
‘‘Battle of the Alamo,’’ circa 1912. Reproduction of painting by Percy Moran (18621935). (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-2133.)
In 1718, Franciscan monks founded the mission of San Antonio de Valero. The mission grew, encompassing five sites, and ultimately obtained a great deal of property surrounding it. Between 1744 and 1758, monks built a church by the mission near the San Antonio River. Near the turn of the nineteenth century, Spain’s King Charles IV secularized the mission and divided its holdings among the Spanish colonists of the area. By 1803, the mission had been fortified for use as a military post and the first hospital in Texas. It is this building that became known as the Alamo. The Battle of the Alamo in 1836 turned the tide in the Texas Revolution. In December 1835, a segment of the disorganized revolutionary fighters took San Antonio and occupied the Alamo. These fighters were reinforced by Colonel Jim Bowie and a group of volunteers on January 19, 1836. Led by twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant Colonel William B. Travis, another small contingent arrived at the Alamo on February 3, bringing the number holding the garrison to approximately 150 Anglo American settlers and natives. In February 1836, Mexican dictator General Antonio L opez de Santa Anna besieged the fort with several thousand soldiers. Travis sent requests to the Texas army for reinforcements, but only about 30 men from Lieutenant George C. Kimbell’s Gonzales ranging company were able to fight their way through the Mexican lines. On the morning of March 6, 1836, the thirteen-day battle ended. Mexican troops overwhelmed the fort, soundly defeating its occupiers. Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett were among the 180 or more revolutionary troops either killed in battle or executed. Legend is mingled with history in the various accounts of this battle, but it has been reported that Santa Ana, walking among the bodies, remarked on the small affair of the battle and said the dead were only ‘‘chickens.’’ On March 27, General
7
American G.I. Forum Santa Anna continued the war and ordered the execution of 400 surrendered Texans in what is called the Goliad Massacre. News of the slaughters at the Alamo and Goliad roused and unified the revolutionary forces in Texas. On April 21, under the leadership of General Sam Houston, Texans shouting ‘‘Remember the Alamo!’’ defeated Santa Ana’s forces at San Jacinto near present-day Houston. Texans answered the atrocities of Santa Ana with equal intensity and cruelty against Mexican soldiers and civilians. Texas declared its independence on March 2, 1836, in the midst of the Battle of the Alamo, but the war continued for nine more years. Between 1836 and 1845, united under the flag of the ‘‘lone star state,’’ Texans battled Mexico. The war finally ended when the United States annexed Texas in 1845. Today, the Alamo, ‘‘cradle of Texas Liberty,’’ is an Anglo American symbol for courage and heroism in the struggle against oppression and against overwhelming odds. The chapel and fort have been designated as a Texas state monument site since 1883. See also Stephen F. Austin; Sam Houston. FURTHER READINGS: Calvert, R.A., De Le on, A., and Cantrell, G., The History of Texas. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2002; Thompson, F.T. The Alamo, Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2005.
Jean Shepherd Hamm
American G.I. Forum. The American G.I. Forum (AGIF) is a civil-rights organization that has been a key player in many legal and political struggles to secure equal rights for Hispanic Americans. One of several major civic-minded, service-oriented, and politically active groups founded by Mexican Americans during the twentieth century, the AGIF is unique in that it was organized specifically to promote the interests of Mexican American veterans. A local chapter is the basic unit of the organization, where veterans must provide 75 percent of members. Like the Veterans of Foreign War (VFW), there are often auxiliary (spousal) and junior organizations attached to a local unit. Beyond the local units, there are district, state, and, since 1958, national governing bodies. Today, AGIF has more than 150,000 members in some 500 chapters in 24 states. Among the group’s most influential leaders was Hector Perez Garcıa, M.D. (1914– 96) of Corpus Christi, Texas, a former U.S. Army physician who served in Europe during World War II. Garcıa and several hundred Mexican American veterans met in Corpus Christi in early 1948, initially to discuss strategies to secure benefits promised under the 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights. They founded AGIF to give a single strong voice to this effort. Ultimately, the group addressed a variety of veterans’ concerns, such as the need to enhance the medical care delivered by the Veterans Administration, and even the low rate of Mexican American representation on local draft boards. As was to be expected of an organization founded during the early years of the Cold War, and especially one composed of recent veterans, the AGIF charter emphasized the loyalty and patriotism of its membership. The charter also prohibited official endorsement of any political parties or candidates. Soon after the founding, however, Garcıa led the organization in a lobbying campaign that proved that this particular stricture did not blunt the group’s potential as a political force. In 1949, AGIF
8
American G.I. Forum members were outraged when the Anglo director of the only funeral home in Three Rivers, Texas, refused to open his chapel for the funeral of Private Felix Longoria, who had been killed in the American campaign to recapture the Philippines. Garcıa organized a protest that gained national attention and brought the intervention of newly elected U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who arranged for Longoria to be buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery. The so-called Longoria Incident gained the young Senator Johnson an important following among Mexican Americans in Texas, and established the new organization’s reputation as an effective advocate for Hispanic rights. The AGIF grew quickly as local units were soon founded across the southwest. In 1950, Garcıa was among those interviewed by Pulitzer Prize– winning author Edna Ferber, who was interested in accurately depicting the Mexican American experience in Texas in her novel Giant (1952). AGIF’s activities soon expanded beyond lobbying and organizing solely on behalf of veterans, and it came to support a broader Mexican American civil rights agenda, such as securing fair housing, quality public education, widespread voter registration, and better employment opportunity. When necessary, AGIF also supported litigation to achieve its goals. In 1954, AGIF-affiliated lawyers collaborated with the older organization League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), to defend Pete Hernandez against murder charges. Hernandez was convicted by an all-white jury—in a county that was heavily Mexican American yet had not used a Hispanic juror for decades—and the legal team appealed. In the 1954 landmark decision, Hern andez v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the AGIF and LULAC argument that, although legally classified as ‘‘white,’’ Mexican Americans in Texas had suffered discrimination as a class and were entitled to protections under the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1957, one of the AGIF lawyers from the Hernandez case, James DeAnda (1925–2006) convinced a federal court to declare school segregation of Mexican American children in Texas schools unconstitutional. A decade later, DeAnda sought and won the first judicial application of the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to de facto Mexican American school segregation in Corpus Christi. In 1979, DeAnda himself was appointed to the federal judiciary by President Jimmy Carter. Outside the courtroom, AGIF members mounted efforts to register Mexican Americans to vote, protested incidents of police brutality, raised money for scholarships, supported improving labor and living conditions of migrant farm workers, and, naturally, continued to lobby for veterans’ health care and other needs. Garcıa, and other prominent AGIF members, played a critical role in the 1960 presidential campaign, by organizing ‘‘Viva Kennedy’’ (earlier ‘‘Viva Johnson’’) political clubs in Texas. The Kennedy administration recognized their contribution, but did not reward Mexican Americans with much increased attention. President Johnson, however, appointed Garcıa to be the first Hispanic member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and made him a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. Johnson also selected Vicente T. Ximenes, another AGIF founder and a former national chairman, to serve as the first Hispanic member of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and appointed him to chair the Committee on Mexican American Affairs, the first cabinet-level office for Hispanic issues. AGIF members, affiliates, and supporters, whether working on behalf of the organization or, increasingly, operating from important positions in government, played significant roles in extending Great Society programs into the barrios. AGIF continued its work
9
Anthropology of the Borderlands even as the Civil Rights era effectively came to its end in the 1970s. In 1983, Garcıa received an award for distinguished accomplishment from President Ronald Reagan. FURTHER READINGS: Allsup, Carl. The American GI Forum: Origins and Evolution. Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, 1982; Felts, Jeff, producer. Justice for my People: The Dr. Hector P. Garcıa Story (a ninety-minute documentary). Corpus Christi: KEDT-TV, Public Television in Corpus Christi; Garcıa, Ignacio M. Hector P. Garcıa: In Relentless Pursuit of Justice. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 2002; Ramos, Henry A.J. The American GI Forum: In Pursuit of the Dream, 1948–1983. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1998.
S. Harmon Wilson Anthropology of the Borderlands. The anthropology of the borderlands is a field of scholarship that takes the U.S.–Mexico border as a point of focus onto the varied and changing means through which people negotiate identity and establish social networks within the context of globalization. Originally limited to the study of cultural groups within the U.S.–Mexico border region, the field has expanded to examine the vast range of spaces in which migrant and transnational populations negotiate reality throughout the North American continent. Borderlands anthropology is both a subject of research and a theoretical perspective. As the longest international boundary between two nations of such economic disparity, the U.S.–Mexico border has sparked anthropological developments of global applicability. Attempts to grapple with the political, economic, and symbolic incongruities of the border region have challenged scholars to question key conceptual categories. These efforts have resulted in a reconsideration of the apparent separation between industrial and developing world populations, the nature of the relationship between researchers and the objects of research, and the understanding of cultures as isolated, self-contained social units. As a theoretical approach, the anthropology of the borderlands has both drawn on and contributed to scholarly work on feminism and gender, postcolonialism, globalization, and transnationalism. There is little consensus regarding the geographic extent of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Whereas the border is the political boundary separating the territory of Mexico and the United States, the term ‘‘borderlands’’ represents the broader cultural space that extends from this boundary into both countries. Although the term traditionally refers to the areas sharing a long and violent colonial history of Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo cultural influences, today, the borderlands refer not only to the land contiguous to the U.S.–Mexico border, but also to the culturally diverse urban areas and other spaces of malleable and shifting cultural fabric throughout North America. Early ethnographers conceptualized the border almost as a natural entity. These anthropologists tended to regard the Anglo, Mexican, and indigenous populations on both sides of the border as internally coherent and mutually exclusive social groups. Later, anthropologists focused on the border as a space of cross-cultural contact, but still perceived borderland populations as bounded social groups. In efforts to improve the social conditions of people living in the border areas, applied anthropologists delved more deeply into the political and economic forces at work in the border region. Soon, interest in the dynamics of migration caused ethnographers to take an increasingly fluid perspective, examining the borderlands in terms of processes rather than static social structures. It has been noted that as immigration increased in
10
Anthropology of the Borderlands influence, anthropologists began to examine how the experiences of migrants in the border region reflect the dynamics of global capitalism. Current borderlands anthropology recognizes the U.S.–Mexico borderlands as a region characterized by unique political and economic incongruities deriving from the close physical contact of two large and economically disparate nation-states. Anthropologists trace both the dynamics by which people interpret and negotiate this power within their communities, and also the ways in which cultural histories and ethnic identities predate, transcend, and resist the hegemony of the international border. Just as the border exists at the crux between nations, borderland cultures exist at the interstices of traditional anthropological categories. Contemporary ethnographers examine not only the manner in which the political and economic dimensions of the border penetrate cultural processes, but also the very lenses through which these cultural processes are examined. Two main factors have spurred this reflexive turn of borderlands anthropology. On one hand, due to the increasingly transnational character of immigration, researchers encounter mobile populations, whose complex social networks and intimate involvement in both local and global economies render traditional interpretive schemes such as ‘‘local’’ and ‘‘global’’ ineffectual. On the other hand, the perspectives of ‘‘insider’’ borderlands scholars have challenged anthropologists to question the conceptual binaries between themselves and the objects of their research. Chicana and Chicano folklorists, for example, cite a rich oral tradition of the borderlands. Their nuanced perspectives challenge the categories that European American anthropologists have applied to borderlands culture. The reflexive turn in borderlands anthropology has both given rise to and drawn theoretical strength from developments in transnationalism, postcolonialism, and feminism and gender theory. Postcolonial theorist Arjun Appadurai claims that anthropological categories have traditionally been place-specific. By documenting geographically distinct populations as foreign and distant, anthropologists have implicitly justified efforts of imperialist control. As world order changes, increasing pressure is brought to bear on the formerly accepted distinctions between the industrial and developing world, and between so-called center and periphery nations. Homi K. Bhabha urges scholars to look for cultural reality not within bounded, geographically specific units, but rather within the experiences of those who live in the interstices of conventionally accepted categories—that is, those to whom the categories of nation, language, and ethnic group do not neatly apply. Anthropologist Michael Kearney has been one of the foremost ethnographers to apply a postcolonial perspective to the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Kearney suggests that the maintenance of a geographical and conceptual separation between Western nations and less developed countries once allowed privileged nations such as the United States to maintain the upper hand in economic relationships. In the current period, however, a surplus of labor in peripheral countries has led to large-scale migration to the United States and other powerful countries. By studying undocumented immigrants in the United States, Kearney calls into question the geographic distance that formerly distinguished Western anthropologists from the objects of their research. Kearney argues that immigrants no longer simply relocate to a new country; they maintain ties to their home communities as members of transnational communities that exist simultaneously across two countries. Transnational theory holds that the nation-state is no longer the dominant paradigm of political organization as it was throughout modernity. Organizational forms
11
Anthropology of the Borderlands such as corporations and ethnic groups forge connections and structures of such influence that they undermine the conceptual integrity of the United States and call into question the ultimate authority of national boundaries. Instead, cultural networks and maps of meaning undergird the political border and question its ability to control and define human relationships. While some anthropologists have examined the extent to which the U.S.–Mexico border defines human relationships, cultural theorists such as Gloria Anzald ua have metaphorically associated the border with the internal and interpersonal boundaries of race, language, and gender. The child of South Texan farm workers of Mexican descent, Anzald ua calls for hybrid consciousness, born of the struggle experienced by those whose colonized past demands that they straddle multiple identities to survive. She argues that the struggle to make sense of a multiplicity of identities drives one to an elastic creativity through which nonbinary awareness may arise. Anzald ua’s perspective as a feminist and gender theorist has challenged anthropologists to reconsider the conceptual boundaries in terms of which they classify human beings. For a growing number of scholars, the U.S.–Mexico borderlands are sites of religious change. The border presents a distinct set of challenges to those whose identities transect the continent in ways that the legal division between ‘‘citizen’’ and ‘‘alien’’ cannot fully encompass. This challenge has spurred an emerging body of scholarship on the religion and ritual of the borderlands. Several scholars have examined how individuals and cultures utilize religious ritual to negotiate the challenges of migration. Jorge Durand and D. S. Massey, for example, note that Mexican Catholic migrants have for decades left votive paintings at the Church of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos in testimony to the trials of illness and near-death experiences encountered during acts of border passage. Sociologist Jacqueline Hagan has explored how, in the highlands of Guatemala, Pentecostal Mayans undergo communal acts of fasting, prayer, and prophecy in preparation for migration to the United States. Hagan’s research suggests that the ways in which communities respond to the challenge of border crossing may have far-reaching implications for the development of transnational communities. Shaped by contradicting forces of restriction and permeability, the border region is a space of social control, in which immigration policy influences the most intimate aspects of people’s lives. Scholarship on religion has enriched the anthropological perspective by suggesting that people draw on religious ritual as a means to negotiate transnational identity and to deal with the physical and cultural challenges of the borderlands. See also Colonias; Migration; Native Americans; Popular Saints and Martyrs. FURTHER READINGS: Alvarez, Robert R., Jr. ‘‘The U.S.–Mexican Border: The Making of an Anthropology of the Borderlands.’’ Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 447–70; Appadurai, Arjun. ‘‘Theory in Anthropology: Center and Periphery.’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 28, no. 1 (1986): 356–61; Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994; Hagan, Jacqueline Marıa. ‘‘Religion and the Process of Migration: A Case Study of a Maya Transnational Community.’’ In Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz, eds. Religion Across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, 75–90. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press, 2002; Heyman, Josiah McC. ‘‘The Mexico-United States Border in Anthropology: A Critique and Reformulation.’’ Journal of Political Ecology 1, no. 1 (1995): 43–65; Kearney, Michael. ‘‘Borders and Boundaries of the State and Self at the End of an Empire.’’ Journal
12
Anzald ua, Gloria (1942–2004) of Historical Sociology 4, no. 1 (1991): 52–74; Vila, Pablo. Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.–Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
Leah M. Sarat
Anzald ua, Gloria (1942–2004). Author, feminist, editor, and social activist whose well-known works include This Bridge Called My Back (1981) and The New Mestiza (1987), Anzald ua was one of the first openly lesbian Chicana writers. Her honors include the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, the Lambda Lesbian Small Press Book Award, a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fiction Award, and the Sappho Award of Distinction. Born in Jesus Marıa of the Valley, Texas, Anzald ua was the oldest of several children. Anzald ua’s family was poor and subsisted mainly through migrant farm work, especially after the father’s death when she was fifteen. The hard work in the fields, the oppression of farm workers, and the sexism of the Chicano culture helped ignite Anzald ua’s drive to succeed. She read voraciously, excelled in school, and received a master’s degree from the University of Texas in 1973. She then taught high school English and worked with migrant and bilingual education programs in Texas. In the late 1970s, Anzald ua moved to San Francisco State University as a lecturer in feminist literature and later taught creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Anzald ua’s first published work was This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, a volume which she coedited with Cherrie Morgana. Many of the Asian, Hispanic, and African American women represented in this pioneering work are also lesbian writers. This influential anthology challenged the primarily white, middle-class feminists to a more inclusive feminism and called on women of color to make their voices heard. The books celebrates the diversity that exists among women while calling on them to work together to fight interlocking oppressions. In 1984, Anzald ua published Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, a sevenpart essay and collection of poems. Written in both English and Spanish—including the autobiographical, the real, and the imaginary—and combining poetry and prose, the volume explores what it means to live on the border between the United States and Mexico. In one essay, Anzald ua introduces the idea of a Mestiza consciousness, a multicultural awareness that is the result of the blending of different cultures, languages, and races along the border. This study of the Chicano culture is both personal and political and raises issues of political and social equity on both sides of the border. Making Face, Making Soul/Hacieno Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (1990) was edited by Anzald ua, who also contributed an essay calling for unity among feminists. Anzald ua’s later works include several children’s books such as Prietita and the Ghost Woman (1991), the retelling of a Mexican folktale, and Friends from the Other Side (1993), the story of a friendship between a Mexican American girl and a Mexican boy. Anzald ua died in May 2004 at her home in California from complications from diabetes. Her essays and poems, her editing, and her children’s books are all concerned in some way with feminism, homosexuality, and the Chicano culture and established her as an authentic voice on these issues. FURTHER READINGS: Behar, R., and Gordon, D., eds. Women Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; Keating, Ana Louise. Women Reading and Writing:
13
Architecture Self-Invention in Paul Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzald ua, and Audre Lorde. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996; Steele, Cassie Premo. We Heal From Memory: Sexton, Lorde, Anzald ua, and the Poetry of Witness. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
Jean Shepherd Hamm
Architecture. In addition to supplying the basic necessity of shelter, the main characteristics of borderlands architecture are obviously shaped by the border. By its very nature, the border imposes an ephemeral influence, because it is a region of tremendous and constant movement. A border city is a port, a point of connection, and a heavy traffic zone. Some areas could even be seen as a series of encampments rather than settlements. Somewhat paradoxically then, the borderlands are characterized by the permanency of momentum. The resulting built environment is one developed by and for people whose daily life interminably takes shape in the crossing from one side to the other. Borderlands architecture is dynamic, fluid, and often contradictory; an architecture that appears temporary but at the same time struggles to give the appearance of stability. Private architecture invades public space. Commercial design attempts to impress with bold signage in a highly competitive market. Perhaps without realizing it, the result often verges on the absurd. On the Mexican side of the border, precarious structures predominate. Houses seem to be improvised from a combination of discarded industrial items, adobe, and straw. The situation produces an articulation of unfinished spaces based on the fact that people often have a desperate need to create even the most basic shelter and therefore exhibit a powerful capacity to fulfill that need despite an often significant lack of resources. Although perhaps difficult at first to comprehend, a kind of cultural resistance can be seen in the fact that many of the constructions are made with materials unwanted by others, giving rise to an aesthetic of poverty. Difficult conditions notwithstanding, one finds many examples of prototypical Mexican architecture in the borderlands. The widespread use of imported materials and techniques is also clearly popular—as can be seen nearly everywhere in Tijuana, where people often acquire a portion or nearly all the material for their homes across the border in San Diego. In this, construction follows U.S. standards and tries to emulate U.S. styles. In an environment in which architecture is in a constant process of reconfiguration, finding a language to discuss such a process is challenging. Recent postmodern studies are of some help learning to appreciate a built environment that seemingly is little interested in permanency or expressions of cultural identity. Some of the basic formulations of postmodernism have proven helpful in understanding architecture in the borderlands environment, such as the idea that nearly anything goes, there is no need for compromise, things most dissimilar can be juxtaposed, there is no such thing as authenticity, and so on. In other words, architecture can be understood as part of a larger historic process going on today in which the forces of the global marketplace predominate and constantly reshape the urban environment. In what proves to be a premature effort to appropriately describe the state of architecture on the Mexican side of the border, one might nevertheless understand that it is often a kind of temporary, secondhand architecture.
14
Architecture On the U.S. side, spaces are developed to profit from consumers on the go, to house executives of businesses located in Mexico, or to shield occupants from the silent invasion of the unemployed. Much is developed by people who might ultimately wish to return to their place of origin or at least maintain a memory of their native home in the way they design their neighborhoods and houses. As a place of memory, the home is a place for both nuclear and extended family to gather. In it, one tries to create a Mexican feeling despite the many difficulties of living in a everchanging environment. Oftentimes, consumer goods fill in for the real thing as they act as reminders, however cheap, of something ‘‘authentic’’ back home. A plastic parakeet or macaw, laminated wood and plastic tiled roof, the fake antiquity of furniture thought to be of value, and the earthenware sun and moon are all Mexican items, but they fail to create a convincing popular style. Nevertheless, they somehow complement other images tenuously stuck on the wall or hung from the roof. The family home is one’s lookout onto the world, and the North American porch serves as a kind of crossroad or hybrid corridor through which Mexicans enter while at the same time remaining a space from which local activity can be observed and where mexicanidad (‘‘Mexicanness’’) is never abandoned. The neighborhood is a place where identity is demarcated and a refuge for fellow countrymen whether settled or just passing through. It is a small, defendable universe; however, it is one that does not reconcile itself to the North American conception of modernity (see, for example, San Diego or El Paso). Large painted murals can be found in the barrio. Containing a variety of cultural symbols, messages, and icons, the murals have many meanings. Their designs often allude to a lost world, an abandoned world juxtaposed with fragmented, capricious images; sketches of historic and mythic figures (Pancho Villa or the Virgin de Guadalupe, a dancing Yaqui Indian, or a woman sleeping on the side of the Iztaccıhuatl volcano). The narrative is clear when one examines the various components and individuals grouped together but mixed when considered as a whole. Often, there is no apparent connection among the figures represented other than what the artist has imagined in ideological terms. To the extent that individual homes are pictured in such works, one finds them—along with images of cacti, maguey, the siempreviva, and margaritas—as symbols of cultural resourcefulness, survival, belonging, and solidarity in a fast-paced world. In some respects, there are more common elements on both sides than differences. Construction materials made from natural products have been rapidly replaced with cement and plastic. Art expression is often a mix of cholo-inspired graffiti with contemporary North American pop attitudes critical of consumerism. Informal construction is often precarious, resulting from rapid population growth south of the border, which comes, in part, from restrictive actions north of the border. On both sides, rigid conceptions of habitat are challenged, as evidenced by their continual renewal. Customary ways, and resorting to an identity void of formalized detail, is an accessible option that reinvents the home as if it were a family album of all that is ‘‘Mexican.’’ The architecture of the borderlands in the end is many things. It is diverse like the coexisting ethnic and national groups in the region. It is deterritorialized and delocalized because of the fact that people from vastly different backgrounds have expressed themselves architecturally over different times. It is also a three-dimensional mosaic—nationally, regionally, and ephemerally. It is a place of resistance in that
15
Art architecture is part of a process of developing and maintaining cultural identity. It aids in identity formation in that architecture is a social articulation in the face of tremendous doubt and difficulty. In this, it is an attempt to establish something of permanence, an offering meant to give residents a sense of belonging in an environment otherwise ever-changing and fleeting. FURTHER READINGS: Arreola, Daniel D. The Mexican Border Cities. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993; Herzog, Lawrence A. From Aztec to High Tech. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999; Mendez, Eloy. Arquitectura nacionalista. Plaza y Valdes, Mexico, 2004; Mendez, Eloy. Arquitectura transitoria. Itesca-El Colegio de Sonora-Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo, 2002; Mendez, Eloy. ‘‘El caos l udico, de Tijuana a Matamoros.’’ Cuadernos del Norte 33 (julio-agosto 1994): 41–47.
Eloy Me ndez Sainz, translated by Andrew G. Wood and Linda Allegro Art. The visual arts of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands reflect the diverse historical influences of the region. As with borderlands culture in general, the art of the region synthesizes local elements of indigenous, Spanish, African, Asian, and Anglo American origins, as well as influences from the national cultures of both the United States and Mexico. Therefore, it is difficult to speak of a single borderlands ethos. However, one can identify various elements that create a unique artistic setting. Long before European settlement, the indigenous peoples of the region produced a wide variety of decorated goods and ceremonial pieces, and Native American influences continue to inform borderlands art. Many indigenous arts were designed to be useful as well as aesthetically appealing, including the finely crafted and painted pottery of the Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo peoples. Indeed, crafts that developed with functional concerns in mind, such as the intricately woven baskets of the Pomo and other Californian peoples, and the sewing and embroidery of the Tarahumara of Chihuahua, are now appreciated for their high degree of artistry. Many of the artworks that indigenous peoples produce are closely tied to religious ceremonies. The sandpaintings of the Navajo and the kachinas of the Pueblo peoples carry an importance that extends well beyond the artistic dimension. These creative works do not simply represent static depictions of spiritual figures, many indigenous peoples regard sandpaintings and kachinas as living presences. This close association between ritual and art continued after the imposition of Roman Catholicism by the Spanish colonizers of the region. Hispano settlers and Christianized Pueblo alike have created a variety santos, or saint figures. These crafts, which endure in northern New Mexico, combine Hispanic representations of Christian figures with indigenous techniques of painting and woodcarving. Santos include free-standing sculptures and the relief panels that adorn altars and other furniture in missions. The mission complex incorporates a blend of Hispanic art and architecture— itself a synthesis of European and Islamic forms—with the building materials and techniques of indigenous artisans. The imagery of the Spanish borderlands mission retains a powerful influence on popular perceptions of borderlands architecture and art. In the 1920s, Anglo American enthusiasm for Spanish colonial buildings and art pieces spawned both the marketing of kitsch and serious attention to the Hispanic and indigenous art of the borderlands. In most respects, this interest in mission revival style remained unabated throughout the twentieth century.
16
Art To a substantial extent, the popular appeal of borderlands art has reflected a fascination with the ‘‘exotic’’ cultural and physical traits of the region among European American newcomers and travelers. The region’s distinct landscapes drew visual artists from the rest of the United States as well as Europe. Beginning in the late 1920s, Taos and Santa Fe attracted the painter Georgia O’Keefe, who popularized Southwestern themes in the fine arts. Her paintings used vivid colors to convey the cultural and physical setting of northern New Mexico. The photographer Ansel Adams displayed the deserts of southern California and New Mexico in his works from the 1930s through the 1950s. Many of Adams’s photographs emphasized the stark contrasts of sky and land in the southwest, through his choice of scenery and his innovative use of light. The borderlands continue to be defined, above all, as a place where the national cultures of the United States and Mexico interact and combine to inspire new artistic expressions. The striking and often boldly polemical work of postrevolutionary Mexican artists, such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, had a profound influence on art of both sides of the border. Murals are among the most visible representations of art in the borderlands, and sites such as Chicano Park in San Diego, and many outdoor walls in the Silverlake and Boyle Heights districts in Los Angeles contain murals. The revolutionary artists of Mexico had a direct and profound influence on the art of ethnic Mexicans in the United States. The individual and collective works of ‘‘Los Four,’’ Frank Romero, Carlos Almaraz, Gilberto Lujan, and Roberto de la Rocha, brought critical attention and acclaim to Chicano art in the 1970s. Due to their highly public display, and often overtly political content, murals have often been the source of public controversy in borderlands communities. For instance, in 2005, the display of Judy Baca’s mural Danzas Indigenas in Baldwin Park, California, encountered opposition from protesters who believed that the work expressed anti-European sentiments. While murals are perhaps the best-known examples of Chicano visual art, a wide variety of different formats and media are part of the Chicano art scene. Collections of Chicano art have been exhibited internationally at many museums and cultural centers. In the United States, the art of the borderlands is often associated with ethnic and regional expressions and various representations of a ‘‘unique’’ landscape. In Mexico’s borderlands communities, however, art often serves to affirm Mexican identity in the face of powerful foreign influences. Beginning in the 1980s, the Mexican government had established cultural centers such as the Centro Cultural de Tijuana and the Museo del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Ciudad Juarez. Both facilities, known for their striking modern architecture, aim to present Mexican culture to the peoples of both sides of the border. These centers include galleries that feature exhibits of local and national artists. While the arts of the borderlands encompass a wide variety of genres, a few common elements include influences from both the United States and Mexico and the vital presence of indigenous forms and techniques. The use of striking colors and sharp contrasts in visual depictions is a major, and often anticipated, component of the borderlands aesthetic. However, much of the art produced along both sides of the border that reflects the culture and environment of the region does not easily conform to common expectations of Southwestern or Mexican visual styles. See also Folklore; Low Riders; Popular Saints and Martyrs.
17
Austin, Stephen F. (1793–1836) FURTHER READINGS: Davalos, Karen Mary. Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2001; de Alba, Alicia Gaspar. Inside/Outside the Master’s House: Cultural Politics and the Cara Exhibition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998; Teague, David. The Southwest in American Literature and Art: The Rise of a Desert Aesthetic. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997.
Jamie Starling
Austin, Stephen F. (1793–1836). Stephen Fuller Austin, a former bank director and Missouri territorial legislator, took over his father’s commission as leader of a settlement in the Tejas Province of Mexico in 1822. The newly independent Mexican government first protested Austin’s use of the land grant, but Austin excelled in diplomatic talks and became the impresario of what would become Texas. This intermediary position allowed Austin control over law enforcement, basic infrastructure, and immigration to the settlement, among other administrative tasks. Tensions increased between Mexicans and settlers despite Austin’s best efforts. In 1830, Mexico prohibited further American immigration into Tejas, which Austin
Lithograph of pro-Democrat cartoon from 1844 by H. Bucholzer, published by James Baillie, New York, forecasting the collapse of Whig opposition to the annexation of Texas. James K. Polk, the expansionist candidate, stands at right near a bridge spanning ‘‘Salt River.’’ He holds an American flag and hails Texans Stephen Austin (left) and Samuel Houston aboard a wheeled steamboat-like vessel ‘‘Texas.’’ Austin, waving the flag of the Lone Star Republic, cries, ‘‘All hail to James K. Polk, the frined [sic] of our Country!’’ The Texas boat has an eagle figurehead and a star on its prow. Below the bridge pandemonium reigns among the foes of annexation. Holding onto a rope attached to ‘‘Texas’’ above, they are dragged into Salt River. Led by Whig presidential nominee Henry Clay, they are (left to right) Theodore Frelinghuysen, Daniel Webster, Henry A. Wise, and an unidentified figure whose legs are tangled in the rope. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-10802.)
18
Aztlan managed to circumvent using legal loopholes. However, Tejas settlers were frustrated and, in 1833, colonists formed the San Felipe Convention to establish a new constitution for an independent republic. Mexican President Antonio L opez de Santa Anna repealed the 1830 prohibition but jailed Austin for inciting revolution, despite Austin’s moderate approach with the Mexican government. Austin was released from prison in July 1835 and continued to preach a diplomatic course to resolve the tensions between the Tejas settlers and Mexico. However, the October 1835 outbreak of revolution forced Austin to side with the settlers over the Mexican government. Austin played an active role in leading the charge against Mexican forces, including taking troops into battle at San Antonio. However, Austin’s greatest contribution to the cause of independence for Texas was his role as commissioner to the United States on possible annexation following victory in war. The Republic of Texas declared victory over Mexico in June 1836 and Austin would serve as Texas President Sam Houston’s secretary of state until his death on December 27, 1836. See also The Alamo; Land Grants; Louisiana Purchase; James K. Polk; Texas Revolution; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; U.S.–Mexican War. FURTHER READINGS: Cantrell, Gregg. Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001; Silbey, Joel. Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and The Road to Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Nicholas Katers
Aztlan. Aztlan is both the ‘‘mythical Aztec homeland’’ as well as an indigenous conceptualization of the U.S. Southwest (Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California). Aztlan is much more complex than merely being a mythical site or the expansive geographic landscape of the southwestern United States. To properly understand Aztlan, it must be acknowledged that there are two primary constructions separated by more than six centuries, although connected by their political evocation and relationship to indigenous Mexican (and Mexican American) identity. Initially, indigenous elites conceptualized Aztlan as the homeland from whence the Mexica, one of the tribal units collectively known as the Aztecs, departed on their way to found their imperial home at Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City). According to many historians, Aztlan functioned in an ideological manner that legitimized the Mexica subjugation of other Nahuatl-speaking peoples in central Mexico. Following the foundation of the ‘‘Aztec empire,’’ Aztlan remained an important ideological construct for Mexica elites, but it lost its import with the arrival of Spanish conquistadores in 1519, when it then morphed into an entirely dissimilar concept. As such, after the colonization of central Mexico by Spanish military, religious, and administrative forces in the early sixteenth century, colonial elites combined Aztlan with European notions of Cıbola (‘‘the seven cities of gold’’) before it faded from popular discourse for approximately two centuries. Because Catholic commissaries destroyed all pre-Hispanic indigenous textual documents, contemporary understandings of Aztlan are mediated by colonial interest in indigenous social structures. These indigenous texts, called codices or amoxtli, contained aboriginal knowledge and history, which is why they were then destroyed.
19
Aztlan Among the written sources, there are more than twenty colonial texts, both native and European, that address the Mexica migration south to Tenochtitlan. Among these, there are seven hybrid-indigenous texts that substantially narrate the Aztlan tale: Codex Boturini, Mapa Sig€ uenza, Codex Aubin, Codex Mexicanus, Codex Azcatitlan, and the comparable Codices Telleriano-Remensis and Vaticano-Rıos. Codex Boturini is considered the most authoritative and has often been referred to as the Aztlan Annals because it offers a year count alongside the visual documentation. Mapa Sig€ uenza, as its name suggests, is a more cartographic representation than Boturini, while the Codex Aubin contains script in both Spanish and Nahuatl. From these documents, historians have gleaned the generalities of the migration. As the migration accounts explicate, the Mexica left Aztlan in 1168 following the mandate of the divine spiritual energy Huitzilopochtli. In many of the codices, Huizilopochtli is featured prominently and is shown being carried in a sacred bundle. This bundle was known as the tlaquimilolli and carried the ‘‘heart of god.’’ Following their departure from Aztlan, which is usually translated as the ‘‘land of whiteness’’ or the ‘‘place of the herons,’’ the Mexica spent time at Chicomoztoc (‘‘place of seven caves’’) and Colhuacan. Although these three sites appear to be distinct in most oral and textual documents, they are frequently collapsed into contemporary conceptualizations of Aztlan. Upon the Mexica’s arrival in central Mexico, Aztlan functioned to give legitimacy to Mexica imperial expansion throughout an imagined community of Nahua speakers. In 1325, the Mexica established Tenochtitlan after nearly two centuries of continued migration. For the duration of the Mexica empire, Aztlan served an important role that mediated between their past as a warring and migratory people (Chichimecs) and the sedentary and agricultural practices of Teotihuacan. In fact, at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, Mexica rulers constructed two sacred structures at the apex of the main pyramidal structure. The respective buildings were in homage to Tlaloc (‘‘energy of water’’) and Huitzilopochtli, the spirit that had guided them from Aztlan to Tenochtitlan. Shortly before the arrival of Europeans in Central Mexico, Mexica rulers remained interested in the concept of Aztlan. In approximately 1450, the great tlatoani or leader Motecuzoma Ilhuicamina sent an expedition north in an attempt to physically locate Aztlan within real space. The mission turned up little, but during the mid-sixteenth century, Spanish forces would combine indigenous knowledge of Aztlan with multiple Medieval and Renaissance traditions from Europe. Most important was a 734 C.E. Portuguese legend that envisioned the discovery of seven cities of gold isolated on a distant and abandoned island. This myth, combined with indigenous migration stories, influenced viceroy Antonio de Mendoza to send Marcos de Niza in search of the seven cities of Cıbola (possibly a distortion of the Zuni word shiwina or ashiwi) in 1539. There were multiple expeditions north until the beginning of the seventeenth century, at which time Aztlan, Cıbola, or one of its other namesakes disappeared from popular culture. For nearly four centuries, Aztlan remained semidormant until Chicana/o activists (politically engaged Mexican Americans) popularized it during the late 1960s. Subsequently, during the late 1960s, in conjunction with the global movements of anticolonialism and anticapitalism, Chicanas/os recuperated and reconfigured this ancient indigenous notion as a way to sanction and decriminalize their presence in the present-day United States. For these young Chicana/o activists, the U.S. Southwest was (and continues to be) Aztlan. This indigenous construct, as opposed to lo hispano (identifications with Hispanic culture), which had been privileged by upwardly mobile Mexican Americans (frequently identifying as Spanish Americans), served as an
20
Aztlan organizing tool and a call-to-arms for working-class Mexicanas/os. In fact, Aztlan played an irreplaceable role in the Chicana/o struggle for national liberation. Aztlan, both for the Mexica, as well as for modern Chicanas/os, has always served an explicitly ‘‘political,’’ albeit distinct, objective. In turn, Aztlan is recognized and analyzed as a hybrid site that combines both indigenous Mesoamerican and European (both Hispanic and Anglophone) worldviews and perspectives. As such, many contemporary Chicana/o critics have stated that Aztlan, in fact, serves as a palimpsest. Aztlan is an idea that functions as a multilayered accumulation of compound temporalities and knowledge systems. The Chicana/o Aztlan was a continuation of earlier indigenous manifestations, although one that is mediated by both Hispanic and Anglo American knowledge systems. The most important manifestation of the process of Chicana/o self-determination during the 1960s and 1970s was El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan (hereafter ‘‘the Plan’’), which was anonymously written at the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in March 1969. This document served as the national impetus to forge a unified voice and movement within the Chicana/o community. Scholars have focused attention on the Plan’s strong emphasis on ethnic pride and provisions for an independent Chicana/o ‘‘nation.’’ Many have fixated their criticism on the manner in which the Plan posited separatism. During the movimiento, many Chicana/o activists solidified a univocal position from which Aztlan could be articulated. In other words, for many, Aztlan, as hegemonic, has been seen as monolithic and essentializing. Accordingly, Aztlan simply reestablished hierarchical structures based on gender, location, and sexuality—as well as entirely dismissing the Chicana, non-Southwestern, and queer voices from the Chicana/o movement. Within scholarly literature, the person most recognized for incorporating Aztlan into movimiento discourse was the poet Alurista (a pseudonym for Alberto Urista, b. 1947). The preamble to the collectively written Plan Espiritual de Aztlan has been credited to Alurista. According to the Plan, the Chicana/o community was united by a fraternal love and struggle against the exploitation and colonization of capitalist Anglo America. On the word of Alurista, as both aboriginal peoples and workers, the Chicana/o community was doubly oppressed and demanded community autonomy. In the end, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan served as a construct that united radical Mexican American organizations, such as MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlan), and produced a social justice movement that was simultaneously an ethnic and working-class movement. See also Gloria Anzald ua; Chicana/o Movement. FURTHER READINGS: Alarcon, Daniel C. The Aztec Palimpsest: Mexico in the Modern Imagination. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997; Anaya, Rodolfo, and Lomelı, Francisco, eds. Aztlan: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico [Academia/ El Norte], 1989; Fields, Virgina M., and Zamudio-Taylor, Victor. Road to Aztl an: Art from a Mythical Homeland. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2001; Forbes, Jack D. Aztecas del Norte: Chicanos of Aztlan. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1973; Maiz, Apaxu. Looking for Aztlan: Birthright or Right for Birth. Lansing, MI: Sun Dog, 2004; Navarette Linares, Federico. La migracion de los mexicas. Mexico City: Tercer Milenio (Consejo Nacional la Cultura y las Artes), 1998; Noriega, Chon A., et al., eds. The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztl an, 1971–2001. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2001.
Dylan A.T. Miner
21
B
v
The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1983). Directed by Robert M. Young and released in 1983, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez is a U.S. independent feature film starring Edward James Olmos and produced by Chicano activist/producer Moctesuma Esparza. It depicts the story of the famous corrido (narrative folk ballad) so documented in Americo Paredes’ 1958 classic book With a Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero. The film illustrates how Gregorio Cortez becomes a fugitive from the law as the result of a cultural and linguistic misunderstanding in turn-of the-century Texas. Cortez shoots a sheriff in self-defense after his brother is killed. This occurs after he is wrongly accused of stealing a horse. Cortez rode 400 miles on horseback and walked 120 miles along the Texas-Mexico border before being apprehended on June 22, 1901. The corrido, which has been described as the Chicano community’s form of social expression par excellence, describes how he outwitted the Texas Rangers. Twelve years later, Cortez was granted a gubernatorial pardon. Film critics have both praised and criticized the film: some thought it privileged the Anglo point of view and excluded forms of resistance and support that the Mexican community gave to Cortez when he was under trial; others thought the film was an important testament for both the Chicano and broader communities. See also Cinema. FURTHER READINGS: Fregoso, Rosa Linda. The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, 70–76; Gutierrez-Jones, Carl. ‘‘Legislating Languages: The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez and the English Language Amendment.’’ In Chon Noriega, ed. Chicanos and Film: Representation and Resistance, 195–206. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992; Sorell, Victor. ‘‘Ethnomusicology, Folklore, and History in the Filmmaker’s Art: The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez.’’ In Gary D. Keller, ed. Chicano Cinema: Research, Reviews and Resources, 153–58. Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Review Press, 1985.
Tamara L. Falicov Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1832–1918). Hubert Howe Bancroft was a businessman, historian, and collector born in Ohio. He opened a bookstore in San Francisco in 1856 that grew into the mercantile and publishing firm, H.H. Bancroft & Co. Success provided him with the means to amass a substantial collection of western Americana, which he used to produce a set of important regional histories.
22
Barbed Wire Bancroft began collecting texts in the late 1850s, focusing on California. In the following decades, the scope of his library expanded to cover all of western North America from Alaska to Central America, eventually reaching more than 60,000 books, manuscripts, newspapers, and various other records. In 1871, Bancroft began using his library to write and publish what would become the thirty-nine-volume Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. The series included some topical volumes, but most were geographically themed, with western American states representing the majority. Reflecting the strengths of his collection, California and Mexico both received multiple volumes. Bancroft, however, only wrote a fraction of the volumes himself. He employed a workshop of librarians and writers to produce the rest, a system that allowed for breadth but left the series with an uneven style. The set sold well due to Bancroft’s vigorous promotion. It received good reviews in general, but also criticisms for its disingenuous authorial claims and interpretations deemed insufficiently celebratory by contemporaries. Both Bancroft’s work and his collection, which he sold to the University of California in 1905, remain important tools for reference and research on the American West. FURTHER READINGS: Caughey, John W. Hubert Howe Bancroft, Historian of the West. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946; Clark, Harry. A Venture in History; The Production, Publication, and Sale of the Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
Robert Lee
Barbed Wire. Though often thought of as a uniquely Western innovation, the prototype for the style of barbed wire fencing used throughout the late-nineteenth-century Plains was actually patented in Illinois in 1874 by a New Hampshire–born farmer named Joseph Glidden, who sought a means of safeguarding his crops from wandering livestock. With the help of a coffee mill (which crimped the barbs) and a grindstone (which then affixed them to a double strand of wire), Glidden created a type of fencing material ideally suited to the treeless Plains, for it was strong enough to keep animals out (or in), but its construction required much less wood than a regular rail fence. Despite its obvious appeal, barbed wire did not catch on until 1876, when salesman John ‘‘Bet-a-Million’’ Gates staged a public demonstration of its effectiveness in San Antonio’s Military Plaza. Initially, barbed wire was most popular with Texas farmers, who—like Glidden— hoped to protect their harvests from being trampled. However, as they migrated from East Texas to the open ranges in the middle and western portions of the state, these ‘‘nesters’’ (as they were derisively called) met stiff opposition from area ranchers, who worried that the newcomers’ enclosures would impede the access of their cattle to the free water and grass of the public domain. Nevertheless, when it became clear to Texas cattlemen that they could not halt the farmers’ advance, they themselves adopted barbed wire, using it to keep interlopers away from watering holes and pasturage, while allowing for the selective breeding of their stock. Fences soon went up at a frenzied pace throughout central and west Texas, and Glidden himself got in on the act, as he and his partner ordered the construction of a 150-mile enclosure to surround their own Panhandle spread, the Frying Pan Ranch. While most Texas cattlemen fenced only lands to which they held title, others illegally enclosed portions of
23
Big Bend National Park the public domain, frustrating the farmers and smaller cowmen who still relied on the open range system to feed and water their livestock. These tensions boiled over in the summer of 1883, when a severe and extended drought struck Texas, most adversely affecting the livestock of those who had little or no access to streams and pastures. Thus enraged, some of the rural poor began cutting down the enclosures of their wealthier neighbors, touching off the so-called Fence-Cutters War, an episode that reached such proportions that Governor John Ireland called the state legislature into special session early the next year. Lawmakers responded by passing a bill that made fence destruction a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and allocated special funds for use by the Texas Rangers in eradicating the offense. The Rangers used lethal force in several instances—perhaps most effectively in Brown County, which was among the hardest hit areas in the state—and helped bring the epidemic to an end, though occasional reports of fence-cutting persisted into the early twentieth century. See also Ranching. FURTHER READINGS: Gard, Wayne, ‘‘The Fence-Cutters.’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly 51, no. 1 (July 1947): 1–15; Graybill, Andrew. ‘‘Rural Police and the Defense of the Cattleman’s Empire in Texas and Alberta, 1875–1900.’’ Agricultural History 79, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 253– 80; Holt, R.D. ‘‘The Saga of Barbed Wire in the Tom Green Country.’’ West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 4 (June 1928): 32–51; Holt, R.D. ‘‘The Introduction of Barbed Wire into Texas and the Fence Cutting War.’’ West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 6 (June 1930): 65–81; McCallum, Henry D., and Frances T. The Wire That Fenced the West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.
Andrew R. Graybill Big Bend National Park. Big Bend National Park contains 801,163 acres of desert, mountain, and river territory in western Texas. The park was created to protect the environment of unusual beauty and draw tourists to the region. The park was authorized by Congress in 1935 and it became the twenty-seventh United States national park on June 12, 1944. It is the fifteenth largest national park in the United States, the first along the U.S.–Mexico border, and the first in Texas. The park’s southern boundary sits along 118 miles of the Rio Grande where the river’s course abruptly shifts from a southeasterly to a northeasterly flow. This is the source of the name ‘‘big bend.’’ The park is known for its sharp contrasts in geologic formations, the subtle beauty of the vegetation, and the rare desert wildlife. The park consists of a mainly arid ecosystem and it includes prominent features such as the Chisos Mountains and Boquillas, Mariscal, and Santa Elena Canyons. The desert lands of approximately 2,000 feet in elevation contain mesquite and agave, but in the higher elevations of up to 5,500 feet, Douglas fir and ponderosa pine forests grow. The park provides habitat for animal species including bighorn sheep, black bear, collard peccaries (or javelinas), jackrabbits, gray and kit foxes, coyotes, badgers, mountain lions, bobcats, roadrunners, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and tarantulas. In total, the region boasts more than 1,000 species of plants, including 70 kinds of cacti, 3,368 different insects, 78 mammals, 71 reptiles and amphibians, and 36 fish. Some of the most popular attractions are the park’s 434 documented bird species, more than any other U.S. national park. Big Bend’s arid ecosystem and distance from large population centers make it less visited than many other national parks although visitation in
24
Big Four the 1990s averaged 300,000 people annually. Current management issues include air pollution blocking canyon views, car wrecks, and human and drug smuggling. Historically, the park was proposed by local residents who wanted to bring attention to the impressive scenery of the area. Early on, the project became international, as Mexican officials were asked to join the project and designate the adjoining areas of the states of Coahuila and Chihuahua as part of a cross-border park. National park officials such as Herbert Maier and Conrad Wirth from the United States and Miguel Angel de Quevedo and Daniel Galicia from Mexico conceived of the project as an international peace park, similar to Glacier-Waterton Park between the United States and Canada. Differing philosophies on park management and obstacles to acquiring the land impeded park development on the Mexican side. Efforts to create a joint protected area continued through the twentieth century, and although the Mexican government has created protected zones adjoining Big Bend, park administrators have not succeeded in creating a single international park. FURTHER READINGS: Gehlbach, Frederick R. Mountain Islands and Desert Seas: A Natural History of the US-Mexico Borderlands. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1981; Jameson, John. The Story of Big Bend National Park. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996; National Park Service. ‘‘Big Bend National Park.’’ August 2006. http://www.nps.gov/bibe; Welsh, Michael. ‘‘Landscape of Ghosts, River of Dreams: A History of Big Bend National Park.’’ September 2006. http://www.nps.gov/bibe/adhi/adhi.htm.
Emily Wakild Big Four. The Big Four, often known as ‘‘The Associates,’’ were four powerful men who organized, funded, and built the Central Pacific Railroad end of the continental railroad, which met with the Union Pacific line on May 10, 1869, in Promontory, Utah. The group consisted of Governor Leland Stanford of California, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, and the four delineated tasks in such an efficient way that they were part of the greatest engineering feat at that point in American history. The four businessmen came to California, like many others, during the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s. The Big Four met while they were organizing the California Republican Party, in an effort to get Abraham Lincoln elected in 1860 and keep the state in the Union. The Central Pacific line ran through new territories acquired in the wake of the U.S.–Mexican War and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase. Leland Stanford served as president of the Central Pacific concurrent with his one term as California governor between 1861 and 1862. Stanford was widely considered the most influential person among the Big Four because of his connection to the national Republican Party, his role in California politics, and his management skills honed as a businessman and governor. Stanford served as president of the Central Pacific until his death in 1893 and as president of the Southern Pacific line until 1890, when he was elected U.S. senator. The extent of former-governor Stanford’s influence on the railroad came out in his role in driving the final spike in the first transcontinental railroad. Collis Huntington was a New York businessman who came to California during the Gold Rush and set up successful businesses in Sacramento, where he met future railroad partner Mark Hopkins. Huntington served as vice president of the Central Pacific Railroad and advocated in Washington, D.C., for federal funding to develop the transcontinental railroad. His lobbying successes came with the signing of a
25
Border Arts Workshop contract with the federal government on November 1, 1862, to survey and develop the cross-country railroad across the southern United States, once the U.S. Civil War was over. Mark Hopkins is widely considered the primary organizer of the Big Four’s organization and financial efforts, because he was a decade older than the other three. Hopkins was manager of the New York firm James Rowland and Company and later owned the New England Trading and Mining Company, which gave him vital business experience during his time with the Central Pacific Railroad. Hopkins played the role of railroad treasurer and organizer until his death in March 1878. Charles Crocker was perhaps the most crucial partner in the Big Four, because his business acumen and connections with the construction industry were instrumental to implementing Stanford and Huntington’s plans. Crocker had already built a reputation as a successful businessman and state politician before taking on the task of leading the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad. Crocker was the shortest tenured of the four, leaving the leadership of the rail line in 1871 to pursue other construction efforts. See also Labor; Land Grants; Louisiana Purchase; Migration. FURTHER READINGS: Ambrose, Stephen. Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863–1869. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001; Bain, David Howard. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Penguin, 2000; Howard, Robert West. The Great Iron Trail: The Story of the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Putnam, 1962; Tutorow, Norman E. The Governor: The Life and Legacy of Leland Stanford. Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2004; Williams, John Hoyt. A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Times Books, 1988.
Nicholas Katers Border Arts Workshop. The Border Arts Workshop in San Diego, California, has been visually speaking to a consciousness of the borderlands and the complexities inherent in bordered identities and geographic spaces since its creation in 1984. Initially organized by David Avalos, Victor Ochoa, Sara Jo-Berman, and other Chicano/a activists and artists, the workshop is sponsored by the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego. Founded in 1970, this Chicano Cultural Center is part of the city’s famed Balboa Park, the United State’s largest urban cultural park that boasts more than fifteen major museums, a zoo, gardens, and numerous art performance venues. The Border Arts Workshop is heralded as a pioneering artistic organization, in part because it has consistently explored the tensions and ruptures of the borderlands amid some of the more-heated political debates of the last two decades. Workshop participants are largely composed of San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, artists, but the focus of the members involved in the collective is wide ranging. Recent shows have explored such issues as displacement in the Middle East, the plight of children internationally, ethnic identities among indigenous people around the globe, and women working in multinational factories along the U.S.–Mexico border. One of the workshop’s primary investigations revealed throughout its shows is what happens when cultures, regions, and spaces meet. Its overarching theme of interconnectedness allows for moving representations of the intersections existing between and among geographic borders.
26
Border Industrialization Program The Border Arts Workshop has had a vibrant history marked by inventiveness and stirring imagery. Its dynamic collections, including video monitors, performance art, light and sculpture installations, murals, photography, and interactive pieces, have awakened viewers to the struggles of oppressed peoples and the importance of resisting cultural suppression. Workshop members have also taken part in street events, workshops, and numerous forums to reach diverse populations and enhance the community life of participants. The Workshop has continued to explore the tensions and opportunities that arise at the meeting points of borderlands since it was first formed. True to the organization’s activist roots, members of the workshop helped sponsor the building of a new community arts center in Tijuana in 1998. Residents of Maclovio Rojas, a region in which most of the 6,000 to 8,000 villagers work for low pay in maquiladoras, can now come and pursue such activities as dancing, painting, singing, and acting. The center is a tangible reminder of the possibilities that can exist for individuals and communities amid difficult circumstances, as well as the role art can play in envisioning a new political and social reality. FURTHER READINGS: Border Arts Workshop. http://www.borderartworkshop.com/index.html (accessed 10/1/07); Griffin, Gil. ‘‘Space for Change: Colonia Works for Tomorrow by Building a Cultural Arts Center Today.’’ San Diego Union-Tribune. June 1998. http://members.tripod. com/zopilote/mrut698.htm htm; Prieto, Antonio. ‘‘Border Art as a Political Strategy.’’ ISLA: Information Services Latin America. ISLA, 1999. http://isla.igc.org/Features/Border/mex6.html.
Amanda Jane Davis Border Industrialization Program. The Border Industrialization Program began operations in 1965 at a time of high unemployment along the Mexican border caused largely by the end of the U.S. guest-worker initiative known as the Bracero Program. Mexican entrepreneurs, in cooperation with the federal government in Mexico City, enticed multinationals to establish assembly plants, or maquiladoras, in most of the border cities. Foreign companies could achieve tremendous cost savings because Mexican manufacturing wages were about 10 percent of U.S. manufacturing wages. Within a decade a Who’s Who of global corporate giants had established maquiladora operations, yielding huge profits because of the pro-business environment and availability of cheap labor. Between 1970 and 2001, the number of border maquiladoras rapidly grew from 120 to more than 3,700, while the number of employees rose from 20,327 to almost 1.3 million. Historically most of the plants have been heavily concentrated in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, while Matamoros, Reynosa, and Mexicali have emerged as second-tier centers of maquiladoras, and Nuevo Laredo, Piedras Negras, Ciudad Acu~ na, and Nogales as third-tier centers. Select cities in Mexico’s interior have also embraced maquiladoras. The products assembled in these factories are made almost exclusively from imported raw materials, components, and parts, and their final destination is largely markets outside of Mexico. Thus, maquiladoras are not integrated with other domestic industries in Mexico; they operate largely as foreign enclaves in the national economic system. The acute vulnerability of the maquiladora industry to international wage competition and periodic global recessions has been demonstrated repeatedly, but never so
27
Bracero Program dramatically as during the crisis of 2001–02. As a result of sluggishness in U.S., European, and Asian markets and the devastating impact of the terrorist attacks of 2001, droves of maquiladoras shut down or moved to China, Thailand, and Vietnam, lured there by production costs much lower than those found in Mexico. Wages topped the list of push factors that drove maquiladoras to relocate. In 2002, entry-level workers could be hired for a low as US$0.25 an hour in Asia, compared with US$1.50 to US$2.00 in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. The stability of the Mexican peso kept wages from dropping in Mexico, disappointing multinationals accustomed to periodic declines in their payroll as a result of peso devaluations. New taxes imposed by the Mexican government and the prospect of more regulation constituted two additional push factors influencing maquiladoras to leave the Mexican border region. Maquiladoras have not only increased the external economic dependence of the border region, but also of Mexico in general. These industries have become one of the top earners of foreign exchange in the nation. If for some reason the maquiladoras should significantly reduce their operations (for example, as a result of maquiladora migration to countries with cheaper labor), Mexico, and the border zone in particular, would experience a crisis of immense proportions. In the 1960s and 1970s, critics of the maquiladoras pointed out that the original purpose of the program, to alleviate the pronounced male unemployment at the border, had not been accomplished. Indeed, at the time, women who had only recently joined the workforce and who could be paid lower wages dominated the maquiladora employee ranks. In recent years, however, the representation of men has increased significantly. All along, detractors of the program have noted that with rapid industrial expansion on the border have come attendant social ills, such as inadequate housing, an alarming shortage of social services, increased crime, and family disintegration. Environmentalists, too, have accused the maquiladora program of aggravating pollution problems along the border. Others have argued that maquiladoras have encouraged more migrants from Mexico’s interior to head toward the border, thus contributing to a persisting overpopulation problem. For example, with an unofficial current population of about 2 million each, Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana are among the most overcrowded cities in Mexico. See also Economy; Environmentalism; Labor Unions. FURTHER READINGS: Martınez, Oscar J. Troublesome Border. Revised edition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press; 2006; Martınez, Oscar J., ed. U.S.–Mexico Borderlands: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Wilmington, DE: S. R. Books, 1996.
Oscar J. Martınez
Bracero Program. On July 23, 1942, Mexico and the United States signed an agreement to bring Mexican men north for agricultural work (under Public Law 45 of 1942, extended in December 1947, and 78 of 1951). This U.S.–initiated program emerged from a push from growers who claimed an imminent scarcity of laborers as more farmhands enlisted in the Armed Forces or found better-paying jobs in urban industry. While originally expected to last the duration of World War II, the Mexican-U.S. Program of the Loan of Laborers would last for twenty-two years. Over its duration, the Bracero Program, as this regulated migration was informally termed, would offer nearly 4.5 million contracts to almost 2 million Mexican men, most of
28
Bracero Program
Mexican migrant workers, employed under the Bracero Program to harvest crops on California farms, are shown working in the field in this 1964 photograph. The Bracero Program, a labor agreement between the United States and Mexico, supplied Californian farms in 1964 with 100,000 Mexican laborers. (AP Photo, FILE)
whom migrated after the war. The agricultural program also generated a similar one for the railroad industry, which only lasted during the war and imported many fewer men; in that case, unskilled workers, originally brought to lay track, ended up engaged in a variety of low-wage railroad jobs (the following information applies to the agricultural program). Mexico’s principal interest was who would official employ braceros. To avoid problems earlier migrants had faced when recruited during World War I, Mexico would only consider an agreement in which the U.S. government acted as the employer and where both governments administered the program and investigate claims of abuse. This condition prevailed for all but a brief period (1948–51), when growers were bracero’s employers. Complaints surged and as Mexico’s negotiating strength rose with the start of the Korean War, the United States was again forced to be the employer of record (1951 Public Law 78). Second, the agreement guaranteed (on paper) that migrants would live in sanitary housing, have access to medical care, and be paid the prevailing wage for the crop they picked—protections far stronger than those accorded U.S. domestic farm workers. Third, Mexico sought to control the location of the Reception Centers, arguing for their placement in the interior of the country and not near the border, where the United States wanted them. For Mexico, which lost this condition over time, the issue was both cost and control over migration; cost, in that Mexico paid men’s
29
Bracero Program transportation and board to Reception Centers, where the United States took over; and control over migration, in that it wanted to prevent both undocumented migration and the mass exodus from farm jobs in northern Mexico, where labor was scarce and lower paid. Fourth, the agreement required that growers demonstrate that they could not attract U.S. workers before they became eligible for Mexican farm hands (again, at least on paper). Over time these requirements effectively depressed wages and worked against farm labor unionization because growers, especially large growers, mobilized into associations and thus were able to act collectively, set salaries below what they would have needed to pay to attract domestic workers, and use the presence of these workers to undercut collective resolve. Fifth, Mexico foreclosed—at least at the outset—laborers going to Texas, citing discrimination against people of Mexican descent. Sixth, although the U.S. government set the number needed, Mexico retained control to allocate bracero slots and reduce the number of men selected. That Mexico never adjusted this number suggests that it recognized that it could not restrain men from going and reasoned that men garnered more protections from the program than by migrating outside it. Seventh, braceros— only men—would come for a limited amount of time, set according to the needs of growers. Lastly, Mexico mandated that 10 percent of workers’ wages be held in escrow, to be made available when migrants returned home. This provision increased the likelihood that men would return home and would do with some money, unlike previous migrations. This money (deducted from 1942–48) would be put to good use on tractors and other equipment on Mexican farms. The government was so invested in this aspect of the agreement that it halted negotiations at one point during World War II when the United States, with so-called limitation orders restricting the civilian production of farm equipment, refused to include it in the agreement. Most workers, however, never received these funds and many were not aware of them. While growers lobbied for a formal program without any governmental control and while migrants were deported for union activity (like the First World War version), two important things had changed. First, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy required that he (outwardly) treat Mexico as a sovereign country, changing the dynamics of negotiation and the clout that Mexico brought to the bargaining table. Second, in 1938, President Lazaro Cardenas stood up to the Roosevelt administration and nationalized the oil fields, some held by U.S. companies. He claimed sovereignty over its territory and subsoil, and refused to bow to U.S. pressure. While from the beginning Mexico tried to compensate companies, these companies felt that this compensation, calculated according to how oil companies had listed their assets and income on Mexican tax rolls, was insufficient. The result was a general boycott on Mexican oil, ignored by Japan, Germany, and Italy, and a U.S. refusal to settle the dispute. It was finally resolved when U.S. involvement in World War II sought to shore up hemispheric allies and access to Mexican oil and other products. In the end, the United States got most of what it wanted from the program: a World War II ally, increased imports of Mexican silver and grains, and the rationalized temporary employment of laborers for agricultural work. Mexico received respect and an international partnership in accordance with a new set of foreign policy relationships and objectives. When the program was terminated (1964), a move pushed
30
Bracero Program for by the United States, Mexico instituted the Border Industrialization Program, under which maquiladoras—assembly plants using imported materials and domestic labor—were set up just south of the U.S.–Mexico border. These plants, now owned by Koreans, Japanese, Americans, and others, were to industrialize Mexico using former bracero labor. In actuality, the preferred worker for maquiladora jobs is and has generally been a young Mexican woman, seen as more docile and controllable, and less likely to engage in union activity. Since the program’s end, braceros have struggled to recoup the 10 percent of their salaries withheld. They captured international attention when they filed a lawsuit in the early 2000s in California federal court. The case was thrown out, but the pressure still yielded results. Mexican President Vicente Fox called for small payments to be made to former braceros or their descendents for monies lost. See also Agribusiness; Economy; Immigration Legislation; Labor Unions. FURTHER READINGS: Anderson, Henry P. The Bracero Program in California. New York: Arno Press, 1976; Calavita, Kitty. Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the INS. New York: Routledge, 1992; Cohen, Deborah. ‘‘From Peasant to Worker: Migration, Masculinity, and the Making of Mexican Workers in the US.’’ International Labor and Working Class History 69 (2006): 81–103; Galarza, Ernesto. Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story. Charlotte, NC: McNally and Loftin, 1964; Lytle Hernandez, Kelly. ‘‘The Crimes and Consequences of Illegal Immigration: A Cross-Border Examination of Operation Wetback, 1943–1954,’’ Western Historical Quarterly 37 (Winter 2006): 421–44; Scruggs, Otey. Braceros, ‘‘Wetbacks,’’ and the Farm Labor Problem: a History of Mexican Agricultural Labor in the United States, 1942–1954. New York: Garland Publishers, 1988.
Deborah Cohen
31
C
v
~ez (ca. 1490–ca. 1557). Spanish explorer Alvar N ~ez Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar N un un Cabeza de Vaca was the first Spaniard to leave a written account of his travels across North America. His references to fabulous cities in the southwest, which he never actually saw, sparked later explorations. He was born in Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia, Spain. Cabeza de Vaca joined the Spanish army in 1511 and was second-in-command in Panfilo Narvaez’ expedition to Florida in 1527. Narvaez headed inland with 300 men, leaving half of his party behind with his ships. Hostile Amerindians drove the Spanish back to find their ships had departed, forcing them to build two crude boats and hug the Gulf Coast to return to Mexico. Shipwrecked at Galveston in 1528, ~ez, Alonso del Castillo, Andres the Karankawa tribe enslaved the survivors. Alvar N un Dorantes, and his slave Esteban, a Moor, escaped in 1534, eventually reaching the Pacific coast. The first Europeans to cross the North American continent, they survived ~ez became a respected medicine man. In 1536, they encounas traders and Alvar N un tered Spanish slave hunters in northwestern Mexico and returned with them to Mex~ez journeyed to Spain, returning to the Americas in 1537 as ico City. Alvar N un Governor of the La Plata region (modern-day Argentina). His men rebelled in 1543 and sent him to Spain, where he was imprisoned for eight years. He wrote three important works: Naufragios, chronicling the Narvaez expedition; La Relacion, covering his travels across America; and Comentarios, recording his time in South America. He died in Seville where he had engaged in trade with America. See also Francisco Vasquez de Coronado; Native Americans; War of the Gran Chichimeca. FURTHER READINGS: Bishop, Morris. The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca. New York: Century ~ez. The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca. Translation of La Co., 1933; Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar N un Relacion by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003; Terrell, John Upton. Journey into Darkness. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1962; Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Joanne Kropp California Gold Rush (1848). The California Gold Rush began in 1848 when one of the employees of the German-born entrepreneur Johann August Sutter, who built a
32
California Gold Rush (1848) frontier trading post at the junction of the Feather and Sacramento rivers in 1841, discovered gold in Sutter’s property. Following this discovery, hundreds of thousands of gold-seekers and merchants from around the world settled in California, the new Promised Land, and its overall population grew from about 25,000 in 1848 to more than 200,000 in the mid-1850s. Most of them were men who had left their spouses in the east, where women could obtain an unparalleled degree of independence. An estimated 5,000 people died during their east-west journey, while greed, racism, social anarchy, lawlessness, and the social Darwinist competition of an almost entirely masculine society—in some places the gender ratio was a staggering 97 percent men to 3 percent women—led to the killing and lynching of more than 4,000 Forty-Niners and countless Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexicans. A serious lack of sanitation and poor diet also caused numerous epidemics. As a result, it has been calculated that up to one-third of newcomers and old-time residents died of disease, accident, or violence. The Californian Dream of prosperity, peace, and freedom outran the reality, and disappointed a great many. The ‘‘Herrenvolk democracy’’ imposed on native peoples, the Chinese, and black ‘‘inferior races’’ drove the lingering aspirations to labor and social equality to a crashing demise. Property rights were respected only for so long and the materialist ethos of miners left little room for interethnic accommodation. The dedicated and lucky few were rewarded, while hardship, alienation, and desperation shattered the dreams of thousands, who could not extract enough gold to make a living. Most of them eventually retraced their steps to the east. Furthermore, a Foreign Miners Tax made mining unprofitable for most immigrant miners. New techniques were then introduced to increase profits. Initially, gold could simply be panned from rivers and streams, but ‘‘cradles,’’ ‘‘rockers,’’ and sluices were later used to extract gold from gravel far more efficiently. Starting in 1853, hydraulic mining by means of high-pressure hoses was pioneered in California, bringing about the corporatization of the Gold Rush. The systematic exploitation of lucrative Californian natural resources and the pollution of water and soil with mercury, which was indispensable for large-scale gold extraction, led poet Bayard Taylor to write in 1862 that nature in the mining regions ‘‘reminds one of a princess, fallen into the hands of robbers, who cut off her fingers for the sake of the jewels she wears.’’ The California Gold Rush was a dramatic confrontation between the values and ideals of technology-driven progress and nostalgic conservationism, unbridled competition, and tolerance, which continue to characterize American society today. See also Californios; Manifest Destiny; Joaquın Murieta; Frederick Jackson Turner; U.S.–Mexican War. FURTHER READINGS: Gutierrez, Ramon A., and Orsi, Richard J., eds. Contested Eden. California before the Gold Rush. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; Owens, Kenneth N., ed. Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002; Rohrbough, Malcolm J. Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997; Starr, Kevin, and Orsi, Richard J., eds. Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Tim Bowman
33
California Proposition 187 California Proposition 187. Concerned with what they perceived as the financial toll on California’s economy caused by the provision of public services like education and health care to undocumented immigrants, California voters passed Proposition 187 in November 1994. The referendum subsequently approved the prohibition of public services to those without proper documentation. In response, immigrant rights advocates challenged the proposition in the California Supreme Court and in district court. In 1995, in Los Angeles, U.S. district court judge Marianne Pfaelzer determined that the primary education standards set in Proposition 187 were unconstitutional. After this decision, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of a case that contended that prenatal funding for illegal immigrants was important to saving millions in state funds. Subsequently, Proposition 187 was further defeated by a combination of judge Pfaelzer’s March 1998 decision to overturn most of the public service prohibitions and the election of Democrat Gray Davis as governor of California in 1999. Proposition 187 consisted of eight distinct sections that were specific in their prohibition of the use of public funds for services to undocumented immigrants. The first section, as in most laws, was a general decree against the use of public services by noncitizens and the importance of state and federal agency coordination to accomplish this goal. As a means of enforcement, beyond what was already in California law, the proposition’s second and third provisions provided for strong penalties for both the users of forged documents but also to the manufacturers and distributors of such documents. The fifth through eighth provisions focused on the different aspects of public funding that would be covered by Proposition 187. This included the elimination of funding for social services, publicly funded health care, and education from kindergarten through twelfth grade. This proposition was comprehensive in its attempt at stopping money spent on immigrants who came largely from Mexico to pursue higher paying jobs. Despite the elimination of Proposition 187’s provisions in 1998, the sentiment and politics behind the proposition live on to the present day. Proponents of stronger border enforcement in states like California continue to advocate for the elimination of public services of undocumented immigrants as a deterrent from further migration northward. Opponents of Proposition 187 want to provide services to immigrants because of the role they play in filling critical jobs as well as the need to ensure the health and safety of migrant children. In the wake of Proposition 187, other state legislatures have passed similar measures. More recently, congressional debate has focused on immigration but without much success. See also Immigration Legislation; Labor; Migration. FURTHER READINGS: Ngai, Mae. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005; Ono, Kent, and Sloop, John M. Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California’s Prop 187. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002.
Nicholas Katers
Californios. In the broadest sense, Californios were Spanish-speaking residents of Alta California (the present-day state) from Spanish settlement in 1769 until the region became part of the United States following the U.S.–Mexican War of 1846–48. But
34
Californios the term most commonly refers to prominent rancheros; large landowners who dominated California politics and life from the 1820s until U.S. annexation in 1848. The Spanish crown had laid claim to Upper or Alta California since 1542, when Juan Cabrillo explored the Pacific coast as far north as San Francisco Bay. But the territory proved difficult to reach by sea and had no readily apparent value to Spanish officials in Mexico City. Thus, the first serious Spanish settlement of Alta California did not begin until 1769 when officials became concerned about British and Russian trading ventures then being established along the Oregon and northern California coasts. To reinforce Spanish territorial claims, officials approved the creation of a string of missions and presidios (forts) that would run from San Diego in the south to San Francisco in the north. The first Spanish settlers were mostly Franciscan friars, Mexican soldiers, and a handful of civilian settlers. Except for the Franciscans, the early settlers were poor mestizos, most of whom came from the northern frontier provinces of New Spain. While the land was fertile and the climate mild, immigration to California was a difficult and hazardous undertaking and immigration was slow and halting. As late as 1790, fewer than a thousand Spanish-speaking inhabitants lived in Alta California and a mere 3,200 lived there when Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. California was so isolated that virtually all of the Californios living there in 1821 were the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of settlers who had arrived in California before Yuma (Quechan) Indians closed the overland route in 1781. Though few in number, by the turn of the nineteenth century the Franciscans and Californios had come to dominate the California coast, displacing thousands of Miwok, Chumash, and Luiseno Indians from their homelands in the process and enticing or forcing others into the mission system. Life in Spanish California was dominated by the missions, which held large tracts of land surrounding the mission settlement. The land was worked by Indian neophytes or converts who lived within mission walls under strict control by the resident friars. The mission system was blatantly exploitative for California Indians and it was also a source of friction between friars and Californio settlers, for the missions controlled the best land and the bulk of Indian labor. But despite this ongoing friction, most Californios prospered. Beginning as landless and mostly illiterate peasants in a land plagued by draught, plagues, and poor harvests, Californios found a better life in Alta California, and by the close of the eighteenth century, once-landless migrants lived in strong adobe houses on their own land. Town life grew with the success of the people and after 1800, a growing number of merchants and craftsmen appeared in California towns to serve their rural customers. Civic life revolved around the church with its Sunday masses and feast days, while the Californios developed a distinctive culture punctuated by family rituals and public celebrations. Mexican independence in 1821 changed the face of Alta California and with it the lives of the Californios. By the 1820s, the California missions were a pale reflection of their original design. True Indian conversions were few in number and the missions themselves had fallen into disrepair. Known more for their exploitation of Indians than any good they had done, the mission system was dissolved by the Mexican government in 1834. Californio life also changed as a result of independence. With the missions out of the way, better-off families such as the Peraltas, Picos, and Bandinis began to file claims with the Mexican government for appropriated mission land. Following a
35
Californios system first established on a small scale by California Governor Pedro Fages in 1784, after 1834 the Mexican government awarded huge land grants or ranchos to government supporters who would remain in California and maintain Mexican control of the frontier province. Many of these ranchos totaled 100,000 acres or more and the new Californio elite turned them into vast cattle enterprises that produced meat, hides, and tallow for sale to American traders whose swift clipper ships had begun to trade at California ports in the 1820s. By the time the Mexican period ended in 1848, 200 elite Californio families owned more than 14 million acres of ranch land. Between their rise to prominence in the 1820s and the annexation of California by the United States in 1848, elite Californios fashioned a distinctive culture marked by aristocratic values and lavish spending. Adopting the rudiments of elite Spanish culture, the new Californios eschewed the world of work and labor (which they left to their Indian employees) and emphasized their hospitality, largess, and benevolence. Rancho families vied with each other for the honor of hosting the most lavish party, sponsoring the most spectacular dance, or promoting the largest rodeo. Californios earned huge sums of money every year, but they did so not to accumulate wealth, but to spend it conspicuously and thereby gain honor and reputation. The extravagant and romantic lifestyle of elite Californios proved to be short-lived however, for in 1846, Mexico and the United States went to war. Fought for control of the American Southwest, the war ended with Mexico losing half of its territory, including all of California. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the war in 1848 made all Californios, rich and poor alike, U.S. citizens and guaranteed the original Mexican land grants. But later the same year, gold was discovered outside Sacramento and, as one American resident of San Francisco wrote, ‘‘the world rushed in.’’ The California Gold Rush utterly transformed California and the Californios. By 1850, nearly a quarter-million Americans and fortune-seekers from around the world flooded into the gold fields, attracted by the lure of adventure and quick wealth. In 1850, California became a state, which proved to be the downfall of the Californios. Now part of the Union, American miners, speculators, and ordinary citizens considered all of California’s resources theirs, whether it was the gold panned from its rivers, or the land claimed by the Californios. For the next twenty years, Californios watched as Americans used legal chicanery, discriminatory laws, and violence to wrest control of their ranchos from their hands and place it into those of Americans. While a handful of Californio families managed to retain some of their land, most did not and the coming of the Gold Rush spelled the end of the Californios as a distinctive people in what was now hailed as the ‘‘Golden State.’’ See also Manifest Destiny; Monroe Doctrine; Pıo Pico. FURTHER READINGS: Beebe, Rose Marie, Mar, Rose, and Senkewicz, Robert M., eds. Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535–1846. Berkeley, Heyday Books, 2001; Haas, Lisbeth. Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996; Pitt, Leonard. Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1966, 1999; Pubols, Louise. ‘‘Fathers of the Pueblo: Patriarchy and Power in Mexican California, 1800–1880.’’ In Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, eds. Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.–Mexico Borderlands History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, 67–93; Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Ronald Schultz
36
Catholic Church Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has played an important role in the history and culture of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands since the Spanish conquest of the region. From the earliest interactions between Spanish missioners and native Americans up to the present day in which new immigrants are challenging older patterns of ministry, the Catholic Church in the border area has been marked by an ongoing negotiation between popular traditions and institutional structures. Spanish incursions into the area began in the early sixteenth century, but permanent settlement of Catholic Spaniards did not occur until 1598 when Juan de O~ nate claimed a vast region of what is now the U.S. Southwest for God and King Philip of Spain. Several Franciscan brothers accompanied his expedition and were responsible for evangelizing the native population. Over the next two centuries, the Franciscan order would be the most important Catholic presence from Texas to California (a notable exception being the Jesuit Eusebio Kino who organized Catholic missions in Arizona). The missions served not only to educate the native people in Catholic beliefs and practices, but also were instrumental in reconfiguring native cultures. The Franciscans’ mission system forced native people to live within the confines of the mission itself, to cultivate mission land, to carry out various other tasks, and to adopt Spanish social and political structures, dress, and ethical codes. Despite these forced measures, many of the missions failed due to outright revolts and a profound resistance among the native people to give up their original beliefs, rituals, and cultural commitments. By the time of Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, diocesan clergy overseen by bishops in major Mexican cities had been slowly supplanting the brothers and priests of the religious orders who had previously ministered in the northern reaches of Spanish territory. This takeover accelerated at independence and was solidified throughout the early nineteenth century. However, when the European orders were forced out of the region by the Mexican bishops, few priests were sent north to replace them. Local parishes would often go years without receiving the services of a priest. It was in this setting of relative isolation from clerical supervision that many elements of local and popular religiosity flourished. Indeed, Mexican Catholics on Mexico’s northern frontier were forced to rely on religious practices that did not require the participation of the clergy. One key element of this popular religion was the erection of home altars and local shrines, which served as places in the home or community dedicated to prayer. A typical home altar included devotional objects like statues of saints, crucifixes, candles, and rosaries. The many shrines in the region created public religious space wherein the faithful could pray for the saints’ intercession, leave ex-votos and other offerings, and make promises, or mandas, to God or a saint in exchange for healing or other miraculous intervention. Other popular religious practices included the dramatic reenactment of the Christmas story known as las posadas, celebration of the Dıa de los Muertos, participation in lay fraternities called cofradıas, and contracting the services of rezadores, nonordained Catholics who were especially gifted at offering public prayer. With Texas statehood in 1845 and the U.S. invasion of other northern Mexican lands in 1846, the Mexican Church in the region came under control of the U.S. Catholic Church hierarchy. After this change in administration, dioceses were quickly established throughout the U.S. West and Southwest. In almost all cases, French-born bishops were sent from the east to shepherd the new dioceses; these foreign prelates
37
Catholic Church often clashed with the more-entrenched Mexican priests. They were often displeased with the low levels of Mexican American church attendance and religious education. Tensions between official church practices and continued Mexican Catholic folk traditions were not uncommon, and many of the faithful were deemed ‘‘superstitious’’ and ‘‘ignorant.’’ In the twentieth century, the American Catholic Church initially made little effort to ordain Hispanic priests to care for Mexican American Catholics. Since the nonHispanic population in the west and southwest quickly surpassed that of Mexican Americans, most Catholic leaders assumed that Mexicans and their unique practice of Catholicism would soon disappear. However, as the absolute population of Mexican Americans continued to rise throughout the region, Church leaders began to feel an acute need to minister to Hispanic Catholics in the Spanish language and with greater sensitivity to traditional practices. While partially motivated by a sincere effort to serve fellow Catholics, much of their activity was spurred by fears that Mexican Americans in the border states would be successfully evangelized by Protestant missionaries. The Bishops’ Committee for the Spanish Speaking, formed in 1945, was one of the first official organizations to serve the religious and social needs of both citizen Mexican Americans and migrant Mexican laborers. The latter half of the twentieth century was marked by a greater commitment on the part of the Church to meet the needs of Hispanic Catholics. One sign of this new commitment was that Patricio Flores became the first Hispanic bishop in the United States in 1970. He and other Hispanic priests and bishops began to give an institutional voice to Mexican American Catholicism. In 1972, 1977, and 1985, Mexican American and other Hispanic Catholics met in national ‘‘Encuentros’’ to promote their concerns within the Church. It was also during this era that important groups like the Mexican American Cultural Center, Priests Associated for Religious, Educational and Social Rights (PADRES), and the cursillo devotional renewal movement contributed to a greater national consciousness among Mexican American Catholics. By the year 2000, a full 39 percent of all U.S. Catholics were Hispanic, and since then this figure has continued to grow. No discussion of the Catholic Church and Mexican Americans would be complete without a mention of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This uniquely American manifestation of Mary, the mother of Christ, first appeared to an indigenous Mexican named Juan Diego in the sixteenth century. Since then, she has become the preeminent symbol of Mexican Catholicism and religious identity. Her feast day on December 12 is celebrated in Mexican American parishes throughout North America, and her mestizo features can be seen in sanctuaries and shrines, and on paintings, clothing, banners, and prayer cards up and down the border. Pope John Paul II named the Virgin of Guadalupe the ‘‘Patroness of the Americas,’’ and in so doing, institutionalized the ever-growing importance of Mexican and Mexican American Catholicism for the entire Catholic Church. See also Popular Saints and Martyrs; Fray Junıpero Serra. FURTHER READINGS: Dolan, Jay P., and Hinojosa, Gilberto M., eds. Mexican Americans and the Catholic Church, 1900–1965. Vol. 1, The Notre Dame History of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994; Matovina, Timothy M. Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005; Sandoval, Moıses. On the Move: A
38
Central American Migration History of the Hispanic Church in the United States. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Department of Hispanic Affairs. http://www.usccb.org/ hispanicaffairs/.
Brett Hendrickson
Central American Migration. Two pressures from migration squeeze Mexico: (1) pressure from Central Americans wishing to enter Mexico, either to live and work there, or to transit through the country on their way to the United States; and (2) pressure emanating from the United States, whose policymakers would like to see Mexico curtail the amount of undocumented migrants who cross their shared border. With a reported 473 immigrant deaths in 2005, everyone agrees that the journey from Mexico to the United States is potentially fatal. Moral questions arise concerning accountability and responsibility for the people displaced by American actions in Central America during the Cold War. Also important is the idea of ‘‘compassion fatigue’’ that is plaguing the United States and causing irrational fear of immigrants. Chief among the other issues of Mexican and Central American migration are human trafficking, economic inequality, detentions and deportations, nongovernmental militias, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and xenophobia. The U.S.–Mexican War witnessed expulsions, land-grabs, and migratory movements. After the conflict, immigration patterns were diverse and relatively free-flowing. Between 1870 and 1910, nearly 20 million foreigners came to the United States. In the same period, nearly 1 million Americans left the United States, mostly for Canada but some to Latin America. During this time, travel costs and prohibitions were the most permissive, and American society was the most welcoming it has ever been. Following World War I, the United States focused on securing the border with Mexico and limited the number of people authorized to immigrate. Following the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas (1934–40), the relative calm of Mexico’s single-party system stabilized emigration and displacement. The U.S.’s passage of the 1965 Immigration Act led to the welcoming of millions of newcomers in the largest show of accommodation since the beginning of the century. After the recession of the late-1970s, a backlash stemming from ‘‘compassion fatigue’’ led to restrictive legislation during the 1980s and 1990s. Mexico’s 1994–95 economic crisis following the signing of NAFTA increased the number of border crossings. In their search for explanations as to why Mexico could not curtail undocumented emigration, some critics point to the historically asymmetrical relationship with the United States, as well as to internal constraints imposed by local actors within the balkanized Mexican state who undermine federal actions. In a figure that has doubled since 2002, around 215,000 Central American migrants were intercepted by Mexican authorities and returned to their countries of origin in 2004. There are forty-eight detention centers for undocumented Central Americans in Mexico. Despite the thousands of people passing through annually from nearly two dozen other countries, Mexico understands itself as a country of emigration. The nickname for its southern boundary, la frontera olvidada (the forgotten border), expresses this one-sidedness. About 40,000 Guatemalans pick coffee and do other farm work in southern Chiapas state each year, and Mexico may expand the guest-worker program to include the construction and service industries in southern
39
Ch avez, Cesar (1927–93) Mexico. Mexico faces a backlog of social, economic, political, and cultural issues relating to the fact that its Guatemalan border is the key gateway for Central and South Americans looking to cross into the United States. In order to contain the traffic of drugs, arms, and human beings, Mexico is treated like a so-called vertical border for the United States. U.S. President George W. Bush referred to this process as the ‘‘shared responsibility’’ of border security. Mexican officials said that their border guards detained 182,705 illegal migrants in 2006; the United States caught more than a million people crossing Mexico’s northern border without proper documentation during the same time period. In 2005, American authorities detained more than 1.5 million people crossing the border from Mexico. To reduce this number, the U.S. Border Patrol fortifies the main gates with high-intensity, stadium-type lighting and constant video surveillance; beginning in June 2004, the Patrol has also used unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) along the Arizona-Mexico border. Yet, the vast majority of apprehended migrants attempt to enter again within the next couple of days. The coyotes—human smugglers paid by hopeful migrants to lead them through deserts and mountains into the United States—often give their clients three ‘‘free’’ rides. The phenomenon is so commonplace that a Mexican resort offers a guided tour that replicates the experience of illegally crossing the border. Frustration within the United States has resulted in the formation of ‘‘volunteer’’ civilian armies, also known as militias. The public outcry also catalyzed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ‘‘Return to Sender’’ interior enforcement operation, whereby the government conducts raids to arrest and deport undocumented migrants. On September 14, 2006, as part of a larger program to curtail all undocumented migration, the House of Representatives voted 283–138 in favor of a bill calling for the construction of 700 miles of double-layered fencing to be added to the 75 miles of fencing already in place. Given all of these circumstances, the future is unsure for Mexico’s boundaries and reflects a sea change in attitudes toward migrants in the borderlands. See also European Immigrants and Communities; Immigration Legislation. FURTHER READINGS: Cohen. Jeffrey H. The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004; Fitzgerald, David. ‘‘Inside the Sending State: The Politics of Mexican Emigration Control.’’ International Migration Review 40, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 259– 93; Garcıa, Marıa Cristina. Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Stephanie J. Silverman Chavez, Cesar (1927–93). Cesar Estrada Chavez, the man whose name would become synonymous with migrant farm workers’ rights, was born near Yuma, Arizona, on March 31, 1927. During Chavez’s childhood, his father Librado ran a small farm that he eventually lost, joining, like so many other impoverished Mexican Americans in the mid-twentieth century, the migrant farm labor stream. Because the Chavez family was always moving in search of farm work for Librado, Cesar, by the time he was in the eighth grade, had attended more than thirty-seven schools. In 1942, Librado was severely injured in an accident in the fields. To circumvent the necessity of his mother Juana going out into the field, young Cesar dropped out of school and became a migrant farm worker himself.
40
Chavez, Cesar (1927–93) After two years in the field, in 1944, Chavez enlisted in the Navy. When his twoyear enlistment ended in 1946, he retuned home and in 1948 married a young woman named Helen Fabela. The two honeymooned in California and settled in a small town in the grape-growing region of the San Joaquın Valley, eventually having eight children. Although there is some indication that Chavez learned about social protest and nonviolent resistance from his mother (who also raised him in a devoutly Catholic household), it was in the late 1940s that Chavez met the people who would help develop the ideas that would change his life forever. In San Jose, Chavez met Father Donald McDonald, who introduced him to the writings of Saint Francis and Mohandas Gandhi. The two began discussing how passive resistance and strikes could be used to improve the living and working conditions of California’s mostly Mexican American and Catholic farm workers, who were not protected by any state or federal labor regulations. For Chavez, the ideological seeds of the farm workers movement had been planted. It was around this time when Fred Ross came into Chavez’s life, further steering him toward social activism. In 1952, Chavez joined the Ross’ Community Service Organization (CSO), a Los Angeles–based Latino civil rights group. The dedicated and energetic Chavez eventually became CSO’s national director, traveling throughout the state, encouraging Mexican Americans to vote, and giving speeches on workers’ rights. Dissatisfied with CSO’s inability to assist migrant farm workers, Chavez resigned from the organization in 1962, forming the National Farm Worker’s Association (NFWA). Based out of Delano, California, Chavez spent three years interviewing and enrolling workers in the NFWA. On September 8, 1965, after learning that Filipino farm workers had planned to strike and demand higher wages from local grape growers, the mostly Mexican American NFWA declared a strike. The Delano Grape Strike was born. Several historic events occurred during the strike. In the spring of 1966, Chavez led a 300-mile march from Delano to Sacramento, culminating in a public demonstration for farm workers’ rights on the steps of the state capitol. Chavez also announced a nationwide boycott of grapes, supported in large part by NFWA-led boycott committees in major cities across the United States and Canada. Also, in March 1968, the pious Chavez went on a highly publicized twenty-five-day fast to garner support for the fledgling farm workers’ movement. The fast drew national media coverage and the support of many, including Robert Kennedy, a fellow Catholic who took mass with Chavez when the latter broke his fast. Chavez was quickly becoming an icon for Mexican American civil rights. In July 1970, the union (now called the United Farm Workers of America, or UFW) won collective bargaining agreements with all of the California grape growers impacted by the strike. Chavez’s next step was to organize strikes and boycotts of various lettuce growers in California and Arizona, hoping to win collective bargaining agreements for workers in those fields. It was during this time, however, that people began questioning his leadership abilities. As the Chicano Movement grew in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Mexican American raised issue with Chavez’s personal outlook. At issue was the UFW leader’s stance on illegal immigration. During the grape and lettuce strikes, Chavez became aware that many growers would use illegal immigrants—who were eager to work and
41
Cheech and Chong (Richard ‘‘Cheech’’ Marin [1946–] and Thomas Chong [1938–]) could be easily intimidated—to break the UFW’s picket lines. Aware of the threatening implications this had for union activities, Chavez authorized picket leaders to call Immigration and Nationalization Services (INS) to have the illegal workers deported. This infuriated many Chicano Movement activists, who called for solidarity among all ethnic Mexicans, no matter what their country of origin. Facing political pressure and alienation within the ranks of civil rights activism, Chavez eventually softened his stance. Other problems arose within the ranks of the UFW itself. Many expressed concern over Chavez’s well-known participation in Democratic Party politics. Others thought that Chavez was losing sight of the original mission of the union. Antonio Orendain, one of the union’s original cofounders and leader of the UFW in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, broke away from the union in 1975, forming the Texas Farm Workers Union (TFW). Orendain—who was openly opposed by Chavez and other UFW officials—sought collective bargaining rights for South Texas farm workers. Other organizers also expressed frustration with Chavez’s leadership but chose to stay within the ranks of the UFW. As the late 1970s and early 1980s wore on, Chavez continued struggling for the workers, although gaining much less fanfare and attention. In the mid-1980s, Chavez announced a new grape boycott, this time to protest the harmful effects of pesticides on farm workers and consumers. After undertaking several more fasts in support of the new grape strike, Chavez passed away in his sleep on April 23, 1993. The UFW would continue organizing into the twenty-first century, but on a much smaller scale. Chavez left behind a strong legacy of self-sacrifice and struggle for Mexican American and workers’ rights. Although historians and conservative pundits sometimes question his motivation and persona, Chavez will remain celebrated by Mexican Americans and social activists for many years to come. To this day, his name remains synonymous with social change and struggle on behalf of the poor. See also Agribusiness; Labor; Labor Unions Chicano/a Movement. FURTHER READINGS: Ferriss, Susan, and Sandoval, Ricardo. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997; Levy, Jacques E., and Chavez, Cesar. Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. New York: Norton, 1975; Soto, Gary. Caesar Chavez: A Hero for Everyone. New York: Aladdin, 2003.
Tim Bowman Cheech and Chong (Richard ‘‘Cheech’’ Marin [1946–] and Thomas Chong [1938–]). Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong were celebrated comedians and actors during the 1970s and 1980s. Their best known films are Up in Smoke (1978), Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie (1980), and Still Smokin’ (1983). Typically, Cheech played a working-class Chicano while Chong played an stoned Anglo character. They began their careers on the stand-up comedy circuit until they were given a comedy album contract in 1972 for their self-titled record debut. From their albums and movies, they developed a cult youth following for their irreverent, laid-back, drug humor. Up in Smoke was the highest-grossing comedy in 1978. Cheech Marin’s Chicano character has been debated in academic circles as either ‘‘subversive’’ or ‘‘self-hating’’ in its humor. For example, his character could be seen an ethnic stereotype in the way he acts crude and oversexed, drives a ‘‘tacky’’ low rider, and speaks with a heavy accent. However, there are scenes in Up in Smoke to demonstrate that Marin’s character is
42
Chicana/o Movement empowered as a picaro, when he pretends not to understand English to use his boss’ car. Marin self-consciously challenges Hollywood stereotypes when his persona persuades an actor on the set of a racist ‘‘greaser’’ flick to temporarily disable the set. Cheech and Chong separated in the 1980s, citing creative differences. Marin went on to direct and star in the comedy Born in East L.A. (1987) in which his character is mistakenly deported to Mexico. He also became an avid Chicano art collector and arts supporter. Tommy Chong was arrested in 2003 for distributing drug paraphernalia and wrote a book maintaining that his arrest was part of a political backlash. See also Cinema. FURTHER READINGS: Fregoso, Rosa Linda. The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture. Minneapolis: University of Cheech and Chong, 1970s. (Courtesy of Photofest.) Minnesota Press, 1993, 49–64; List, Christine. ‘‘Self-Directed Stereotyping in the Films of Cheech Marin.’’ In Chon Noriega, ed. Chicanos and Film: Representation and Resistance, 183– 94. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Tamara L. Falicov Chicana/o Movement. The Chicana/o civil rights movement, commonly known as el movimiento (the movement) or la causa (the cause), is the name given to the radical social justice activism within the Mexican American community beginning in the late 1960s and ending in the early 1980s. During this period, various organizations and individuals throughout North America struggled for self-determination, equal rights, and economic equality. Most historians point to the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference held in March 1969 as the moment when the various factions of the Chicana/o Movement coalesced from regional and local sectors into a national alliance. This conference was hosted by the Denver-based Crusade for Justice, a civil rights organization headed by activist and boxing champion Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales. Although the Chicano Movement did not begin until the late 1960s, a period when anticolonial and anticapitalist movements were emerging on a global scale, its activist efforts built on previous experiences of resistance dating back many decades and even centuries. Accordingly, Chicano resistance to Anglo American oppression began at least with the 1848 signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It was this document signed to end the U.S.–Mexican War that transformed the northern frontiers of Mexico to the southern-most borderlands of the United States. In many ways, a unique Chicana/o community and identity was created practically overnight when Mexican nationals became ‘‘American citizens.’’
43
Chicana/o Movement During the 1930s, Mexican American-ness was used as a way to produce a U.S.– centered social space for Mexicans whose citizenship belonged to the United States. This period came to a head in the 1940s when Mexican American World War II veterans returned to the United States from combat in Europe to face rampant segregation, particularly in Texas. With their homecoming, Mexican American G.I.s expected to be treated with the respect and esteem they deserved as veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces. Instead, these veterans faced the same segregated realities they had confronted before their military service. In response to the needs of Latino veterans, the American G.I. Forum was an organization that strove for equal rights of Mexican Americans through a variety of campaigns, including antidiscrimination lawsuits, voter registration, and college scholarship competitions. The G.I. Bill gave many working-class enlistees access to higher education and served as a leveling-device for blacks, Latinos, and working-class whites within a traditionally racist and classist civil society. Concurrent with the activism of the G.I. Forum were the foundation and expansion of other Latina/o social justice organizations throughout the country. One such organization was the Community Service Organization (CSO). The CSO was formed by Saul Alinsky in 1947. It applied union-organizing tactics to civic Mexican American issues in California. In the late-1940s, Fred Ross, an Anglo community planner and activist, was sent to Los Angeles to organize Chicana/o residents and was introduced to a young organizer named Cesar Chavez. Working closely with Ross, Chavez organized more than twenty CSO chapters across California. In 1962, Chavez met resistance from CSO leadership about the prospects of working more closely with labor unions. In turn, Chavez resigned from his CSO appointment, closed the Los Angeles office where he had been working, and relocated to Delano in California’s rich Central Valley. Along with fellow organizers Gil Padilla and Dolores Huerta (collectively know as los tres), Chavez convened the first conference of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) that fall in Fresno, California. The first NFWA-supported strike occurred in 1965 when workers on a McFarland, California, farm aligned with the union to ensure higher wages and rectify on-the-job problems. In September 1965, the predominately Chicana/o NFWA joined the picket line with Filipino organizer Larry Itliong and Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) grape workers in the Delano Grape Strike. This strike, lasting five years, put tremendous economic pressure on the union and projected ‘‘the fight in the field’’ into the national consciousness. Through the direct action of farm workers and students alike, the support of activist solidarity, the production of community-based art, and international media coverage, the farm worker struggle was on the lips of workers and politicians alike. As this long-term strike persisted, AWOC and NFWA merged to form the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)–affiliated United Farm Workers of America (UFW). The UFW, although not a ‘‘Chicano’’ organization, would become one of the hallmarks of the Chicana/o Movement. In addition to the farm worker struggles of the UFW, student activists played a prominent role in the Chicana/o Movement. At a 1969 conference in Santa Barbara, Chicana/o students came together under the acronyms MEChA (El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan). Although an acronym, the organization’s name MEChA serves as a double-signifier in that MEChA is also the Spanish word for
44
Chicana/o Movement match. These young activists envisioned themselves not as the vanguards of Chicanismo, but rather as agitators who would ignite the flames of resistance. Collectively, these organizers saw Aztlan, the metaphorical homeland of the Aztecs, as the birthright of Mexican American peoples. In October 1967, Reies L opez Tijerina, an evangelical priest and leader of the Alianza de Pueblos Libres called young Chicana/o activists to a summit in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was here that fellow activist Jose Angel Gutierrez, a Movement leader associated with the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) in Texas, argued that Chicanas/os should use the term La Raza to self-identify, as Chicano had not gained widespread usage at that point. During the mid-1960s, Chicana/o student and youth organizations existed throughout the country, with solidarity networks across Mexico. These organizations included the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO or MAYA [Mexican American Youth Association]) in Texas; United Mexican American Students (UMAS) in California and New Mexico; various chapters of the Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC) also in California; and the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education (CCHE). These organizations also existed in barrios and colonias with large Latina/o populations in other parts of the country, particularly in Chicago, Michigan, and Washington state. When these organizations came together at the 1969 National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, the diverse organizing principles of the various Chicana/o factions were centralized into a(n) (inter)national ethno-class alliance. While the movement maintained a commitment to the ‘‘national’’ identity and struggles of the Chicana/o community, it formed a network in alliance with international anticolonial struggles in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. By doing so, Chicana/o activists were not producing a cookie-cutter structure for the movement, and instead created a network in which autonomous organizations could interact and work together. In northern New Mexico, Chicana feminists such as Betita Martınez and Enriqueta Longeaux y Vasquez produced El Grito del Norte, a newspaper in solidarity with the land grant struggle. This publication countered the assumptions that the Chicana/o Movement was a male-dominated space. Within a month of the Denver symposium, California students and university professors organized a summit at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was here that activists wrote the seminal document El Plan de Santa Barbara. This manifesto brought together all Chicana/o student groups under the name MEChA. While multiple names were up for debate, in the end, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan was chosen over the Chicano Alliance for Student United Action (CAUSA). In the end, the Chicana/o Movement changed the everyday reality of Mexican Americans through activism and confrontation of white privilege. However, as many historians have pointed out, the Movement was crippled by the prevalence of machismo and homophobia. Even with these caveats, the Chicana/o Movement cemented Latinas/os into the fabric of U.S. society. See also Gloria Anzald ua; Border Arts Workshop; Culture; Social Movements; Teatro Campesino; United Farm Workers. FURTHER READINGS: Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education. El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education. Oakland: La Causa, 1969; Espinosa, Dionne. ‘‘Revolutionary Sisters: Women’s Solidarity and Collective Identification among Chicana Brown
45
Chinatowns Berets in East Los Angeles, 1967–1970.’’ Aztlan 26, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 17–59; Garcıa, Ignacio M. Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos. Tucson: University of Arizona, 1997; Gonzalez-Berry, Erlinda, and Maciel, David R., eds. The Contested Homeland: A Chicano History of New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2001; Mariscal, Jorge. Browneyed Children of the Sun; Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965–1975. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2005; Navarro, Armando. Mexicano Political Experience in Occupied Aztl an: Struggles and Change. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira, 2005.
Dylan A.T. Miner
Chinatowns. Chinatowns were communities formed by Chinese immigrants in the United States beginning in the 1850s. Although most Chinatowns developed in urban settings such as San Francisco and New York City, even small western towns such as Boise City, Idaho, and Rock Springs, Wyoming, had their own distinctive Chinatowns. The largest and most important Chinatown in the United States was located in San Francisco. Like its counterparts in other areas of the United States, the creation of the Bay Area’s Chinatown owed more to white prejudice and discrimination than to Chinese desire to live in bounded communities. Anti-Chinese and anti-Asian sentiment generally was strong in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, and Chinese workers gravitated to existing Chinatowns or created their own ethnic communities to protect themselves and to forge livable lives in America. San Francisco’s Chinese community began as a small neighborhood near the business district of the city. Known as ‘‘Little Canton,’’ the community hosted dozens of groceries, laundries, restaurants, and shops that catered to Chinese customers as well as white businessmen who frequented the area. In 1853, a San Francisco newspaper referred to the growing Chinese neighborhood as ‘‘Chinatown,’’ and the name stuck. Chinatown’s economy rested on both a manufacturing and a service base. Laundries dominated the service industry and already by 1870, San Francisco counted more than 2,000 Chinese-owned laundries, a number that mushroomed to 7,500 a decade later. Chinese-owned garment and cigar-making factories employed more than a third of Chinatown’s workers, making it nearly unique among American Chinatowns, most of which did not support a manufacturing sector. Hundreds of small retail shops and restaurants rounded out the economic diversity of the ‘‘First City.’’ Chinatowns were usually bachelor communities, especially in the early years. The aim of most Chinese immigrants was to work in the United States, save, send money home, and advance their family’s position in China. Most men expected to return to China after a few year’s work on ‘‘Gold Mountain,’’ so there was little reason to bring wives and children to America. While some women did join their husbands and family members during the 1860s and 1870s, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 virtually stopped the legal flow of Chinese men and women to the United States. The result was that in most Chinatowns single men outnumbered women by large margins. In China, life was regulated by family clans, and in similar fashion, San Francisco’s Chinatown was controlled by the huiguan or mutual assistance societies established there. These associations assisted newcomers, protected them from outsider exploitation, and in general helped them adjust to life in America. The huiguan collected dues that were used to support widows and orphans, provide burials, maintain grave markers, and provide small loans in times of need. A combination of businesses and social welfare agencies, the huiguan were the backbone of every Chinatown, not only
46
Chinatowns in San Francisco, but wherever Chinatowns existed. During the 1860s, San Francisco’s six huiguans formed themselves into a single body, the Zhonghua (Chinese) Huiguan, better known to Americans as the ‘‘Six Companies.’’ The Zhonghua Huiguan became a powerful organization, regulating most internal aspects of life in Chinatown and, by the 1870s, acting as the semiofficial representative of the Chinese community to the American public as well as to government agencies. The hub of Chinese life in America, San Francisco’s Chinatown also supported the first Chinese newspapers in the United States. Beginning as Chinese sections of the Golden Hills News in 1854 and The Oriental a year later, these American-owned newspapers were directed at the Chinatown community by their editors, who had been longtime missionaries in China. Carrying news of the Chinatown community as well as business and commercial news from the wider city, state, and nation, these newspapers sought to educate their Chinese readers about the language, laws, and customs of America. Like the huiguan, the Chinese press sought to ease the adaptation of Chinese immigrants to American life. San Francisco may have been the First City to most Chinese, but Chinatowns existed wherever Chinese immigrants lived and worked, In California, Sacramento and Stockton were known as ‘‘Second’’ and ‘‘Third’’ City, while Los Angeles also supported a substantial Chinatown. As growing anti-Chinese sentiment and discriminatory laws peaked in the 1870s and 1880s, however, many Chinese immigrants fled the west coast for safer havens in other parts of the country. Their foremost destination in their quest for safety was New York City. Chinese sailors had moved into the city and formed families in the eighteenth century, but it was the push of mob violence and discrimination in the West that drove thousands of Chinese to Gotham. By 1880, more than a thousand Chinese lived in New York City’s newly created Chinatown. Located on the Lower East Side near Five Points, New York’s Chinatown functioned much like its San Francisco counterpart. Chinatown was self-supporting with laundries, cigar-making factories, groceries, and retail shops, and again like San Francisco, life was regulated by huiguan and by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the New York equivalent of the Six Companies. The greatest difference between the two coastal Chinatowns was gender imbalance: in 1900, there were fewer than 100 women among the 7,000 Chinese residents of New York’s Chinatown. Whether in New York, San Francisco, Denver, or Los Angeles, Chinatowns changed significantly in the post–World War II era. China was a wartime ally of the United States, and in recognition of this, Chinese immigrants were again allowed to enter the country and were allowed to become citizens. It was in this climate of growing acceptance that some Chinese entrepreneurs and civic organizations began to promote tourism in the larger Chinatowns. Shops were refurbished to cater to non-Chinese customers, restaurants invited customers with decidedly non-Chinese dishes as ‘‘chop suey’’ and ‘‘egg fu yung,’’ and civic organizations publicized Chinese New Year celebrations to attract tourists and to bring them into Chinatown shops and restaurants. As Chinese and Chinese Americans became more accepted in mainstream society, many families left Chinatowns for newly emerging suburbs, but a core population of businessmen and families remained. Since the 1990s, Chinatowns have become such an accepted part of American culture that several artificial ‘‘Chinatowns’’ have been built in Phoenix and Las Vegas, cities where no Chinese communities had existed in the past. Although smaller and much less well known, Chinatowns developed in Mexico as well. The major impetus for Chinese immigration to Mexico was less about work and
47
Cinco de Mayo settlement than about the fact that Mexico served as a staging ground for illegal entry into the United States following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The numbers of Chinese immigrants was small until 1902, when a regular steamship route was established between Hong Kong and Mexican ports. While most Chinese immigrants quickly crossed into the United States, a small number stayed to seek their fortunes in Mexico. By the turn of the twentieth century, Mexico City had a small Barrio Chino near the center of the city, a community that still exists today. The most important Mexican Chinatown, however, was established by early twentieth-century immigrants in Mexicali. Named La Chinesca, the immigrant enclave was established in 1903 by Chinese fleeing anti-Asian discrimination and legislation in the United States. La Chinesca grew rapidly after a wave of direct Chinese immigration at the end of World War I and flourished until the 1930s, when President Plutraco Elıas Calles ordered the deportation of most Chinese and Chinese Mexicans from the country. Flooded with unemployed workers by the forced deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans from the United States during the Great Depression, Mexican society witnessed a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment that paralleled, and sometime exceeded, that of their northern neighbor. Nonetheless, a small number of Chinese managed to remain in La Chinesca, which had a population of about 2,000 at the turn of the millennium. As in the United States, Mexico, too, has witnessed the rise of artificial Chinatowns designed to attract tourists and consumers, often in cities with no Chinese immigrant population. See also California Gold Rush; Cities and Towns; Filipinos; Railroads. FURTHER READINGS: Chang, Iris. The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. New York: Viking, 2003; Chen, Yong. Chinese San Francisco: A Trans-Pacific Community, 1850–1943. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2000; Tchen, John Kuo Wei. New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776–1882. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999; Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995; Zhu, Liping. A Chinaman’s Chance: The Chinese on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1997.
Ronald Schultz Cinco de Mayo. The May 5, 1862, Mexican defeat of the French in the Battle of Puebla is commemorated each year during Cinco de Mayo celebrations. It is a battle that Mexicans lost to the French who, with their conservative allies, occupied the country until 1867 when Mexican liberals under the leadership of Benito Juarez reclaimed the nation. During the French Intervention, most Mexican Americans were liberal allies (especially in the state of California) and showed their support by sending money or volunteers across the border to join Mexican resistance. Later, most Mexicans who made up the first significant emigration wave to the United States (1880–1900) identified as liberals. They joined other Mexican Americans in their Independence Day (September 16) and Cinco de Mayo festivities, which featured parades, horse races, cockfights, and political speeches full of patriotic remarks all over Southern California’s major cities. Appropriately, the Mexican American press, civic, and labor unions promoted these patriotic festivities as a way to show ethnic/national and cultural unity. Since 1921, the Mexican government started exporting Mexican nationalism through its consulates, and one of the events they encouraged was Cinco de Mayo. More recently, Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Hispanic Americans, and even some Anglo Americans
48
Cinema
Cinco de Mayo queens in Goliad, Texas, take time from the celebration May 5, 1999, to visit the monument to Texas-born Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza, who led outnumbered Mexican forces to victory over invading French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The key battle is fested each year on May 5 with festivities throughout the state. (AP Photo/Texas Parks & Wildlife, Earl Nottingham)
(with the avid support of the big corporate breweries and fast food chains) have made Cinco de Mayo into a holiday spectacle the size of San Patrick’s, while in Mexico few people give it much thought. See also Popular Saints and Martyrs. FURTHER READING: Rodrıguez Gonzalez, Ra ul. ‘‘5 de Mayo: A Cinderella in Mexico’s Civic Calendar and a National Holiday for the Chicano Community in the United States.’’ La Prensa, San Antonio, TX, 2003.
Raul Rodrıguez Gonzalez Cinema. The U.S.–Mexico borderland has produced a considerable number and variety of films in accordance to its complex and conflict-ridden existence. The border is
49
Cinema the space where these two national cultures have crisscrossed to generate a border culture. This culture is not Mexican or American but a Mexican American hybrid. In this respect, the borderland and its people have had a multiplicity of cinematic roles resulting from its history of difference, political confrontation, and ambivalence. Movies in and about the border have portrayed its spatial intersections, otherness, estrangement, and haziness. Inasmuch as the border has been a space of negotiation, confrontation, transacculturation, and hybrid identities, its representation in films covers a wide gamut of cinematic genres. Borderline movies can be grouped, according to the cultural intersections that take place on its space, into three types of productions: United States (mainly Hollywood), Mexico, and it dwellers, the fronterizos. Narrative films were the favorite genre in the United States. Between 1900 and 1951, the United States produced 21,000 feature films. The most popular films were westerns and warfare types, in its many varieties of dramas, romances, history, comedy, epics, and biopic. The U.S.–Mexican War of 1846–48 was a favorite Hollywood theme. D.W. Griffith made one of the first fictional movies of The Alamo, The Martyrs of the Alamo (1915). This was followed by thirteen other versions of the Alamo stand during the Texas secession, which further enhanced the mythical imagery of the Alamo and the heroics of the Texans. North American moviemakers made the 1910–20 Mexican Revolution a neverending source of cinematic storytelling. In 1913, North American filmmaker Harry E. Aitken partnered with D. W. Griffith to produce The Life of General Villa (1914). Both agreed that Francisco ‘‘Pancho’’ Villa could film his battles and forays, which were staged for the cameras with Villa being the main star. Among the more memorable North American movies about the revolutionary and actor is Viva Villa! (1934). It was directed by John Conway and Wallace Beery portrayed the elusive Mexican revolutionary. The most recent movie retelling Villa’s story is And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003) directed by Bruce Beresford with Antonio Banderas as Villa. Documentaries like The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa (2003), by Gregorio Rocha, rescued for the historical record the contemporary footage of Villa posing for the cameras. The other leading Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata, became an icon immortalized by Marlon Brando in the Elia Kazan rendering of Viva Zapata! (1952). Hollywood not only portrayed the Mexicans as ranch hands, vagrants, roaming Indians, smugglers, and more contemporarily, drug dealers but also as amusing and banal se~ noritas, hidalgos, and Latin lovers. Of the latter type, the first to make the screen was the famed Mark of Zorro (1920), a silent motion picture directed by Fred Nible and starring Douglas Fairbanks and Noah Beery. This adventure was the first movie version of The Mark of Zorro, which has seen several remakes, the latest of which had two sequels with Antonio Banderas, The Mask of Zorro (1998) and The Legend of Zorro (2005). Mexican Americans and Native Americans bore the brunt of the ill feeling of negative stereotyping, just as they did in their representation in the Southwestern dime novels and literature of the nineteenth century. Disapproving roles of Mexican and Mexican Americans can be traced back to Thomas A. Edison. He produced, with his kinetoscope, the first film about the violent Mexicans, Mexican Duel (1894). The short film, directed by W. K. L Dickson, displayed a knife duel between Pedro Esquirel and Dionecio Gonzalez. The thirty-second film had the dubious credit of encoding in the North American imaginary the long-lived visual of the violent Mexican. The script standardized the border as a lawless, grimy, and depraved place.
50
Cinema Predictably, the Mexicans and the Mexican Americans, on either side, were deceitful, lazy, and immoral. During Prohibition, the border was portrayed as a crime-ridden locale, because most of the activities outlawed in the United States crossed the border to operate from Mexico. Bordertown (1935), a film directed by Archie Mayo starring Paul Muni and Bette Davis, can be seen as a prime example of this cinematic perception. Casinos, gambling, alcohol, prostitution, and drugs were now main movie motifs of social melodrama. The formulaic seedy border appears to climax with three of the classic cinema noir productions of the 1940s and 1950s: Border Incident (1949) directed by Anthony Mann, Borderline (1950) by William A. Seiter, and Touch of Evil (1958) by Orson Wells. These films depict the most sordid and infamous face of the border region and the corruption of the authorities, smuggling, crime, and gangsters. Post–World War II movies such as Right Cross (1950) directed by John Sturgess, My Man and I (1952) by William Wellman, and The Lawless (1954) by Joseph Losey shifted the focus from the dreadful view of the border as paradise for illegality to the difficult themes of the untenable promised American dream for Chicanos and Mexican braceros. These movies directed their attention to Mexican American and Chicano identity and conditions of discrimination and marginality. Movies of the same time period directed their attention to the dire social conditions of Mexicans in the border states and are exemplified by A Medal for Benny (1945) directed by Irving Pichel, The Ring (1952) by Kurt Neumann, and Trial (1955) by Mark Robson. The border has rarely lost its imbued violent nature created at the jump start of the motion picture. Later movies, set on the borderlands, include Sam Peckinpah’s powerful westerns, The Wild Bunch (1969) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcıa (1974). On the Mexican side, it was not fiction film that made the borderlands a protagonist. It was the earliest form of the newsreel and documentary that made the border visual phenomena accessible to the masses’ affection for movies. Political events, scenery, festivals, and everyday occurrences were seized by the camera and became all the rage for the novel and fast-growing popular entertainment industry. In 1896, Salvador Toscano, the famed Mexican film pioneer, captured with his camera hundreds of hours of the public appearances of politicians, public demonstrations, folklore, and everyday events for an image-avid urban audience. Toscano was soon joined by filmmakers Guillermo Becerril, the Alva Brothers (Salvador, Guillermo, Eduardo, and Carlos), the Stahl Brothers (Jorge, Carlos, and Alfonso), and Enrique Rosas in the filmic frenzy. All of them were directors, producers, and exhibitors who were interested in the actuality of the events that were sweeping Mexico. Mesmerized by the expanding capabilities of the new visual media, they recorded the exuberance and pageantry of the last years of Porfirio Dıaz regime (1877–1910). One of the most renowned early documentaries of the border featured the meeting of President William H. Taft and Porfirio Dıaz, the first presidential summit of the two border nations. The reunion took place in Ciudad Juarez-El Paso on October 16, 1909, and it was filmed by the Alva Brothers. Another important news documentary about the border was Conferencias de Paz a Orillas del Rıo Bravo (1911) later incorporated into Memorias de un Mexicano (1950), which was the edited version of the many reels of Salvador Toscano’s life work. When the Mexican Revolution erupted in 1910, filmmakers documented the battles and exploits of the revolutionary armies that overthrew Dıaz. The Alva Brothers followed Francisco I. Madero’s campaign and produced several documentaries of these life battles in Revolution Orozquista (1912). Jes us H Abitia filmed the exploits of Francisco Villa and his Dorados of la Division del Norte.
51
Cinema In the aftermath of the Revolution, the Mexican movie industry grew under the auspices of the government. It produced story films advocating nationalistic themes. Filmmakers showed the plight of the lower-urban classes, the indigenous people, and rural population. Movies became conveyors of revolutionary propaganda and social drama was the chosen genre. In 1927, sound was introduced and the Mexican movie industry opened its ‘‘golden age’’ (1930–52). In the 1940s, the urban drama produced one of the most celebrated Mexican movies of the time, Aventurera (1949, directed by Alberto Gout). The final setting was Ciudad Juarez with its nightclub scenery and licentious lifestyle. It made the border town the metaphorical Mexican edge toward the North American precipice of the other side (el otro lado). The Bracero Program (1942–64) attracted many filmmakers’ attention to relate the Mexican migrant experience. Salient examples include Alla en la frontera norte (1943, directed by Juan Orol), Pecadora (1947, directed by Jose Dıaz Morales), Frontera Norte (1953, directed by Vicente Orona), Pito Perez se va de Bracero (1947, directed by Alfonso Pati~ no Gomez), Aca las Tortas (1951, directed by Juan Bustillo Oro), Yo soy mexicano de aca de este lado (1951, directed by Miguel Contreras Torres), and Asesino X (1955, directed by Juan Bustillo Oro). In this same year, Alejandro Galindo’s Espaldas Mojadas (1955) offered the Mexican public the crystallized negative view of the U.S. border side by depicting what was a common immigrant fate of exploitation, hardship, and death. Interestingly enough, Galindo’s film coincided with the anti-immigrant backlash in the United States and the onset of Operation Wetback (1954) under the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, which that year alone deported more than 80,000 Mexicans. The Mexican movie industry collapsed during the early 1960s. Hollywood and European movies, studio discrepancies, lack of credit, state interventions, and television contributed to its deterioration. Between 1960 and 1980 production concentrated on what is known as B movies with low budgets and minimal attention to artistry. Its main topics were the so-called fichera/cabaret movies, wrestling, drug trafficking, and sleazy subjects. It was during the 1990s that Mexican movie production began a new life cycle with quality filmmaking. The Mexican cinema boom that emerged during those years, and still raves today, directed its attention to the developments of the borderlands. The establishment of maquiladoras and the incorporation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 created a new life and new problems for la frontera. The border has become crucial for the United States, Mexico, and nations in the continent. Among the most recent releases related directly to the borderlands are Santitos (1999, directed by Alejandro Springall), Sin dejar huella (2000, directed by Marıa Novaro), El Jardin del Eden (1995, directed by Marıa Novaro), Like Water for Chocolate (1992, directed by Alfonso Arau), and Bajo California, el limite del tiempo (1998, directed by Carlos Bolado). The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the Chicano Movement—which was part of the general mobilization of U.S. minorities against segregation and discriminatory practices—were the breakthroughs for the advent of Hispanic/Latino production, direction, and leading performances. Latino production in Hollywood features, independent moviemakers, and binational productions became common. In the same way, Latino actors and actresses became familiar to U.S. and Latin American audiences. The most popular films produced during between late 1970s and 1990s were El Norte (1983, directed by Gregory Nava), Mi Familia (1995, directed by Gregory Nava), Zoot Suit (1981, directed by Luis Valdez), The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez
52
Cinema (1981, directed by Robert M. Young), El Alambrista (also known as The Illegal, 1977, directed by Robert M. Young), and La Bamba (1987, directed by Luis Valdez). During the late 1970s and more often during the 1980s, movies produced in the borderlands, commonly called Cabrito Westerns, began appearing in cinema and video rental stores catering to the public on both sides of the border. The genre mixed rural and urban settings, dealt with drug trafficking and smuggling, and featured few romances intertwined in the plot. Often, the movies were based on popular corridos, either traditional or narco-corridos of relative recent creation. The corridos are interpreted and oftentimes written by popular norte~ no music groups such as Los Tigres del Norte and norte~ no bandas such as Conjunto Primavera, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Los Gavilanes, Ramon Ayala, and Sus Bravos del Norte. Popular movies provide fashionable and widespread entertainment among Latinos in the United States throughout the border area and beyond. Sample movies of these genre include Lola la Trailera (1983, directed by Raul Fernandez), Contrabando y Traicion (also known as Camelia, La Tejana, 1977, directed by Arturo Martınez), El Traficante (1984, directed by Jose Luıs Urquieta), Tres Veces Mojado (1989, directed by Jose Luıs Urquieta), and several scores of movies starring the Almada Brothers (Fernando and Mario). Most of these movies were released on videotapes and compact discs at relatively inexpensive prices, which made them even more popular because they were readily available to Mexicans on both sides of the border. Pertaining to the same popular movies for the Mexican public, at home and abroad, was Ni de aqui ni de alla (1987, directed by Marıa Elena Velasco). La India Marıa, the Mazahua character who made Velasco a popular television, theater, and movie comedian, directed herself in this high commercial success. Cabrito Westerns, the fichera or cabaretera, and narco movies are despised by the Mexican upper- and middle-class critics, producers, and directors who see in these features the ugliest side of the Mexican populace migrating north. Additionally, they do not perceive any redeeming artistic or educational quality in these popular and commercial movies. In the 1990s, the fronterizos produced an alternative vision of the border, quite different from the imaginary constructions the came out of U.S. and Mexican studios. Todos los viernes son santos (1996, directed by Hector Villanueva), Flor de Nopal (2005, directed by Juan A. Pantoja), and Asfalto (2002, directed by Adriana Trujllo) are prime examples of the reappropriation of the border by the fronterizos. See also Dolores del Rıo; Music; Literature; Culture. FURTHER READINGS: Berumen, Frank Javier Garcıa. Brown Celluloid: Latino/a Film Icons and Images in the Hollywood Film Industry. New York: Vantage Press, 2003; Berumen, Frank Javier Garcia. The Chicano/Hispanic Image in American Film. New York: Vantage Press, 1995; Keller, Gary D. Hispanics and United States Film: An Overview and Handbook. Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Review/Press, 1994; King, John, Lopez, Ana M., and Alvarado, Manuel, eds. 1993. Mediating Two Worlds: Cinematic Encounters in the Americas. London: BFI, 1993; Maciel, David R., Ortiz, Susan Isidro D., and Herrera-Sobek, Marıa, eds. Chicano Renaissance: Contemporary Cultural Trends. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000; Mora, Carlos M. Mexican Cinema: Reflections of a Society 1896. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; Ramirez Berg, Charles. Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002; Reyes, Luis. Hispanics in Hollywood: An Encyclopedia of Film and Television. New York: Garland Publications, 1994.
Marıa Albelaez
53
Cities and Towns Cisneros, Henry (1947–). Henry Cisneros was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1947. In 1981, Cisneros became the first Latino mayor of San Antonio since the 1840s and would serve as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. At the height of his political career, Cisneros became one of the most prominent local politicians in the nation, but a series of personal and political scandals cut short his rise to prominence. Cisneros grew up on the predomiHousing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisnantly Mexican American West Side neros, 1996. (AP Photo/Susan Ragan) of San Antonio in a middle-class neighborhood. In 1975, he was elected to the city council, becoming the youngest councilman in San Antonio history. He aligned himself with the city’s powerful Good Government League (GGL), which maintained control of the city’s government from the 1950s to the late 1970s when the group finally collapsed due to federal action to end the decades-long electoral chokehold the GGL had held on San Antonio politics. Still, Cisneros separated himself from the GGL when he ran for mayor in 1981. He easily won reelection for two more two-year terms, serving until 1987. While mayor, Cisneros attracted federal money to the city, while also working to heal the ethnic divides within the Latinomajority city that had long been controlled by Anglo politicians. His successes in office brought Cisneros to the attention of the national Democratic Party, but family and personal problems forced him to leave politics in the late 1980s. President Bill Clinton named Cisneros his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, but Cisneros’s problems arose again in 1995 when an independent counsel began investigating allegations that Cisneros had lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about secret payments made to a former mistress. The investigation ended years later in 2006 as the longest independent counsel investigation in history, with no charges filed. After leaving politics, Cisneros has spent much of his time working on business ventures that seek to redevelop inner cities. See also Cities and Towns; Tejanos/as. FURTHER READINGS: Johnson, David R., Booth, John A., and Harris, Richard J. The Politics of San Antonio: Community, Progress, and Power. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983; Miller, Char. Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2004; Montejano, David. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987; Rosales, Rodolfo. The Illusion of Inclusion: The Untold Political Story of San Antonio. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
John Weber
Cities and Towns. The popular American perception of the Mexican border towns invariably conjures two persistent images. First, border towns are seen as tawdry yet
54
Cities and Towns convenient and accommodating tourist outlets that are proximate to American border towns. Second, they are viewed as small places, not quite large enough to warrant the label city. Although this view has become something of a cliche, it never was entirely accurate and is more a product of fantasy than reality. Fueled by high rates of in-migration and economic growth, the nearly 2,000-mile border corridor has emerged over the last five decades as one of the most urbanized regions in Mexico. Its largest cities are among the fastest growing in the Western Hemisphere. The six largest of these cities—in rank order, Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Mexicali, Matamoros, Reynosa, and Nuevo Laredo—each have populations that range between 1.2 million and 300,000, according to the 2000 Mexican National Census. In 1950, their combined population was less than half a million. As a consequence of such extraordinary growth, these communities have become dynamic urban places where a new structure and urban landscape have evolved that exhibit aspects of Latin American as well as North American cities, but that contain elements that are unique to the border as a place. Significantly, although all of these cities have grown, the degree of change varies considerably. It runs along a continuum from the small, stable towns with more traditional urban forms and only a few thousand people to the rapidly modernizing border metropolises with several hundred thousand inhabitants. This suggests that the border settlements are not today, and probably never were, as one-dimensional as they have been portrayed historically. Yet, in spite of their diversity, the border cities from Matamoros to Tijuana have been and continue to be shaped by similar forces. They share an experience dissimilar to other regions of Mexico; it sets them apart and gives them a distinctive landscape anatomy and personality. Despite the presence of colonial settlements, there was no border—and therefore, no true border towns—before 1848. During the second half of the nineteenth century, a series of small population nodes emerged along the border, and a few of these places became modest towns. In the hierarchy of Mexican cities, however, the border communities remained marginal. Between 1877 and 1900, no border town ranked among Mexico’s twenty-five largest cities. Urbanization along the border has been largely a twentieth- and twenty-first-century phenomenon. Although most of the border cities were founded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of settlements were initiated during the Spanish colonial era. Six of these have persisted to the present: Ciudad Juarez, Matamoros, Sonoita, Ojinaga, Reynosa, and Camargo. Six other border towns were founded in the nineteenth century, including Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, Piedras Negras, Ciudad Acu~ na, Nogales, and Agua Prieta. The border towns of Naco, Mexicali, San Luis Rıo Colorado, Tecate, Palomas, and Miguel Aleman were founded in the twentieth century. The early part of this century was a period in which the Mexican border settlements became economically dependent on tourist and entertainment economies sustained chiefly by North American patrons. This period coincides with the U.S. Prohibition era (1918–33) and follows closely an economic depression that devastated local border economies in the late nineteenth century. The so-called culture of sin that flourished in many border cities during this period was a combined product of North American investors fleeing moral reform in the United States and depressed conditions in border communities that led local politicos and businessmen to embrace pariah (socially outcast) economies. The results brought significant growth to most border settlements.
55
Cities and Towns A second growth phase in the border cities followed the economic depression of the 1930s and coincided with a U.S. military buildup during the 1940s and 1950s. Ten of eighteen border cities, including five of the six largest, are situated within several hours to less than a one-hour drive from U.S. military installations. These facilities provided the needed clientele for a rejuvenated entertainment and tourist economy in border cities after World War II. Additionally, during the 1950s, Mexicans from the interior came north seeking economic opportunity such as agricultural labor in the American Southwest. As a consequence, the border cities began to act as staging areas for further migration, adding significantly to their transforming populations. By 1960, the largest cities had grown to between three and ten times their 1940 populations, while medium-size cities doubled and tripled. As during the Prohibition era, border-city economies again became tied to North American tourist activity. However, other local factors such as petroleum industrial development at Reynosa, agricultural expansion at San Luis Rıo Colorado and Mexicali, and highway construction promoted by the national government all across the borderland region contributed to this urban growth. A third phase of border-city growth was initiated in 1961 when the Mexican national government created the Programa Nacional Fronterizo (National Border Program, or PRONAF). PRONAF was intended to change the unseemly image of border towns through public beautification projects, thereby creating Las Puertas a Mexico (the Gateways to Mexico). Incentives were set up for improvements in tourist services, including hotels, sports complexes, parks, theaters, museums, and handicraft shops. An outgrowth of PRONAF was the Border Industrialization Program (BIP) of 1965 that resulted in a free trade industrial corridor in which American firms could take advantage of inexpensive Mexican labor. Border cities could thereby act as magnets for employment and growth. Americans have come to know this economy as the maquiladora industry that continues to contribute to border-city economies. Both PRONAF and BIP were major catalysts to the continued urban growth along the border, catapulting population levels two to three times the 1960 levels in the largest cities and stimulating continued growth in medium-size cities as well. Today, the border cities exhibit certain spatial structural characteristics that may be distinctive to the region, such as their peculiar configuration, tourist districts, maquiladora industrial parks, and a highly centralized arterial street network oriented to the ports of entry. Border cities with few exceptions hold tight to the borderline, appearing like snails on an aquarium wall, and because most Mexican border cities are significantly larger than their American counterparts, the spread of the city along the boundary is a distinctive shaping feature. Tourist retail functions whether elaborately developed districts as in Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana, or underdeveloped nodes as in Pedras Negras and Tecate, are typically within short walking distance of the port of entry, convenient for day-tripping tourists. Maquiladora plants are largely concentrated in selected districts proximate to transportation arteries that link to border crossings, and in some cities like Nogales, they continue to be built on the sprawling periphery of the urban area. As border cities expand, new residential districts push to the margins of the city away from older housing areas in the central core of a community. In this way, the largest border cities are developing suburban housing and retail districts similar to the process experienced by U.S. cities in the postwar era. Alas, the border cities continue to serve as staging areas for illegal immigration to the United States, especially in smaller border towns like Naco and Palomas, because U.S. border enforcement concentrates on the larger border city intersections.
56
Colonias Although undeniably influenced by the North American economy and culture, the border cities appear to be more congruent morphologically with the contemporary urban centers of Latin America than Anglo America. See also Colonias; Economy; Immigration Legislation. FURTHER READINGS: Arreola, Daniel D., and Curtis, James R. The Mexican Border Cities: Landscape Anatomy and Place Personality. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993; Lorey, David E. The U.S.–Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century: A History of Economic and Social Transformation. Wilmington, DE: S. R. Books, 1999; Martınez, Oscar J. Troublesome Border. Revised edition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006.
Daniel D. Arreola and James R. Curtis
Colonias. Colonias are burgeoning neighborhoods and communities located on the outskirts of large urban centers and in rural regions throughout the U.S.–Mexico border. For almost 2 million colonia residents currently living in the United States, owning land in a colonia is one of the few alternatives to affordable housing and to achieving the Mexican American dream of home ownership. Colonias settlements are nonstandard and often irregular developments built without formal engineering, platting, or planning efforts. Housing in colonias is highly represented in the form of mobile homes and organically built and modified structures made by the residents’ vernacular and self-help housing skills and social networks. Colonias are significant to the U.S.–Mexico border region, primarily because they house migrant, farmworking, and low-income residents whose primary goal is to live close to their work. In policy terms, colonias have been primarily defined for what they lack, mainly physical infrastructure and financial resources. Under U.S. federal housing law, a colonia is defined as any identifiable community that (1) is in the state of Arizona, California, New Mexico, or Texas; (2) is within 150 miles of the U.S.–Mexico border, except for any metropolitan area exceeding 1 million people; (3) lacks adequate sewage systems as well as decent, safe, and sanitary housing; and (4) has been in existence as a colonia before November 28, 1990. The official recognition and designation of these settlements as colonias is significant for local communities in requesting and acquiring federal, private, and institutional funding. Colonias play central and critical roles in housing a significant number of citizens and laborers who contribute to the economic, political, and social dynamics of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Although many colonias have a long historical trajectory as borderland communities, their visibility and recognition as population settlements of interest to scholars and policymakers dates to the mid-1980s, as investments in the border manufacturing and agricultural industries between 1960 and 1980 generated considerable low-wage labor opportunities in Mexico’s northern border region. The growth in employment opportunities during these historical periods and economic spurts did not, however, translate into parallel investments into the border region’s infrastructure and housing stock. Historically and politically, colonias in borderlands region have been linked to unregulated land sales and development, primarily as many of these settlements have been sold to buyers without the necessary infrastructure such as potable water, paved roads, and sewage systems. Many of these settlements are founded on fallow farm and desert land not originally intended for population settlements, and as such lack much
57
Colorado River of the physical infrastructure and public services often associated with larger urban settings. Because of their location and lack of visibility, colonias are more vulnerable to a number of environmental, health, and social justice issues, as well as to the pejorative treatment of colonias and their residents as populations on the fringes or margins of society. However, colonias as population settlements represent a conglomeration of human resiliency and creativity behind the processes of becoming rooted, including the social and political activism, civic participation, and strategic collaboration involved in building U.S.–Mexico border communities from the ground up. See also Border Industrialization Program; Bracero Program; Cities and Towns; Disease; Environmentalism; Health; Maquiladoras. FURTHER READING AND VIEWING: Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). ‘‘Colonias and Farm-Worker Communities.’’ http://www.hud.gov/groups/colonias.cfm; PBS. ‘‘The Forgotten Americans: A film about Las Colonias.’’ 2000. http://www.pbs.org/klru/ ~ez, Carlos G., Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southforgottenamericans/; Velez-Iban ~ez, Carlos G., Samwest United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996; Velez-Iban paio, Anna, and Gonzalez-Estay, Manolo. Transnational Latino/a Communities: Politics, Processes and Cultures. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
Guillermina G. Nu~nez Colorado River. The Colorado River originates in the southwest corner of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park and flows southwest through Utah and Arizona. The Colorado River leaves the United States near San Luis Rıo Colorado, runs through Baja California and Sonora, Mexico, and flows into the Gulf of California. Over its 1,450-mile course, a number of tributaries flow into the Colorado, including the Gunnison, Green, San Juan, Virgin, and Gila Rivers. The Colorado from the Hoover Dam to the river delta is blockaded by more than 30 dams, irrigates more than 3.5 million acres, and serves the water needs of some 30 million people. From Rocky Mountain National Park, the Colorado River flows through Grand Lake and Lake Granby, and then southwest through the state of Colorado. In Utah, the river flows along the southern boundary of Arches National Park, then southward to Canyonlands National Park, where the Green River joins the Colorado. The river then flows into Lake Powell, formed by Glen Canyon Dam, near Page, Arizona. Lee’s Ferry, just below the dam, marks the dividing line between the Colorado River’s upper and lower basins. South of Lee’s Ferry, the Colorado enters the Grand Canyon. The river then flows generally westward until entering Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, formed by the Hoover Dam (formerly Boulder Dam). Flowing south from Lake Mead, the Colorado forms the border between Arizona and Nevada, Arizona and California, and Arizona and Baja California, Mexico. From Hoover Dam to the U.S.–Mexico border, the river encounters a series of dams: Davis Dam, forming Lake Mojave; Parker Dam, forming Lake Havasu; and Imperial, Laguna, and Morelos Dams. These series of dams serve multiple roles, including irrigation, water supply, hydropower, flood control, and recreation. In addition to the ten major dams on the Colorado River, more than eighty structures divert water from the river to meet human demands. At Morelos Dam, near Yuma, Arizona, the Colorado River is diverted to Mexico to irrigate the Mexicali Valley. With the ‘‘Law of the River,’’ the system of policies, court decisions, and multistate agreements dictating the allocation and use of the Colorado, the river was divvied up
58
Colorado River to serve the agricultural, power, and urban needs of seven western states and Mexico. Rights to the river are divided between the Upper Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) and the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, and Nevada), with each basin receiving an annual allotment of 7.5 million acre-feet of water. The U.S.–Mexico Treaty on the Utilization of Waters of the Colorado and Tijuana Rivers and of the Rio Grande (1944) allocated 1.5 million acre-feet to be delivered by the United States to Mexico. The growth of metropolitan areas is rapidly escalating the pressure placed on the water supply of the Colorado River. Moreover, the Law of the River allocates more water than the river can typically provide. In an average year, 13.5 million acre-feet of water flows in the Colorado River. However, the 1922 Colorado River Compact, 1944 U.S.–Mexico Treaty, 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact, and subsequent court decisions and federal law overallocated the river based on an average annual flow of 16.4 million acre-feet. As a result, access to a limited supply of water has been at the heart of conflict over the Colorado River. This battle is made even more complex by tribal water rights to the river—established by treaties, executive orders, and court decisions—that predate nontribal rights. If decreed those rights, Native American tribes could claim more than 2 million acre-feet from the Colorado River, leaving many existing water users high and dry or paying dearly for water. Established in 1902, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is the federal agency charged with managing the Colorado River. Americans envisioned irrigation as the way to ‘‘reclaim’’ the West for human use and pressed Congress to establish the Reclamation Bureau. Since its inception, the Reclamation Bureau has developed 180 projects in 17 western states to supply water and hydropower at an approximate price tag of $11 billion. The 726-foot high Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, completed in 1935, became an icon of American greatness and ability to ‘‘master’’ nature. The International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), known as the Comision Internacional de Lımites y Aguas (CILA) in Mexico, is the federal institution with binational authority over surface water resources, including the Colorado River. Established in 1889, the IBWC/CILA is responsible for applying the requirements of a variety of water and boundary treaties. IBWC/CILA conducts work on reclamation projects, boundary maintenance, transboundary water resource apportionment, and resolving treaty and water quality disputes. For thousands of years, the Colorado River served diverse human and ecological communities. The river wove its way through cragged canyons, long valleys, and the Native American communities dependent on its resources. The river was the source of life in the arid Southwest as well as a powerful and destructive force when flooding. In the U.S.–Mexico border region, the river became a magnet for trade in the second half of the nineteenth century. The 1852 launch of the first Colorado steamboat began an era of river exploitation. Steamboats traveled through the Colorado River delta, carrying ore from Yuma, Arizona, to the Gulf of California and returning with food and material goods. In 1869, geologist John Wesley Powell became the first to successfully explore and run the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. In the early 1900s, settler began to realize that the river’s delta region and the Imperial Valley of California had great promise as an ‘‘agricultural empire.’’ The California Development Company began plans to divert the Colorado, and by June 1901, water reached the Imperial Valley. In less than a year, the valley had 400 miles of canals and more than 100,000 acres ready for cultivation. Shortly thereafter, the Reclamation Bureau began
59
Colorado River to develop the Yuma Project, which envisioned a massive system of canals, and the Laguna Dam to make the Arizona and California deserts blossom. The construction of dams and canal systems dramatically altered the Colorado River. The development of these projects transformed the Colorado from a silty, warm river with highly fluctuating flows to a clear, cold river with more consistent flows. Damming halted periodic flooding and the depositing of silt, and shrunk Colorado River wetlands by more than 1.7 millions acres, threatening wildlife and plant populations. Alterations to the character and quantity of flows significantly affected the river’s native fish, such as razorback sucker, humpback chub, bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow, and Sonoran topminnow. Seven of the Colorado River’s nine native fish species are now federally listed as endangered. Changes to the Colorado have ironically made the river more inhabitable for nonnative fish, such as rainbow trout and largemouth bass, that managers introduced to the river for recreational purposes. When Lake Powell, the last major reservoir on the river, reached full capacity in 1980, water diversion utilized almost the entire flow of the river, leaving little water in the river for environmental purposes. Morelos Dam, the last dam on the river 23 miles north of the southern U.S. border, diverts nearly all remaining river flow to Mexico. Yet changes in climate patterns and precipitation in the 1990s restored large portions of the Lower Colorado River ecosystem. Now, the region from Morelos Dam to the Gulf of California is recognized as having the most valuable riparian habitat on the Lower Colorado, perhaps the entire river. However, this ecological revitalization is threatened by water rights squabbles, escalating human demand for water, and climate change. The Colorado River Compact does not recognize environmental protection as a ‘‘beneficial use,’’ leaving the flora, fauna, and fish—and the people who depend on and value them—the last in line for water. The Colorado River is at the crux of major economic, political, social, and environmental concerns not only facing the U.S. West, but the nation. American society is at a crossroads whereby difficult decisions must be made about water supply and whether it can continue to meet escalating human demands as well as the requirements for environmental preservation. The Colorado River nourishes a vital wetland ecosystem in the U.S.–Mexico border region that continues to be threatened by a diminishing water supply. More that 30 million people rely on the river in the two nations. In the next several decades, the populations relying on the Colorado in Arizona, California, and Nevada could double, while the population of many other regions across the U.S. West is projected to increase. At the same time, climate change could have significant impacts on the Colorado River region, including reduced snowpack, earlier snowmelt, and higher evaporation rates with corresponding declines in water supply. With those changes, the Colorado River would not be able to meet existing or projected water demands. It is rumored that Mark Twain once said, ‘‘Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting over.’’ That axiom becomes even more poignant considering that the Colorado River is often referred to as the lifeblood of the West. The Colorado is the most litigated river in history, and it continues to be the battleground for divergent interests across the U.S. West. The Colorado is one of the most controlled rivers in the world, yet it is also envisioned as one of the wildest rivers. It supplies water for agriculture, human consumption, irrigation, hydropower, and many other uses. The Colorado also provides habitat for wildlife and recreational settings for fishing, boating,
60
Communications hiking, camping, and birding. And, the river is highly valued for its aesthetic qualities. In 1981, Phillip Fradkin described the Colorado ‘‘as a river no more.’’ Nonetheless, with its many roles and all that it represents, the Colorado River is, and will continue to be, one of the most dynamic and debated subjects in American society. See also Environmentalism; Louisiana Purchase; Protected Areas and Parks; Salton Sea; U.S.–Mexican War; Water Issues. FURTHER READINGS: Fradkin, Philip L. A River No More: The Colorado River and the West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981; Hundley, Norris. Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975; International Boundary and Water Commission. www.ibwc.state.gov; Powell, John Wesley. The Exploration of the Colorado River. Abridged from the 1st edition of 1875. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957; Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986; United States Bureau of Reclamation. www.usbr.gov.
Garrit Voggesser Communications. From the earliest settlements in North America and Mexico, a few intrepid couriers traveled with letters from the core British, French, and Spanish settlements to the borderlands by land. This largely proved a haphazard and problematic method, and most communication was achieved along sea routes. Several letters from the first decade of the 1800s survive, all hand-stamped with the name of the place of origin in an irregular oval frame or with a large, red stamp. As Anglos began settling in Texas, demand for more regular communication increased. When Texas became a republic in 1836, letters to Texas from Mexico and elsewhere were hand-stamped by various forwarding agents in New Orleans, including William Bryan who worked as general agent for the Government of Texas and Sam Ricker Jr., known as the ‘‘agent of the Texian Post Office Dt., New Orleans.’’ Although letters continued to be a main mode of communication, the telegraph system became important for cross-border communications in the 1850s. In 1843, Samuel Morse managed to get an electric telegraph system established between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, and the network was quickly expanded to cover most of the major urban centers in the eastern states, gradually covering other regions. Mexico began work on its first telegraph system in May 1849, and by 1852, service between Mexico City and Veracruz was established. Soon thereafter, telegraph lines stretched across much of Mexico. At the same time, Texas started its own network, followed by California whose system underwent a much-needed reorganization in the early 1860s. The Pony Express courier service competed with the upstart telegraph service. Just as the American Civil War broke out, the Pony Express started taking messages from the United States to Mexico through the young town of El Paso. On the Mexican side of the border, the township of El Paso del Norte grew rapidly and in 1888 was renamed Ciudad Juarez after the Mexican politician Benito Juarez. During the American Civil War postal services in the Confederacy (including Texas) continued, with letters either carried on blockade runners—ships trying to break through the Northern blockade—or on the land route from Texas to Mexico. The inability to get stamps in Texas led to the post offices in Austin, Beaumont, Galveston, Goliad, Hollandale, Houston, Huntsville, La Grange, Plum Creek, Port Lavaca, Richmond, Victoria, and Weatherford introducing their own hand-stamps. As the
61
Corona, Bert (1918–2001) war progressed, the route into Mexico was fraught with problems on the Mexican side. Sporadic fighting had resulted in a civil war between liberal forces loyal to Benito Juarez and their conservative rivals, who sided with Emperor Maximilian, an Austrian archduke installed as ‘‘Emperor of Mexico’’ by the French. Fighting from 1864 until the liberals triumphed in 1867 wrecked the telegraph system in Mexico, although the postal system seems to have continued along alternative routes other than El Paso/Ciudad Juarez. Letters from Texas thus went through New Orleans and then to Veracruz before reaching the Mexican capital. Soon the telegraph system gave way to the telephone. In 1876, the first telephone call was made between Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson. In February 1878, the first telephone exchange was established at New Haven, Connecticut. In the following month, the first telephone line in Mexico was established, linking Mexico City and the neighboring town of Tlalpan, ten miles away. Soon afterward the network in Mexico started to include police stations, businesses, and the homes of wealthy individuals. Establishment of the Mexican National Bell Telephone Company soon brought many more into the incipient network. In 1924, the government network was sold to the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (I.T.T.), which went into competition with the Swedish-owned Meteric. Not surprisingly, telephone lines crossed the U.S.–Mexico border. Indeed for some of the settlements that straddled the boundary, there was often a telephone exchange covering both sides of the border. This resulted in the publication of a number of binational telephone directories listing numbers in both countries. A 1930 directory issued by The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Co. entitled ‘‘El Paso and Vicinity,’’ however, only covered subscribers in the United States, although an occasional cross-border business does appear in the classified section (or Yellow Pages). With lower telephone call prices and the widespread use of the Internet, cross-border communications today is cheaper and easier than ever before. See also Media; Railroads; Remittances; Santa Fe Trail. FURTHER READINGS: Billings, R.R. ‘‘Mexico: Porte de Mar.’’ The American Philatelist (December 1977); Bolton, Herbert Eugene. Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970; Robert A. Siegel, 1994; The ‘‘Camina’’ Collection of Texas Postal History. New York: Thompson, Robert L. Wiring a Continent: the History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States 1832–1866. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947; Thonhoff, Robert. San Antonio Stage Lines 1847–1881. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1971.
Justin Corfield Corona, Bert (1918–2001). Bert Corona was a Mexican American union organizer known most prominently for his work with undocumented Latinos in the United States. An intelligent and athletic young man, he won a scholarship to University of Southern California to play basketball and study commercial law. He left school to focus his energies on the labor rights movement. He worked with several community labor organizations, including the League of Spanish-Speaking People, the Community Service Organization, the National Association of Mexican Americans, and La Asociaci on Nacional Mexico-Americana. Through his work with these organizations, Corona met Cesar Chavez. Corona also served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor. He is most known for his work with undocumented Latino workers
62
Cortina War (1859) through La Hermanidad Mexicana Nacional and CASA (Centros de Accion Social Autonomo). Although the direction of CASA did not suit Corona, he continued his work with La Hermanidad. Despite the flaws he perceived and fought to rectify in the Immigration Act of 1986, Corona assisted eligible illegal aliens with obtaining citizenship under the Act by offering English classes and helping them to obtain documents necessary for amnesty to be granted. Corona, with La Hermanidad, helped more than 160,000 Mexican Americans gain citizenship. See also Agribusiness; Chicano Movement; United Farm Workers of America. FURTHER READING: Garcıa, Marıo T. Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Vicki Gruzynski Cortina War (1859). Following the U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48), former soldiers, squatters, and Anglo American businessmen entered the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and they used violence and intimidation to displace Tejanos from their lands and positions of influence. As Mexicans defended their land titles in court, they learned that the American court system would not uphold their rights. Thus, South Texas represented a region of interracial friction between Tejanos and Anglo Americans during the 1850s. By 1859, these land disputes resulted in a violent ethnic conflict that occurred in Brownsville, Texas. On July 13, 1859, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, a local ranchero and the son an aristocratic mother who owned land near Brownsville, shot Marshal Robert Shears in the arm for using unnecessary force against a Mexican ranch hand who had once been Cortina’s employee. Following the confrontation, Cortina took the prisoner and crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico. On September 28, 1859, Cortina returned to Brownsville, where he led a force of forty to eighty armed men. During the raid, they killed at least three people, released all the prisoners from the town’s jail, and hoisted the Mexican flag over Fort Brown. As Cortina’s men rode through the streets, they shouted ‘‘Death to the Gringos’’ and ‘‘Viva Mexico.’’ However, some of the men that Cortina intended to kill, including rancher Adolphus Glavaecke and Marshal Robert Shears, had fled from the town. Cortina remained in control of Brownsville until September 30 when influential Mexican authorities Jose Marıa Cabajal and Miguel Tijernia persuaded him to give up the town. He rode back to his mother’s ranch in Cameron County and issued two proclamations that stipulated his intentions for amassing an army and denouncing the presence of Anglo Americans in South Texas. The size of Cortina’s army increased as nearly 400 Mexicans on both sides of the Rio Grande joined his cause. In the following days, the citizens of Brownsville raised a force of nearly twentyfive men to protect the town and patrol the streets. Under the leadership of W. B. Thompson, they also formed a twenty-man group called the Brownsville Tigers to drive Cortina from his mother’s ranch. In November 1859, the Brownsville Tigers along with a militia company from Matamoros launched an attack against Cortina. As they approached Santa Rita, Thompson’s group encountered a few of Cortina’s men. During the ensuing battle, the Mexican troops captured two small cannons and forced the Brownsville Tigers and militia company to retreat.
63
Coyotes Meanwhile, a company of Texas Rangers under Captain William G. Tobin arrived in the lower Rio Grande Valley to reinforce the citizens of Brownsville. In late November, Tobin’s troops launched an unsuccessful expedition against Cortina. On December 5, 1859, a second group of Texas Rangers under the command of Captain John Salomon ‘‘Rip’’ Ford and 165 U.S. Army troops led by Major Samuel P. Heintzelman arrived in Brownsville. The combined force of federal troops and Texas Rangers defeated Cortina’s army at the battle of Rio Grande City on December 27, 1859. Following the battle, Cortina retreated into Mexico, where he remained in the Burgos Mountains for more than a year. The Cortina War resulted in the deaths of fifteen Americans and 230 Tejanos as well as severe property damage in the lower Rio Grande Valley. More important, the conflict led to Anglo Americans conducting counterraids against Tejanos residing in South Texas during the late nineteenth century. FURTHER READINGS: De Leon, Arnoldo. They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821–1900. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983; Thompson, Jerry D., ed. Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier, 1859–1877. El Paso: Texas Western Press, University of Texas at El Paso, 1994; Utley, Robert Marshall. Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kevin M. Brady Coyotes. In Spanish, coyote is the common name for the mammal Canis labrans. However, within the Mexican territory, this word has two other colloquial uses. It refers to an illegitimate intermediary of any kind of transactions for a commission or percentage in exchange. This meaning dates at least to the latter half of the nineteenth century. In Mexico, when people want to get around a difficult or slow process, they hire a coyote for help. A second use of the word coyote refers to a broker of a commodity who serves as an intermediary linking the direct producers to enterprises who consume it in their own production or carry out its distribution. Along the U.S.–Mexico border, both uses of the word coyote are linked to labor emigration practices. Illegal Mexican migrants who intend to cross the border hire a coyote to help them to get around the bureaucratic requirements they should fulfil as legal immigrants. Also, they hire coyotes to be smuggled away from the U.S. ports of entry. Coyotaje or smuggling is a set of strategies related to the labor migration on the behest of the migrants and in concert with migrants’ friends and family members and U.S. employers. In the last century, coyotaje has transformed its strategies as it has been directly influenced by the U.S. border policy. In the earliest period of Mexican labor migration to the United States, the main activity of coyotes consisted in traveling to the Mexican interior to gather groups of potential laborers to work in the United States, promising better labor conditions and transportation to the U.S.–Mexico border. Another coyote strategy was to recruit Mexican laborers once they entered into the United States. Many of the coyotes working in Mexico were Mexicans or Mexican Americans who could engage workers in towns along the border because of their appearance and command of the Spanish language. During the early years of the twentieth century, this system known as enganche (‘‘the hooking’’) became self-sustaining due to the better labor conditions in the
64
Coyotes
Unidentified migrants cross the waters of the Rio Grande with the help of a ‘‘coyote’’ or smuggler, in an attempt to reach the U.S. border from in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico in 2006. (AP Photo/German Garcia)
United States. One benefit of this policy was that Mexican workers often returned to their towns spreading the word of these improved conditions. These workers were then accompanied by friends or family members seeking employment, thus reducing recruitment expenditures and the activity of enganchadores (‘‘hookers’’). The enganchadores focused in the border towns of Ciudad Juarez, Nogales, Nuevo Laredo, Piedras Negras, and Matamoros, where the contractors only had to wait for the hundreds of workers seeking employment and contract them. In 1908, San Antonio and El Paso became important labor depots for the rest of the country. The 1920s marked a rise in the large-scale coyotaje dedicated to the clandestine entry as it is known today. Antimigratory measures taken during the 1920s compelled coyotes to diversify their strategies, changing from red-tape experts to guides who lead the clandestine-crossing treks. During the Bracero Program (1942–64), illegal migration occurred simultaneously with the importation of legal Mexican labor to the United States. The principal reason for this migration was the lack of contracts available for the numerous Mexican workers demanding work in the United States and the hardships of obtaining a legal contract. This situation made coyotaje a highly lucrative activity. In spite of the mistrust of the Mexican workers, they hired coyotes to pay bribes to the people in charge of enlisting those who would be sent to contracting centers and to write the letters of recommendation required at the recruitment centers.
65
Coyotes In 1949, the number of unauthorized migrants entering the United States peaked as a result of a change in the bilateral agreement that prioritized legalization of those who entered illegally to the United States. This policy offered great benefits to those who crossed the border illegally. People smuggling has become the preferred trade of a growing number of clandestine networks consisting of men and women distributed along the route to the United States. The journey may begin at the migrants’ communities where one member of the smuggling chain recruits those workers seeking jobs in the United States. In other cases, recruitment is made at downtowns or bus stations of border towns. Once the contract is made, the coyotes transport the migrants to a house of security—characterized by the overcrowding conditions—where another member of the smuggling chain (cuidadores) is in charge of preventing the potential workers from going out and being recruited by other coyotes. The next stage of the journey is made by viajeros (travelers) whose work consists of walking from the house of security to the crossing point at the border. Once they have arrived, the guıas (guides) lead the trek through the desert or across the Rio Grande. Usually, these guides are natives of the border area who know how to avoid the obstacles of the path. Others were migrants themselves who learned the route after crossing several times. The guides are generally in good physical condition, are aware of the Border Patrol’s movements and schedules, and know the places where activists put water along the desert. As soon as a group reaches the American side of the border, another member of the chain—raitero or the person who drives an automobile (generally American citizens or residents)—wait for the migrants at the border or at houses of security to take them to their final destination. At the end of the chain is the cobrador or collector who collects the money for the services. Based on a code of honor, the coyote is obligated to guarantee a safe crossing. Migrants already living in the United States help their relatives to finance the border-crossing trip by hiring a coyote, and ensuring that payment is made after the service is concluded. In spite of the fact that the methods of coyotaje have been the same throughout a century, the strategies used by coyotes have changed proportionally to the difficulties imposed by the American border policy, especially after the militarization of the border during the 1960s and 1970s and the official relationships established between the Immigration and Nationalization Services (INS) and a wide variety of federal security, police, and military agencies. Following the signing of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), coyotes have benefited from the commercial and transportation legislation that allows entering the U.S. territory with trailers, furniture vans, and U-Haul trucks that are useful to border crossing with numerous groups of migrants. The large variety of individuals working as coyotes, along with the inherent profits of the activity, has made possible the use of new technology in organizing longer trips. Mobile phones, automobiles, trailers, trains, security houses, and, in some cases, private airplanes are part of the new methods of alien smuggling, along with providing false documents. Even though there does exist the kind of coyote who kidnaps, extorts, and steals clientele, coyotes are closely linked to the migrants’ home communities. Even more so, the profits involved with coyotaje have extended to border towns and have become
66
Cuisine an essential financial source for restaurants, transportation agencies, bars, taxis, hotels, and phone booth owners who depend on the coyotes’ customers. Also, the profile of people hiring a coyote has diversified during this time due to the rise of transmigrants coming from Central and South America, Africa, China, and the Middle East who cross Mexican territory to reach the United States. This new demand has been satisfied by coyotes using these new technologies and even with fake traveling agencies that disguise the crossings. The high rate of deaths along the border linked to the clandestine entry of migrants can be explained by the fact that the U.S. policy has included the construction of fences that discourage illegal immigration by exposing illegal workers to the dangers of daytime dehydration and night-time hypothermia. Another fact to take into account is the danger represented by anti-immigrant vigilante groups such as the Minutemen in the Arizona and Texas area. People smuggling or coyotaje is considered a high profitable business that attracts many youngsters between eleven and fourteen years old who have become members of coyote gangs, in spite of their scarce knowledge of the crossing areas and route. This lack of knowledge has become another risk factor for those who want to reach the United States. See also Economy; Legal Issues; Migration; Operations; Organizations and Governmental Agencies; Policy. FURTHER READINGS: Conover, Ted. Coyotes: A Journey through the Secret World of America’s Illegal Aliens. New York: Vintage Books, 1987; Kyle, David, and Koslowsky, Rey, eds. Global Human Smuggling. Comparative Perspectives. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001; Nevins, Joseph. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the ‘‘Illegal Alien’’ and the Remaking of the U.S.–Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge, 2001; Ramos, Jorge. Dying to Cross: The Worst Immigrant Tragedy in American History. New York: HarperCollins, 2005; Urrea, Luis Alberto. The Devil’s Highway: A True Story. Boston: Little, Brown, 2004.
Anahı Parra Cuisine. The foods of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico developed through a long history of cultural fusion, mixing the contributions of Native Americans, Spaniards, Anglos, and many others. As a result, the borders between different ethnic cuisines are often difficult to define; for example, Texas chili is now considered a basically Anglo dish despite its Mexican origins, while the kosher burrito has become a California institution. The culinary border may best be viewed as a process; foods serve as boundaries separating ethnic groups (‘‘they eat that?’’) and simultaneously offer inviting ports of entry for those who wish to sample the unfamiliar (‘‘does it taste good?’’). Indeed, border foods have transcended their geographic origins through the global popularity of Tex-Mex and its relatives. Food on both sides of the border can be seen as one regional style, norte~ no, within the broader category of Mexican cuisine. One distinctive characteristic of northern Mexican cooking is the use of wheat flour instead of corn in making tortillas. With access to great herds of livestock along the frontier, norte~ nos are also more carnivorous, and particularly fonder of beef, than Mexicans farther south. On the other hand, the grassy plains and arid deserts of the north offer less variety in vegetables, herbs, and chiles, limiting the potential for complex sauces and soups. These common elements notwithstanding, foods vary greatly from the Californias to the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps the oldest of these regional cuisines, New Mexican food extends beyond the geographic confines of the state to include the San Luis Valley in southern
67
Cuisine Colorado, the mountains around Flagstaff in northern Arizona, and parts of Chihuahua, Mexico. The state’s eponymous chile pepper forms the basic ingredient, served as a stew, a sauce, or stuffed with cheese as chiles rellenos. Cooks also prepare a variety of different corn dishes, including blue corn, chicos (roasted green ears), and posole (hominy). Pork is more common than beef, often served in adovada, a spicy marinade. Common desserts are fried bread sopaipillas and bu~ nuelos topped with local honey. The regional cooking of Sonora, encompassing both the Mexican state and the southern half of Arizona, features the mild Anaheim chile pepper and plentiful beef. Even after the advent of refrigeration, one of the most common methods of preparing the meat was a colonial style of jerky, sometimes called machaca, for the pounding needed to reconstitute it. Flour tortillas, while common throughout the Southwest, also reached the peak of artistry in Sonora, where cooks often roll them out to perfectly round, paper-thin disks a foot and a half in diameter. When wrapped around beef or bean fillings, they are burritos, unknown in the rest of Mexico, and their deep-fried cousins, the chimichanga. Texans, and their neighbors in Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila, likewise share a taste for beef, spiced with red chiles, cumin, and oregano, the distinctive flavors of Tex-Mex cooking. Anglos first encountered this spicy stew in nineteenthcentury San Antonio, where outdoor vendors became an important tourist attraction under the name ‘‘Chili Queens.’’ South of the Rio Grande, however, cabrito asado (roast kid) has become the most famous regional dish. Working-class Mexican Americans along the border learned to make use of castoff cuts of meat, such as the diaphragm muscle (arrachera), which lost its tough texture in a marinade of lime juice and garlic and became quite delicious when grilled on an open fire and served with salsa on hot, fresh tortillas. California cooking has undergone the greatest changes as the small colonial population was swamped by later generations of Mexican migrants. Thus, few now make the original Californio ranch dinners of barbacoa de cabeza de vaca (pit roasted cow’s head) and tamales with olives and raisins. Instead, perhaps the most distinctive local foods are the fish tacos originally served to surfers and other tourists along the coast of Baja California, which spread north of the border only in the 1980s. Otherwise, Cal-Mex is more an invention of contemporary restaurateurs, while home cooking generally follows recipes carried by migrants from throughout the Mexican Republic, from Oaxaca to Tijuana. From the first encounters with the ‘‘Chili Queens,’’ nonethnics have profited from the industrialization of border foods. A German immigrant, William Gebhardt, formulated the chili powder known as Tampico Dust, which helped spread the taste for chili across the country, even as San Antonio health officials closed down the original stands in the early 1940s. In a similar fashion, Elmer Doolin purchased the formula for Fritos corn chips from a nameless Mexican American in 1932, and Dave Pace began bottling salsa in 1948. By the end of the century, supermarket sales of tortillas, chips, salsas, and other Mexican foods had grown into a US$3 billion market, although only a small fraction of this revenue went to ethnic businesses. The restaurant industry, particularly fast food, also reflects the corporate domination of border foods. Glen Bell, founder of Taco Bell, started out with a hotdog stand in 1948, in Downey, California, just across town from where Richard and Maurice McDonald were pioneering the modern fast-food industry. Bell applied their model
68
Culture to a new market segment, the Mexican taco common to southern California. He boosted efficiency by prefrying corn tortillas and adapted his chili dog sauce into salsa. With this prototype for the hard taco shell, Mexican-style food was released from the need for fresh tortillas. Along with look-alike competitors, Taco Bell defined Mexican food for an entire generation in the United States and throughout the world. Beginning in the 1980s, border foods were gentrified through the fad for Southwestern cuisine. The signature dish, fajitas, was simply the Texan arrachera served up on a fancy a grill plate with sour cream and bell peppers. Dubbed ‘‘skirt steak’’ for Anglo sensibilities, it became too expensive for the working-class Tejanos who invented the dish. In a similar fashion, underpaid Mexican migrants are now ubiquitous in restaurant kitchens throughout the United States, while Anglo celebrity chefs profit from their labor. See also Anthropology; Californios; Culture; Folklore; Health; Tejanos. FURTHER READINGS: Abarca, Meredith E. Voices in the Kitchen: Views of Food and the World from Working-Class Mexican and Mexican American Women. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006; Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Foods and the Making of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998; Pilcher, Jeffrey M. ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
Jeffrey M. Pilcher Culture. Border culture can refer to two domains: (1) the cultures of specific groups of people living in the regions around international boundaries; and (2) the cultural situations that cross or combine two social-cultural settings normally thought of as separate and distinct, whether or not an international boundary is involved. The culture of the U.S.–Mexico border has been viewed in both perspectives, sometimes without clarifying exactly which angle has been taken. Anthropologist Renato Rosaldo critiques the approach to culture in which that term is understood to pertain to definitively bounded units, such as nations; this he terms ‘‘monumentalism.’’ These approaches ignore internal complexity and processes of interconnection, and treat border-crossing people and cultural traits as marginal and deviant. Rosaldo revalues border crossings as the central position in the study of culture understood as complex and fluid. Urban anthropologist Nestor Garcıa Canclini offers a similar analysis, focusing on ‘‘hybridities,’’ or mixtures of cultural elements. His main examples are visible forms of mixing of U.S. and Mexican cultural elements in northern Mexican border cities. Chicana feminist writer and scholar Gloria Anzald ua explored border culture as a series of challenges by subordinated and often voiceless subject positions to dominant cultural frameworks and their valued subject positions (subject position is a term of art meaning the consciousness and self-identity of a particular social set, such as lesbians or farm workers). Her border cultures, then, are Mexican-origin people in the United States challenging the dominant Anglo American definition of U.S. culture, poor workers challenging standards set by the prosperous, indigenous people challenging Western colonizers, women challenging the dominant male framework, and gays and lesbians challenging normative heterosexuality. Rather than maintaining these dichotomies (calling for reversing them, for example), she argues for valuing a mixed (mestiza) position between them.
69
Culture Ethnographer Pablo Vila has subjected this school of ‘‘border culture’’ to a penetrating critique. Among his criticisms are that these works do not address the social inequality and coercive state power characteristic of the U.S.–Mexico border (especially from the perspective of Mexicans, often the target of barriers and inspections), that they favor border crossing and mixing and neglect border conflict and polarization, that they blur the U.S.–Mexico border and other formal boundaries with a vast range of diverse social and cultural settings involving crossing cultural limits, and that they confuse sharing of cultural traits with sharing of identity and solidarity, which do not automatically follow. Abstract border theory had relatively little to say about specific social groups and cultural situations, located in space and time, along the U.S.–Mexico border. Two valuable takes on this regional culture come from Historians Oscar Martınez and Pablo Vila. Strikingly, these authors have different perspectives. Martınez delineates a series of ‘‘orientations’’ toward the border. Some borderlanders are uninationalist and unicultural, in that their attitudinal and behavioral orientations fit within either national Mexican culture or the dominant Anglo American version of U.S. national culture. Others are binational and bicultural, in that their attitudes and behaviors combine traits from both nations, and they are comfortable crossing political and cultural borders. Binational/uninational and bicultural/unicultural are not always consistently aligned, and Martınez carefully illustrates different combinations of these orientations in life histories. He clearly favors the synthetic, binational, and bicultural version of border culture, and takes an optimistic view of linear progression toward social and cultural as well as economic integration along the border. Vila, by contrast, emphasizes separation and polarization on the border. His method focuses on narrative identities, that is, how people speak about themselves and others. He looks, for example, at how Mexican Americans discuss themselves through contrasts with Mexicans on the one hand and Anglo Americans on the other. His method thus tends to highlight contrasts and divisions. Vila covers the narrative identities of northern Mexican borderlanders vis-a-vis interior Mexicans and the United States; recent Mexican immigrants vis-a-vis Mexican Americans and Mexicans; Mexican Americans vis-a-vis Mexico, recent Mexican immigrants, and Anglo Americans; Anglo Americans vis-a-vis Mexico and Mexican Americans; and African Americans vis-a-vis the whole border situation. In addition to ethnic, national, and regional identities, he adds complicating themes, such as religion and gender, to the narrative mix. His central concern is always verbalized identities, however. A related, but wider, manner to approach the cultural complexity of the border region is to look at key institutions and processes, in two different nations, that result in different life experiences, channels of cultural learning, and orientations and identities for individuals and social groups. In other words, the political, economic, and social grounds within which culture occurs need to be examined along with the patterns of culture of diverse groups. Furthermore, these contexts and the cultural patterns are subject to constant historical change. Much of the work needed to flesh out this approach remains to be done, however. Anthropologist Josiah Heyman raises some of the key points. One is the general economic inequality between Mexico and the United States, and the way that that international inequality is played with both practically (as in the informal economy) and conceptually (as found in Vila’s narrative differences) at the immediate interface of the border. Yet at the same time, both Mexico and the United States are class societies, and no single characterization of culture and economy as poor versus rich is
70
Culture fully adequate to the complexity on both sides of the border. Another important point is to explore the national-culture indoctrinating institutions of both nations, such as school systems and government agencies (such as border control and police organizations). These nationalist institutions are not hermetically sealed from influences and individuals from ‘‘the other side,’’ but their overall effect is to strengthen the differentiation between the two countries. Pushing back against those forces of polarization is the large, long-term flow of people from Mexico to the United States, the smaller flow from the United States to Mexico, and the short-term patterns of shuttling and communication back and forth across the border. Border theorists such as Rosaldo and Anzald ua were correct in drawing attention to hybridity and mestizo creativity, but they overstated their presence and were unspecific about who was involved, what aspects of culture were involved, and what contexts in society and history made them possible or foreclosed them. One problem in discussing U.S.–Mexico border cultures is that there are fairly few grounded, robust ethnographies or social histories of the borderlands. Vila and Martınez have already been mentioned. One study of Tucson looks at ‘‘cultural bumping,’’ that is, the constant movement and interaction of people, in the ArizonaSonora borderlands. They draw our attention to the crucial role of networks (familial and community), the use and meanings of languages (Spanish and English), and the funds of knowledge transmitted outside of formal schooling. Heyman, in Life and Labor on the Border, examines the historical unfolding of border culture as class formation and transformation in northern Sonora and southern Arizona, paying particular attention to changes in work and consumption both outside and inside the home. Anthropologist Marıa Patricia Fernandez-Kelly’s ethnography of maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juarez remains the best description of everyday, working-class life in border Mexico, although its data on the maquiladoras is now dated. Border culture, then, is a particular experience with in capitalism, as well as with the gradual rise of nation-state territorial exclusivity and power. Small cultural groups along the border are often neglected, but merit attention. They include Native Americans living on or near the international boundary (often, since before there was a border), recent indigenous migrants from the interior of Mexico, Chinese, Koreans, Lebanese, Syrians, Jews, and African Americans. A narrower definition of culture as various forms of arts (music, plastic arts, cinema, architecture) is also found in the borderlands. Two broad patterns can be seen in this domain. One explicitly considers (often questioning or parodying) the border as a symbol of nationalistic division and control, and celebrate mobility and hybridity in defiance of that rigid view of the United States and Mexico. The audiences and referents for this sort of art are cosmopolitan, extending well beyond the border, largely because such audiences understand the political-cultural agenda of critiquing nationalistic, one-dimensional images of the border. The other kind of border artistic expression is regional, grows out of particular art communities and experiences in the borderlands, and references a more diverse but also more intimate meaning in everyday life in this area. Perhaps the most creative of border arts are musical and visual shows blending Mexican popular music, punk, rap, and electronica, growing organically out of the mixture of sounds and images that pervade northern Mexican border cities. This movement illustrates the grounding of cultural creativity in everyday realities of this dynamic region. See also Anthropology; Cities and Towns; Folklore; Literature; Migration; Music.
71
Culture FURTHER READINGS: Anzald ua, Gloria, Borderlands: The New Mestiza ¼ La Frontera. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, 1987; Canclini, Nestor Garcıa, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995; Canclini, Nestor Garcıa, and Safa, Patricia. Tijuana: la casa de toda la gente. Mexico, D.F.: CONACULTA, Programa Cultural de las Fronteras, INAH, UAM-I, 1989; Fernandez-Kelly, Marıa Patricia. For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983; Gonzalez, Norma. I am My Language: Discourses of Women and Children in the Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001; Martınez, Oscar J. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994; McC. Heyman, Josiah. Life and Labor on the Border: Working People of Northeastern Sonora, Mexico 1886–1986. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991; McC. Heyman, Josiah. ‘‘The Mexico-United States Border in Anthropology: A Critique and Reformulation.’’ Journal of Political Ecology 1 (1994): 43–65. http://www.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/ volume_1/HEYMAN.PDF; McC. Heyman, Josiah. ‘‘On U.S.–Mexico Border Culture.’’ Journal of the West 40, no. 2 (2001): 50–59; Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of ~ez, Carlos G. Border Visions: Mexican CulSocial Analysis. Boston: Beacon, 1989; Velez-Iban tures of the Southwest United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996; Vila, Pablo. Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.–Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005; Vila, Pablo, ed. Ethnography at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003; Wood, Andrew Grant, ed. On the Border: Society and Culture between the United States and Mexico. Lanham, MD: S. R. Books, 2004.
Josiah Heyman
72
D
de Anza, Juan Bautista (1736–88). Juan Bautista de Anza was a military officer, explorer, and governor on the northern frontier of New Spain. Anza began his military career at the age of sixteen in his hometown of Fronteras, Sonora. Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, both of whom were career officers in Mexico’s frontier army, by 1760, he had risen to the rank of captain and was given his own command. Military service on New Spain’s northern frontier consisted mostly of forays against Comanche and Apache raiders, whose attacks destabilized Spanish settlements and local Indian peoples alike. De Anza’s expeditions against Indian raiders took him throughout Arizona and it was his intimate knowledge of the terrain and people of northern Arizona that brought him his greatest renown. Beginning in the early 1760s, Spanish officials in Mexico City had become increasingly concerned by British and Russian exploration and trading ventures along the northern Pacific coast. Fearful that these foreign traders and explorers might soon occupy Alta California, the northernmost territory of New Spain, vice regal officials approved a combined military-spiritual expedition into upper California led by Father Junipero Serra in 1769. While Serra’s expedition met with some success and established the California mission system, the ocean route that he had taken from Mexico to California was difficult and costly. Thus, when de Anza proposed an overland route from Arizona across the Gila River into coastal California, government officials quickly gave their approval. With two Franciscan friars, twenty-one troops, and the indispensable help of Yuma Indians, in 1774, de Anza crossed into California, creating an overland route that would remain in use until the Yuma rebellion of 1781. De Anza’s success in California earned him the appointment as governor of New Mexico in 1777, a position he held for the next nine years. During his tenure as governor, de Anza again earned renown by using his diplomatic skills to end Comanche and Apache raiding in the Southwest and to create an atmosphere of mutual tolerance among Indian peoples and between them and Spanish settlers in New Mexico and Arizona. FURTHER READINGS: Bowman, J. N., and Heizer, Robert F. Anza and the Northwest Frontier of New Spain. Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1967; Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Ronald Schultz
73
D
de Coronado, Francisco Vazquez (ca. 1510–54) de Coronado, Francisco Vazquez (ca. 1510–54). Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was a Spanish explorer who led an expedition into the American Southwest in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Cıbola, purported to be rich in gold and other treasures. He was born in Salamanca, Spain, in the early 1500s. In 1535, he sailed to Mexico with Antonio de Mendoza, first viceroy of New Spain. There, in 1538, he became governor of New Galicia. In 1539, a Spanish missionary priest named Marcos de Niza returned from a journey to the north claiming to have seen the golden city, Cıbola, among the Zuni Indians in the region. Niza’s account, as well as other stories by Spanish explorers such as Alvar Nu~ nez Cabeza de Vaca served as an inspiration to Coronado’s expedition. In the February 1540, Coronado recruited more than 300 Spanish troops, more than 1,000 Indian soldiers and servants, many accompanied by their wives and children, and several missionary priests. In July, Coronado reached the place he identified as Cıbola; an area near what is now Gallup, New Mexico. The Zuni Indians inhabiting the area fought to defend their territory. Coronado and his soldiers defeated the Zuni and made the area their camp. Much to Coronado’s disappointment, however, the town was not Cıbola, but a village called Hawikuh. From his new camp, Coronado sent smaller bands of soldiers to explore the region. Pedro de Tovar led a force to the Colorado Plateau and the Painted Desert to the northwest. Garcıa L opez de Cardenas and his force became the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon. Hernando de Alvarado was sent to scout out the Rio Grande Valley. In the winter of 1540–1541, Coronado moved his headquarters near a group of a dozen Indian villages in the Tiguex region, north of present-day Albuquerque, New Mexico. The winter brought shortages of food and clothing. Coronado began pilfering supplies from the Tiguex. They resisted and violence broke out. Before it was over, Coronado’s forces had destroyed several villages and left hundreds dead. The following spring, Coronado lead an expedition east across the Pecos River to find Quivira, another city said to be filled with treasure. Lead by an Indian named ‘‘the Turk,’’ they wandered through parts of Texas and Oklahoma in search of their imagined city of gold. Coronado reached central Kansas before he began to make his way back to New Mexico. In the spring of 1542, he returned to New Spain with only 100 men. He remained governor of New Galicia until 1544. That year he was suspended from his office during an investigation of the Cıbola Expedition and in 1545 Coronado was charged with mistreatment of the Indians, failure to colonize the lands he had explored, and other misconduct. In 1546, he was cleared of all crimes. He died on September 22, 1554, in Mexico City. See also War of the Gran Chichimeca. FURTHER READINGS: Engels, Andre. ‘‘Francisco Vasquez De Coronado.’’ Discoverers Web: Coronado. July 14, 2007. http://www.win.tue.nl/engels/discovery/Coronado.html; Flint, Richard, and Cushing Flint, Shirley, eds. Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539–1542: ‘‘They Were Not Familiar with His Majesty, nor Did They Wish to Be His Subjects.’’ Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005.
Charles Wood
74
del Rıo, Dolores (1904–83) de O~ nate, Don Juan (ca. 1550–1626). Don Juan Perez de O~ nate y Salazar was the first Spaniard to found settlements in and act as governor of what is now New Mexico. He was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, the son of the prosperous conquistador Crist obal de O~ nate, and later married wealthy Isabel de Tolosa Cortes Moctezuma, granddaughter of Hernan Cortes and Aztec emperor Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. In 1595, O~ nate received a royal contract making him governor and captain general charged with exploring New Mexico and converting the natives to Christianity. O~ nate embarked from Santa Barbara, Mexico, in January 1598, with 129 men, their families, livestock, and ten Franciscans. Reaching the Rio Grande on April 20, 1598, they celebrated the First Thanksgiving April 30 in present-day San Elizario, adjacent to modern El Paso, Texas. Proceeding northward, O~ nate established settlements at San Juan and San Gabriel. In 1599, the Acomas killed eleven Spaniards who had extorted food and committed murders and rapes. O~ nate’s men attacked the pueblo, killing 800 Acomas and taking 500 captives. O~ nate sentenced the adults to twenty years of slavery and gave their children to the settlers and Franciscans. As additional punishment for rebelling, adult men also had their right foot cut off. Until 1605, O~ nate unsuccessfully sought routes to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The colony did not prosper, and in 1606, the king replaced O~ nate due to colonist’s complaints and charges of abuse of Amerindians. O~ nate was convicted of several crimes in 1614 and exiled from New Mexico, banished from Mexico City, stripped of his titles, and fined. His wealth exhausted, O~ nate returned to Spain in 1621 and eventually won a pardon and restoration of his titles. In 2007, the city of El Paso erected a bronze statue of O~ nate at the El Paso International Airport. The largest equestrian monument in the world, the city council renamed the thirty-four foot high work ‘‘The Equestrian’’ due to public outcry against O~ nate’s treatment of Amerindians. See also Cabeza de Vaca, Vazquez de Coronado. FURTHER READINGS: Gutierrez. Ramon. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991; Hammond, George P., and Agapito Rey, eds. Don Juan de O~ nate: Colonizer of the New Mexico, 1595–1628. 2 Vols. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1953; Snow, David H. Spanish Borderlands Sourcebooks: The Native American and Spanish Colonial Experience in the Greater Southwest. New York: Garland., 1992; Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Joanne Kropp del Rıo, Dolores (1904–83). Mexican film and stage actress Marıa de los Dolores (Lolita) As unsolo y L opez Negrete was the sole child of Durango banker Jes us Leonardo As unsolo and Antonia L opez Negrete, a member of a prominent family. Briefly exiled in the United States during the Mexican Revolution, the family resettled in Mexico City, where Lolita attended the prestigious College Francais Saint Joseph in Santa Marıa la Ribera. She also trained in dance and music, frequently performing in benefit concerts. At one such party, organized by Salvador Novo, she was introduced to the anglophile millionaire eccentric Jaime Martınez del Rıo, eighteen years her senior. They married in 1921, and spent a year traveling abroad. When they returned to Mexico in 1922, they were a popular couple and befriended many artists and intellectuals. Martınez del Rıo, although wealthy, made a series of bad investments. When American film director Edwin Carewe, a guest at one of their parties, suggested that
75
Disease the couple try their luck in Hollywood—Lolita as an actress and Jaime as a scriptwriter—they seized the opportunity. The talented and outgoing Lolita shortened her name to Dolores del Rıo and began a lifelong career in Hollywood with Joanna (1926), becoming a star two years later in Ramona (1928). Del Rıo’s acting career spanned six decades—her last appearance was in The Children of Sanchez (1978)—and although she acted on stage in Argentina and Spain, and occasionally on U.S. television in the 1960s and 1970s, most of her work was on screen. She starred in more than 50 films and her career went through four major phases. From 1925 to 1932, she appeared in Hollywood films as a brunette beauty or exotic foreigner, being among a handful of actors who made a successful transition from silent film to sound movies. From 1932 to 1942, she played a variety of roles, although scholars have stressed the importance of Flying Down to Rıo (1933) as Hollywood’s goodwill ambassador to Latin America. From 1943 to 1948, as one of Mexico’s Golden Age Cinema’s youthful beauties, she helped forge a nostalgic feminine nationalism in films like Flor Silvestre (1943) and Marıa Candelaria (1944), in which she portrayed a moral, suffering woman in Mexico’s disappearing countryside. And although she embodied a stylized working-class and indigenous beauty on screen, the press played her up as an urban sophisticate. From 1948 to 1967, despite being overtaken by actresses like Marıa Felix, the aging beauty gracefully played the role of mother and matron, starring in Mexican, Spanish, and Italian films like Do~ na Perfecta (1951), Se~ nora Ama (1955), La Dama del Alba (1965), and C’era una volta (1967). She also returned to American films, playing the role of Mexican or Indian women in a number of westerns like Flaming Star (1960) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Del Rıo had a successful career. She received the Ariel award (Mexico’s Oscar) in 1946, 1952, 1956, and 1974, and the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or in 1946. In her later years, she devoted much of her wealth to charity. Childless in her three marriages, she became interested in improving the lives of actors’ and performers’ children. She participated in film festivals in France and Spain, and retired to the United States, where she died in Newport Beach, California, in April 11, 1983. See also Cinema. FURTHER READINGS: David, Ramon. Dolores del Rıo. Mexico City: Editorial Clıo, 1997; Hershfield, Joanne. The Invention of Dolores del Rıo. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Vıctor M. Macıas-Gonzalez
Disease. Immigration into the United States has been a cause of concern for many decades, but the high rate of people entering this country in the past few years has now become the center of a debate concerning public health. Not only are Americans concerned with issues of national security and major sociological changes in the United States, but there is also growing concern for public health and, therefore, with disease control. When immigrants arrive by land, sea, or air, they must undergo document inspection and are subject to a health inspection if they exhibit signs of illness. In colonias, on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, basic modern sanitation, such as toilets, showers, or clean water, is lacking; without these sanitation benefits, disease spreads rampantly throughout the population. The disease threat is more
76
Disease acute because the people residing in many border towns do not have adequate medical care. Dangerous parasites such as tapeworms, which were eradicated in the United States at one time, are now being found in these areas. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), continue to present a serious threat, particularly among drug users. Exotic New Castle disease—a disease found in poultry—had never been a problem in the United States, but now it has been identified in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. When humans are exposed to infected poultry and other fowl, they can become infected. A condition known as conjunctivitis typically occurs after exposure in people who work in the poultry industry, veterinarians, or laboratory technicians. Some members of Congress have proposed a suspension on immigration because of a presumed transfer of infectious diseases into the United States. Some officials have argued that immigrants carry with them the parasitic Chagas disease. The disease has a variety of symptoms, ranging from constipation, fatigue, the inability to swallow, fever, and abdominal pain, and can be lethal. A study by doctors at the Minnesota school of medicine in the mid-1980s found that about 10 percent of Mexicans crossing the United States border daily have the infectious disease, which can be spread via insect bites or blood transfusions. Another potential disease threat that has often been associated with Latino immigration is measles. However, Samuel L. Katz, an expert on measles, stated that there have been less than 100 cases of measles in the United States per year and that, through gene testing, most cases were found to come from Italy, Germany, and Japan. There have been many proposed solutions for dealing with the issue of disease control, but few have been put into effect. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has proposed a plan to help combat the carrying and spreading of infectious disease. This plan, entitled ‘‘Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases: A Strategy for the 21st Century,’’ aims to contain a disease to one person instead of trying to address the issue after it has become a large-scale problem. The plan includes nine categories of diseases and explanations of the ways in which they should be approached and addressed. The CDC has increased the number of quarantine stations, which are used when immigrants crossing the border appear to have an infection or disease. The National Center for Infectious Disease (NCID) is working to enhance the GeoSentinel program—an international network of health clinics and medicine working to further develop the tracking of disease trends among immigrants and refugees. GeoSentinel employees closely examine infectious disease threats that are found near the U.S.–Mexico border. The NCID is designing cost-effective medical screening that would detect emerging diseases in immigrants at an early stage. In conjunction with the CDC, the NCID works to ensure that medical screening for immigrants is up to date. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has used $5 million to provide Early Warning Infectious Disease Surveillance (a program started in 1994 and still in place today) at the border between the United States and Mexico. The money was used to create coordinated systems between the two countries that allowed for detection, identification, and reporting of diseases that were known to pose major threats to the public in regards to health. Part of the Early Warning
77
Domestic Workers Infectious Disease Surveillance system which began in December 2003, mandated that the United States would also help make Mexico’s sewage treatment, air quality, and water resources cleaner and safer. See also Cities and Towns; Environmentalism; Health; Immigration Legislation; Water Issues. FURTHER READINGS: Ackerman, L. K. ‘‘Health Problems of Refugees.’’ Journal of the American Board of Family Practice 10 (1997): 337–48; Beck, Roy. The Case against Immigration: The Moral, Economic, Social, and Environmental Reasons for Reducing the U.S. Immigration Back to Traditional Levels. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997; de Paula, T., Lagana, K., and GonzalezRamırez, L. ‘‘Mexican Americans.’’ In J. G. Lipson, S. L. Dibble, and P. A. Minarik, eds. Culture and Nursing Care, 203–21. San Francisco: UCSF Nursing Press, 1996; Gavagan, T., and Brodyaga, L. ‘‘Medical Care for Immigrants and Refugees.’’ American Family Physician 57 (1998): 1061–1068; Muwakkil, Salim. ‘‘A Shared Vision.’’ The Nation 282, no. 24 2006): 16–17; ‘‘Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases.’’ Center for Disease Control Information Pamphlet. Washington, DC: CDC, 2002; Price, Joyce Howard. ‘‘New Diseases and Medical Costs Associated with Illegal Immigration.’’ The Washington Times, sec. A, February 13, 2005; U.S. Customs and Border Protection. ‘‘Admission into the United States.’’ July 16, 2006. http://www.cbp.gov/ xp/cgov/travel/id_visa/legally_admitted_to_the_u_s.xml; U.S.– Mexico Border Health Commission: EWIDS Project. Washington, DC: U.S. Department and Health and Human Services, 2004; Waters, Maurice. ‘‘Social Trust and Foreign Policy: Immigration and Law Enforcement Issues.’’ 1999. http://immigration.about.com/library/blStateGovOpFo.htm.
Demond Shondell Miller Domestic Workers. Domestic work is a major source of employment for women of Mexican descent living in the United States. Domestic workers, also called servants, maids, criadas, and limpia-casas, are defined as workers who perform services in their employers’ households. Mexicana domestic workers perform a variety of jobs that might include some or all of the following: cleaning, cooking, ironing, washing, caring for children, running errands, gardening/lawn care, and buying groceries. Along the 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico, thousands of women of Mexican descent, documented and undocumented, carry out a variety of tasks as either temporary or permanent domestic workers. Although the exact number of Mexican domestic female workers is difficult to discern, given many women’s undocumented status, research based on oral histories point to a significant number of Mexicanas employed in domestic work. The lived experience of domestic workers, particularly Mexican, has begun to receive scholarly attention. Mexican female domestic workers are among the most exploited labor group. Earning substandard wages that rarely surpass $2 an hour and no health insurance, domestic workers regularly work up to fifteen hours a day performing a variety of jobs that are often not clearly outlined. Single, married, and divorced women ranging from the ages of twelve to sixty, with or without children, do the work that others do not want or cannot do. Given the nonexistence of few written work agreements between Mexican women workers and employers, the pay is often irregular, sometimes by the day, week, or month, and rarely paid by specific task (contractual basis). Some domestic workers commute to work on a daily basis to supplement family incomes. Others live with the employer’s family in small rooms and are often
78
Domestic Workers expected to work round-the-clock. Oral histories of domestic workers during the 1990s from Hidalgo County in south Texas revealed that women were regularly woken up at night to assist drunken employers and their guests, and often were sexually assaulted by employers or employer family members. Despite dealing with such problems, permanent and in-house domestic workers continually worry about finding someone to care for their children when employers do not permit children in their homes. They spend more time cleaning other people’s homes than with their own families. Citizenship or legal status plays a key role in workers’ labor conditions, physical mobility, and employment options. For many who hold micas or tourist visas, have permanent resident cards, or are citizens, their employment options are greater. Yet, for those who lack the proper documentation, their social reality is distinct. Despite overt discrimination and exploitation, some women view work in a private home as a safe place as opposed to a factory for fear of deportation. However, unscrupulous employers use deportation as a labor control mechanism. If women refuse to perform certain jobs, even if these are not part of the verbal or written contract, employers threatened to call immigration officers. The availability of a large pool of unskilled women workers, particularly along the U.S.–Mexico border, allows employers to easily dispose of and replace their employees with another woman in economic need. For those who face deportation, the economic need forces them to seek the assistance of a coyote or pollero, a person who is paid a fee for smuggling humans into the United States. Risking their lives, many women place their trust in smugglers who may or may not respect their end of the contract. Women are often sexually assaulted, robbed, and left at the mercy of the migra or Border Patrol. Given the lack of a central workplace, fear of deportation, and the ‘‘underground’’ nature of domestic paid work, organizing and unionization are difficult. However, despite these setbacks, the social realities of domestic workers have led to greater efforts at organizing for labor rights. In California, Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) has helped Mexican immigrant women, as well as other Latinas in their everyday struggles at the workplace, which, for many, is also their home. Other organizations include the United Domestic Workers of America (UDWA) and Domestic Workers United (DWU). Mexicana domestic workers have also found solace in a variety of church groups. Steadily, domestic women workers are rejecting the long-standing view of them as ‘‘unorganizable’’ and passive. The growing body of literature on Mexican women domestic workers underscores their contributions to the United States. Toiling up to fifteen hours a day for substandard wages, domestic workers relieve families of arduous home work allowing them to live comfortable lives. With the hyperglobalization occurring in today’s world, highly visible in the numerous assembly plants that dot the border from the Matamoros-Brownsville border to the Tijuana-San Diego region, the displacement of indigenous and mestizo women and families by multinational corporations, the growing poverty, and political instability, the number of women from Mexico and Latin America who seek refuge and work in the United States will continue to increase. See also Cities and Towns; Economy; Labor; Labor Unions. Maquiladoras; Migration; Remittances. FURTHER READINGS: Goldsmith Connelly, Mary, ‘‘Polıtica, trabajo, y genero: la sindicalizacion de las y los trabajadores domesticos y el Estado mexicano.’’ In Marıa Teresa Fernandez Aceves, Carmen Ramos Escandon, Susie Porter, coordinadoras. Orden Social e
79
Drug Trafficking identidad de genero Mexico, siglos XIX y XX. Guadalajara: CIESAS, 2006; Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001; Richardson, Chad, and Torres, Cruz C. ‘‘‘Only A Maid’: Undocumented Domestic Workers in South Texas.’’ In Chad Richardson, ed. Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados: Class and Culture on the South Texas Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999; Romero, Mary. Maid in the U.S.A, 10th anniversary edition. New York: Routledge Press, 2002; Ruiz, Vicki L. ‘‘By the Day or the Week: Mexicana Domestic Workers in El Paso.’’ In Vicki L. Ruiz and Susan Tiano, eds. Women on the U.S./Mexico Border: Responses to Change, 61–76. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987.
Sonia Hernandez
Drug Trafficking. Drug trafficking and the use of illicit drugs have a long history in the United States and Mexico and have become an important component in the relationship between the two countries. Opiates such as morphine and heroin, as well as marijuana and cocaine products, were widely available in pharmacies and other public markets prior to the twentieth century and were used primarily for medicinal purposes. Morphine and heroin had also become widely used in the United States as pain relievers. The U.S. government began pushing for control and prohibition of certain narcotics in the early twentieth century. The Shanghai Conference in 1909 and the Hague Convention of 1912 marked the beginning of an international movement to regulate the distribution of opium and other drugs. In 1914, the United States passed the Harrison Narcotics Act, which required physicians, pharmacists, and others who dispensed narcotics to be licensed and imposed a tax on certain drugs. The United States encouraged other nations to imitate drug restriction efforts, but Mexico was in the midst of a violent revolution, and drug enforcement did not become a government priority until later. It was not until the 1920s that the production and sale of marijuana and opium poppies were made illegal in Mexico. As the United States tried to impose more controls on drug distribution and use, the illicit drug trade from Mexico developed—driven by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States. Initially, illegal drug trafficking went through the Mexicali and Tijuana areas of Baja California. By the 1930s, transit routes had expanded to include more centralized border cities, often times following southern agricultural trade routes. As drug trafficking evolved in northern Mexico, it quickly became associated with political corruption, with high-ranking politicians and law enforcement officials often involved in the movement of illegal narcotics. Drug trafficking to the United States accelerated even more during and after World War II as military bases popped up along the U.S.–Mexico border. Over the next three decades, Mexico replaced areas of the Near East as the main supplier of heroin and marijuana to the United States. As the quantity of illegal drugs moving across the border increased, the U.S. government became concerned with enforcement of drug laws. Throughout the twentieth century, responsibility for drug enforcement shifted among various federal agencies. By the 1960s, two main agencies, the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control and the federal Bureau of Narcotics had emerged as leaders in the enforcement of drug laws. These two agencies were merged to form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) in 1968 in an attempt to curb the growing trend of drug consumption in American culture.
80
Drug Trafficking The creation of the BNDD paved the way for several aggressive U.S.–led campaigns against drug trafficking in the following years. In 1969, the Richard Nixon administration initiated Operation Intercept in an attempt to pressure the Mexican government into implementing better controls on the supply side of the drug trade. The operation effectively shut down the border between Mexico and the United States. New regulations limited tourist traffic from the United States into Mexican border towns and the movement of goods and people from Mexico to the United States came to a virtual standstill. The operation was short-lived and rather ineffective and created a public outcry as border economies felt the impact of tighter border restrictions. In 1970, the BNDD brought together local, state, and federal authorities for the first time in a drug enforcement joint task force created in New York. The cooperation among agencies in this task force became a model for later drug enforcement strategies. In 1971, U.S. Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which provided a centralized system of control for illegal narcotics in the United States. With the BNDD, the New York Joint Task Force, and the Controlled Substances Act in place to provide a foundation for a rigorous drug control policy, the Nixon administration proposed Reorganization Plan No. 2 in 1973 which created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to consolidate the government’s drug enforcement efforts under one central agency. Since 1973, the DEA has worked independently and with foreign governments to control the production, transport, and sale of illegal drugs intended for the U.S. market. Throughout the 1970s, the U.S. government continued to pressure Mexican officials into taking a more proactive approach to controlling illicit drug supplies. In 1975, Mexican law enforcement officials introduced Operation Condor, which involved the use of chemical herbicides to eradicate marijuana and opium cultivation in the southern states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, and the northwestern states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua. Defoliation operations continued for the next ten years with little regard for the environmental or human impact of using the toxic chemicals. Hundreds of peasants fled the areas targeted for eradication, and thousands of opium and marijuana fields were destroyed. Nevertheless, drugs continued to flow into the United States as drug bosses simply relocated their operations to other regions of the country. While the operation temporarily impeded marijuana and opium trafficking, Mexican drug traffickers supplanted income from drug production by becoming conduits for increasing quantities of cocaine moving through Mexico from Colombia. Even though Operation Condor succeeded in destroying thousands of tons of illegal drug crops, most observers consider the concomitant costs in human rights abuses, environmental devastation, and population displacement to far outweigh the benefits. From its inception in 1973, the DEA quickly placed itself as the hemispheric leader in the fight against illegal drugs. At times, the U.S. agency maintained an amicable relationship with its foreign counterparts in Mexico and other countries. But, often, DEA policies evoked notions of U.S. hegemony. In 1985, DEA agent Enrique Camarena and Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala were kidnapped in Guadalajara in retaliation for information they had discovered about a large marijuana cultivation operation. U.S. officials attempted to pressure the Mexican government into action by conducting search and seizure operations along the border, in a move reminiscent of Nixon’s Operation Intercept. The discovery of Camarena’s and Zavala’s tortured bodies one
81
Drug Trafficking month later caused tensions between the two governments to flare. U.S. investigators used the Camarena case to expose corruption and collusion among Mexican drug traffickers, Mexican law enforcement, and even high-ranking political leaders. Drug bosses Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, and Ernesto Fonseca were convicted in the case and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. U.S. officials pushed for additional investigations, maintaining that corruption in the Mexican law enforcement system had suppressed evidence implicating high-raking officials who had been accomplices to the crime. Meanwhile, in 1986, the United States passed the AntiDrug Abuse Act, which gave the DEA expanded authority to extradite foreign citizens on drug-related charges for prosecution in the United States. Indeed, when the Mexican government failed to act against suspected accomplices in the Camarena slaying, DEA agents hired bounty hunters to enter Mexico and kidnap Humberto Alvarez Machain, a medical doctor accused of overseeing the torture of the agent and keeping him alive for further torture and interrogation. Machain was forcibly brought to the United States and turned over to DEA agents to await trial. A judge eventually ordered the doctor to be released for lack of evidence, but not before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that his forcible abduction did not violate the U.S.–Mexico extradition treaty—a ruling that caused an outcry among Latin American leaders. As law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Mexico have attempted to crack down on drug trafficking between the two countries, drug-related violence in Mexico and along the border has swelled. As drug bosses are brought down by law enforcement officials, competing cartels wage virtual war against each other in an attempt to fill the power void. Ordinary citizens, police officers, and journalists are often caught in the violence as well. Violence and the drug trade seem to have become a part of popular culture in many areas along the border. Over the past few decades, narco corridos, or drug-themed ballads, have become a common medium for glorifying the drug trade. While drug trafficking between Mexico and the United States originated with marijuana and opium produced in Mexico and cocaine produced in Colombia, a new drug product has recently surfaced as part of the cross-border drug trade. Crystal methamphetamine production that used to be concentrated in the western and midwestern regions of the United States has now spread to Mexico. This new drug, referred to by many as ‘‘Mexican ice,’’ is more potent and far more dangerous than the crystal meth originally produced in home labs in the United States. See also Economy; Legal Issues. FURTHER READINGS: Astorga, Luis. ‘‘Drug Trafficking in Mexico: A First General Assessment.’’ Management of Social Transformations. MOST Discussion Paper No. 36., 1999; Craig, Richard. ‘‘Operation Condor: Mexico’s Antidrug Campaign Enters a New Era.’’ Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 22, no. 3 (August 1980): 345–63; Drug Enforcement Agency. A Tradition of Excellence: The History of the DEA from 1973 to 2003. http://www.dea.gov/pubs/history/index.html; Edberg, Mark Cameron. El Narcotraficante: Narcocorridos & the Construction of a Cultural Persona on the U.S.–Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004; Toro, Marıa Celia. ‘‘The Internationalization of Police: The DEA in Mexico.’’ The Journal of American History 86, no. 2 (September 1999): 623–40; United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. http://www.unesco.org/most/astorga.htm.
Monica Rankin
82
D
Economy. Encompassing four American states (California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas) and six Mexican states (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Le on, and Tamaulipas), the U.S.–Mexico borderlands shares a long, complex history of socioeconomic interaction. Once a cattle ranching and mining area, the border economy has evolved into a global center for manufacturing and service work along with a notable tourism industry and agricultural sector. The borderlands region has its own distinct economy, society, and culture that, as a whole, is greater than the sum of its nation-state parts. There is a tremendous amount of commerce that takes place within the region, which is evidenced by the steady flow of border traffic, with approximately 250 million annual legal crossings composed of people who live, work, and shop on both sides of the border and who move back and forth frequently. Border shoppers spend nearly US$26 billion a year, further fueling the regional economy. The U.S.–Mexico border is also characterized as having ‘‘twin cities,’’ such as San Diego-Tijuana and El Paso-Ciudad Juarez, whose parameters reflect megapolises, which are technically territorially divided under separate political jurisdictions but evidence a larger transfrontier space and logic. This is a region where the economies and culture of Mexico and the United States have overlapped and interacted for more than 150 years, giving rise to a unique subnational borderland economy. The emergence of the maquiladora processing industry in Mexico in the mid1960s serves as an important historical marker for understanding the expansion of the border economy as it drew significant international capital and labor to the region. The maquiladora economy began in the mid-1960s when bilateral accords were signed by the U.S. and Mexican governments to establish transnational assembly plants in duty-free zones (zona libres) on the Mexican side of the border. Attracted to tax-free incentives and proximity to the United States, approximately 4,000 transnational corporations, the majority of which are U.S. companies, had relocated to the borderlands as of 2000. Often referred to as ‘‘offshore’’ economic enclaves, the maquila system ushered in a new mode of production that shifted from its Fordist origins to a regime of globalized production where cheap labor in the global south is sought to assemble manufactured goods for export. With the termination of the Bracero Program or guest-worker recruitment from Mexico in 1964, the Border Industrialization Program (BIP) the following year sought to invigorate Mexico’s northern
83
E
Economy frontier, leading to considerable socioeconomic change. Rapid and uneven economic development on the borderlands ensued with economic benefits for the region albeit with considerable lopsided financial gain for the northern partner. With rapid urban development has come a number of serious environmental and health problems. The rapid expansion of infrastructure to accommodate investment has had residual effects such as illegal dumping of toxic waste and byproducts generated by the maquiladora industry. Inadequate hazardous waste disposal and treatment systems have resulted in chronic health problems, such as respiratory infections, asthma, and birth defects, for resident populations. Rapid urban sprawl has also led to a severe shortage in drinking water, inadequate sewage disposal, substandard housing, and air and water pollution for much of the border communities. Additionally, industrialization has spawned colonias, or shantytowns, composed of residents who have migrated from the interior of Mexico seeking work possibilities and livelihood. Lacking basic necessities such as clean water and sewage treatment, colonias are a result of poor urban planning and exacerbate the difficulty in managing urban development. Long confronted with poor quality of surface and underground water and increased levels of pollution, ‘‘twin cities’’ have responded with shared mutual concern and bilateral initiatives to address the toxicity generated by rapid industrial development. The lack of environmental planning and poor compliance to environmental protection laws continues to challenge the region. A distinct feature of the maquiladora economy has been the contracting of female labor, often single women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, with low education levels, as the preferred labor force, particularly for electronics, given their good health and perceived docility, dexterity, and discipline to perform monotonous tasks. By contrast, the managerial ‘‘class’’ in the maquiladora economy is overwhelmingly male. The recruitment of female labor, many of whom come from the interior of Mexico, has led to the restructuring of traditional family and gender roles in much of rural Mexico. The feminization and proletarianization of this labor force has resulted in a reorganization of family and labor practices in agriculture and urban sector work as women have been drawn into formal channels of wage labor. Cautioning against the view that the proletarianization of women into low-wage work has served to liberate them, critics hold that earning a low wage has not necessarily improved qualityof-life indicators for women in Mexican society. Rather than taking a celebratory view of the maquila economy, many hold that hardships facing women have doubled with added responsibilities inside and outside the home. While generating some employment, the maquila economy has failed to alleviate the widespread unemployment and underemployment in the region particularly of males who, as a result, may be predisposed to attempt illicit border crossings to earn a living. Despite these criticisms, advocates of free trade maintain that the maquila economy has brought desperately needed jobs, capital, skills, and technology to the region, propelling it into a position of relative comparative advantage. The borderlands economy is serviced by a vibrant tourist industry from populations on both sides of the border. During the Prohibition years, bootleggers ventured into the borderlands where they could more easily obtain alcohol and illicit drugs. The characterization of the region south of the border as a place where individuals with dollars can buy ‘‘anything’’ continues to prevail. Often a place where college students and others cross seeking an unfettered zone of bars, drugs, recreation, and gambling, much of the borderlands tourist industry is largely characterized as a place of
84
Education lawlessness. Arguably, the inequality stemming from a poor nation bordering a rich one lends itself to abuse and illegality. A dark side of the border is evidenced by the alarmingly high rates of murders and rapes of young Mexican women in border towns. Rapid urban sprawl has brought about a transient migrant population that has contributed to a climate of corruption and abuse. Numerous murders of Mexican journalists who have attempted to disclose government corruption and activities of drug traffickers have also received notoriety. Beyond the manufacturing and tourism industries, the borderlands economy also includes agriculture and tertiary sector work, such as retail/wholesale trade, government, education, and service-related industries. As in many regions that have experienced rapid capitalist economic growth, an informal sector is also prevalent. Inability to absorb and accommodate the growing levels of unemployment results in alternative employment and survival strategies adopted by residents to make ends meet. Rather than viewing untaxed economic activity as an aberration, informal activity has come to be viewed as an intrinsic part of rapid capitalist development. There is a considerable amount of asymmetry in which cities on the northern side of the border experience a greater degree of prosperity than their counterparts south of the border, leading to a greater reliance and dependence of the Mexican economy on the United States. At the same time, the United States has benefited from the advantages of this asymmetrical relationship, particularly in the area of labor recruitment. What is increasingly evident is that the economies of the borderlands are intricately connected. Despite its many flaws, economic development on the border has brought merits such as an expanding middle class on both sides. Cultural exchanges and fusions of music, architecture, language, and cuisine further mark the rich hybrids created by the border geography. Understanding the interdependent nature of the borderlands economy offers the opportunity to de-eternalize nation-state sovereignty as it highlights the ‘‘transfrontier’’ nature of the region. Rather than viewing nation-states in absolute terms, a study of the borderland economy, culture, and society conceptualized as a transboundary urban geography can more closely approximate the vision of a new, emerging political and socioeconomic reality of the twenty-first century. Increased transborder cooperation may offer solutions to the very problems it has engendered. See also Agribusiness; Colonias; Labor Unions; Migration. FURTHER READINGS: Brown, Timothy. ‘‘The Fourth Member of NAFTA: The U.S.–Mexico Border.’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 550 (March 1997): 105–21; Herzog, Lawrence. Where North Meets South: Cities, Space and Politics on the U.S.– Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas, Austin, 1990; Iglesias Prieto, Norma. Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997; Laufer, Peter. Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican–American Border. Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2004; Lorey, David. The U.S.–Mexico Border in the Twentieth Century. Wilmington: S. R. Books, 1999; Wood, Andrew Grant, ed. On the Border: Society and Culture between the United States and Mexico. Boulder and New York: S. R. Books, 2004.
Linda Allegro Education. Education in the U.S.–Mexico border lands has been shaped by competition between religious and civil pedagogies, and by the challenges of maintaining schools in remote communities and rugged landscapes. Its character is complicated
85
Education by the variety of educational models that have existed in the region, and by the different experiences that Hispanics, Native Americans, Anglos, and other peoples have had within those models. Its classrooms have been contested spaces of religious conversion, ethnic assimilation, racial segregation, and the construction of cultural identities. In the borderlands, formal educational institutions are a recent European addition to a longer history of education as practiced by indigenous inhabitants. Franciscan friars introduced formal schooling to the borderlands. With support from the Spanish crown, members of the Roman Catholic order traveled north from New Spain, beginning mission schools for Pueblo Indians in what is now New Mexico as early as 1598. Missions followed in Texas in 1718 and Alta California in 1769. Friars designed their schools to convert Indians to Catholicism, and learning in these schools consisted of memorizing doctrine and performing religious hymns. Friars instructed both boys and girls in reading and writing. While learning in Spanish and Latin dominated, some friars wrote dictionaries and translated catechisms into native languages. Despite these schools, most education of both Indian and Spanish children took place at home, and children from wealthy families traveled to Mexico City or Europe for schooling. Mission schools declined with the secularization of the missions and the shifting of political control to Mexico in the early nineteenth century. The Mexican government had difficulty establishing its own schools along its northern frontier. In some areas, the government used a Lancastrian model, in which instructors assisted by older pupils taught classes with as many as 150 students. Scattered local initiatives, both public and private, characterized schooling during this period. Padre Antonio Jose Martınez, a Catholic priest in Taos, oversaw a particularly ambitious program between 1826 and 1867. Martınez admitted both boys and girls to his school, offered seminary and legal training, and printed his own textbooks. The United States’ annexation of the region in the mid-nineteenth century initiated an era of educational competition and change. While public schooling emerged unevenly across the U.S. Southwest, American Protestant and Catholic groups traveled to the region to start their own schools. These Anglo educators intended to Americanize, as well as Christianize, Indian and Hispanic residents. A new Catholic leadership, unhappy with the unrefined religiosity of the region’s Catholic population, invited communities of religious from the American Midwest and Europe to open parochial schools. These communities included the Sisters of Loretto, who arrived in Santa Fe in 1852, the Christian Brothers, and the Sisters of Charity. Protestant missionaries, including Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, began work in the borderlands during the same period. Concerned about Catholic influence, they started their own schools for the region’s natives and for a growing Anglo population. The first Protestant school in the Southwest opened in Brownsville in 1852, and by the 1890s, dozens of these institutions educated students in the borderlands. Through the nineteenth century, public schools on the frontier remained sparse, idiosyncratic, and locally funded. Political, economic, and cultural circumstances varied dramatically along the borderlands, and public education systems developed at different rates. While Texas and California had tax-supported funding structures in place by the time they became states in 1845 and 1850, the Arizona territory did not establish a public school system until the 1870s. The New Mexican territorial government only created a tenable, tax-based public system in 1891. Even with these systems in place, facility construction, teacher training, and student enrollment often
86
Education remained inadequate. The influence of the Catholic Church on the region’s developing institutions also proved persistent, and the line between religious and secular education in the new public systems was sometimes blurry. In New Mexico, more than 130 Catholic sisters taught in public schools as late as 1948. Local debates over public education often carried cultural and racial undertones. Anglo arrivals pointed to the lack of preexisting public schools in the territories as proof that the region’s Hispanics were unintelligent or ‘‘backward.’’ Meanwhile, some Hispanic residents showed reluctance to support education initiatives, in part because of the Americanizing agenda and race-specific privileges that much educational legislation entailed. Language became a heated theme in these debates. In the nineteenth century, Spanish-language instruction was common in the borderlands, and some early Anglo leaders actually proposed schools to teach Anglo children in Spanish. By the turn of the century, however, Progressive era reformers in the region advocated for English-only education. English requirements increased as part of a broad curricular transformation directed at Hispanics, which also included emphases on hygiene and vocational trades. The Texas legislature mandated that public teachers teach exclusively in English in 1893, while New Mexico adopted English-only textbooks in 1907, just before the U.S. Senate stipulated English education as a condition for its statehood. Through the early twentieth century, English instruction sometimes coincided with the segregation of Hispanic students. Although educators justified teaching these students separately based on their linguistic and cultural needs, segregation was systematic and racially based. School districts throughout Texas and California maintained segregationist policies. Although courts ruled against policies targeting Mexicans in both states in the 1940s, school segregation was not easily erased. As late as 1972 parents and students in Houston protested after local officials circumvented courtmandated desegregation by categorizing Mexican students as ‘‘white’’ and restricting them to a largely African American school. In New Mexico, where de jure segregation of Hispanics never existed, de facto segregation based on geographic distribution and correspondingly inadequate funding also remained a serious problem until the 1970s. Hispanics are not the only segregated subjects in the borderlands; the segregation of African American students, especially in Texas, was legal until Brown v. Board of Education and persisted for years after that federal decision. Asian students in early twentieth-century California and Arizona also faced school codes requiring they attend separate ‘‘oriental’’ schools. These policies culminated during World War II, when several thousand Japanese students were forcibly relocated to internment camp schools. Indian children in the Southwest have historically attended separate schools, overseen by the federal government. Until the 1880s, responsibility for Indian schools fell to religious groups, some of which received compensation from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). As the BIA assumed direct control of Indian education in the 1880s, the off-reservation boarding school became its preferred educational model. The government built these schools in places like Albuquerque (1884), Santa Fe (1890), Phoenix (1891), and Riverside (1902). The government’s strategy for educating Southwestern Indians emphasized immersion-based assimilation and vocational training. The twentieth century brought two important shifts in Indian education policy. The first came after 1928, when an independent study called the Meriam Report criticized the BIA’s strategy and recommended that Indians be educated in either public or reservation day schools. As a result, federal day schools opened in pueblos and other Indian lands along the border, but Indian public school attendance in
87
Environmentalism the Southwest remained low. Native languages also began to appear in school curriculums. The second era of Indian educational reform culminated in the 1960s and 1970s, as tribes gained new authority in the oversight of federally funded schools. For example, the Santa Fe Indian School, closed since 1962, reopened under the jurisdiction of New Mexico’s All Indian Pueblo Council in 1981. See also Culture; Legal Issues. FURTHER READINGS: Blanton, Carlos Kevin. The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836-1981. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2004; Gallegos, Bernardo P. Literacy, Education and Society in New Mexico, 1693–1821. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992; Getz, Lynne Marie. Schools of Their Own. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997; Gonzalez, Gilberto. Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation. Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1990; Guadalupe, San Miguel, Jr. Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001; Hyer, Sally. One House, One Voice, One Heart: Native American Education at the Santa Fe Indian School. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1990; Johnson, Leighton Henry. Development of the Central State Agency for Public Education in California, 1849–1949. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1952; Reyhner, Jon, and Eder, Jeanne. American Indian Education: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004; Salvatore, Susan, and Waldo E. Martin Jr., Vicki L. Ruiz, Patricia Sullivan, Harvard Sitkoff. ‘‘Racial Desegregation in Public Education in the United States.’’ National Register, History and Education Program; National Parks Service. Washington: Department of the Interior, 2000.
Kathleen Holscher Environmentalism. Industrialization, rapid urbanization, and various forms of unsustainable development have significantly challenged the borderlands fragile ecosystems. As a result, environmental problems in the region are disproportionately acute when compared with other areas in the United States and Mexico. Air and water quality is especially poor and rapid population growth is exacerbating an already accelerated drain on natural resources. Waste disposal and water treatment is uneven. Pesticides and chemical runoff from agricultural fields is frequent, while various forms of illegal dumping are common. Perhaps most threatening, discharge from renegade maquiladora plants has spilled many highly toxic, industrial substances on the Mexican side. Not surprisingly, a host of health problems have resulted. Infant mortality rates run high—especially on the Mexican side. In Tijuana, for example, there are nearly 27 deaths per 1,000 live births. Across the border in San Diego, the death rate is approximately 7 per 1,000 live births. Documented cases of birth defects, such as babies born with hydroencephaly (in which the brain cavity is filled with fluid), are on the rise. Respiratory and other related health concerns are especially acute for children and the elderly given the high levels of sulfur dioxide, suspended particulate matter (PM-10 and PM-2.5), nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, and carbon monoxide in the air. Efforts to clean up and reform borderlands polluters are many but still insufficient. Grassroots groups such as the Amas de Casas have banded together in Tijuana with some success. San Diego’s Environmental Health Coalition has challenged those maquiladora owners who operate on the Mexican side with little regard for international environmental standards. Such guidelines are endorsed by a variety of local and international government and nongovernmental organizations.
88
European Immigrants and Communities The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), founded as a ‘‘side agreement’’ in the wake of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), is charged with the difficult task of monitoring—and presumably helping to enforce—Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. environmental regulations. Similarly, the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) was created through a NAFTA binational (Mexico and the United States) negotiation. The agency’s mission is to improve the borderlands environment through encouraging infrastructural development, sustainability measures, and public participation. Approved projects are funded by the North American Development Bank (NADB). The U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission checks water quality at a variety of border sites, including treatment plants and industrial plants. Meanwhile, various municipalities on the Mexican side struggle to keep up with the volume of sewage and wastewater collected for treatment. Sampling the content of such materials in Tijuana in 2000, for example, investigators found much higher levels (eight to ten times) of chromium, nickel, copper, and other metals as compared with that collected in San Diego. In the effort to guard against further environmental degradation, there have been many setbacks but also some bright spots. Interest in providing a safe infrastructure for Asian investment, international assistance to the region has more recently been provided by the Japanese Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (JOECF). The JOECF provides low-interest loans to Mexican cities such as Tijuana to help them build more water-reclamation plants. Transnational environmental scholarship and research is being conducted in a variety of areas, including Mexican and U.S. universities affiliated with the Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy. These are but two of the many innovative endeavors, however, many urgent and massive challenges remain. What is desperately needed is a powerful combination of cross-border environmental management on the part of industry coupled with the conscious effort of academics, concerned citizens, and public interest groups. See also Disease; Economy; Labor; Legislation. FURTHER READINGS: Barry, Tom, and Sims, Beth. The Challenge of Cross-Border Environmentalism: The U.S.–Mexico Case. Albuquerque: Resource Center Press, 1994; Consejo Consultivo para Desarrollo Sustentable (Mexico’s Consulting Council for Sustainable Development). http://consejos.semarnat.gob.mx/; Environmental Health Coalition. http://www.environmentalhealth.org/; Fuentes, Carlos. The Crystal Frontier. English edition. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997; Pe~ na, Devon Gerardo. Mexican Americans And The Environment: Tierra Y Vida. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006; Pe~ na, Devon Gerardo. The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology of the U.S.–Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997; Salda~ na, Lori. ‘‘Tijuana’s Toxic Waters.’’ NACLA Report on the Americas XXXIII, no. 3 (November/December 1999): 31–35; Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy. http://www.scerp.org/; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. ‘‘U.S.–Mexico Border Program 2012.’’ http://www.epa.gov/usmexicoborder/issues.html.
Andrew G. Wood European Immigrants and Communities. In the history of the U.S.–Mexico border region, the terms immigration and migration often refer to the movement of Mexicans or to the settlement of the area by American-born Anglos. European immigrants play, at best, a supporting role in this discussion. That all Europeans get easily labeled
89
European Immigrants and Communities as Anglos downplays the diversity of white ethnicities and the complexity of white experience in the region. During the nineteenth century, many Germans, Irish, Italians, Scandinavians, Swiss, Scots, and others from widely different backgrounds and social classes came to Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico in search of business opportunities and a fresh start. The many merchants, soldiers, miners, and farmers contributed to the heterogeneous character of the border communities. While ethnicity often mattered less to the immigrants than their trade or class, many preferred to live in ethnic clusters where they celebrated and preserved their ethnic heritage. In Northern Mexico, no significant influx of European immigrants ever emerged. Although Mexico was keen to bring in ‘‘strong’’ European blood to provide energy for its modernization, only foreign investment came. Political disruptions in the 1860s, the long reign of Porfirio Dıaz, and the revolutionary disorder of the early 1900s kept the country unstable and deteriorated social and economic conditions. European immigrants stayed out, because they found no prospects in Mexico. They preferred the United States and later, South American countries like Argentina. On the other hand, some Mexicans doubted the benefits of European immigrants. In many ways, Texas was an attempt to lure Anglo-European immigrants to the Mexican soil, which proved to be a costly and embarrassing mistake from Mexico’s viewpoint. Although most of them did not stay, the almost 30,000 French troops that occupied the country during the 1860s brought with them European culture and influences. Hated by the general population, soldiers bore offspring and imported French cultural products like hoop skirts, literature, and music. They also introduced scientific positivism and endorsed Freemasonry. Also in the late 1800s, the Mexican elite wanting to stress their European roots and desiring European influences flocked to foreign universities from Berkeley to the Sorbonne and took grand tours through Western Europe and the United States. If northern Mexico attracted hardly any Europeans, the majority of the millions of immigrants who sailed to the eastern seaports of the United States never reached the border region either. The reasons included cost, familiarity, and the availability of industrial work or suitable land for farming. Not only was the journey from eastern cities to the border area a chancy and costly endeavor, but also the ‘‘remote’’ Southwest, lacking manufacturing and industrial foundation, offered little immediate economic promise for the immigrants. Many places on the border lacked the ethnic communities in which immigrants could settle down and feel at home. This explains why those who did go usually acculturated quite rapidly to the American society. The immigrants found themselves in a tradition-free setting surrounded by nonwhites. On the border, whiteness was generally more inclusive than in the east, where, for instance, Jews and Irish were often seen as nonwhite. Although many Irish figured in the development of Texas independence and statehood, most of the white colonizers were Anglos throughout the nineteenth century. The Germans formed by far the largest white ethnic group in Texas. Unlike in New Mexico or Arizona, the Germans tended to concentrate in ethnic clusters. The German Belt stretched from Houston to the west of San Antonio. Islands of German ethnicity developed elsewhere as well, but not in the Trans-Pecos area or in the Rio Grande Valley. German communities differed from each other in many ways. Some were Protestant; others were Catholic, Jewish, or atheist. People also came from a variety of German provinces. While some places included intellectual refugees who sought political freedom, the middle-class farmers who had some experience in trade
90
European Immigrants and Communities constituted the typical case. Many Germans lived in urban areas like San Antonio. By 1880, one-third of the town’s population was German. In the 1890s, German immigration slowed down and ended by the time of the two World Wars and the antiGerman sentiment that accompanied them. In many places, intermarriage, rural depopulation, the move to the suburbs, the breakup of old German neighborhoods, and the closure of German papers and schools eroded the German cultural basis and directed the Germans toward the Anglo mainstream. In addition to Germans, Texas had significant minorities of Austrian, Bohemian, Scot, and Swiss immigrants. The Swedish community in Texas was larger than in any other southern state, yet still small. Texas had only a few Italians before 1880, but then their numbers increased somewhat. Typical Italians included unskilled laborers, miners, and farmers. The small settlements in New Mexico and Arizona were often a mix of many cultures. White ethnic clusters proved a rarity at least before the copper mining boom. Although Arizona, in particular, had a high percentage of foreign-born people, most of them originated from Mexico not from Europe. Still, by 1880, there were hundreds of European migrants in both territories. Almost all of them were men. Arizona had sizable groups of Scots, Swiss, Swedes, Danes, Italians, and French. The largest groups, however, were the Germans and the Irish, numbering 1,110 and 1,296, respectively, in the 1880 Census. Several Jewish immigrants made their name as businessmen. Among them was German-speaking Michael Goldwater, who founded a successful mercantile chain. He was also the grandfather of Arizona’s famous presidential candidate and senator, Barry Goldwater. Many of the working-class immigrants were soldiers. The U.S. Army posts that dotted Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas included men from almost every European country. Although the officers were usually native-born Anglos, approximately half of the white enlisted men were immigrants, many Germans or Irish. For these immigrants, the army service proved a suitable way to acquaint themselves to the American culture and the English language. When their army contracts ran out, many immigrant soldiers stayed and made the border area their permanent homes. In New Mexico, the crypto-Jews who arrived to escape the Spanish Inquisition were probably the first ‘‘non-Spanish’’ European immigrants. After the Civil War, the Irish and the Germans formed the largest immigrant groups. However, in New Mexico, Hispanics and Native Americans outnumbered all whites into the twentieth century. The Germans represented an influential minority of educated merchants and skilled workers. Before the railroads and the Anglo influx that followed, most Germans were more interested in acculturation than cultural preservation. Intermarriages with Mexicans made these immigrant men part of the Spanish-speaking community. Only after the Anglos reordered the socioeconomic structures of the territory, did ethnic Germans become more concerned about their cultural identities. They formed ethnic organizations designed to preserve their identity as Germans, while at the same time cooperating with the Anglos. In the 1880s, transcontinental railroads made Arizona and New Mexico more easily reachable. While more people arrived in the area, significant quantities of copper and cattle were shipped out. Demand for a skilled and steady labor force made the copper towns miniature colonies where workers arrived from established mining areas in Germany, Scotland, Ireland, and Cornwall. Also many Italians, Spaniards, Czechs, Serbs, Montenegrans, and Bohemians flocked to mining communities like
91
European Immigrants and Communities Bisbee and Jerome. Unlike in the military posts, in copper towns, visible hierarchies of whiteness existed. Camp sites for instance were segregated between different European nationalities and the Anglos. Other mining communities had men from different European countries. For example, the silver mining town Tombstone had significant Irish, German, and Jewish minorities. For its part, California maintained a cosmopolitan population ever since the California Gold Rush. For instance, there were more Irish in California than in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico combined, yet most of them lived away from the border area. In contrast to San Francisco, relatively few European immigrants of any origin settled in Los Angeles and southern California. When the rapid growth after World War I brought people from every corner of the nation to the Los Angeles area, European immigration to the United States. had already become highly restricted. See also Migration; Mormon Colonies in Mexico. FURTHER READINGS: Jaehn, Thomas. Germans in the Southwest, 1850–1920. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005; Lich, Glen E. The German Texans. San Antonio: University of Texas Institute of Texas Cultures, 1981; Nugent, Walter. Into the West: The Story of Its People. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999; Rochlin, Harriet and Fred. Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2000; Sheridan, Thomas E. Arizona: A History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.
Janne Lahti
92
D
Filibusters. Filibusters are men who participate in unofficial, private military expeditions that originate from the territory of one state against that of a friendly state. The term more specifically has come to describe Anglo American adventurers in the nineteenth century who intended to invade and seize control of various territories in the Western Hemisphere. The process itself, filibustering, reached a zenith in the 1850s when several groups of filibusters from the United States invaded lands in Latin America, most conspicuously Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Filibustering violated the U.S. Neutrality Act of 1818, which prohibited private warfare, and it damaged international relations with not only Latin American nations but with European powers as well. The term itself derives from the Dutch word vribuiter (freebooter), and the filibusters, although vilified by many as pirates, won acclaim from others as heroes and agents of Manifest Destiny during the years of expansionist frenzy in the United States. A significant wave of filibustering, aimed primarily at Latin America, took place in the wake of the U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48). Narciso Lopez, a Cuban emigre intent on freeing his country from colonial rule by Spain, organized two separate invasions of Cuba. L opez and 520 filibusters landed on the north coast of Cuba on May 19, 1850, capturing the town of Cardenas before being repulsed by Spanish reinforcements. He fled to Key West, escaped prosecution for his illegal act, and quickly organized a second invasion of Cuba. This second expedition of 453 men landed on the northern coast of Cuba, west of Havana, on August 12, 1851. This second adventure also ended in failure, with L opez and many of his followers killed in battle or executed. Spanish authorities garroted L opez in Havana on September 1. Several filibustering expeditions took aim at Mexico during the 1850s. Tejano Jose Marıa Jes us Carbajal, who had supported the cause of Texan independence, led three filibustering expeditions from Texan soil into the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas between 1851 and 1853. These missions, intended to achieve a combination of norte~ no separatism and a relaxation of duties on U.S. imports into Mexico, eventually met with failure. Throughout the 1850s, filibusters remained interested in northern Mexico, with many expeditions originating in California. Joseph Moorhead, California’s quartermaster general, attempted an invasion of the Mexican state of Sonora in 1851, although Mexican officials aborted the attempt. French filibuster Gaston Raul de Raosset-Boulbon led three expeditions of frustrated French immigrants from
93
F
Filibusters California into Sonora where their attempts to establish an independent colony on the frontier suffered defeat. Henry Crabb’s invasion of Sonora in 1857 also failed, with only one filibuster out of sixty-eight surviving. The most notorious—and fleetingly successful—of the filibustering expeditions of the 1850s were those organized by William Walker. A Tennessean born in 1824, Walker studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and law in New Orleans before becoming interested in journalism and politics. He moved to California in 1849 where he began to conceive his plans to capture territory for personal gain in mineral-rich Mexican Sonora. His expedition of forty-five filibusters departed San Francisco on October 16, 1853, and managed to overtake the town of La Paz, Baja California, seizing its governor as hostage. Walker then proclaimed himself president of the independent ‘‘Republic of Lower California.’’ He sailed northward to Ensenada, received reinforcements from California, and then mounted an unsuccessful attempt to invade and complete the incorporation of Sonora into his republic. Mexican forces repulsed his invasion, and Walker retreated to the United States in April 1854. Although Walker stood trial in California for violating U.S. neutrality statutes, his quick acquittal probably reflected the U.S. public’s fascination with and tacit approval of filibustering in northern Mexico. Walker’s next adventures took him further south into Latin America. Invited by Nicaragua’s liberals to assist them in a civil war, the now well-known Walker arrived in 1854, captured the conservative stronghold of Granada, and maneuvered himself into being named commander-in-chief of the Nicaraguan army. From that key position, Walker managed to subdue his rivals and win a fraudulent election for the presidency in 1856. Many forces conspired to undermine his tenuous rule, including armed intervention by a coalition of Central American states, opposition from U.S. authorities who withdrew recognition and cut off reinforcements, and resistance from the British who saw their own interests on Central America’s Gulf Coast threatened. Driven from power, Walker surrendered to U.S. naval forces in 1857, and although he attempted three subsequent invasions of Central America, each one ended in failure. His final campaign, in 1860, ended in his execution by firing squad after British officials had turned him into Honduran authorities. Filibusters not only coveted lands in Latin America; Canada and Hawaii figured among their targets in the nineteenth century as well. However, stemming from the success of the U.S.–Mexican War, and riding the wave of expansionist sentiment in the era of Manifest Destiny, filibustering during the 1850s, particularly in Cuba, Mexico, and Central America, resonated strongly with many who shared a sense of U.S. superiority and mission to dominate the Western Hemisphere. The filibusters themselves were motivated by several factors, ranging from personal profit to political ambition, and these motivations often became conflated and confused. Walker, for example, sought personal enrichment in Sonora, but he defended his later actions in Nicaragua as ensuring the march of civilization and expansion of slavery. In this way, he sought to win support from southerners in the United States. The U.S. government condemned the filibustering campaigns and successfully impeded many attempts. Sectional politics, however, often factored into official attitudes and actions, with the Whig Party and antislavery northern politicians denouncing the expeditions, and members of the southern Democratic Party more sympathetic. In the end, the filibusters and their illegal private invasions, combined with official attempts at U.S. territorial expansion, cast a shadow over international
94
Filipinos relations between the United States and Latin America in the second half of the nineteenth century. See also Manifest Destiny; Monroe Doctrine; Texas Revolution. FURTHER READING AND VIEWING: Brown, Charles H. Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives of the Filibusters. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1980; Chaffin, Tom. Fatal Glory: Narciso Lopez and the First Clandestine U.S. War against Cuba. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996; May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002; May, Robert E. The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973; Stout, Joseph A. The Liberators: Filibustering Expeditions into Mexico, 1848–1862 and the Last Thrust of Manifest Destiny. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1973; Stout, Joseph A. Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848–1921. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2002; Walker, William. The War in Nicaragua. Mobile: S.H. Goetzel, 1860. Walker. Directed by Alex Cole. Produced by Lorenzo O’Brien. 95 minutes. InCine Compa~ nıa Industrial Cinematografica S.A., 1987.
William E. Skuban Filipinos. Like people from Puerto Rico and Guam, people from the Philippines (Filipinos) have had a special relationship with the United States that dates back to the Spanish-American War of 1898. In that war, the United States fought to free what remained of the Spanish Empire from colonial rule. As a result of the war, the Philippines became an American protectorate and their inhabitants were considered American ‘‘nationals,’’ which allowed them to immigrate to the United States without restriction. Until the Hawes-Cutting Act transformed them into aliens ineligible for citizenship in 1932 and the Tydings-McDuffie Act limited Philippine immigration to fifty people per year in 1934, this special relationship defined the flow and the lives of Filipinos in America. The first Filipinos to immigrate to what is now the United States came as sailors aboard the Spanish treasure ships that traveled the Pacific between Acapulco, Mexico, and Manila. Although few in number, early accounts report Filipino sailors living in Los Angeles in the late eighteenth century and escaped Filipino sailors formed a community in Louisiana as early as 1765. Serious immigration only began at the turn of the twentieth century, however, following U.S. annexation of the Philippines in 1898. The first to immigrate were students from elite Philippine families, whose American education was paid for by the Philippine government. In addition to these future Philippine leaders and administrators, beginning in 1903, agricultural workers began to leave the Philippines in large numbers to work in the cane fields of Hawaii and the agricultural regions of California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. By the time the Great Depression and Congressional legislation ended these twin migrations in the mid-1930s, nearly 14,000 students and 45,000 agricultural workers had immigrated to the mainland United States, while a much larger group, some 122,000 agricultural workers, had moved to Hawaii. With immigration from the Philippines all but foreclosed by Congress in 1934, the sole route to America came through wartime military service. Between 1941 and the war’s end in 1945, more than 10,000 Filipino men served in the armed forces, most in the Navy and 80 percent of them as stewards rather than combat soldiers.
95
Filipinos Nonetheless, wartime regulations allowed these men to stay in the United States and legislation passed in 1946 allowed them to become full American citizens. Passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 brought the greatest number of Filipinos to the United States. Under the Act, Filipinos no longer suffered special restrictions and were admitted to the country following the same regulations as other foreign nationals. The result was dramatic. The 1960 Census counted a little more than 100,000 Filipinos in a country of 175 million people, but by 1970, only five years after passage of the Immigration Act, the Filipino population of the United States had tripled to 300,000. Twenty years later that number stood at 1.4 million and, by 2005, 2 million Filipinos lived in the United States. The post-1965 immigration was radically different than earlier waves of immigration. Unlike the uneducated laborers of the early twentieth century and the highschool educated soldiers and sailors of World War II, the new immigrants were highly skilled, many with technical degrees. Most were women, who made up 60 percent of the post-1965 immigration. Along with these new immigrants, the Immigration Act allowed family members of men who had gained citizenship through military service to join their relatives in the United States. Taken together, these twin flows have made Filipinos one of the fastest-growing groups of immigrants in the contemporary United States. Like immigration itself, the reception of Filipino immigrants by established Americans has occurred in two phases. During the period of agricultural labor immigration between 1903 and 1934, Filipinos were welcomed as much-needed labor by growers in Hawaii and the mainland United States. Like the Chinese and Japanese before them, the Filipinos gained a reputation as diligent, hard workers who outperformed many other groups of workers. But to mainstream Americans, the Filipinos were simply another group of unwanted Asians who were biologically and culturally inferior and took away American jobs. Filipino immigrants were predominantly unmarried young men who took jobs involving hard labor in agriculture. With a lack of jobs for women, few Filipinas immigrated. Thus, like the Chinese, Filipinos formed bachelor societies, and sex ratios in the first thirty years of immigration averaged 14 to 1 (in some areas, such as Washington State, the ratio ran as high as 33 to 1). But unlike the Chinese, many Filipino men sought American wives, marrying among other Asian, American Indian, African American, Mexican, and white groups. In the eyes of many whites, this made them a ‘‘social menace,’’ and in some states, especially California, antimiscegenation laws were extended to cover members of the Malay race, as Filipinos were then categorized racially. Conditions worsened during the Depression, as whites began to complete with Filipinos for low-paying jobs and the HawesCutting Act transformed Filipinos into aliens. Some states, such as Washington, extended their Alien Land Acts to prevent not only Japanese, but now Filipinos, from owning land. Though Filipinos attempted to counter increasing discrimination and prejudice by forming labor and civic organizations and by petitioning legislators, the downward spiral of anti-Filipino actions and sentiments only ended with the mobilization of World War II. The experience of Filipinos in the second wave of immigration following passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 was altogether different. The postwar era had witnessed a gradual lessening of anti-Asian sentiment, but most important, the Civil Rights acts of the mid-1960s made the kind of discrimination faced by Filipinos, and other people of color in the past, illegal and increasingly unacceptable to the
96
Flores Magon Brothers mainstream public. Added to this, the highly educated and female-centered nature of the post-1965 immigration made integration into American life considerably easier for the second wave of immigrants. Employed in technical and medical fields, Filipinos earned higher-than-average incomes, which allowed them to move to suburbs, send their children to good schools, and in general fully participate in American life. See also Cities and Towns; Labor Unions; United Farm Workers of America. FURTHER READINGS: Fujita-Rony, Dorothy B. American Workers, Colonial Power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919–1941. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003; Le Espiritu, Yen. Filipino American Lives. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995; Le Espiritu, Yen. Homebound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Ronald Schultz Flores Mag on Brothers. The Flores Mag on brothers—Jes us, Ricardo, and Enrique— were born in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. All three were involved in opposing the dictatorship of Porfirio Dıaz during the last decade of the nineteenth century through a series of short-lived newspapers, while Ricardo and Enrique maintained their opposition to the forces that replaced Dıaz after the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 while in exile in the United States through their writing and the political party Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM). Their most important and famous newspaper, Regeneracion, was first published in 1900. From the beginning, their writings, and especially those of Ricardo, were motivated by an intense radicalism that foreshadowed much of the evolving revolutionary ideology that would become so apparent in the years after 1910. As the Flores Magon brothers became more prominent within the circle of anti-Porfirian writers and intellectuals, government repression increased. The three brothers were outlawed from publishing in 1903, and Ricardo was arrested for his antigovernment writings. When Ricardo left prison in late 1903, he and Enrique decided to leave Mexico to avoid the harassment of the Dıaz regime, entering into exile in Texas in early 1904. They continued to publish Regeneracion from exile, but pressure from the Dıaz regime forced them to move from Laredo, Texas, to San Antonio, Texas, and finally to St. Louis, Missouri. By 1906, the circulation of their paper had increased to 20,000 throughout the United States and Mexico, in spite of the fact that the publication had been banned by the Mexican government. They also published the PLM program in 1906, which called for the immediate overthrow of the Dıaz regime, as well as substantive agrarian and labor reforms. The year 1906 also witnessed the first abortive attempt by the PLM to launch a revolution in Mexico. A series of raids across the border from the United States were launched, but all were repulsed easily by the federal army. These botched raids led the U.S. and Mexican governments to imprison much of the leadership of the PLM, including Ricardo and Enrique Flores Mag on, but they continued to write and continued to plot the overthrow of the Dıaz regime. They tried to launch another series of cross-border attacks in 1908, but these were again repulsed. Ricardo finally left prison in 1910 on the eve of the Mexican Revolution. He watched the beginning of the civil war from exile in the United States, and while he was glad to see Dıaz gone, he argued that Francisco Madero was every bit as bad and would allow Mexico to remain as unequal as it had been under Dıaz. He continued
97
Folklore to oppose all of the iterations of revolutionary leadership, whether led by Victoriano Huerta or Venustiano Carranza. The exception was Emiliano Zapata, who the Flores Magons supported throughout the Revolution as the only palatable option for Mexico. Because of their radical writings, Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magon were convicted in July 1918 of violating the Espionage Act, a World War I–era law that suppressed antigovernment publications. The twenty-two-year sentence would be a death sentence for Ricardo, whose health had been worsening for several years. Ricardo died in the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1922. See also Foreigners Expelled from Mexico; Industrial Workers of the World; Labor; Plan de San Diego. FURTHER READINGS: Albro, Ward S. Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican Revolution. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1992; Cockcroft, James D. Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1913. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968; Langham, Thomas C. Border Trials: Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican Liberals. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1981; MacLachlan, Colin M. Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores Magon in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991; Wood, Andrew Grant. ‘‘Death of a Political Prisoner: Revisiting the Case of Ricardo Flores Magon.’’ A Contracorriente. Fall 2005. http://www.ncsu.edu/project/acontracorriente/fall_05/Wood.pdf.
John Weber Folklore. Borderlands folklore can be defined as the vernacular cultural knowledge and practices (lore) of the people (folk) who inhabit or hail from the binational swath of land encompassing the U.S.–Mexico border region. This zone of approximately sixty miles radiating north and south from the ‘‘line’’ is variously described as a buffer zone, third country, open wound, edge, rim, margin, and a number of other evocative metaphors that point to the in-between character of cultural processes rooted in various degrees of transculturation. Derived from European roots, in its most widely used forms, the word ‘‘folklore’’ and the more recent interchangeable term ‘‘folklife,’’ refer to (1) groups loosely or formally organized around ethnicity, occupation, religion, or various other kinds of affinities; (2) communicative practices meant to be shared informally that provide instruction on ‘‘the way we do things here’’; and (3) predominantly artistic practices that are not necessarily beautiful or sublime, but rather refer to a range of inventive ways to embellish what is otherwise commonplace in everyday life. The inventory of folk practices in the borderlands is extensive. It moves along a spectrum that encompasses ancient and contemporary indigenous traditions (for example, the harvesting of the saguaro cactus fruit by the Tohono O’odham people in Arizona); Spanish cultural imports (Matachine dances, Santos wood carvings); traces of European, African, and Asian cultural materials; distinct national Mexican cultural elements; U.S. popular and mass culture (expressed, for example, in the preference for rock-and-roll oldies in many border radio stations); and the border area’s own hybrid creations. Such creations include unique words such as pachuco and agringado; vernacular foods such as cabrito and tortillas de harina; musical traditions such as conjunto and, more recently, quebradita; objects such as cowboy boots, hats, and veladoras; and lifestyles such as the afternoon conversations known as resolanas or the family horse-dancing tradition known as escaramuza.
98
Folklore In addition, border folklore encompasses practices distributed across patterns of regional social stratification—from working-class cultural experiences to aesthetic preferences of a clase acomodada, rural and urban lifeways, English and Spanish monolingual and bilingual speech communities, natives and settlers, Americanos, and law enforcement agents. While cultural fusion is inherent in interactions among these various sectors, conflict is also pervasive, leading to the proliferation in the region, as folklorist Olivia Cadaval has noted, of the use of many ‘‘unneighborly names between neighbors’’ (among which ‘‘gringo,’’ ‘‘wetback,’’ and even the more recent ‘‘alien’’ are but a small sample). Border folklore is predominantly Mexican American, but this generalized characterization is heavily inflected by regional variations that represent distinct subcultural clusters, including Lower Rio Grande culture (Tejano culture originating from both Laredos down to the Gulf of Mexico), West Texan and Chihuahuan distinctiveness (with El Paso de El Norte and Ciudad Juarez functioning as pivotal symbolic contact zones), New Mexican Hispano and Pueblo traditions, Arizona-Sonora lifeways (with marked cattle ranching folklife elements detected as far as Sinaloa and Durango and expressed in a preference for beef and cheese products), and Baja and Alta Californias’ Pacific-oriented cultural traits (from Baja’s popular fish tacos to Tijuana’s famed Chinese takeouts). Broadly conceived notions of fronterizo identity are often trumped by regionalism, resulting in distinct and novel expressive forms such as the frequent use of the idiom y’all by Tejanos and the invention of words like cimarronas to refer to snowcones in Arizona-Sonora. Although the predominance of transborder cultural contacts is undisputable, historian Oscar Martınez has observed that not all ‘‘borderlanders’’ feel compelled to the same degree (by sheer economic necessity or taste) to establish ties or absorb cultural influences from their neighbors. Some borderlanders, he has written, actually go to great lengths to avoid contact with those on the other side of the border. Nonetheless, given the pockets of xenophobia one can find even in areas along the border resolutely embedded in bicultural worlds, the general ethos of the region is one of mythical opportunities for reinvention, adaptation, and convergence. While Mexicanderived and Mexicano working-class folklore is most strongly represented along the region, one can easily detect the vitality of other folk traditions, such as old-time fiddling, whittling, and peach carving connected to the westward migration of workers from Appalachia and Arkansas and the African American southern postbellum diaspora. In popular usage, the term folklore is sometimes used as a code for quaint, eccentric, or peculiar. In the borderlands, this connotation is usually attached to the stereotypical ideas about border towns and their reputation for unruly behavior, excess entertainment, and the saturation of material goods known as curios (for example, velvet paintings, plaster statuary, and garish souvenirs). As a totality, these multiple cultural nodes and flows are seldom separated into neat rubrics that distinguish folkloristictype cultural forms from broader notions of something simply called border culture. Insofar as the borderlands function as crucible (intense laboratories for dynamics of borrowing and rejecting), the region has also incubated important resistance movements. This is true not only of folk heroes such as Gregorio Cortez or Juan Garcıa, or the widely influential ‘‘sanctuary movement’’ on behalf of migrants and refugees that emerged in Arizona in the 1980s, but as Baja California scholar Jose Manuel Valenzuela Arce has noted, also of more recent massive phenomena such as cholismo (a youth subculture that borrows styles and social ideologies from Chicano barrios in
99
Folklore many U.S. cities). Hence, the folklore of the border is also inscribed by a residual body of legends, jokes, stories, styles, and attitudes concerning bohemians and maverick passers-by, day trippers, writers, and artists seeking to escape civilization, as well as the hippies, ecologists, humanitarian activists, outlaws, rebels, and the transgressive characters that the late and notable border scholar Americo Paredes called tequileros and sediciosos. A widespread body of folk practices has come to be associated with drug smugglers; these include the controversial narco corridos and the recent rise in devotion to the Santa Muerte. Paredes, a former professor of English at University of Texas in Austin, was the single-most prolific recorder and analyst of borderlands folklore. His scholarship, primarily focused on the border folk ballad known as corrido, but extensive to many other genres embedded in working-class Lower Rio Grande Mexican American cultural life, set a precedent that inspired dozens of scholars. Today, a robust body of scholarship is available, not only on borderlands vernacular practices specifically but also on Chicano arts and culture, that owes a substantial intellectual debt to Paredes’ work. Within this academic corpus, women scholars have stepped in to bring attention to the feminist dimensions of border expressive life—from the historical role of gardens in the transition from Mexican to U.S. rule, to patriarchal ideologies inscribed in children’s songs, to life-cycle rituals such as Quincea~ neras, and the musical legacy of female icons such as Lydia Mendoza and Selena. Alive as well is a sturdy tradition of avocational folklorists and community scholars—school teachers, librarians, amateur photographers, family members, social workers, health educators, and others who have set out to record and document local traditions. Several university libraries have archives containing many useful folklore materials—University of Texas Austin, University of Arizona, and Utah State are among the most comprehensive. The Library of Congress’ Folklife Center also boasts an extensive collection. Occasionally, borderlands folklore materials will appear bound up with folklore of the U.S. West or, in the case of states like New Mexico, Chihuahua, Arizona, and Sonora, in specific references to the Native groups in each area (Raramuri, Apache, Yoeme, and so on). Borderland cultural ways have been affected by increasingly porous social and economic dynamics of globalization, thus research on Mexican American communities in U.S. cities like Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles frequently leads to various forms of vernacular border practices transmigrated to urban barrios. One common approach to the study of folklore is to group expressive forms into three major categories: verbal, material, and customary. The study of borderlands folklore could be pursued accordingly. In terms of material culture, some topics of interest include various forms of folk architecture, such as adobe bricks and ramadas; decorative arts such as paper flowers, bordados, pi~ natas, ironwork, blown glass, and leatherwork such as saddles and boots; religious folk art such as roadside altars or capillas, nichos, gravemarkers, and home altars; visual culture and public art such as low riders, murals, yard art, and signage; and the many and rich traditions associated with vernacular foods. Among this cuisine the whole phenomenon denominated Tex-Mex is worth considering, as are unique varieties of produce and vegetables (chiltepin chiles in Arizona, verdolagas in New Mexico, fajitas in Texas), the prevalence of panaderias and carnicerias throughout border towns, delicacies such as the Lent dessert capirotada and tripitas de leche among meat lovers; unique stories associated with food origins (the ‘‘invention’’ of the quesadilla in Imuris, Sonora, or the margarita in various competing border locations). Verbal art forms include various forms of folk
100
Foreigners Expelled from Mexico narratives, among which jokes, casos, legends, and tales are most common (La Llorona, El Cucui, La Corua, the Devil appearing disguised at various festive settings, and more recently, the Chupacabras); various forms of folk speech, among which the underground dialect known as calo is most prominent, together with arbur (doubleentendre joking), naming practices (diminutives, terms of endearment, and derisions), proverbs, dichos, riddles, and declamacion of folk poetry; music in all its forms, from religious alabanzas to dance-oriented varieties such as Waila and boleros, and the remarkable growth of Mariachi in the border region since the 1950s. The realm of customary practices incorporates a wide range of well-known folk expressions: Fiestas Patrias, Day of the Dead, charreadas, and horse races are among the best documented ones, but children’s games, backyard barbacoas, and rite-of-passage events such as weddings, baptisms, and funerals are also quite prominent; customs associated with specific occupations, such as that of miners, gardeners, and ranch hands, offer interesting insights into historical developments of the border region. Recent years have also seen a rise in interest in folk medicine, including herbal remedies, curanderas, parteras, and a number of folk beliefs associated with health and well-being, including devotions directed to noncanonical folk saints such as Don Pedrito Jaramillo, El Nino Fidencio, Teresita Urrea-La Santa de Cabora, and Pancho Villa. See also Anthropology of the Borderlands; Literature. FURTHER READINGS: ‘‘Borders and Identity.’’ Smithsonian Folklife Festival, 1993. http:www.smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/bord/borders.html; Cantu, Norma, and Olga Najera-Ramırez, eds. Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002; Graham, Joe S. Hecho en Tejas: Texas-Mexican Folk Arts and Crafts. Denning, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1997; Griffith, James S. Folk Saints of the Borderlands: Victims, Bandits, and Healers. Tucson: Rıo Nuevo Publishers, 2003.
Maribel Alvarez Foreigners Expelled from Mexico. During the government of President Porfirio Dıaz (1876–1911), Mexico’s northern border developed rapidly. Accelerated transformation brought on in the aftermath of the U.S.–Mexican War turned northern Mexico, in just a few short decades, into an important region in the larger national economy. Rapid social change in the north also produced individuals and groups who would go on to play an important role in the revolution of 1910. From the northern frontier came most of the major players who not only challenged Dıaz but also the counterrevolutionary government of Victoriano Huerta. Many of these northern revolution aries—namely Francisco Madero, Venustiano Carranza, Alvaro Obregon, and Plutarco Elıas Calles—ruled Mexico until the mid-1930s. With the United States bordering to the north, Mexicans from this region felt an intense concern for national security—one that would fuel a program of revolutionary nationalism and its attendant call for equality and justice. In the heat of battle, combatants began to develop many of the nationalist proposals that would prove so important in the coming decades. In fact, many saw the revolution as a chance to challenge foreign influence and prejudice toward Mexicans. Not just in the north, but in other areas of the country, Mexicans aggressively targeted foreigners—especially Spaniards and Chinese. In comparison, anti-Americanism proved less energetic as few were threatened with expulsion or had their property expropriated.
101
Foreigners Expelled from Mexico At the beginning of the Mexican Revolution slightly more than 20 million North Americans lived in Mexico. A decade later, this number increased by approximately 5 percent. At the beginning of the conflict, most (approximately 75 percent) lived either in the capital or in the northern states. Ten years later, some change in northern location could be noted while the number of Americans living in Mexico City decreased. Yet despite broken diplomatic relations between national governments during this period, Mexicans rarely engaged in direct attacks on U.S. citizens. In 1919, the National Association for the Protection of the Rights of North Americans in Mexico made public the names of 317 Americans killed during the revolutionary conflict. The majority of the deaths occurred in the northern states undertaken by a variety of responsible parties: soldiers in the national army, followers of Pancho Villa, combatants under Venustiano Carranza, various bandits, and Indian rebels. Senator Albert Fall headed up a subcommittee to investigate these deaths as well as other crimes against property. His findings concluded that between 1910 and 1919 more than 1,000 foreigners had lost their lives. Of these, Fall reported that 550 had been U.S. citizens, 471 of Chinese origin, and 209 Spanish. With the drafting of Article 33 of the 1917 Constitution, the Mexican president had the authority to expel any foreigner deemed undesirable or unfit to live in the country. Between 1911 and 1940, the government used this provision to issue a few more than 1,200 expulsions to foreigners from about forty countries. Among these, 32 percent were Spanish, 19 percent Chinese, and 10 percent U.S. citizens. Most lived in cities and were men. Many of those expelled under the new law had been understood to have interfered directly in political matters. Others were journalists who officials perceived to have written antigovernment materials. Still others were labeled delinquents. Many of these individuals (sometimes called ‘‘slackers’’) ended up being associated with various American leftist concerns before associating with the aspiring Mexican labor movement. The government also deported various business executives, such as those working for U.S. mining, oil, and agricultural companies for not complying with revolutionary legislation. Particularly in the north, foreign owners of cantinas and brothels also felt the pinch. New immigration legislation passed in 1926, 1930, and 1936 affected North Americans living in Mexico. Here, fears about a ‘‘racial degeneration’’ of Mexican society as a result of U.S. migration into the country factored into the new regulations. In particular, this meant that African Americans would not be allowed to reside permanently in Mexico, although many were authorized to enter the country with temporary work permits. Those working in various ‘‘international’’ capacities as servicemen on trains, horse trainers, or traveling musicians, for example, tended to be exempted. Regulations limiting the entry of African Americans into Mexico persisted until the mid-1940s. Nevertheless, the majority of expulsions came as a result of foreigners being found guilty of fairly ordinary criminal behavior. Fraud, drug dealing, unauthorized sale of alcoholic beverages, robbery, murder, prostitution, illegal gambling, and other unsavory practices usually were conducted on the premises of various nightclubs, casinos, and bars near the U.S.–Mexico border. See also Flores Mag on Brothers; Industrial Workers of the World; Mexican Revolution.
102
Freemasonry FURTHER READINGS: Bloch, Avital, and Ortoll, Servando. ‘‘Viva Mexico! Mueran los yankis.’’ In Silvia A. Aarom and Servando Ortoll, eds. Revuelta in las ciudades. Politicas populares in America Latina. Mexico City: UAM-Colegio de Sonora/Miguel Angel Porr ua, 2004; G omez izquierdo, Jose Jorge, coed. Los caminos del racismo en Mexico. Mexico: BUAP-Ed. Plaza y Valdes, 2005; Knight, Alan. ‘‘Nationalism, Xenophobia and Revolution. The Place of Foreigners and Foreign Interest in Mexico, 1910-1915.’’ PhD dissertation. Oxford University, 1974; Turner, Frederick. La dinamica del nacionalismo mexicano. Mexico: Ed. Grijalbo, 1971; Yankelevich, Pablo. ‘‘Extranjeros indeseables en Mexico. 1911–1940 Una aproximaci on cuantitativa a la aplicacion del artıculo 33 Constitucional.’’ In Historia Mexicana, No. 211. Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico, 2004.
Pablo Yankelevich, translated by Andrew G. Wood Freemasonry. Relations between Masons, members of an international fraternity, in the United States and Mexico have been intense, yet not always brotherly. Even though Freemasonry arrived in Mexico from Europe in the late eighteenth century, it was not until the 1820s that the first real lodges began to spread across the country. All of those lodges belonged to the Scottish Rite and their members—aristocrats, wealthy entrepreneurs, and former officials of the Spanish army—were European oriented. As some sort of counterweight, U.S. Minister to Mexico (1825–29) Joel Poinsett helped a group of Mexican middle-class intellectuals—politically opposed to the posh members of the Scottish Rite—to establish the York Rite in Mexico. This began the long struggle between the two Masonic rites, which led to changes in the government, political instability, and, eventually, armed engagements between the followers of both factions. Poinsett was to blame for this situation both by the Scottish Rite Masons and those opposed to Freemasonry and secret societies, the Catholic Church included. A decade later, prominent Masons on both sides of the border had an active role in the Texas Revolution. Masons Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin on one side and Generals Antonio L opez de Santa Anna and Nicolas Bravo on the other fought the Texas Independence War. At the Battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, ‘‘brothers’’ Santa Anna and Houston faced each other in an event that was decisive for U.S.–Mexican relations in the near future. In 1846, another prominent Mason, U.S. President James K. Polk, declared war on Mexico as a consequence of the Mexican refusal to validate the Treaties of Velasco—signed by Santa Anna when he was taken prisoner by Houston on the day after San Jacinto—and the attack on an American patrol by Mexican forces, known as the Thornton affair. Once again Masons Bravo and Santa Anna were called to lead the Mexican army in several battles against the Americans. In the aftermath of the war, the liberals—yorkino Masons most of them—took control of the Mexican government. But the conflict with the conservatives was far from over. As several legal changes were introduced and the new Constitution took effect, yet another civil war broke out. The conservatives overthrew the Republic and replaced it with the Second Empire, headed by Maximilian of Habsburg, who was a Mason as well. Mexican President Benito Juarez—one of the most important figures in Mexican Masonic history—turned to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln for help in his struggle to restore the Republic. But Lincoln had his own share of trouble with some other Masons such as Albert Pike, George Pickett, Lewis Addison Armistead, Henry Heth, John B. Gordon, and Alfred Iverson, all of them important members of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War.
103
Freemasonry Juarez managed the situation without American help. After restoring the Republic, in a move viewed by many as contradictory to his liberal principles, Juarez sought reelection in 1871. Sometime-Mason Porfirio Dıaz opposed Juarez’s plan and led an unsuccessful revolt against his government. Juarez died in office the following year and was succeeded by Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada. In 1876, Dıaz carried a new putsch, the Plan de Tuxtepec, which finally made him president. During Dıaz’s many terms as president of Mexico, foreign investments began to flow into the country. And along came many foreigners, mainly Britons and Americans, some of whom founded Masonic lodges in cities across the country. These foreign Masons, unused as they were to witnessing struggles among their brethren, were shocked by the constant conflict between the different Mexican rites. There has always been an implicit rivalry between the Scottish and York Rites for the privilege of controlling Masonic tradition, but in the Mexican case, this rivalry had gone a little too far during the nineteenth century. President Dıaz was aware of this situation and, in an effort to control Freemasonry and therefore an important sector of the middle class and business community, tried to centralize all Masonic activity under a single leadership, a sort of overall Grand Lodge confederation. Finally, in July 1890, the Gran Dieta Simbolica (Grand Diet) was established by fifteen Yorkist grand lodges and twenty-five independent local lodges, thus leaving the Scottish Rite to its own devices. Many of the Yorkist lodges were run by American citizens and they immediately tried to get recognition for the Gran Dieta in the United States. According to some sources, it was George W. Tyler—the Grand Master of the Texas Grand Lodge—who wrote the charter and the table of organization of the Dieta, although other contemporary American Masons, such as Richard E. Chism, have argued that Tyler acted unilaterally and never consulted any other lodges to recognize the Dieta. Soon problems began inside the Dieta. Differences between Mexican and American Masonic practices were made evident when the former started disregarding the landmarks and permitting irregularities, both ritualistic and practical, which made the latter mistrust their new hermanos. The Dieta’s Grand Master, Ermilio Canton, disregarded basic Masonic technicalities such as the prohibition to charter lodges nationwide without official vote. Needless to say, American and British Masons were furious. Furthermore, the growing tensions within the Dieta delayed its recognition from American and British lodges that, in the first place, were not happy with the idea of a Masonic supra-agency. As soon as reports of further inadmissible Masonic practices—such as the initiation of women and the refusal to place the Bible on the altars—began to arrive on regular basis to lodges in the United States, American Freemasonry turned its back to the Dieta. Even President Dıaz withdrew his support of his Masonic creation, causing the Dieta to fall apart. Many lodges seceded from the organization and some disappeared. After Cant on’s death in 1898, a mere 38 of the 254 original lodges affiliated to the Dieta remained. And of those thirty-eight, twenty-five made no reports for the year 1899. By 1901, the Dieta was nothing but a failed experiment that left a bitter taste in Freemasonry’s mouth on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border. So bitter that, from the twentieth century on, Masonic relations between the two countries have remained fraternal yet distant. See also U.S.–Mexican War.
104
Freemasonry FURTHER READINGS: Davis, Thomas B. Aspects of Freemasonry in Modern Mexico. New York: Vantage Press, 1976; Garner, Paul. Porfirio Dıaz. New York: Pearson Longman, 2001; Manning, William Ray. Early Diplomatic Relations between the United States and Mexico. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1916.
Rogelio Aragon
105
G
v
Gadsden Purchase (1853). The Gadsden Purchase was an 1853 agreement between the United States and Mexico to transfer 29,000 square miles of what is now New Mexico and Arizona to the United States for $10 million. In addition to rounding out the continental United States, the Gadsden Purchase helped establish the western and southern borders between the two nations. Politically, the Purchase stoked the debate about whether new territories and states would enter the United States as free or slave states. Finally, the Gadsden Purchase was integral to the completion of a southern route of the transcontinental railroad because it allowed easier access between California and Texas. Events leading to the Gadsden Purchase were tumultuous and shaped AmericanMexican diplomatic efforts. The declaration of independence by the Republic of Texas, formerly a province of Mexico, asserted that the boundary between the two political bodies was the Rio Grande. The Mexican government long asserted that the natural boundary between Mexico and Texas was the Nueces River, which is significantly north of the Texan proposed boundary. The success of the Texas Revolution in the summer of 1836 led to the annexation of the Republic of Texas by the United States in 1845 under President James K. Polk. The ensuing war between the United States and Mexico ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, approved by the Senate on February 2, 1848. The treaty ended the U.S.–Mexican War in earnest and transferred 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory to the United States in exchange for $15 million. This territory would later become the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. While the treaty guaranteed that Mexican citizens who held land claims on transferred territory would be respected, the quick movement westward of American citizens made this a difficult provision to enforce. The years between the 1848 treaty and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase saw the rise of President Franklin Pierce and other ‘‘dough faces’’ to positions of power in Washington, D.C. Pierce, a New Hampshire politician and a dark horse candidate in 1852, was a proponent of continuing slavery in America. Early in his presidency, Pierce and his cabinet, including future president James Buchanan, first wanted to annex Cuba to spread southern plantations to the Caribbean. This idea was annunciated in the Ostend Manifesto and claimed annexation was a tool to protect Cuba from
106
Galarza, Ernesto (1905–84) Spanish influence. However, Pierce chose to use diplomatic channels with Mexico to expand American territory. Pierce sent James Gadsden to negotiate with Mexican President Antonio L opez de Santa Anna. Pierce, Gadsden, and Secretary of War (and future Confederate president) Jefferson Davis were interested in purchasing land not only to expand southern plantation capabilities but also to open up the American Southwest to the Central Pacific rail line. The Gadsden Purchase did little to influence most of the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo aside from the land transferred to the United States. However, it helped fortify the slavery and abolition camps in their fight to determine how the purchased land would be used. See also Adams Onıs Treaty; California Gold Rush; Labor; Land Grants; Louisiana Purchase; Railroads U.S. Mexican–War. FURTHER READINGS: Levinson, Sanford. The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion 1803–1898. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005; Stephanson, Anders. Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.
Nicholas Katers Galarza, Ernesto (1905–84). Ernesto Galarza, a Mexican American labor activist, was born in Nayarit, Mexico. Like many other families during the Mexican Revolution, Galarza’s family moved north, settling in Sacramento, California. These early years of Galarza’s life were documented in his well-received autobiography, Barrio Boy (1971). He flourished in Sacramento, securing a high school scholarship, eventually earning a master’s degree from Stanford, and continuing with further graduate work at Columbia, for which he was eventually awarded a doctorate. During these formative years, Galarza developed a keen interest in education and labor issues. Galarza established his reputation as a Research Associate at the Pan American Union where he paid special attention to the plight of tin workers in Bolivia and Mexican workers in the United States. Following the Pan American Union, he moved to San Jose to be Director of Research and Education for the National Farm Labor Union, where he was active in organizing strikes to focus attention on poorly treated laborers. In the 1950s, Galarza became increasingly vocal in his opposition of the Bracero Program, which was intended to manage Mexican agricultural laborers. He discredited the program in his report ‘‘Strangers in the Field’’ and later in his book Merchants of Labor (1964). In 1964, Galarza moved to Los Angeles, which was coupled with a shift in focus from Mexican agricultural workers to urban workers. He also returned to university teaching, pursuing methods for alternative bilingual education. While known for his intellectual rigor, Galarza is chiefly remembered, and respected, for his commitment to social justice. See also Agribusiness; Labor; Labor Unions; United Farm Workers of America. FURTHER READINGS: Chabran, Richard. ‘‘Activism and Intellectual Struggle in the Life of Ernesto Galarza (1905–1984) with an Accompanying Bibliography.’’ Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 7 (1985): 134–52; Galarza, Ernesto. Barrio Boy. University of Notre Dame Press, 1971; Galarza, Ernesto. Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story. Charlotte, CA: McNally and Loftin, 1964; Galarza, Ernesto. ‘‘Mexicans in the Southwest: A Culture in Process.’’ In Edward H. Spicer and Raymond H. Thompson, eds. Plural Society in the Southwest, 261–97. New York: Interbook Inc, 1972; Galarza, Ernesto. Spiders in the House and Workers in
107
Garza, Catarino Erasmo (1859–95) the Field. University of Notre Dame Press, 1970; Pitti, Stephen J. ‘‘Ernesto Galarza Remembered: A Reflection on Graduate Studies in Chicano History.’’ In Refugio I. Rochın and Dennis N. Valdes, eds. Voices of a New Chicana/o History, 231–36. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000.
Joseph Gelfer Gamio, Manuel (1883–1960). Manuel Gamio was one of the pioneers of Mexican archaeology and anthropology. A native of Mexico he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University under the noted anthropologist Franz Boas (1909–11). Columbia later awarded Gamio a doctorate for his excavation of the ruins in Teotihuacan near Mexico City. Gamio is most famous for his book Forjando Patria (1916), which promoted the idea of indigenismo that Mexico’s postrevolutionary leaders later adopted to redeem Mexico’s majority Indian population. He argued that the Anahuac (the civilization of the Mexica or Aztecs) was the root of Mexican history and culture and rejected the idea that indigenous art could be evaluated according to European aesthetic standards. Unlike most Mexican intellectuals, he did not believe that indigenous people were, due to their ‘‘race,’’ a hindrance to Mexico’s modernization. Instead, he argued that given a proper diet and education they could overcome their rural isolation and material poverty and be incorporated into mainstream Mexican society. Equally as important, but less well known, Gamio participated in the Migration Studies Project (1923–30) of the Social Science Research Council, which helped shape the Mexican government’s irrigation and colonization projects during the 1920s and 1930s. He credited the economic success of the government-established borderlands colonies to the advanced culture of Mexico’s northern peasants. His research led him to write an anthropological account of Mexican immigrants’ lives in the United States, Mexican Immigration to the United States, based on 131 interviews collected by Gamio and his research team in San Antonio, El Paso, Ciudad Juarez, Los Angeles, Tucson, and the mining towns of Globe and Miami, Arizona, in 1926 and 1927. See also Anthropology; Labor; Migration. FURTHER READINGS: Alonso, Ana Maria. ‘‘Conforming Disconformity: ‘Mestizaje,’ Hybridity, and the Aesthetics of Mexican Nationalism.’’ Cultural Anthropology 19, no. 4 (November 2004): 459–90; Brading, David. ‘‘Manuel Gamio and Official Indigenismo in Mexico.’’ Bulletin of Latin American Research 7, no. 1 (1988): 75–89; Dawson, Alexander S. ‘‘‘Wild Indians,’ ‘Mexican Gentlemen,’ and the Lessons Learned in the Casa del Estudiante Indigena, 1926– 1932.’’ The Americas 57, no. 3 (January 2001): 329–61; L opez, Rick A. ‘‘The India Bonita Contest of 1921 and the Ethnicization of Mexican National Culture.’’ Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 2 (May 2002): 291–328; Redfield, Robert. ‘‘The Antecedents of Mexican Immigration to the United States.’’ The American Journal of Sociology 35, no. 3 (November 1929): 433–38; Zermeno, Guillermo. ‘‘Between Anthropology and History: Manuel Gamio and Mexican Anthropological Modernity, 1916–1935.’’ Neplanta: Views from the South 3, no. 2 (2002): 315–31.
Andrae M. Marak Garza, Catarino Erasmo (1859–95). Catarino Erasmo Garza was a journalist and revolutionary who lived on the South Texas-Mexico border in the late nineteenth century. He is best known for a revolution he launched against Mexico’s
108
Garza, Catarino Erasmo (1859–95) long-standing dictator Porfirio Dıaz on September 16, 1891. The Garzista rebellion that sought to overthrow Dıaz and install a liberal government in Mexico garnered popular support on both sides of the border and managed to raise an armed force of nearly 200 soldiers. Although the Garzistas crossed the border five times and engaged the Mexican Army in combat, most of their battles were fought in South Texas against the Texas Rangers and the U.S. Army. Garza fled South Texas in the spring of 1892, but the rebellion sputtered on for another two years and was definitively crushed by the end of 1893. The Garzista rebellion was the largest and most serious threat to the Dıaz regime up to that point. Garza’s movement not only illustrates the level of discontent with the Porfiriato both in Mexico and in Texas, but also sheds light on the political and economic displacement of Texas Mexicans by Anglos in South Texas. Catarino Garza was born to Encarnaci on and Do~ na Marıa de Jes us Rodrıguez on November 25, 1859, on a small fruit and dairy farm outside of Matamoros, Mexico. Garza eventually enrolled in the Colegio de San Juan in Matamoros and briefly served in the Mexican National Guard at the Port Plaza. Garza was just eighteen years old in 1877 when he crossed the border from his hometown of Matamoros, Mexico, to Brownsville, at the southeastern tip of Texas. He initially found work in a dry goods store and later became a Singer Sewing machine salesman throughout the border region. A few years later, on June 19, 1880, he married Caroline O’Conner, the niece of a leader of the local Democratic political club (the Blue Club) and a long-time county clerk. Caroline’s father was Irish American and her mother was Mexican. The newlyweds moved back to Matamoros where Garza opened a small store called ‘‘El Tranchete’’ that eventually went bankrupt. They returned to Brownsville in August 1881, but after a few months, Garza picked up again and headed northwest along the Rio Grande to Laredo. While the evidence is unclear, several newspapers suggested that Garza fathered two children with Caroline. A few years later they were divorced. Garza remarried in 1890, to Concepci on Gonzalez, daughter of wealthy Duval County rancher Alejandro Gonzalez. Months before he declared his revolution, Garza and Concepci on had a daughter, Amelia. In Texas, Garza became an active member of several mutualista (mutual aid) societies and began his career as a journalist by writing for these societies’ newspapers. His work as a traveling salesman, journalist, and orator for the mutualistas provided Garza with a following among Mexicans in the border region. He was particularly vocal in his defense of Mexicans living in Texas against insults and harassment by Anglos. Although most of his work defending Mexicans was undertaken in print, Garza also resorted to physical violence to defend his honor and that of other Mexicans. In 1885, Garza moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he fought unsuccessfully to gain recognition from Porfirio Dıaz’s government as the Mexican consul. While unable to assume the consular post, Garza served as an unofficial representative of Mexico in St. Louis, inviting Mexican delegates to a convention of wool producers and hosting Mexican journalists in the city. Following his unsuccessful bid to become consul and Dıaz’s assuming the presidency for the second time in 1885, Garza increasingly began to attack the Dıaz regime in two newspapers he founded in Eagle Pass, Texas, El Comercio Mexicano and El Libre Pensador. In 1887, Garza was jailed in Eagle Pass for thirty-one days on libel charges brought by Coahuila Governor Garza Galan. Fearing for his life, Garza left Eagle Pass for Corpus Christi, where he reopened El Comercio Mexicano, established the Club Polıtico Mutualista MexicoTexano, and became its first president.
109
Garza, Catarino Erasmo (1859–95) Garza’s challenges to Dıaz government officials and to Anglo Texan authorities provoked several attempts on his life and constant harassment. In 1888, Garza was arrested by Texas Ranger Captain John Hughes for libeling an Anglo Customs Inspector Victor Sebree. One month later, Sebree shot and almost killed Garza while he was sitting in a barber shop in Rio Grande City, leading to a riot in which Texas Mexicans surrounded Fort Ringgold and demanded Sebree be brought to justice. When Garza’s friend and political ally, the doctor and general Ignacio Martınez, was assassinated by Dıaz agents on the streets of Laredo, Texas, on February 3, 1891, Garza decided to turn to armed revolt against the Dıaz regime. The Garzista revolution aimed to overthrow Dıaz, because he had violated the sacred liberal principles of no reelection and turned his back on the 1857 Constitution. Although the Garzista manifestos made vague promises to distribute ‘‘vacant lands,’’ they did not propose a full-scale social revolution. Garza’s army was mostly made up of poor ranchero Mexicans living in Texas, but he had the support of almost the entire population of South Texas, including wealthy landowners and merchants like Manuel Guerra, Antonio Bruni, and Alejandro Gonzalez, his father-in-law. In the two years that the revolution lasted (1891–93), there were five major incursions into Mexico, with hundreds of rebels engaging in active combat and scores of casualties on both sides. In spring of 1892, Garza fled Texas and spent several months on the run through New Orleans, Havana, Key West, Nassau, and Jamaica, and finally ended up in a small town near Puerto Lim on, Costa Rica. During his time in Key West, Garza was hidden by fellow Masons and met with Cuban independence leader Jose Martı to discuss the possibility of Garza joining the Cuban movement. Garza’s reputation as a liberal revolutionary had spread through Latin America, and although he tried to live incognito in Costa Rica, once his identity was revealed, liberals from throughout Latin America sought his support. In 1894, Garza published in Costa Rica a political tract La era de Tuxtepec en Mexico o sea Rusıa en America in which he criticized Porfirio Dıaz and defended his revolution. Ultimately, Garza decided to join the Colombian liberals, and he died while leading an attack against a military barracks in Bocas del Toro, Panama (then part of Colombia) on March 8, 1895. Until recently, Garza’s rebellion has remained a footnote in most U.S. and Mexican histories. Garza’s memory was kept alive in corridos sung on the border by Texas Mexicans and by Chicano historians who saw in him a hero. Garza wrote an autobiography, La logica de los hechos (The Logic of Events), in which he described his twelve years living along the South Texas border (1877–89), but this manuscript remained unfinished and unpublished until recently, because it was captured by U.S. Army Captain John Gregory Bourke during a raid on Garza’s headquarters in Palito Blanco. See also Freemasonry; Mexican Revolution; Music; Tejanos/as; Tomochic Rebellion. FURTHER READINGS: Bourke, John Gregory. ‘‘An American Congo.’’ Scribner’s. (May 1894); Garza, Catarino E. La logica de los hechos: O sean observaciones sobre las circunstancias de los mexicanos en Texas, desde el a~ no de 1877 hasta 1889. Garza Papers, Misc. No. 73. Austin: Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, 1859–95; Garza Guajardo, Celso, comp. En busca de Catarino Garza. Monterrey, Mexico: Universidad Aut onoma de Nuevo Le on, 1989; Romero, Matıas. ‘‘The Garza Raid and Its Lessons.’’ The North American Review 155 (September 1892): 324–37; Young, Elliott. Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
Elliott Young
110
Great Depression (1929) Great Depression (1929). Precipitated by the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, the Great Depression ushered in a decade of extreme economic despair for much of the United States. Lasting throughout the 1930s, the Great Depression years were especially difficult times for Mexican and Mexican American families who were often targeted for the economic woes facing the nation. The Depression years also introduced a new era in the history of Mexican migration to the United States. Whereas the first few decades of the twentieth century were characterized by recruitment efforts and the relatively open movement of peoples across the U.S.–Mexico border, extreme nativist attitudes toward Mexicans hardened with the onset of the Great Depression, resulting in border-crossing restrictions and mass deportations. Migrations from Mexico dropped precipitously. Scape-goated for the economic crisis, the Great Depression years reflect a period of heightened xenophobia and hostility toward Mexicans and Mexican Americans whose citizenship and civil rights were often violated and ignored. Much of the xenophobic and nativist attitudes were held by unemployed and economically desperate Midwesterners, often referred to as Okies, who sought employment, particularly farm work in California where Mexicans had historically been employed. Compounded by the Dust Bowl drought, this wave of sharecropper refugees, along with trade union organizers, targeted Mexicans who were now perceived as having taken ‘‘their’’ jobs. The repatriation process resulted in feelings of betrayal among Mexican families who felt they had earned their ‘‘American-ness’’ through decades-long economic contributions orchestrated through U.S. employer and U.S. government recruitment channels. Mass deportations also strained relations with Mexico, which was forced to accommodate repatriates and expatriates (Mexican Americans) under their own troubled economic circumstances. Up until the 1920s, the United States had an open-door policy on migration from Mexico where Mexican labor played an instrumental role in railroad construction, ranching, construction, fruit production, and other agriculture. Farm workers and railroad workers were recruited from the borderlands often returning to their hometowns in the blurred boundaries of the borderlands after bouts of seasonal work. Some crossed back into Mexico while others remained in south Texas or other border communities awaiting the following year’s harvest to rejoin the farm-worker migration streams. Much of Mexican labor recruitment was done through private contractors who often employed coercive measures to recruit Mexican labor. Such coercive policies became known as el enganche (‘‘the hook’’), which turned into a kind of indentured servitude. Characterized by failed promises, el enganche resulted in lower wages than promised, working conditions worse than expected, and loans for farmworker travel above what was anticipated. Since they had to pay off their debts to the recruiter, Mexican migrants considered themselves ‘‘hooked’’ into a relationship of indebtedness. In 1924, the Border Patrol was created to begin to address what was perceived to be an ‘‘unruly’’ border and to quell native fears about Mexicans taking jobs from natives. This early militarization of the U.S.–Mexico border also served to strengthen notions of citizenry by labeling Mexicans as ‘‘alien’’ despite generational ties of Mexicans to the geography and economy of the borderlands. During the 1920s, the term ‘‘alien’’ was first used to refer to Mexicans. With it came the idea of the Mexican as ‘‘wetback’’ and ‘‘lawbreaker’’ and hence the institutionalization of a law-and-order approach to managing the U.S.–Mexico border. After World War I, Mexican labor was drawn to the United States to help with labor shortages in agriculture,
111
Great Depression (1929) transportation, and steel production as the U.S. government assumed a direct role in labor recruitment by creating its own worker recruitment programs. When the war ended, so too did the labor programs, but the United States continued to pursue a relatively lax immigration policy toward Mexicans throughout the boom years of the 1920s. Federal immigration laws placed restrictions on most other national-origin groups, whereas Mexicans remained largely exempt. This trend changed abruptly with the Great Depression as the economy of the nation, and indeed the world, collapsed into an economic crisis. Under a xenophobic climate, many Mexican families, including their U.S.–born children, were forcefully removed from U.S. territory through a massive repatriation drive. The federal government’s policy of massive roundup and removal resulted in 500,000 or more deportations, leading to an approximate 41 percent of the Mexican population in the United States. The policies of deportation during the Great Depression encompassed intimidation tactics and included the barring of public works projects and denial of federal relief to Mexican families. Mass repatriations elicited a strong emotional response among Mexicans, reawakening sentiments of social justice and questioning the hard-won security in the United States they had built in the previous decades. Many Mexican families struggled with the dilemmas of being sent ‘‘home’’ where they were not necessarily welcomed and where their U.S.–born children faced adjustments in a foreign land. Ironically, when the U.S. economy recovered by the 1940s, U.S. business again sought Mexican labor to help rebuild the post–World War II economy. The institutionalization of a labor recruitment initiative originally intended as a guest-worker program, known as Bracero Program, resulted in a twenty-year program (1946–64) during which time approximately 4.6 million Mexican workers were drawn into the United States economy through federally sponsored programs. See also Repatriados. FURTHER READINGS: Balderrama, Francisco, and Rodrıguez, Raymond. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995; Guerin-Gonzalez, Camille. Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994; Massey, Douglas, Durand, Jorge, and Malone, Nolan. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Integration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2002; Solis, Jocelyn. ‘‘Immigration Status and Identity: Undocumented Mexicans in New York.’’ In Agustin Lao-Montes and Arleen Davila, eds. Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001; Zolberg, Aristide. ‘‘A Century of Informality on the US-Mexico Border.’’ Border Battles: The US Immigration Debates. Working paper for SSRC, August 17, 2006.
Linda Allegro
112
D
Health. The border region is characterized as medically underserved with many pressing health conditions. Residents of the borderlands are disproportionately affected by higher rates of chronic and infectious disease, environmental pollution, and limited access to health insurance and medical facilities. While the United States and Mexico each has its own health regulations and priorities, both nations have a bilateral interest in improving health conditions along the border. Every year, 350 million people cross the border between the United States and Mexico at forty-three different official points of entry. This makes the U.S.–Mexico border one of the busiest in the world. Communities along the border are socially and economically interdependent. Residents on both sides frequently cross the border for work, to go to school or shop, and to visit family and friends. Because of the movement of people in the border region, it is impossible to distinguish health problems as belonging to only one nation. Health officials in the borderlands emphasize that ‘‘disease knows no borders.’’ This means cooperation between health workers and elected officials from both nations is necessary to address problems and find viable solutions to borderlands health. Uneven economic development, which results in a lack of access to resources and poverty, poses one of the most serious health problems in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. Public health officials have long identified a direct relationship between poverty and poor health. From a U.S. perspective, the borderlands region is one of the poorest in the nation with 30 to 35 percent of families living at or below the poverty line. In the border region of Texas, an estimated 30 percent of residents lack health insurance. In contrast, the states on the Mexican side of the border are some of the wealthiest and fastest growing in the nation. However, even though Mexico’s northern states are the nation’s most prosperous, they are still less well off economically than their counterparts on the U.S. side of the border. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has lead to an increase in trade and human interaction between the United States and Mexico, has few provisions for the health and safety of border residents. Rapid industrialization and migration to the border region has outpaced health resources and public services. As a result of an increasing population along the border and a lack of available housing, colonias, defined as poor and unincorporated housing developments, have
113
H
Health sprung up on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border. Colonias often do not have safe drinking water, sewage systems, public services such as police and firefighters, and health care infrastructure. For example, on the Mexican side of the border, only 88 percent of the inhabitants have access to drinking water and only 69 percent have access to sewage systems. Residents of colonias can be exposed to water-born bacteria and toxic substances such as lead, and are susceptible to dysentery, hepatitis A, typhus, cholera, and tuberculosis (TB). Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes, are the leading cause of death and disability in the border region. Diabetes, a chronic disease that disproportionately affects border residents, results in nearly 5,000 deaths per year. The prevalence of diabetes along the border is nearly 50 percent higher than the rate for the rest of the United States. The rate of diabetes among Hispanics is more than twice that of non-Hispanic whites in border communities. Diets high in fat, lack of exercise, and low awareness of health risks contribute to the problem of diabetes. To address diabetes health disparities, organizations like the Border Health Strategic Initiative (Border Health ¡SI!) emphasize the management of diabetes risk factors, such as obesity, by involving the whole family in healthy lifestyle changes. There are a number of specific infectious diseases that disproportionately affect people in the borderlands such as TB, HIV/AIDS, and hepatitis A and B. TB, caused by bacteria, is one of the world’s oldest and most deadly diseases. There are higher rates of TB among border residents than in the general population of the United States or Mexico. In 2000, the TB rate along the U.S. side of the border was 10 cases per 100,000 people compared with 5.8 cases per 100,000 nationally. On the Mexican side, rates of TB have been estimated at 33.4 cases per 100,000 people. While TB is treatable through a six-month course of drug therapy, it has been especially hard to control in the border region where the constant movement of people and lack of health care access are significant obstacles to treatment. HIV/AIDS is also a significant problem along the U.S.–Mexico border. Treating and preventing HIV/AIDS in this region is complicated by several factors, including poverty, geographic isolation, and lack of access to culturally sensitive, high-quality health care. It is estimated that on the U.S. side of the border 8.4 people per 100,000 are infected with HIV. On the Mexican side, 3.4 people per 100,000 are infected and many other infected individuals along both sides of the border do not know their HIV status. Testing people for HIV and providing HIV education are critical components of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. One successful approach for conducting HIV outreach to transborder populations has been the use of lay community health workers or promotores. Promotores are trusted members of border communities trained to do HIV/AIDS education in their community. For example, promotores have worked at truck stops along border crossings, in the fields with migrant farm workers, and at house parties for Latinas to increase awareness about HIV/AIDS. The health of women, infants, and children is an important component of overall borderlands health. Women have traditionally been the caretakers, child raisers, and providers of health care. More recently, women are being recognized as organizers and activists for the health care of their families and communities. There are a number of health risks that disproportionately effect women in the U.S.–Mexico border region. For example, the leading cause of death for borderlands women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four is accidents and adverse effects including violence. For women ages twenty-five to sixty-four, malignant tumors were the number one cause
114
Houston, Sam (1793–1863) of death. Reproductive health is an important part of women’s overall health. It is estimated that 27 percent of women living in the U.S. border region did not receive prenatal care during the first trimester, and in Mexico, only 59 percent of women had prenatal care within the first six months of pregnancy. However, rates of infant mortality on the U.S. border are lower than in the nation as a whole. Cooperation between the United States and Mexico is necessary to improve health and environmental conditions along their shared border. Part of the difficulty in orchestrating effective cross-border health programs stems from the fact that there are different health care systems in the United States and Mexico. In Mexico, the national constitution guarantees the right to health care for all of its citizens. In the United States, health care operates according to laissez-faire principles and is considered a privilege rather than a right. These two national health care systems have different organizational structures. For example, the Mexican health care system is centralized at the federal level while the U.S. system is diverse and fragmented with each state and county dictating its public health services. Successful transborder health initiatives include those that respect the different health care systems in both nations and involve all levels of government. There are also several binational health organizations and programs working to improve health along the border. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), located in Washington, D.C., is the oldest international public health agency in the world. First established in 1902, the PAHO works to improve the health and living standards of people in the Americas. In 1942, the PAHO created their first field office in El Paso, Texas, to address the specific health concerns along the U.S.–Mexico border. Established during World War II, the primary function of the El Paso field office was to control the spread of syphilis and gonorrhea among U.S. soldiers stationed along the border. Most recently, the U.S.–Mexico Border Health Commission (BHC) was established to provide international leadership and oversee efforts to improve health on the border. In 1994, the U.S. Congress passed legislation (Public Law 103–400) authorizing the U.S. president and the Mexican president to establish a binational commission on border health problems. Six years later, the BHC was created. Currently, the BHC is working on the Health Border 2010 initiative to increase the quality of life and eliminate health disparities in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. FURTHER READINGS: Homedes, N uria, and Ugalde, Antonio. ‘‘Globalization and Health at the United States-Mexico Border.’’ American Journal of Public Health 93, no. 12 (2003): 2016– 2022; Loustaunau, Martha Oehmke, and Sanchez-Bane, Mary, eds. Life, Death, and In-Between on the U.S.–Mexico Border: ası es la vida. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999; Pan American Health Organization. www.paho.org; Power, J. Gerard, and Byrd, Theresa, eds. U.S.–Mexico Border Health: Issues for Regional and Migrant Populations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Rodrıguez-Salda~ na, Joel. ‘‘Challenges and Opportunities in Border Health.’’ Preventing Chronic Disease [serial online]. 2005. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. June 2006. www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2005/jan/04_0099.htm; U.S.–Mexico Border Health Association. www.usmbha.org; United States-Mexico Border Health Commission. www.borderhealth.org.
Lena McQuade Houston, Sam (1793–1863). Sam Houston is one of the most celebrated men in Texas history because of his contributions to Texan independence. Houston was born
115
Houston, Sam (1793–1863)
Imaginative portrayal (with overt propaganda value) of an event in the Texas war of independence—the surrender of Mexican commander Santa Anna and his brother-in-law General Martın Perfecto de Cos, to American leader Sam Houston after the Battle of San Jacinto in late April 1836. Santa Anna (center) bows and offers his sword to Houston, saying, ‘‘I consent to remain your prisoner, most excellent sir!! Me no Alamo!!’’ His subordinate follows suit. Houston, clad in buckskins and holding a musket, says, ‘‘You are two bloody villains, and to treat you as you deserve, I ought to have you shot as an example! Remember the Alamo and Fannin!’’ The print reflects the intensity of anti-Mexican feeling in the United States after Santa Anna’s massacre of American defenders at the Alamo mission in February 1836 and the slaughter at Goliad, Texas, a month later of American colonel James Fannin and his surrendered troops. ‘‘Edward Williams Clay.’’ Published by Henry R. Robinson, New York, 1836. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-1273.)
on March 2, 1793, in Virginia. When he was thirteen, his family moved to Tennessee. At the age of fifteen, he ran away from home to the mountains and lived with the Cherokee Indians for three years. He subsequently joined the army where he saw action during the War of 1812. He later resigned from the army to study law in 1818. Houston served Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1822 and did so until 1827 when he became governor of Tennessee. During that time, he became a close associate of President Andrew Jackson. In 1828, Houston married eighteenyear-old Eliza Allen, but the two soon separated and later divorced. With this, he soon ended his relationship with Tennessee politics and moved out to live with the Cherokee Indians. He set up a trading post and married Tiana (also known as Diana) Rogers Gentry—a Cherokee widow. Back in Washington in April 1832 to bid on a contract for supplying the Cherokee’s forced march (Trail of Tears), which came as a result of Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act, Houston became involved in a bitter
116
Huerta, Dolores (1930–) dispute with Congressman William Stanbury of Ohio. The conflict escalated to the point where Houston assaulted Stanbury on Pennsylvania Avenue. For this he was arrested. In the ensuing trial, Houston was found guilty. His Washington insider connections, however, allowed him to remain free. With civil charges still pending Houston moved to Texas in late 1832, leaving his wife who preferred to stay in Indian Territory. Once in Mexican Texas, Houston took up politics again and became the delegate from Nacogdoches during the Convention of 1833 in San Felipe. Advocating independence for the Mexican state, he quickly became an important agent in Texan affairs. In 1835, Houston assumed the rank of major general of the Texas Army. As the Texas Revolution began with a Declaration of Independence in Washington, Texas on the Brazos River in early March 1836, Houston assumed the rank of commander-in-chief. Early action against Mexican forces under Antonio L opez de Santa Anna proved difficult as Houston and his men lost battles both at Goliad and the Alamo in the spring of 1836. Soon, however, Houston and the Texans cleverly defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. With this, the Mexican leader signed the Treaty of Velasco which granted Texas independence. Texans elected Houston as their first president in early September 1836. After his term ended, he served as a state congressman from 1839–40, then again in 1841. He married Margaret Moffette Lea in 1840 and had eight children with her. After annexation and subsequent statehood for Texas, Houston served as U.S. Senator from 1846 to 1849. From 1859 to March 1861 he again became governor of Texas. Pro-Union, Houston left office to protest the state’s joining the Confederacy. Houston spent the rest of his days in his home in Huntsville, Texas, where he died in July 1863. His body is buried in Huntsville’s Oakwood Cemetery where, nearby, a large memorial stands. Houston, Texas, is named for him. See also Stephen F. Austin. FURTHER READINGS: Haley, James L. Sam Houston. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004; James, Marquis. The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988; ‘‘Sam Houston.’’ Lone Star Junction, 1995. July 14, 2007. http://www.lsjunction. com/people/houston.htm.
Ian Wood Huerta, Dolores (1930–). Dolores Huerta is one of the most prominent Chicano labor leaders in the United States and cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America. For many years, Huerta has been committed to improving the standard of living for America’s farm workers. Huerta was born in New Mexico to Juan and Alicia Fernandez, whose marriage ended in divorce. Alicia took her children and eventually moved to Stockton, California, opening a restaurant and later a hotel in one of the poorer districts of the city. The children worked in these businesses where they were exposed to and learned to value diversity. Delores had infrequent contact with her father as she was growing up, but was inspired by his activism in the labor movement. Huerta married, had two daughters, divorced, and returned to school for an associate’s degree in education. Her concern for her students’ poverty led her to become involved in the Community Service Organization (CSO), a self-help group for
117
Huerta, Dolores (1930–)
United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta and President Arturo Rodrıguez, left, lead a march to the Capitol in Sacramento, California, August 25, 2002. Thousands of UFW and other union members marched to urge California Gov. Gray Davis to sign senate bill 1736, a bill granting farm workers more control during mediation and arbitration during contract negotiations. (AP Photo/Steve Yeater)
Mexican Americans. A second marriage to Ventura Huerta produced five children but also ended in divorce. In the 1950s, Huerta organized the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) and met Cesar Chavez, who was also concerned for farm workers. Together, Chavez and Huerta formed the Farm Workers Association in 1962 and later the United Farm Workers. Among the many honors Huerta has received are honorary doctorates from three universities, induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, The Eugene V. Debs Foundation’s Outstanding American Award, the Eleanor Roosevelt Award, and the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom. See also Agribusiness; Labor; Labor Unions; United Farmworkers of America. FURTHER READINGS: Dunne, J.G. Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike. New York: Farrar, 1976; Ferriss, S., Sandoval, R., and Hembree, D., eds. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers. Fort Worth: Harvest/HBJ, 1998.
Jean Shepherd Hamm
118
D
Immigration Legislation. In the first years of the twenty-first century, immigration policy was a heated issue in U.S. politics. Yet systematic immigration legislation did not exist in the states until the late nineteenth century. Early restrictions sought to exclude specific ethnic groups, and in 1924, the country’s first broad-spectrum immigration policy used a quota system to encourage immigration from some nations while hindering immigration from others. After World War II, geopolitical shifts led to modifications in policy, and Western Hemisphere immigration, previously unrestricted, began to come under scrutiny. In 1965, new laws eliminated the quotas, but put limits on Western Hemisphere immigration. Yet in spite of increasing restrictions, Latin Americans, and others, have continued to immigrate, becoming a significant part of the nation’s economic and cultural life. As the composition of U.S. society continues to evolve, so too does its immigration policy, with many changes still to come. After independence, U.S. leaders debated immigration-related issues such as settlement, the slave trade, and citizenship, but did not seek to regulate immigration itself. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, passed by President John Adams, were the first federal laws concerning immigration; they required ship captains to report the arrival of foreign passengers and authorized the deportation of foreign nationals deemed dangerous, as well as their incarceration or deportation in times of war. A naturalization component upheld restrictions codified in 1790—namely, only ‘‘free white persons’’ could become citizens. Designed in part to stifle criticism of Adams’ Federalist Party, these laws had little impact and soon expired. Naturalization, however, remained an issue. After the Civil War, Congress extended citizenship to African Americans, a right incorporated into the Constitution in the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Immigrant labor was another concern of nineteenth-century legislation. In 1864, the law appointing the first federal immigration commissioner also authorized the use of labor contracts in which immigrants pledged to repay their transportation costs out of future wages. In 1868, however, this act was repealed; the 1885 Foran Act made it unlawful to bring foreign workers into the country under contract for the performance of labor or services of any kind. In the 1870s, Chinese workers on the west coast faced growing intolerance from nativists as well as organized labor, which feared that they would be used to break
119
I
Immigration Legislation strikes and undercut union gains. Local and national anti-Chinese ordinances were passed, leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred most immigration from China. This act, which would not be repealed until 1943, was followed by other anti-Asian policies, including the ‘‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’’ of 1907–08 ending emigration from Japan, and the creation of an Asiatic Barred Zone prohibiting the entrance of South and Southeast Asians in the Immigration Act of 1917. That act also expanded the entrance requirements for other immigrants, reinforcing ideological criteria and making literacy (in any language) a prerequisite. The federal government consolidated its authority over immigration during this period. The Bureau of Immigration was created in 1891, and New York’s Ellis Island Receiving Station began operation in 1892. Angel Island, on the west coast, opened in 1910; unlike Ellis Island, it was primarily a Chinese detention center and was known as ‘‘The Guardian of the Western Gate.’’ Between 1900 and 1910, the United States admitted 8.8 million immigrants, primarily from Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia. Anti-immigrant reaction targeted these new European arrivals, especially the thousands of Jews who came fleeing antiSemitic violence. In 1921, new legislation imposed immigration quotas on European nations: each country’s quota was equal to 3 percent of its representation in the U.S. Census of 1910. The Immigration Act of 1924 reduced that percentage and pushed the baseline back to the 1890 Census, further excluding Eastern and Southern Europeans. For example, the 1910 Census recorded 1,343,125 persons born in Italy, while that of 1890 only registered 182,580. Thus, the 1921 Italian quota of 42,057 was reduced in 1924 to 3,845; Germany, in contrast, received the largest quota, 51,227. The Western Hemisphere was not subject to quotas, but immigrants from European colonies were charged to the colonial power’s quota. The quota system gave preference to relatives of U.S. citizens; wives (and later husbands) and children of citizens were exempt from the quota. Although the U.S.–Mexico border was more or less established after the U.S.– Mexican War and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, it rarely figured in early immigration policy. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) had granted citizenship to Mexicans living in territory ceded to the United States, and cross-border movement remained fluid. During World War I, workers came from Mexico to fill labor shortages, setting a precedent for later programs. Border regulation increased with the creation of the Border Patrol and the introduction of mandatory visas and entry permits in 1924. Mexican immigration, however, only became a volatile issue with the Great Depression, when foreign agricultural workers were seen as competing with nativeborn workers displaced by the economic crisis. Many would-be immigrants were turned away, while those already in the United States were denied public services. During the 1930s, thousands of Mexicans were deported or ‘‘voluntarily repatriated’’ under these circumstances. These policies were reversed during World War II, when U.S. agriculture and industry again faced labor shortages. The Bracero Program (1942–64) attempted to ensure that participating workers remained temporary by withholding a portion of their wages, to be paid later by the Mexican government. (To this day, surviving braceros are still waiting to receive their back wages.) Although the program was seen as a wartime measure, its extension well beyond the end of the war indicates the importance of Mexican workers to the U.S. economy—and their future role in the immigration debate.
120
Immigration Legislation Postwar approaches to immigration were closely linked to Cold War anti-Communist ideology. Refugees from Soviet-controlled countries received visa preferences, while Communists and other ‘‘subversives’’ were excluded. In 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, and China, a war ally, was given a small quota. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, or McCarran-Walter Act, retained the quota system based on the 1920 Census, and added quotas for Asian countries using the Asian-Pacific Triangle concept: each country got a 100-immigrant quota, with another 100-person quota for the entire Triangle. Western Hemisphere migration, except for European colonies, remained unrestricted. The 1952 Act, however, increased the powers of the Border Patrol, suggesting the growing importance of migration from the south. In 1965, under President Lyndon Johnson, the quota system was abolished. Instead, the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments put caps on immigration from each hemisphere, limiting immigration from the Americas for the first time. In 1976, the hemispheric limits were replaced by a global quota of 290,000 immigrants per year, with no more than 20,000 from any single country. Within these limits, family-based immigrants received preference and close relatives were exempt from the quota. In the 1980s, policymakers turned to controlling illegal immigration. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, or Simpson-Rodino Act, gave legal status— popularly called amnesty—to foreigners residing in the country since 1982 and created an additional path to legalization for seasonal agricultural workers. About 3 million immigrants were accepted under these programs. The Act also increased border enforcement and imposed sanctions on employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers, a punitive measure with little practical effect. The Immigration Act of 1990 raised the global visa cap, modified entry requirements, and added new categories of temporary worker visas. In 1994, in response to perceptions of rising illegal immigration, California voters approved California Proposition 187, a law denying social services to unauthorized immigrants and their children. Although a U.S. District Court judge ruled the law unconstitutional in 1998, its basic ideas were instituted at the national level in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. A ‘‘war on drugs’’ campaign also created a context for more stringent border enforcement; the number of troops at the border doubled under President Bill Clinton and continued to increase in subsequent years. In 2000, conditions seemed to favor a more liberal immigration policy. The AFLCIO ended a century of immigrant-labor antagonism by proclaiming support for an amnesty program, and incoming presidents in the United States and Mexico declared their willingness to negotiate a mutually satisfactory reform. After the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the political climate changed drastically, as terrorism and immigration became linked in the public imagination. New security legislation particularly affected immigrants; under the 2001 Patriot Act, activities construed as supporting terrorism became grounds for exclusion or deportation, a provision some saw as targeting Muslims, Arabs, and critics of U.S. foreign policy. In 2003, President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), placing immigration matters under DHS authority. In 2006, Bush sent National Guard troops to the border and approved construction of a 700-mile border fence. Congress, meanwhile, debated proposals ranging from amnesty to harsh restrictions sought by anti-immigrant groups, and many Latinos believed themselves to be the targets of a new wave of xenophobic reaction. Yet throughout its history,
121
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) U.S. immigration law has been a mirror reflecting the prejudices and preoccupations of a changing society. Just as immigration patterns themselves continue to change, the policies that regulate these patterns can be seen as a work in progress, with many revisions and transformations yet to come. See also Central American Migrants; Legal Issues; Migration; Operations. FURTHER READINGS: Daniels, Roger. Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004; Gabaccia, Donna. ‘‘Today’s Immigration Policy Debates: Do We Need a Little History?’’ Migration Information Source. November 2006. http://www.migrationinformation.org/; Gibson, Campbell J., and Lennon, Emily. ‘‘Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850 To 1990.’’ Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1999. October 2006. http://www.census. gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/twps0029.html; Le May, Michael, and Barken, Elliott Robert. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999; Ngae, Mai M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005; Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1929. October 2006. http://www2.census.gov/prod2/ statcomp/documents/1929-03.pdf; Zolberg, Aristide. A Nation By Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press/Russell Sage Foundation, 2006.
Elissa J. Rashkin Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). On June 27, 1905, a melange of labor activists from across North America convened in Chicago, Illinois, to discuss the growing problems of the working class. Collectively, the workers produced a broad framework on how to best organize for the rights of all workers. Among those present in this collective of multivocal activists were members of the Socialist Labor Party, Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance, the Socialist Party of America, the Western Federation of Miners, remnants of the International Working People’s Association, and a multiplicity of anarchists and nonaligned working-class radicals. At 10:00 A.M. on that day in Chicago, William ‘‘Big Bill’’ Haywood called to order what has become known as the Founding Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In those opening remarks, Haywood stated that the convention was ‘‘the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism.’’ With this, Haywood, a prominent labor organizer, helped to set in motion the most revolutionary labor organization the modern world has seen, principally the IWW. The Wobblies, as the IWW is frequently known for a variety of contentious reasons, was (and continues to be) a labor union founded on the principles of industrial unionism. Industrial unionism is the notion that all workers within a single industry organize collectively as opposed to individually organizing a specific labor force. Even more important, from their inception as a union, the Wobblies operated in opposition to the racist, sexist, and xenophobic practices of the American Federation of Labor and the mainstream union movement. IWW grassroots unionism, very much aligned with the strategies of anarcho-syndicalism, paved the way for the later successes of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
122
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Within a short period from its founding in 1905, the IWW had affiliated unions and branches throughout Latin America, Europe, Australia, and Africa. In 1912, U.S. Wobblies joined forces with magonistas (partisans of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, as well as supporters of the anarchist Flores Mag on brothers) in Baja California and fought with anti-imperial forces in the Mexican Revolution. Likewise, while most Anglo American unions were solely organizing skilled workers, a codified system to exclude most black, Chicana/o, and immigrant workers, the IWW endeavored to organize ethnic Mexicans and other indigenous laborers in the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico. In 1912, along with the Western Federation of Miners, IWW agitators were active in inciting a pluri-ethnic class of copper miners in Bisbee, Arizona, to strike. Subsequently, by way of harsh capitalist and state repression, more than 1,000 borderlands workers (Mexican, Anglo American, and various European immigrant groups) were deported from Arizona and dumped in rural New Mexico. Because of its ties to the Mexican Revolution, as well as their revolutionary successes using anticapitalist direct action, the IWW received harsh repression wherever they set foot. Unfortunately, nearly all of the early IWW documents were destroyed during the Palmer Raids beginning in 1920. Similarly, the union hall in Tampico, Mexico, was raided by Mexican authorities in 1921. Following a general strike in opposition to this breach of civil rights, the Tampico local was reopened. The radical social vision of a ‘‘new world in the shell of the old’’ is their most important raison d’^etre and has influenced anticapitalist and anticolonial struggles the world over. In fact, it can still be seen in the utopian movements of the antiglobalization, antiwar, and Zapatista struggles. Although the IWW is still an active union that has won many recent organizing campaigns, severe state repression during the 1920s and 1930s forced the union into a peripheral status. Because Wobblies advocated direct action in the workplace, they have refused to coalesce to the demands of elites or bureaucrats. In turn, the IWW has not won the conciliatory victories that dot the history of the AFL-CIO. In addition to their successes in organizing the working class into One Big Union, as they were commonly called, the IWW was simultaneously a labor union as well as a cultural movement. Known for their tradition of altering popular and religious songs to reflect the specific working-class struggles of the day, many Wobblies were also active artists and poets. Many of the most frequently reproduced labor illustrations, poems, and songs were initially created by Wobblies for specific struggles during the union’s heyday. These cultural artifacts were so successful, they still have resonance among contemporary working-class and resistance movements. One of the most active labor songwriters, as well as a visual artist and poet, was the Sweden-born Wobbly martyr Joe Hill. Hill was active during the early twentieth century. He is known for coining the phrase ‘‘pie in the sky,’’ which he used in his song ‘‘The Preacher and the Slave.’’ Hill was martyred in 1915 when he was falsely convicted of murder charges in the state of Utah. Consequently, Hill has become a working-class hero whose likeness, alongside American Indian Wobbly Frank Little and BlackMexican-Native organizer Lucy Parsons (also known as Lucıa Gonzalez de Parsons, the wife of slain Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons), is repeatedly reproduced in IWW cultural production. During the 1960s, the Industrial Worker was edited by Chicana/o artist and activist Carlos Cortez Koyokuikatl. During this period, the IWW demonstrated an overt solidarity with the movimiento chicano. The Industrial Worker frequently reprinted
123
Internment Camps artwork and articles from other Chicana/o newspapers (particularly the United Farm Worker’s newspaper Malcriado and Northern New Mexico’s El Grito del Norte). These newspapers, in turn, would reciprocate by printing IWW imagery and articles. As an artist, the work of Cortez Koyokuikatl was reproduced in multiple workingclass and Chicana/o periodicals and books. During the 2000s, the IWW worked with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a grassroots union that represents predominantly Mexican tomato pickers in south Florida, in their struggle against Taco Bell. By and large, in an era in which mainstream Anglo American unions would not allow Mexicana/o workers into their rank-and-file membership, the IWW was organizing workers throughout the borderlands. See also Flores Mag on Brothers; Labor Unions; Plan de San Diego; United Farmworkers. FURTHER READINGS: Bird, Stewart, Georgakas, Dan, and Shaffer, Deborah, eds. Solidarity Forever: An Oral History of the IWW. Chicago: Lakeview Press, 1985; Hargis, Michael. ‘‘95 Years of Revolutionary Syndicalism.’’ Anarco-Syndicalist Review 27 and 28. June 28, 2006. www.iww.org; Kornbluh, Joyce, ed. Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology. 2nd edition. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1998.
Dylan A.T. Miner Internment Camps. More than 6,300 Mexican federal personnel (men, women, and children) crossed the Rio Grande and were held in American internment camps during 1913 and 1914. Between March and April 1913 about 812 Mexican federal military personnel crossed the border into the United States fleeing the Constitutionalists. They were imprisoned as violators of the neutrality laws upon the order of President Woodrow Wilson. He was deeply involved in formulating the internment policy through April 1913. The ‘‘fumbling’’ policy he developed was to oppose any semblance of cooperation with Mexican President Victoriano Huerta. He believed President Huerta was directly responsible for the execution of President Francisco Madero and wanted him to resign from office and not run for election. President Wilson initially thought he could oust President Huerta by a ‘‘nonrecognition’’ policy and an arms embargo. He came to think that he could bring peace to the border by jailing Huerta’s northern army and allowing the Constitutionalists to gain control of the area. To present his internment camp policy as legally permissible, President Wilson relied on the 1899 Hague Convention allowing internment for violators of the neutrality of a country that borders another country involved in a civil war. He let some Mexican field officers return to Mexico but decided to detain all federal regular troops by the end of April 1913. President Wilson’s internment camp policy was a presidential policy that military officers at the generals’ rank did not think would be effective. The first Mexican soldiers to be imprisoned were from Sonora. They had crossed the border at Nogales and Naco, Arizona. Mexican Colonel Emilio Kosterlitsky kept a stern command over the enlisted soldiers, and they obeyed his orders for the most part when they were transported from Sonora and Arizona to Fort Rosecrans, California, in August 1913. Many of the soldiers took along their wives and children. At the Fort Rosecrans camp, officers were allowed parole to spend the day outside of the camp. They received this privilege based on the ‘‘honor code’’ of officers and gentlemen. But some officers sought to escape from the camp disregarding this code.
124
Internment Camps None of the enlisted soldiers were allowed parole. Their strategy to gain release was to have their relatives write letters asking for their release. The Mexican government sought to gain their release by litigation through habeas corpus writs but to no avail. Camp life came to resemble a Mexican town under the restraints of American military authority. By January 1914, about 4,500 federal men, women, and children stationed at Ojinaga, Chihuahua, had been taken into captivity after crossing the Rio Grande into the United States. They were placed in a temporary camp near the American border town of Presidio, Texas. President Huerta’s northern border armies were now out of action, allowing the Constitutionalists to gain a foothold in northern Mexico. The soldiers, soldaderas, and children were trained to Fort Bliss, Texas, and forced to live in the internment camp from January 18 to May 6, 1914. The U.S. military did not want to imprison the 1,000 soldaderas and 500 children, but they thought that the federal soldiers might rebel against having their womenfolk ousted from the camp. Letters between American generals noted that the soldaderas did the cooking for the soldiers and were part of the Mexican military. The federal soldiers refused to eat American food cooked and served by American messmen. They thought that the soldaderas should be the ones to cook foods they were used to eating. The solution to the food problem was to allow the soldaderas to grind corn and feed the soldiers. Mexican prisoners thought that their sojourn at Fort Bliss would be temporary. But President Wilson had other plans for them and continued to hold them as hostages until he could force President Huerta from office. To downplay accusations that the Americans were only detaining Huertistas, more than 100 Constitutionalist soldiers were also arrested on U.S. soil, accused of neutrality violations, and placed in detention camps at Laredo, Fort MacIntosh, and Fort Brown, Texas. After President Wilson decided to occupy Veracruz, Mexico, the detainees at Fort Bliss were sent to Fort Wingate, New Mexico. They would be held there until September 1914, when President Huerta resigned. Soldiers at the Fort Wingate camp wrote letters home, and escapes from the camp became fairly routine. Camp politics became more intense with rivalry between General Francisco Castro and General Jose Ines Salazar. American generals grew more embarrassed by the interment camps because the soldiers posed no threat to the internal security of the United States. They also did not face retribution and execution by the Constitutionalists if they were returned to Mexico. Federal soldiers made many attempts to escape from Fort Rosecrans, California. They had grown weary of being held for more than a year and were frustrated in gaining release through ‘‘hardship’’ letters addressed to the American military command and even President Wilson. The Mexican officer in charge, Colonel Kosterlitsky determined that they did not deserve to be released based on family hardship. The American military also faced the problem of American sentinels accepting bribes from prisoners to assist them in their escapes from the camp. Three federal soldiers were placed in Alcatraz in an effort to stem the escape attempts. President Wilson’s internment camp policy caused pain and suffering to thousands of Mexican federal soldiers and their families. Some prisoners were wounded or killed in their efforts to escape from the camps. President Wilson’s desire to morally shepherd Mexico’s revolution by using internment camps along the borderlands was a misguided policy of failure. When the Constitutionalists split into two groups, American policy allowed the Carranza faction to go by train through the United States and
125
Internment Camps reenter Mexico to fight the Villistas, only requiring that Carranza pay the cost of the transportation. The borderlands between Mexico and the United States during the 1910s and 1920s existed as a place of periodic chaos, fluid Mexican military identities, and American presidential meddling in U.S. military policy and strategies in border matters. See also Mexican Revolution. FURTHER READINGS: Estes, Captain George H. ‘‘The Internment of Mexican Troops in 1914.’’ Infantry Journal 11 (May-June, July-August, September-October 1915): 747–69, 38–57, 243–64; Salas, Elizabeth. Soldaderas in the Mexican Military and History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Elizabeth Salas
126
D
J
Jackson, Helen Hunt (1830–85). Helen Hunt Jackson was a writer and activist known for her denunciation of U.S. government Indian removal policies in the late nineteenth century. She called attention to the plight of Native Americans and called for reform in her book A Century of Dishonor (1881) and her novel Ramona (1884). She became the first woman appointed special commissioner of Indian Affairs. Jackson was born Helen Maria Fiske to Nathan Welby and Deborah Fiske. She was educated at the Ipswich Female Seminary in Massachusetts and the Abbott Institute in New York City. There, she became a classmate and close friend of poet Emily Dickinson. After the death of her first husband, Edward Bissell Hunt in 1863, Jackson began her literary career and quickly developed an interest in the American West. In 1875, she married William Sharpless and made a new home in Colorado. From there she continued to work on topics relating to American Indians and the west. In 1879, Jackson attended a lecture in Boston by Chief Helen Hunt Jackson, n.d. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Standing Bear, who described LC-USZ62038827.)
127
Jackson, Helen Hunt (1830–85) the forcible relocation of the Ponca Indians from their Nebraska reservation to Indian Territory. Motivated by this and other stories of unjust treatment and unfair government policies, Jackson became an activist and defender of Indians whom she saw as victims of misguided government policies. In 1881, she published A Century of Dishonor, which exposed abuse, neglect, and oppression of western tribes. Shortly after this publication, Jackson went to California and began investigating the plight of the Mission Indians there after the U.S.–Mexican War. Her activism in California led to her appointment as special commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1882. One year later, she submitted a report calling for reform, but her recommendations attracted little attention from government officials. Undeterred, Jackson wrote the novel Ramona, inspired by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, about the Mission Indians of California. Jackson died one year later of cancer. See also Literature; Native Americans. FURTHER READINGS: Banning, Evelyn I. Helen Hunt Jackson. New York: Vanguard, 1973; Mathes, Valerie S. Helen Hunt Jackson and her Indian Reform Legacy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990; May, Antoinette. Helen Hunt Jackson: A Lonely Voice of Conscience. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1987.
Monica Rankin
128
D
Labor. Workers who travel from place to place harvesting agricultural crops are called ‘‘migrant field laborers.’’ Although migrant laborers can be found throughout the world, they are most numerous in the United States. During the 1940s, thousands of migrant laborers were legally brought into the United States. The bulk of these workers came from Mexico. Even today, most migrants in the United States are agricultural workers who work and dwell in rural areas where they receive little legal protection, and their wages have had no significant increases in half a century. Recent health care studies have found that they suffer from numerous chronic conditions including, but not limited to, heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. Although these chronic diseases are exasperated by poor nutrition among field workers, as migrants, they have extremely limited access to health care, and most have no health insurance. Moreover, Mexican American and Mexican migrants have historically been the targets of hate groups in the United States. In the 1920s, they were pursued by the Ku Klux Klan; in the 1990s by neo-Nazis. Today, they are monitored by the Minutemen. The immigration of laborers from Mexico to the United States began immediately after the implementation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), as field workers were merely moving to areas that had previously been within the borders of Mexico to work. Mexican labor was also an integral part of the U.S. labor force that constructed the railroad and worked in mines in the late 1800s. Mexican immigration grew tremendously during World War I, as the migrants fulfilled labor positions in both industry and the service fields left by the American workforce, which was in Europe fighting in the war. However, since labor unions would not organize or associate with Mexican workers during the early twentieth century, Mexican laborers were forced by management into unskilled labor positions and into competition with waves of European immigrants. By the end of World War I, new U.S. immigration policies curtailed the bulk on European immigration, and immigrant Mexican labor became more in demand. This situation led to increases of Mexican immigrants throughout the southwest and the movement of Mexican Americans from Texas and New Mexico to other parts of the United States The sugar beet industry in northern states had an especially heavy demand for migrant Mexican labor. In 1924, the U.S. Border Patrol was formed, and the term ‘‘illegal alien’’ (an undocumented immigrant/worker) was first construed.
129
L
Labor Recognizing that the Mexican workforce was extremely important to U.S. economic development and prosperity, the U.S. government created the Bracero Program. Initiated on August 4, 1942, the program allowed more than 4 million Mexican workers to enter the United States and work between 1942 and 1964. While most of the braceros were agricultural workers, tens of thousands were railroad workers and thousands worked in mines. During the 1960s, the introduction of mechanized agricultural harvesting machinery, such as with cotton and cherries, however, led to an excess of ‘‘illegal’’ agricultural workers in the United States, and the Bracero Program was terminated. According to official U.S. government statistics, Mexican migration into America under the Bracero Program was at its height between 1952 and 1960 when it exceeded more than 300,000 workers annually. In fact, in 1956, the number was almost one-half a million. An important adaptation of the Bracero Program was instituted in 1943 when the powerful American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) used its influence to get Section 5(g) of Public Law 45 enacted by the U.S. Congress. Under this Section, the U.S. government could adjust the statutory limitations of the Bracero Program if it deemed it necessary or vital to the war effort. The AFBF lobbied to invoke the section, and the border was flooded with Mexican laborers, which drove wages to the minimum. The Bracero Program continued after World War II even though labor shortages ended with the return of U.S. soldiers. The U.S. government, in effect, became a labor contractor for growers, recruiting ‘‘cheap,’’ low wage labor from Mexico and sending those laborers back to Mexico when their contracts expired. Under this program, the growers did not have to deal with unions or labor disputes, and the braceros could be used to depress wages artificially and as strikebreakers. Recently, President George W. Bush has suggested the creation of a program similar to the Bracero Program, which would allow screened ‘‘guest workers’’ to apply for a work visa and enter the U.S. labor market. President Dwight D. Eisenhower initiated Operation Wetback, which began in California and Arizona in 1954 as a project of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Under the program, 1,075 Border Patrol agents were coordinated to launch an aggressive crackdown on ‘‘illegal immigration’’ into the United States, especially from Mexico. Mexican citizens residing in the United States were derogatorily referred to as ‘‘wetbacks.’’ It is estimated that under this operation, about 80,000 ‘‘illegal immigrants’’ were removed by the INS and that as many as 700,000 ‘‘illegals’’ voluntarily fled from Texas alone. The Mexican border agricultural workforce was ultimately organized through the efforts of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). Originating in California in the 1950s, today, the UFW has field offices in California and Texas and claims members throughout the southwestern states and northern cities, such as Chicago and Detroit. Today, employers contend that there are not enough laborers to fill the positions in U.S. agriculture and industry that had been filled by ‘‘undocumented workers’’ prior to recent border crackdowns by law enforcement. Also, many undocumented seasonal workers, who would normally return to Mexico after fulfilling their work contracts, fear being detained and arrested at the border. So, they remain in the United States taking year-round jobs in service areas such as food service, hotel/motel cleaning, and construction. This results in current shortages of agricultural laborers. Maquiladora refers to the ‘‘twin plant or factory’’ system in which one factory imports materials and equipment on a tariff-free basis for assembly or manufacturing
130
Labor and then reexports assembled products to its ‘‘twin’’ plant in the country of origin. Concentrated in Mexico along the border, the maquiladora scheme was established after the termination of the Bracero Program by the Mexican government in 1965, with the enactment of the Border Industrialization Program (BIP). When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994, tax breaks were expanded throughout Mexico, and many plants were built in areas other than on the border. However, the great bulk of the maquiladoras are still located along the border. Under the Bracero Program, most laborers were men. In the maquiladoras, most are women. NAFTA, along with the maquiladoras, has resulted in lower wages and labor standards for Mexican labor as well as lessening environmental standards. The Mexican workforce is often faced with harsh working conditions, low wages, forced overtime, and the illegal employment of children who are forced to perform hazardous tasks. Workers frequently have to handle toxic chemicals. The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA ) is a subregional trade agreement that would create a free trade area among the United States and five Central American countries—Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. DR-CAFTA (Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement) added the Dominican Republic to CAFTA in 2004. It is viewed as a stepping-stone for the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a free trade zone among 34 Western Hemisphere economies. While these trade agreements are strongly supported by multinationals who desire free trade zones, many economists oppose CAFTA and DR-CAFTA, arguing that such arrangements will increase poverty by opening national markets to American agricultural goods that are governmentally subsidized. Local family farmers will not be able to compete with American agriculture; so they will fail economically. Moreover, the history of such free trade zones indicates that indigenous people, especially women and children, are drawn into the labor market and appallingly exploited. See also Economy; Labor Unions. FURTHER READINGS: Acuna, Rodolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 5th edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004; Cornejo, Joann. ‘‘Mexican Labor Movement in the United States: An Account of the Mexican Work Force from the Braceros to the United Farm Workers of America and Cesar Chavez.’’ http://home.Sandiego.edu/jcornejo/index.html; ‘‘Free Trade Agreements: A Human Rights Perspective.’’ Washington Office on Latin America. http:// www.wola.org/economic/econ_trade.html; Geis, Sonya. ‘‘Border Security, Job Market Leave Farms Short of Workers.’’; Griffin, Richard W. ‘‘Political Opportunity, Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: The Case of the South Texas Farm Workers.’’ The Social Science Journal 29, no. 2 (1992): 129–52; ‘‘Growers Frustrated by Delay in Agriculture Legislation.’’ Washington Post. http:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-yn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR200610030 ?1254.ht. . .; La Botz, Dan. Masks of Democracy: Labor Suppression in Mexico Today. Boston: South End Press, 1992; ‘‘Mexican Immigrant Labor History.’’ PBS. http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/ theborder/history/timeline/17.html; Nieves, Evelyn. ‘‘Florida Tomato Pickers Still Reap ‘Harvest of Shame’: Boycott Helps Raise Awareness of Plight.’’ Washington Post. http://www.washing tonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58505-2005Feb27.html; ‘‘Still a Harvest of Shame.’’ San Francisco Quarterly. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file¼/chronicle/archive/2000/12. U.S.–Central American Free Trade Agreement. Washington Office on Latin America. http://www.wola.org/ Economic/caftan.htm; Vargas, Zaragosa. Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Richard W. Griffin
131
Labor Unions Labor Unions. In Mexico, labor unions are called sindicatos. Local units called secciones are organized as plant or workplace associations and comprise the basic union organizational structure. These local units are then federated in either national unions or into local, regional, or state associations. Among the older national unions, the Confederation of Mexican Workers (Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos, CTM) is Mexico’s largest. Historically, labor unions have been an important and highly politicized ingredient of both Mexico’s labor market and its political system. While the goals of traditional Mexican labor unions included the protection of membership rights and securing improved working conditions for its members, in past years, most of these unions were affiliated with the corrupt Institutional Revolutionary Political Party (PRI). Thus, the Mexican labor unions functioned as little more than working-class organizations in support of the goals of the dominant, corporate-driven PRI. Union members were forced to join these unions as a condition of employment. Since the mid-1990s, Mexican labor unions have experienced major alterations. The newer unions are independent of the Mexican government. This independence has shattered the government’s historical condition of control of the labor unions, which are now becoming more meaningful challengers of the government and are experiencing a realignment of their place in Mexican society. Illustrations can be found throughout the Mexican labor and economic system. In November 1997, for example, an array of older unions created the National Union of Workers (UNT). The UNT is a labor federation, which instituted democratic reforms both within the union’s organizations and within the workplace. In 2002, the Union, Peasant, Social, Indigenous, and Popular Front (FSCISP) formed a new labor association that has initiated and conducted general strikes against corporate management and against the Mexican government. However, the newly organized autonomous unions in Mexico have a high risk of failing if maquiladora plant workers along the U.S.–Mexico border and within interior Mexico are not independently organized. Early instances of such organizations have taken place. For example, when the Sony Corporation attempted to alter the work rules in its maquiladora plant in Nuevo Laredo, the CTM’s leadership sided with Sony. This immediately led the maquiladora workers to challenge the CTM and intra-union conflict erupted throughout entire state of Nuevo Leon. The workers’ challenges focused on their demands for more democratic union representation, which had been unattainable in the past due to collaboration between CTM’s leaders and management. Prior to the twentieth century, Mexican American laborers experienced economic impoverishment, political marginalization, and geographic isolation along the U.S.– Mexico border. They were also severely uneducated about the American political, legal, and social systems. Thus, Mexican American laborers formed mutual aid societies and collectivities called mutualistas for self-help and self-defense. These organizations, regarded as the earliest Mexican American union collectivities, were rooted in passionate Mexican nationalism. Also, because of Mexican American distrust with the American political system and American society, the organizations and their members strongly rejected all attempts to assimilate within American society. As the organizations became more heavily involved in American labor politics, however, the conventional American unions began to view them as enemies, especially when management played the Mexican American organizations against the ‘‘white’’ unions.
132
Labor Unions During the twentieth century, Mexican American laborers began to establish more conventional labor unions, such as the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). However, the early organizations were not associated with state and national federations of labor networks. In fact, as recently as the early part of the twentieth century, the traditional ‘‘white’’ labor unions divided over whether or not to include Mexicans and Mexican Americans as members of their unions. Many union leaders and rankand-file members held racists attitudes that ‘‘Mexicans cannot be organized.’’ As a result, Mexican American and Mexican workers and their fledgling unions lacked necessary organizational resources such as monetary funds and political support. Also, since many of the Mexican workers were not citizens, management forced them into unskilled labor positions where the market was already flooded with new European immigrants, a situation that led to bitter animosity between the European immigrants and the Mexican laborers. While the early Mexican American unions shared many of the mutualistas’ values, they did reject strong Mexican nationalism as destructive to union effectiveness and as responsible for weakening member solidarity. The unions also became de facto civil right organizations, fighting against discrimination toward Mexicans in the workplace and intervening in labor conflicts and leading strikes against employers. For example, on February 28, 1903, the ‘‘Japanese-Mexican Labor Association’’ was created, which conducted strikes against white American and Japanese American employers in Texas and California during the years prior to World War I. The UFW, probably the best-known Mexican American labor union, sprang up from the efforts of Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta. In 1952, Chavez became involved with the Community Service Organization (CSO), which served the interests of California field workers. Chavez and Huerta left CSO in 1962 and formed the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), a union of California wine grape pickers. During 1966, the NFWA merged with the AFL-CIO’s Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), an organization comprised primarily of Filipino agricultural workers and initiated by Larry Itliong, to form the UFW. The UFW won significant labor contracts with major table grape growers in California and became a member of the AFL-CIO in 1972. Following the principles of nonviolent confrontation utilized by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the union eventually claimed membership of field workers from California to Florida and throughout the southwestern states and established field offices in California and Texas. The UFW formally disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO on January 13, 2006. Under Chavez and Huerta’s leadership, the UFW staunchly opposed the illegal immigration of undocumented workers. Chavez often criticized the Immigration and Naturalizations Service (INS) for being lax with undocumented workers and with those who employ the undocumented, who were often used to continue harvests during strikes and ultimately break strikes. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), implemented on January 1, 1994, among the United States, Canada, and Mexico, has had negative results for Mexican labor unions, especially in the maquiladora industry where wages have plunged, employee exposure to toxic chemicals and waste has intensified, and environmental contamination along the U.S.–Mexico border has exploded. However, NAFTA has increased cooperation among American, Mexican, and Canadian labor unions as they have come to identify shared interests and goals and to understand that they must cooperate against multinational conglomerates to fulfill their goals and
133
Land Grants interests. The unions are learning to form coalitions with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to force improvements in both environmental conditions and the workplace. An example is the Duro Bag plant in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, a maquiladora plant operated by Duro Bag Manufacturing Corporation of Ludlow, Kentucky. When Duro plant workers attempted to bargain collectively for a better work contract, the company fired union leaders and terminated 150 union sympathetic workers. A new union was organized with aid from the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, a group of unions, churches, and community organizations in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. With aid from the Coalition, the new union was granted independent union legal status and continues to represent the rights of its members in the workplace. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, labor unions representing border residents, especially Mexican national and Mexican American workers, have made tremendous strides in organizing and representing labor’s interests. It remains to be seen, however, how effective these unions will be in facing the challenges created by globalization and multinational corporatism. See also Economy; Industrial Workers of the World; United Farmworkers of America. FURTHER READINGS: Bacon, David. ‘‘Border Labor War Defies Mexico’s Fox Administration.’’ ZNET, November 2006. http://www.zmag.org/baconlaborwar.html; Bacon, David. ‘‘Hunger on the Border: Interview with Julia Qui~ nones.’’ Z Magazine 19, no. 4 (April, 2006); Bacon, David. ‘‘Suspicious Fire Heats Up Border Labor Dispute.’’ Jinn Magazine, November 2006. http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/6.26/010103-suspicious.html; ‘‘Before the United States Administrative Office, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, United States Department of / Labor. In re: Sony Corporation d/b/a Magneticos de Mexico.’’ U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, January 2007. http://www.Dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/nao/ submissions/Sub940003.htm; Cornejo, Joann. ‘‘Mexican Labor Movement in the United States: An Account of the Mexican Work Force from the Braceros to the United Farm Workers of America and Cesar Chavez.’’ January 2007. http://home.Sandiego.edu/jcornejo/index.html; Jenkins, J Craig. The Politics of Insurgency: Farm Worker Movement of the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985; Kay, Tamara. ‘‘Even Labor Unions Can Gain from Free Trade.’’ YaleGlobal Online, December 2006. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/204.html; La Botz, Dan. ‘‘Mexico’s Labor Movement in Transition.’’ Monthly Review 57, no. 2 (June 2005); Marquez, Benjamin. Constructing Identities in Mexican American Political Organizations: Choosing Issues, Taking Sides. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003; ‘‘Mexico Labor Market and Laws.’’ November 2006. http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/laborlaw.html; Watts, Julie. ‘‘Mexico-U.S. Migration and Labor Unions: Obstacles to Building Cross-Border Solidarity.’’ University of Califor nia, San Diego, The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, Working Paper 79, June 2003.
Richard W. Griffin Land Grants. Land grants were a major source of land distribution and contested property rights in southwest North America. Spain began issuing gifts of land for military service and to promote settlement in its New Mexican territory in the late seventeenth century. Mexico expanded and refined the practice after declaring independence but lost jurisdiction over grants in the region to the United States in 1848. The earliest grants appeared in present-day New Mexico. In 1692, Spain gave Don Fernando Duran y Chavez a 41,000-acre tract for his service in the reconquista (reconquest) after the Pueblo Revolt. Private allotments like Duran y Chavez’s
134
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Atrisco Grant required owners to make improvements and assist in Spain’s defense. Spanish governors also issued quasi-private grants requiring community building and community grants giving settlers individual plots while reserving natural resources for common use. Grants typically went to prominent citizens, although Pueblo Indians and female heads of household also received them in various forms. Like the expansion of the Atrisco Grant in 1760, grants often changed over time. Oriented more toward community development than land speculation, Spanish officials sometimes required only a verbal contract, used topographical features to mark boundaries, and based measurements on the vara, that is, the approximate length of a man’s step. Imprecision and regional idiosyncrasies sparked numerous legal battles that only became more difficult to adjudicate when brought into the American grid system for land apportionment. After gaining independence in 1821, Mexico abolished Spain’s isolationist policies, opening land to foreigners in exchange for political, military, and religious allegiance. Mexican officials standardized measurements, although variations in locally held vara sticks continued causing disputes. Under Mexican authority, both the tract size and distribution rate increased. During two years in office, Governor Manuel Armijo, dispersed nearly 10 million acres. His most notable grants included the Beaubien and Miranda Grant in 1841 and the Sangre de Cristo Grant in 1843. Empresarios, who helped build communities in return for land, frequently administered grants to foreigners. By the 1830s, Americans held more land than Mexicans in Texas. Over this same period, Californios received more than 500 grants. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S.–Mexican War and transferred most of the present-day southwest to the United States, included protections for Spanish and Mexican grants. Securing recognition for claims, however, proved difficult. Boards of land commissioners were appointed in Texas and California in accordance with the Land Act of 1851, and the U.S. Surveyor General started reviewing claims in New Mexico a few years later. About three-fourths of California claims were approved, but the lengthy legal process and a lack of citizenship rights forced most Californios to sell their land. Most claims were rejected in New Mexico because of unclear boundaries and missing documents. The 1.7-million-acre Beaubien & Miranda Grant, renamed the Maxwell Grant, survived violence and congressional scrutiny to become the region’s largest existing grant. Land grant disputes remained common until the 1890s, when Congress permitted community grants to incorporate and appointed the Court of Private Land Claims. Legal challenges, however, were not eliminated completely. As with a 1967 law permitting the Atrisco Grant to reorganize into a private corporation and a 2002 ruling protecting usufruct access for heirs to the Sangre de Cristo Grant, courts have continued to modify the rights of grant holders into the twenty-first century. See also Agribusiness; Economy; Ranching; Tejanos. FURTHER READINGS: Briggs, Charles, and Van Ness, John, eds. Land, Water, and Culture: New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987; Montoya, Marıa. Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict Over Land in the American Southwest, 1840–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Robert Lee League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). To assert their rights and opportunities as U.S. citizens, middle-class Mexican Americans founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) at a gathering in Harlingen, Texas, on
135
Legal Issues August 24, 1927. Before long, their association grew to include residents in towns across the Southwest. Advocates for Latino integration into mainstream society, in the 1940s, LULAC groups filed suit in Southern California and Texas to challenge segregation in public schools. Their efforts met with mixed success as Mexican Americans at the time still lacked sufficient political power. Nevertheless, LULAC represented one of the first officially organized efforts in the United States to win equality for Hispanics. They would serve as an important precedent for the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s and today have 700 active councils throughout the United States and Puerto Rico with a membership of well over 100,000. See also Chicano Movement; Education; Health; United Farm Workers. FURTHER READINGS: Gomez-Qui~ nones, Juan. Roots of Chicano Politics, 1600–1940. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. LULAC. http://www.lulac.org/; Marquez, Benjamin. LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993; McWilliams, Carey. North from Mexico: The Spanish Speaking People of the United States. Westport: CT: Praeger, 1948, 1990; Waters Yarsinske, Amy. All For One And One For All: A Celebration Of 75 Years Of The League Of United Latin American Citizens. Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Company Publishers, 2004.
Andrew G. Wood Legal Issues. The U.S.–Mexico border has been a natural site of considerable commerce and migration. It has also been a perennial locus of substantial illicit traffic. This fact has led to cultural, diplomatic, and at times, military tensions, as policymakers on both sides of the border have struggled to foster legal trade while stifling illicit traffic. Ongoing efforts to strike a mutually acceptable balance between the goals of promoting commerce and suppressing crime have been made more difficult by shifts in the relative priorities of those goals, shifts which were often driven by external developments. The Mexican Revolution, Prohibition in the United States during the 1920s, the Great Depression, both World Wars, and the American War on Drugs since the 1960s, to list only a few examples, have all affected the relative influence of economic, political, and security questions on policy, and hence, led to shifting regulatory practices. Periodic adjustment of national and international priorities, however, has never mooted basic concerns about policing the border. Given the border’s significance in economic and security policies, and the complexity of those policies, it is natural that the region is teeming with officers working for myriad law enforcement agencies. This is especially true on the U.S. side of the border. Several federal agencies, notably the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as well as local county sheriffs and state police departments, might at times assert jurisdiction over particular investigations. For much of the twentieth century, however, the primary responsibility for policing north of the border was divided between the U.S. Treasury Department’s Customs Service, which is concerned with interdicting illegal imports (including narcotics), and the U.S. Justice Department’s Border Patrol (a branch of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS), which is focused on preventing undocumented immigration. Yet, because streams of contraband are often mingled, officers from the DEA and the FBI have been empowered to enforce federal laws beyond their core mandate. During the 1920s Prohibition era, Border Patrol officers often seized bootleg alcohol in the course of other duties. Because they take the lead for border enforcement,
136
Legal Issues officers from both of these leading agencies exercised broad authority to conduct peremptory searches of any person, vehicle, or freight entering the United States, without either warrants or probable cause. Although first authorized by federal law in 1789, warrantless ‘‘border searches’’ have been challenged frequently, as violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. Federal courts, reasoning that the United States possesses a sovereign nation’s power to regulate entry to its territory, have consistently declared that such searches are reasonable, when performed by duly appointed officers acting at or in proximity to the border. To complicate the enforcement picture further, U.S. military personnel (active units as well as National Guard troops) have been stationed along the border, especially at times of perceived crisis. The U.S. Army, for example, famously pursued Pancho Villa in response to his northern incursions during the Mexican Revolutionary era. In the 1990s, the federal government named the southwest border one of five ‘‘High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas’’ (the other four were large cities). This designation brought with it higher funding and increased coordination among the various civilian law enforcement, military, and intelligence groups that were by then playing a role in drug interdiction. The military was tasked to lend technological or logistical assistance to this effort; however, it was only asked to do so because the Posse Comitatus act prohibits direct enforcement of civilian laws by armed forces personnel. The heightened concerns over drug trafficking at that time reflected the usual tensions between commerce and crime. The United States and Mexico hoped legitimate exchange would increase when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became effective in 1994, but it prepared to combat an expected parallel surge in the smuggling of drugs and undocumented immigrants. The U.S. Congress conceived the Southwest Border Initiative (SWBI) the same year, through which a council consisting of representatives of the DEA, FBI, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, and federal prosecutors’ offices coordinated a regional interdiction strategy. The Border Patrol received the lion’s share of the increased funding from Congress and, as a result, became the fastest-growing federal agency during the decade. The emergence of the new threat of international terrorism significantly altered the law enforcement environment on the border. Among the U.S. government’s major responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, was the consolidation in March 2003 of various law enforcement and intelligence agencies into a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Under this reorganization, the bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) pooled inspectors from the INS and Border Patrol, the Customs Service, and even the Department of Agriculture. The new organization’s duties reflect its bureaucratic heritage as well as the circumstances of its birth. CBP officials are charged with regulating and facilitating international trade, collecting import duties, and enforcing U.S. trade laws. Its agents are further responsible for apprehending individuals attempting to enter the United States illegally, as well as stemming the flow of illegal drugs and other contraband. CBP inspectors also protect U.S. agricultural and business interests from harmful pests and diseases. Finally, the bureau has a primary responsibility for preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States. Like earlier developments that saw both supporters and detractors, changes in the border law enforcement environment post– September 11 comforted some and alarmed others. On October 26, 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush signed The Secure Fence Act of 2006 (Public Law 109-367). Its primary goal is to initiate construction of a wall
137
Literature (or other separation barrier) along hundreds of miles of the southwestern border. No money was allocated to the fence at the time the bill passed (on an 80-19 vote in the Senate and a 283-138 vote in the House), effectively leaving it to future Congresses to determine how much of the project to complete. Proponents of the ‘‘barrier’’ concept argue that a fence would stop entry by drug smugglers, undocumented immigrants, and international terrorists. Opponents criticize it as a waste of public resources and a national shame. See also Immigration Legislation; Militarization; Operations; Policy. FURTHER READINGS: Andreas, Peter. Border Games: Policing the U.S.–Mexico Divide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001; Andreas, Peter, and Biersteker, Thomas J., eds. The Rebordering of North America: Integration and Exclusion in a New Security Context. New York: Routledge, 2003; Bertram, Eva, Blachman, Morris, Sharpe, Kenneth, and Andreas, Peter. Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996; The Brookings Institution. Immigration in U.S.–Mexican Relations: A Report of the U.S.–Mexican Relations Forum. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1998; Heer, David M. Immigration in America’s Future: Social Science Findings and the Policy Debate. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996; Heer, David M. Undocumented Mexicans in the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Johns, Christina Jacqueline. Power, Ideology, and the War On Drugs: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure. New York: Praeger, 1992; Marion, Nancy E. A History of Federal Crime Control Initiatives, 1960–1993. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994; Murchison, Kenneth M. Federal Criminal Law Doctrines: The Forgotten Influence of National Prohibition. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994; Musto, David F. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. 3rd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; The Need For Additional Border Patrol at the Northern and Southern Borders of the United States to Further Deter Illegal Immigration and Drug Smuggling. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000; Southwest Border High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Designation. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991.
S. Harmon Wilson Literature. Borderlands literature, sometimes known as border literature, literatura de la frontera, and literatura fronteriza, refers to the novels, poetry, theater, and other literary forms that are connected to the U.S.–Mexico borderlands as they have existed since the modern-day border was established by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and the Gadsden Purchase (1853). Literature produced in the region before the border existed should not be considered to be borderlands literature. Earlier texts, ~ez Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios (1542) and Gaspar Perez de Vilsuch as Alvar N un lagra’s epic poem Historia de la Nueva Mexico (1610), are significant antecedents to modern borderlands fiction. There is some debate as to whether borderlands literature has to be both from and about the borderlands or whether it can be one or the other. This debate is highlighted by such novels as Murieron a mitad del rıo (1948) by Mexican author Luis Spota. This novel is not by someone from the borderlands but was one of the first novels to be written about the Bracero Program. How we define borderlands literature has a considerable impact on which texts will be included in the genre. The defining characteristic of borderlands literature is that it arises from the circumstances on and around the U.S.–Mexico border whether or not it invokes or is about the actual borderlands. A feature of borderlands literature, especially that which is produced in the United States, is the use of metaphorical borders; however, the
138
Literature presence of metaphorical borders alone is insufficient for a text to be considered as borderlands literature. It is the fact that borderlands literature is from and about the actual borderlands that distinguishes it from ‘‘border writing.’’ ‘‘Border writing’’ refers to literature that is influenced by two or more cultures, as is some borderlands literature, but unlike borderlands literature, ‘‘border writing’’ is not specific to the U.S.– Mexico borderlands. Borderlands literature may be produced on either side of the U.S.–Mexico border. The major difference between borderlands literature produced in the United States and that produced in Mexico is that the former tends to focus on textual and theoretical borders while the latter focuses on the geographic borderlands. Borderlands literature produced on the U.S. side of the border is often born out of the experiences of Mexican Americans or American Mexicans living in the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas who live with or between two cultures and languages. Borderlands literature produced on the Mexican side of the border is often about the major border cities of Tijuana, Mexicali, and Juarez. The distinction between borderlands literature produced on either side of the border is particularly applicable to more recent works but is by no means clear-cut as illustrated by Gloria Anzald ua’s seminal text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), which is notable for its exploration of actual and metaphorical borderlands. Borderlands fiction overlaps with other categories and most notably with Chicano/a literature (literature by people of Mexican descent living in the United States). Much Chicano/a literature may be considered to be borderlands fiction, however, not all Chicano/a literature is borderlands fiction. Of particular interest when considering the relationship between Chicano/a literature and borderlands literature is the concept of the mythic homeland of the Aztecs, Aztlan, located in the U.S. Southwest, which appears in some Chicano/a literature. Borderlands literature also overlaps with desert literature or narrativa del desierto. The representation of the desert in borderlands literature is particularly interesting because the desert is on both sides of the border. The works of Daniel Sada, Ricardo Elizondo, and Jes us Gardea, all of whom are from the Mexican side of the border, are examples of borderlands literature and of narrativa del desierto. Finally, borderlands literature overlaps with the literature of the U.S. Southwest but not all Southwest literature is borderlands literature and vice-versa. The following is not intended to be an exhaustive list of borderlands literature, but it is indicative of what is available within the genre. Early examples of borderlands fiction include novels such as The Squatter and the Don (1885) by Marıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton and Caballero: A Historical Novel (written in the 1930s but not published until 1996) by Jovita Gonzalez. These novels are about the experiences of Mexicans who became U.S. citizens following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Anglo American authors, for example, Harvey Fergusson and Helen Hunt Jackson, also wrote about the early encounters between the Mexicans who had recently become U.S. citizens and Anglos. In Followers of the Sun (1936) and The Conquest of Don Pedro Fergusson describes New Mexico in transition. Another novel that provides an historical perspective is George Washington Gomez, A Mexicoteaxan Novel by Americo Paredes (written between 1936 and 1940 but not published until 1990). Set in South Texas, the novel begins with the Mexican American uprisings of 1915– 17 and their suppression by the Texas Rangers and ends in 1940. Borderlands fiction in the form of Chicano/a literature flourished in the late 1960s and 1970s. Classic texts include . . . y no se lo trago la tierra/ . . . and the Earth Did
139
Literature Not Devour Him (1971) by Tomas Rivera, Bless Me, Ultima (1972) by Rudolfo A. Anaya, and the Klail City Death Trip series by Rolando Hinojosa. Rivera’s novel is about the experiences of migrant farm workers in the post–World War II period. Bless Me, Ultima is about a Mexican American boy, Tony Marez, growing up in the rural culture of New Mexico in the 1940s and, as in Heart of Aztlan (1976), Tortuga (1979), and The Silence of the Llano (1982) also by Anaya, place, be it the desert, mountain, or llano, is of particular importance in this novel. In the Klail City Death Trip series, which began in 1973 with Estampas del Valle y otras obras, Hinojosa experiments with a variety of narrative forms and techniques, but all of the works have in common their setting in the fictitious Belken County in the South Texas Lower Valley. Works by contemporary Chicana authors such as Denise Chavez, Roberta Fernandez, and Pat Mora form part of the corpus of borderlands literature. In their poetry Chavez and Mora connect the landscape of the borderlands to the female body to express their identity and heritage, and both are interested in the language(s) and dialects used in the borderlands. In her collection of short stories Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories (1990) Fernandez writes about six Southwestern women in the early twentieth century. In the 1980s, there was a significant growth in borderlands literature from the Northern Mexican border states. Contemporary writers from the Mexican side of the border include Rosina Conde, Gabriel Trujillo Mu~ noz, Federico Campbell, Jes us Gardea, and Rosario Sanmiguel. Works by these authors are usually set in the major cities on the Mexican side of the border. Tijuanenses/Tijuana Stories on the Border (1989) by Federico Campbell is a collection of short stories about Tijuana in the 1950s, including the nostalgic ‘‘Tijuana Times.’’ Luis Humberto Crosthwaite provides another perspective of life in Tijuana in his collection of short stories La estrella de la calle sexta (2000). Some work on borderlands literature has already been undertaken, but much of this work analyses borderlands literature with reference to other literary traditions such as Chicano/a literature rather than as a separate genre. In addition, criticism has tended to focus on texts from the U.S. side of the border, because literature produced on the Mexican side is more often thought of as Mexican literature rather than as borderlands literature, particularly when it is critically acclaimed. Further research needs to be done on authors from the Mexican side of the border from a perspective that sees these authors as borderlands writers. Perhaps the most potentially fruitful area for future research would be to compare literature from both sides of the border to consolidate the idea of a transnational borderlands literature. See also Culture; Ernesto Galarza; Folklore; Tomas Rivera. FURTHER READINGS: Castillo, Debra A., and Socorro Tabuenca C ordoba, Ana Marıa. Border Women. Writings From La Frontera. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002; Hicks, Emily. Border Writing. The Multidimensional Text. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991; Miller, Tom. Writing on the Edge. A Borderlands Reader. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2003; Polkinhorn, Harry, Di Bella, Jose Manuel, and Reyes, Rogelio, eds. Borderlands Literature: Towards an Integrated Perspective. San Diego: Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias, 1990; Rebolldo, Tey Diana. ‘‘Tradition and Mythology. Signatures of Landscape in Chicana literature.’’ In Vera Norwood and Janice Monk, eds. The Desert’s No Lady. Southwestern Landscapes in Women’s Writing and Art, 96–124. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987; Robinson, Cecil. No Short Journeys. The Interplay of Cultures in the History and Literature of
140
Low Riders the Borderlands. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1992; Saldıvar, Jose David. Border Matters. Remapping American Cultural Studies Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997; Vilanova, N uria. ‘‘Another Textual Frontier: Contemporary Fiction on the Northern Mexican Border.’’ Bulletin of Latin American Research 21 (2002): 73–98.
Sarah E.L. Bowskill Louisiana Purchase (1803). From a treaty of cession dated April 30, 1803, the United States under President Thomas Jefferson negotiated a deal with the French government for the acquisition of the Louisiana territory. At the time, this included the entire Mississippi Valley or portions of the present-day states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota south of Mississippi River, much of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, northern Texas, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana on both sides of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans. After the Senate ratified the treaty in October 1803, both houses of Congress approved payment to the French of approximately $11 million and assumed French debt owed to American citizens (about $3.75 million). In total, the deal amounted to $15 million dollars. The exchange doubled the size of the United States at the time and represented one of Jefferson’s crowning achievements. Aside from a lingering dream of continental expansion, more immediate motivation for the deal came from the fact that both France and Spain had the power to block commercial and military traffic in the port of New Orleans. Originally settled by the French, the area was turned over to the Spanish in 1763. France, under Napoleon Bonaparte, designed an agreement with the Spanish to reclaim the territory in 1800. In the meantime, France’s Caribbean colonies of Saint-Domingue and Guadalupe were in turmoil. Moreover, war between France and Britain seemed imminent at the beginning of 1803. Given these pressures, Napoleon decided to give up his desire to reclaim Louisiana and subsequently told Jefferson’s envoy France Robert R. Livingston that he would be willing to accept payment not just for New Orleans, but the entire territory. Somewhat surprised, Livingston accepted. In the end, the deal cost the United States a mere three cents per acre. See also Manifest Destiny; Monroe Doctrine; Texas Revolution. FURTHER READINGS: Brown Tindall, George. America: A Narrative History, Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 1988; Castor, Peter J. The Great Acquisition: An Introduction to the Louisiana Purchase. Great Falls, MT, Lewis & Clark Interpretive Association, 2004; Fleming, Thomas J. The Louisiana Purchase. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2003; Kukla, Jon. A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America. New York: A. A. Knopf, 2003.
Andrew G. Wood Low Riders. Low riders are customized cars that ride low to the ground; the people who drive the cars are also known as low riders. The aesthetic of the low rider is often evoked by the phrase bajito y suavecito or ‘‘low and slow.’’ Low-rider customization is characterized by complex hydraulic suspension that enables the driver to alter the height of the car from the ground. Skilful use of the hydraulics results in the car lifting from side to side and jumping up and down. Customization also typically involves elaborate paint jobs (‘‘candy’’), chrome accessories, extensive entertainment
141
Low Riders
George Luna’s 1947 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery, christened ‘‘Midnight Illusions,’’ seen here in an undated hand-out photo, took three years to customize for the low-rider show circuit. It was one of nineteen cars, bicycles, and trucks honoring the low-riding culture in an exhibit entitled ‘‘Arte y Estilo: The Lowering Tradition’’ at Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles in 2000. (AP Photo/Petersen Automotive Museum)
systems, and plush interiors. More than just the car, low riding is a lifestyle that locates individuals within family and historical contexts. Low-rider culture as we now know it first became visible in the 1960s U.S. Southwest, primarily Los Angeles and New Mexico. Chicano car enthusiasts began to restore and improve upon old icons of the American motoring industry such as the 1940s Chevy. More than simply being affordable, the use of older cars marked a reverence for the previous generation within the low-riding community that extended to the wearing of zoot suits and the moustaches typical of the older pachucos. Low riding, with its focus on ‘‘being seen’’ and its adoption of American icons mixed with a continuation of a Mexican past, is emblematic of the Chicano establishment of selfidentify in the United States. Being an historically poor Chicano phenomenon, low riding has often been connected with gangs and macho male culture. Consequently, low riders out cruising in their cars can expect continual attention from the authorities. Certainly gang lifestyle intersects with low riding, and copies of Lowrider magazine are populated by numerous bikini-clad women. However, low-rider culture is more diverse than this stereotype and is built around models of family respect, with low-riding clubs often spanning generations. The customizing involved in low riding is expensive and the ‘‘typical’’ low rider is probably a family man with a good job. Nevertheless low riding continues to be a source of ethnic and class tension. Increasingly, as a result of both harassment from the police and the sheer complexity and value of the cars, low riding has in part moved off the streets altogether. Instead, low riders display their work at car shows and exhibitions. While there have
142
Low Riders always been artistic elements to low-riding customization, this change brings new legitimacy to low riding as an art form, which has become increasingly complex and self-aware. Low riders are still identified chiefly as part of Chicano culture, but not exclusively. Hip-hop has adopted the low-rider aesthetic: a 1960s low-riding Chevy Impala ragtop is now an icon of many music videos, increasing popularity among black and general urban youth communities. Lowrider magazine purportedly sells in more than 30 countries, and there is a particularly vibrant low-riding scene in Japan. Undoubtedly, low riding will continue to diversify and increasingly become part of the mainstream for some time to come, continuing the evolution of Chicano identities. See also Anthropology; Chicana/o Movement; Culture; Folklore. FURTHER READINGS: Bright, Brenda Jo. ‘‘Remappings: Los Angeles Low Riders.’’ In Brenda Jo Bright and Elizabeth Bakewell, eds. Looking High and Low: Art and Cultural Identity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995; Lowrider magazine. www.lowridermagazine.com; Penland, Paige. R. Lowrider: History, Pride, Culture. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 2003.
Joseph Gelfer
143
M
v
Manifest Destiny. An ideology articulated by politicians, journalists, clergy, and others as a way to justify Anglo settlement and expansionism, Manifest Destiny is the idea that the United States is a land ostensibly chosen by a ‘‘higher power’’ to occupy the North American continent ‘‘from sea to shining sea.’’ Subsequent invocation and variations on the general theme of Manifest Destiny have been used to support U.S. interventionism and power throughout the Western Hemisphere. The ideas from which Manifest Destiny would take shape in the early nineteenth century took hold at the time English colonists established themselves in the New World. Closely connected to ideas of religious freedom and crafted in the language of romantic myth, many felt that providence had escorted them to their new land across the Atlantic. In New England, Puritan colonizers understood their mission to be one of building a Christian ‘‘city on the hill’’; one that would stand in high moral contrast both to what they saw as the corruption of European society and the ‘‘barbarism’’ of Native Americans and African Americans. Following independence from England, early nineteenth-century military and political leaders such as Andrew Jackson and James Monroe made use of this frontier myth in rationalizing conflict with native peoples and rival European powers throughout the continent. As Anglo exploration and settlement moved steadily westward, Manifest Destiny was used to explain away aggression taken against nonwhites. In a climate of accelerated expansionism, John L. O’ Sullivan, editor for the Democratic Review, is believed to have coined the term ‘‘Manifest Destiny.’’ He first articulated many key themes in an essay titled ‘‘The Great Nation of Futurity’’ in 1839. Later calling for U.S. annexation of Indian and Mexican lands in Texas as well as the Oregon country (held at the time by Great Britain), he used the term again in 1845. Although not uncontested, Sullivan and many other powerful individuals, including President James K. Polk who led the United States into war with Mexico a year later, believed in the inevitable spread of democracy and the right of the United States to acquire new lands as a way to realize this goal. Subsequently, the phrase gained currency during the U.S.–Mexican War as well as a host of other expansionist moves that helped establish the American Empire during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. See also Filibusters; Monroe Doctrine.
144
Maquiladoras FURTHER READINGS: Johannsen, Robert W. ‘‘The Meaning of Manifest Destiny.’’ In Sam W. Hayes and Christopher Morris, eds. Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansionism. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997; LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963; Sampson, Robert D. John L. O’Sullivan and His Times. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003; Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1860–1890. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985, 1994; Slotkin, Richard, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.
Andrew G. Wood Maquiladoras. Maquiladoras, initiated by the 1965 Border Industrialization Program (BIP) and originally called in-bond plants, are sites of product assembly or manufacturing operations that exist in every major city along the U.S.–Mexico border. Many maquiladoras are foreign owned by multinational corporations that import raw materials into the Mexican plants where workers assemble the products. Maquiladoras often export their products out of Mexico. The proliferation of maquiladoras has drastically increased the industrialization and population of border cities, leading to hopes for a more modern Mexico as well as worries about the significant disparities between wealth and poverty and the environmental affects of such dramatic changes. Upon the termination of the Bracero Program in 1964, about 200,000 unemployed workers returned to the Mexican side of the border seeking jobs. Thousands more unemployed individuals were already waiting in border cities with the hope of journeying to the United States as part of the Bracero Program. The U.S. unilateral termination of this program created an abyss for unemployed individuals. Unemployment hovered around 40 to 50 percent in many border towns during this era. The Mexican government, fearing violence and havoc, urgently sought to create new opportunities for employment. The Mexican government promoted the BIP to its citizens by arguing for the need for foreign investment, new technologies, an increase in Mexican workers’ skills, and an increase in demand for Mexican products. When the BIP began, maquiladoras were the only companies authorized for 100 percent foreign ownership without prior authorization. Mexico attracted companies from the United States and later other countries such as Canada and Japan by offering to finance infrastructure and to guarantee cheap workers. The BIP allowed the duty-free importation of machinery, operational components, raw materials, and parts if the company importing the materials guaranteed the exportation of the finished products. In theory, this would keep foreign companies from competing with Mexican industries. The U.S. 807 tariff provision further benefited companies by allowing them to deduct from the total value of items the value of any components that were of 100 percent U.S. origin and that were originally exported from the United States as raw materials for assembly purposes. Mexico’s proximity, relatively stable political atmosphere, and its somewhat familiar culture persuaded companies to relocate their international operations from Asia to the U.S.–Mexico border. In the beginning of the maquiladora program companies frequently assembled only parts of their products in Mexico. They then shipped their unfinished products to the Mexican side of the border where their sisters, or ‘‘twin’’ plants, finished the assembly process. By creating this system, companies were able to label their products
145
Maquiladoras
Workers walk outside a maquiladora (factory) in 1999 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Thousands of women move to and from work in Juarez, many walking miles and then taking an hour bus ride from the colonias where they live. (AP Photo/Thomas Herbert)
as ‘‘Made in the U.S.A.’’ For this reason, people also refer to the maquiladora industry as the ‘‘Twin Plant Assembly’’ industry. The changes in the international economic markets are the primary causes for the dramatic fluctuations in the number of maquiladora operations, employed individuals, and output. The industry moderately expanded from 1965 to about 1974, when Mexico’s stable and hearty economy allowed for a slow but continuous increase in the minimum wage. In 1976, Mexico began its devaluation of the peso, which caused a rapid increase in the minimum wage, subsequently worrying transnational companies. The maquiladora industry shrunk during the early 1980s. However, while the 1980s proceeded with more devaluations of the peso, a matching increase in the minimum wage did not accompany the resulting inflation. The cheap cost of labor attracted more companies back to the border states and a dramatic growth in the maquiladora industry occurred. Several laws and treaties dramatically affected the maquiladora operations. Mexico joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1986, which curtailed labor union activities, limited protectionist tariffs, and reduced minimum-wage increases, among other changes that made the Mexican border more attractable to foreign investors. The 1989 Maquiladora Decree decentralized the government agencies in charge of overseeing the maquiladora program, and it simplified the requirements for establishing and running a maquiladora. It reduced the customs paperwork and allowed companies to file most applications for licenses and other approvals at a central office. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) also altered the functioning of maquiladoras. This agreement lowered tariff barriers on goods, which allowed increased direct foreign investment on the border and
146
Maquiladoras promoted trade among Canada, the United States, and Mexico. While many proponents of the agreement argued that the broader reduction of protectionist tariffs would encourage maquiladoras to relocate their operations further into the interior of Mexico and hence limit population growth on the border, the predictions did not materialize. The number of maquiladoras continued to soar, but most companies kept their maquiladora operations close to the border, limiting transportation costs and facilitating cross-border living for upper-level management. The 1998 Decree for the Promotion and Operation of the Maquiladora Export Industry abolished the 1989 Maquiladora Decree and set forth new regulations to bring Mexico into compliance with NAFTA. The most recent major legislation on the maquiladoras were the Maquila 2001 rules. These rules increased the complexity of the customs duties. It increased these duties for some maquiladoras, but it continued to exempt many maquiladoras from paying importation duties. While initially billed as the source of employment for the newly unemployed primarily male workers displaced by the discontinued Bracero Program, company hiring practices favored females. The disproportionate ratio between males and females in the maquiladora sector is the source of much debate, especially among feminist scholars. Marıa Patricia Fernandez-Kelly pioneered (English language) studies of the maquiladora workers. She argue that the maquiladora workers were victims of the exploitative, elitist, capitalist system that subjected them to countless abuses inside and outside of the workplace. Fernandez-Kelly worked during the initial era of the maquiladora industry when the vast majority of the workers were female. She found that the maquiladoras practice sexism on a grand scale and that they based their decision to hire women on the idea that women are more passive and easily manipulated than men. For her, the maquiladoras abhor anything that limits production and profit and they believe that women’s passivity will create a more stable work environment, which will lend itself to few disruptions in the production schedule. Subsequent analyses of the maquiladoras and their employees dealt with a different picture. Since the 1980s, the proportion of women to men gradually shifted. While in 2006 women still accounted for the majority of workers on the line, men also made up a large segment of these workers. The management also shifted its hiring practices from favoring single, young, childless, and inexperienced women to choosing older mothers. Theoretically, these mothers would be more dependent on their jobs, because their children relied on their salaries, and therefore they would be less likely to risk their jobs by limiting their production. While this argument may seem reasonable, Susan Tiano argues that by the late 1980s maquiladoras no longer attracted the more educated ‘‘maquila-grade’’ labor on which they previously relied. These companies only shifted their ideologies about the preferred woman in order to continue paying workers low salaries. Within the plants, the management practices certain strategies and the workers counter back with their own inventive tactics. Maquiladora management seeks to divide workers by creating competition among labor areas of the plant as well as between individuals within their own sections. This works to hinder successful union formation, strikes, and other collective organization. Workers’ effective responses include tortugismo, or the conscious slowing down of the production process, as well as strikes, and the formation of outside networks of support that foster a community among the workers and help to counteract the attempts by management to divide the workers.
147
McWilliams, Carey (1905–80) Researchers have blamed the maquiladoras on a host of environmental and health problems. These include, but are not limited to, the spread of diseases such as high blood lead levels in children, tuberculosis, asthma, hepatitis A, and birth defects. Most of these conditions actually result from the inadequate environmental infrastructure that includes a lack of potable water. However, scholars and environmentalists trace these problems back to the maquiladoras because of their intense drains on the available resources and their seemingly magnetic ability to attract too many migrants, which the border is unprepared to support. The maquiladoras continue to be controversial. Since their start in 1965, the maquiladoras greatly affected the gross domestic products of the United States and Mexico, as well as the border cities, the workers, and their environments. While the maquiladoras produce a profit and send some of their proceeds back to Mexico City, the public, the media, and governments will persist in questioning their actions on the other three fronts. See also Cities and Towns; Economy; Labor; Labor Unions; NAFTA. FURTHER READINGS: Fernandez-Kelly, Marıa Patricia. For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983; Kopinak, Kathryn. Desert Capitalism: Maquiladoras in North America’s Western Industrial Corridor. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996; Pe~ na, Devon G. The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology on the U.S.–Mexican Border. Austin: The Center for Mexican American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 1997; Tiano, Susan. Patriarchy on the Line: Labor, Gender, and Ideology in the Mexican Maquila Industry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.
Erin G. Graham McWilliams, Carey (1905–80). Carey McWilliams was a Los Angeles attorney, public servant, author, activist, and longtime editor (1955–75) of The Nation. Although born to a cattle-ranching family in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, McWilliams remains best known for his early writings about social and political conditions in California. In his long career, he wrote dozens of influential books and articles on such varied areas as urban planning, civil rights, labor, and immigration policy. Most of the family moved to California in 1919, after the ranch failed, but McWilliams did not follow until 1922. After earning undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Southern California, he practiced at a law firm and began to write. McWilliams’ first book was Ambrose Bierce: A Biography (1929), the first major examination of the famed macabre writer, iconoclastic journalist, and fellow adoptive Californian, who had disappeared in Revolutionary Mexico in 1913. He associated with other politically progressive writers, such as Californian Upton Sinclair, but McWilliams’s own writing career was most marked by Baltimorean H. L. Mencken, the influential editor of the American Mercury, who had known Bierce personally. In later years an editor himself, McWilliams followed Mencken’s example, both by focusing on American social, political, and cultural issues, and by fostering new literary and journalistic talent. In 1939, McWilliams took a position as director of Immigration and Housing under the newly elected California Governor Culbert Olson. As the director of the state agency that regulated farm labor, he sought to improve agricultural working conditions; however, seeing little chance for the type of reform he envisioned,
148
Media McWilliams resigned. That same year, however, he published Factories in the Field (1939), his most influential book, which along with his follow-up, Ill Fares the Land (1942), are milestones in the literature advocating civil rights and social and economic justice for migratory farm workers. Many of the prolific McWilliams’s subsequent books examined racist and nativist attitudes in America. These works included Brothers under the Skin: African-Americans and Other Minorities (1943); Prejudice: The Japanese in the United States (1944); A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America (1948); and The Revival of Heresy: Civil Rights (1950). McWilliams also produced two well-received local histories, Southern California: An Island on the Land (1946) and California: The Great Exception (1949). A common theme in McWilliams’s social and political writing is the Progressive era notion that, although government action cannot eliminate prejudice, the enactment and enforcement of just laws can prevent private and public discrimination. Throughout this fertile literary period, McWilliams continued to be a lawyer and activist, representing criminal defendants and labor unions, arguing against Japanese American internment during World War II, supporting such progressive organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union, and participating in several high-profile cases, notably the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder trial. As chair of the ‘‘Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee,’’ he noted a parallel between anti-Japanese and anti-Mexican sentiment among white Californians. After the war, McWilliams opposed loyalty oaths, censorship, blacklisting, and other signs of the ascendant McCarthyism, and he played a role in the defense of the ‘‘Hollywood 10.’’ In 1951, he left California for New York, to write for The Nation. He became editor in 1955, during which time he defended the defiantly left-leaning magazine though the remainder of the McCarthy period, when its investigative journalism and editorial stance came under frequent attack from conservatives and antiCommunist liberals alike. Over the twenty years of his editorship, McWilliams successfully expanded the cultural role of the magazine and brought progressive ideas to a wider mainstream audience. During this period, The Nation opposed Jim Crow and then the Vietnam War, and introduced important new thinkers to American readers, including Ralph Nader, Howard Zinn, and Hunter S. Thompson. The American Political Science Association gives an annual $500 Carey McWilliams Award to honor a major journalistic contribution to the understanding of politics. See also Agribusiness; Legal Issues. FURTHER READINGS: Critser, Greg. ‘‘The Making of a Cultural Rebel: Carey McWilliams, 1924–1930,’’ Pacific Historical Review 55 (1986): 226–55; Geary, Daniel. ‘‘Carey McWilliams and Antifascism, 1934–1943,’’ American Historical Review 90, no. 3 (December 2003); McWilliams, Carey. The Education of Carey McWilliams. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979; Richardson, Peter. American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
S. Harmon Wilson Media. Many contemporary residents of the borderlands discover themselves to be both Mexican and American (while at the same time finding their identity as unique from either nation). They are fighting to establish their voice anew while creating a unique vocabulary with which they can communicate the distinctive border culture and the particularities of border life.
149
Media For his part, border art scholar Carlos von Son protests the notion of the border as an indeterminate area of limbo, where an individual is neither American nor Mexican. Instead, he encourages us to consider the uniqueness of border residents by not thinking of border identity as a kind of limbo but a new location where the individual and communities are at the center of cultural production. Yet, this trend is a much more recent development in the history of the border between the United States and Mexico. The border message represented in the media has not always been this way. Instead, various communications media of the border region have historically been used for xenophobic, racist, and exclusivist purposes. At the dawn of the twentieth century, U.S. citizens maintained an attitude of zealous superiority over their neighbors to the south of the border. With the beginnings of the mass media such as newspapers, the blatant subjugation of Mexicans became more easily professed; and as a result, there is a glaring historical record of the creation of the ‘‘other’’ on the opposite side of the border to maintain a sense belonging in the United States. When the Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910, not only newspapers but picture postcards depicting images of the border became tremendously popular. These images provide a witness to border relations. Decades earlier, the romantic idealism of the mid-nineteenth-century frontier painters, replete with undertones of a racist mentality, had turned to a jingoistic devotion to the U.S. philosophy of superiority. In the photographs of the Mexican Revolution, Manifest Destiny and all of its pretenses as a crusade for civilization often offered blatant disdain for Mexicans. In the introduction to their seminal work on the Mexican Revolution postcards, Paul J. Vanderwood and Frank N. Samponaro write that U.S. soldiers not only considered Mexicans their enemy, but also a lower form of human life. The picture postcards of the Mexican Revolution influenced how many across the border saw Mexican people. The upsurge in activity of border media during the twentieth century helped deepen the formation of a hybrid culture that is not simply the result of an overlap of two cultures and societies, but rather a unique transborder culture that is unlike any other part of either country. Where radio waves intermingle, one can pick up English stations on the Mexican side of the border and Mexican stations on the American side; and on local television channels, the news may be broadcast in English, Spanish, or both languages. As one scholar observed, identifying with more than one cultural community is common in the borderlands. With that sense of multi-belonging comes a new voice and a new message, which is now being communicated through various media. A new definition—not of America but of the Americas, not of exclusiveness but of inclusiveness, and not of super-human but of simply human—is being sought. As historian Oscar J. Martınez has pointed out, border identity and the media that reflect and help shape the borderlands has created a new sense of regionalism, which has produced a wide range of ‘‘cross-borrowings’’ now being constructed through a wide range of print and electronic media, including the Internet. See also Anthropology; Culture; Education. FURTHER READINGS: Fox, Claire. The Fence and the River: Culture and Politics at the U.S.– Mexico Border. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1999; Martınez, Oscar J. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1994; Spener, David, and Staudt, Kathleen, eds. U.S.–Mexico Border: Transcending Divisions, Contesting Identities. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998;
150
Mexican Revolution (1910–17) Vanderwood, Paul J., and Samponaro, Frank N. Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico’s Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness, 1910–1917. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.
Robert Tice Lalka Mexican Diaspora. Diaspora, from the ancient Greek meaning ‘‘a sowing of seeds,’’ refers to the forced or induced leaving of people from their native land and a resulting resettlement elsewhere. The term is often used to refer to the displacement of Jews from Judea in 586 B.C.E. by the Babylonians and their subsequent removal from Jerusalem by the Romans in 136 C.E. Elsewhere, the word diaspora has also gained favor to describe the forced emigration and resettlement of Africans during the Atlantic slave trade. Today, the term Mexican Diaspora is used to characterize the movement of Mexicans out of Mexico and into new lands. This massive wave of migration is occurring largely because of the disparity in economic conditions between the United States and Mexico. Using the term diaspora is a bit tricky, because historically what today stands as the U.S. Southwest had long been a part of Spain’s colonial empire as well as a vast territorial expanse that was part of Mexico before their loss to the United States in the U.S.–Mexican War. Moreover, many people of Mexican descent remained in the lands ceded to the Americans despite growing marginalization. Nevertheless, the term Mexican Diaspora, perhaps like the similarly expansive ‘‘Greater Mexico,’’ acknowledges the dynamic and growing presence of Mexicans not just in ‘‘traditional’’ out-of-country areas (including Los Angeles, Tucson, Albuquerque, and much of Texas) but also in smaller towns and cities across the U.S. Midwest, South, and Northeast as well as parts of Canada. See also Anthropology; Culture; Migration U.S.–Mexican War. FURTHER READINGS: Durand, Jorge, and Massey, Douglas S., eds. Crossing the Border: Research from the Mexican Migration Project. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Publications, 2006; Massey, Douglas S. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003.
Andrew G. Wood Mexican Revolution (1910–17). The Mexican Revolution refers to a series of armed conflicts, social reformations, and cultural changes that occurred in Mexico beginning in 1910 with democracy advocate Francisco Madero’s call for armed struggle against the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Dıaz. The Revolution extended into the 1920s, though much of its fervor subsided with the signing of a new constitution in 1917 under President Venustiano Carranza. While autonomous insurrections occurred throughout Mexico, the majority of armed conflict centered on two stages, one in the south, under the leadership of Emiliano Zapata, and the other in the north, led by Francisco ‘‘Pancho’’ Villa. Much of the fighting on the northern front took place along the border, and Villa’s leadership particularly intertwined with the border region as his attack on American border towns, particularly Columbus, New Mexico, sparked an American military expedition into Mexico to chase him down. The border region played a significant role in the Revolution’s causes, it was a central stage for many of the political and armed conflicts, and the Revolution’s outcomes had profound impacts on both sides of the border and on U.S.–Mexico relations.
151
Mexican Revolution (1910–17)
General Pablo Gonzales and Jes us Carranza with their artillerymen during the Mexican Revolution led by Carranza. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-89120.)
Many of the Revolution’s causes can be traced to the policies of the Dıaz regime and their effects on the Mexican North. One such policy was greater centralization of the federal government, which brought border states such as Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo Le on, and Durango under the control of Mexico City. Many local leaders in these regions resented the reduction in their autonomy, and as a result, the majority of popular uprisings of the Revolution occurred in these border states. Another such policy was the greater commercialization and capitalization of agrarian, mining, and petroleum production. Increases in these sectors depended on expanded transportation, provided by newly built railroad networks to the United States, beginning in 1884. The railroad provided markets for minerals, livestock, and agricultural produce in the United States, also increasing the value of landholdings along the border. The greater desirability of these lands led to greater attacks on communal landholdings, another source of resentment that led to large popular mobilizations, especially in Durango and Chihuahua. The railroad network in the border region provided for a more flexible labor market between Mexico and the United States. The resultant exposure to racism, harsh working conditions, and lower pay among Mexican workers fueled a growing antiAmerican sentiment. These experiences of Mexican workers together with increasing U.S. penetration into the Mexican economy stimulated resentment of the U.S.– friendly Dıaz regime. Besides increasing discontentment, travel to the United States exposed workers to principles of labor organization and agitation as well as to anarchist and socialist ideas, many of which provided additional fodder for revolutionary activities. The rapid increase in the populations of border states, due especially to the railroads feeding mining towns with fresh labor, became a problem that contributed to revolutionary fervor. The financial crisis of 1907 brought enterprises connected to the U.S. market to a halt, a high percentage of which were located in the border region,
152
Mexican Revolution (1910–17) creating a large pool of unemployed people in the region with time on their hands and discontentment in their hearts. The border served as a space of political planning, exile, and asylum for many important revolutionary figures. The Flores Mag on brothers were intellectuals and activists who founded the political party Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), which instigated insurrections against and eventually toppled the Dıaz regime. Many of their revolutionary activities took place in Laredo and San Antonio, Texas, where they published the radical newspaper Regeneracion and plotted revolution. They were exiled and jailed in various border towns of the United States. Francisco Madero was forced to flee to the United States as a result of his own incitement of rebellion. From San Antonio, Texas, Madero issued his Plan de San Luis, a call to revolutionary arms that forced the resignation of Dıaz. Madero’s ties to the United States and the border region helped him to oust Dıaz and ascend to the presidency. Pascual Orozco, a general who commanded Pancho Villa in alliance with Madero and who later turned against him, was repeatedly forced to take refuge in the United States (in Los Angeles, California; El Paso, Texas; and Newman, New Mexico), where he plotted with Huerta to retake Mexico, and was eventually killed by the Texas Rangers. In addition to these notable instances of the border’s function as a space for political dissent, the access it provided to the United States contributed to the Northern Dynasty that emerged out of the revolution. Leaders like Madero, Carranza, and their successors—Alvaro Obreg on, Plutarco Elıas Calles, Abelardo Rodrıguez, and Emilio Portes Gil—were all northerners whose power can be attributed, at least in part, to their knowledge of and connection to the border. Besides being a space of political maneuvering, the border was the location of much of the Revolution’s armed conflict. After Madero’s illicit execution in February 1913, revolutionary forces fought against Huerta along the Arizona border. When Huerta was defeated, Carranza and Villa continued to fight in Sonora, because controlling it was considered the key to ‘‘winning’’ the revolution. With the existence of separate and conflicting revolutionary factions in the north led by Carranza and Villa, the U.S. government had to decide which leader to support. Carranza forces under Obreg on repeatedly defeated Villa’s forces during 1915, giving Carranza an advantage in power for the purposes of U.S. recognition. In the meantime, the Texas border was becoming increasingly unstable, as raids and insurrections by Mexicans and Mexican Americans in South Texas created mass hysteria. These skirmishes were associated with the Plan de San Diego, which called for an armed uprising against the U.S. government to reclaim the territory lost in 1848. Carranza loyalists either encouraged these raids or neglected to stop them, forcing the U.S. government to deal primarily with Carranza as the head of the Mexican state. The raids also contributed to heightened racial tension that led to a significant exodus of people of Mexican origin from the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Villa grew to resent the U.S. government for recognizing Carranza as the official head of revolutionary forces, for imposing an embargo on shipments of arms and ammunition for Carranza’s rivals, and for assisting Carranza in transporting troops through border states in resisting Villa forces. Villa struck back, first attacking U.S. citizens from the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) on a train in Chihuahua in January of 1916. Subsequently, Villa forces attacked Columbus, New
153
Mexican Revolution (1910–17) Mexico, killing U.S. soldiers and civilians. Symbolically, Villa came to represent the violence and lawlessness of the border region, especially in the United States. In response to the embarrassment of an attack on American soil from a foreign force, President Woodrow Wilson sent John J. Pershing in pursuit of Villa. With Pershing’s forces unable to find Villa and tensions mounting from this unwelcome American invasion, local citizens in the town of Parral, Chihuahua, attacked a cavalry unit, killing two and wounding several others. This incident suspended talks of a reciprocal border-crossing agreement as the Carranza administration focused on the removal of U.S. forces. An agreement was struck in which Pershing’s Punitive Expedition would withdraw in exchange for greater mobilization of Mexican forces along the border to prevent invasions to the United States. This border policing proved impossible as bandits continued to raid U.S. border towns. Several clashes between Mexican and U.S. forces ensued, heightening the tension on both sides to the point at which any military engagement could lead to a general war. When a battle at Carrizal, Chihuahua, resulted in casualties on both sides, the U.S. and Mexican governments decided to avert war by reopening diplomatic talks, and the Punitive Expedition was withdrawn in January 1917. These revolutionary border encounters had several significant consequences. Villa’s encroachment into U.S. territory was the first time in 100 years that the United States had been invaded by a foreign force. As a result, the United States launched a massive public relations campaign against Villa that ultimately affected all Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Hungry for vigilante justice, volunteers joined militias in unprecedented numbers, and mistrust and violence along the border became more widespread than ever. The Punitive Expedition and its aftermath represents the most significant clash over the issue of ‘‘border security’’ since the war of 1848. It would influence border relations for years to come. Additionally, President Wilson’s response to Villa’s attacks was not only to send Pershing to Mexico, but to federalize the nation’s state militias and order them to the border, a significant event in U.S. military history. These conflicts with Mexico demonstrated the lack of preparation of the U.S. military and led to a greater awareness of their military strengths and weaknesses moving into World War I. Overall, the Revolution paralyzed the economy in the Mexican border states, while it contributed to a boom in most sectors of the U.S. border states. Food shortages frequently followed revolutionary violence, and overcrowding and underproduction led to urban food riots. This widespread poverty and hunger triggered displacement, sometimes resulting in the migration of entire towns. Thus, the Revolution functioned as one of the greatest early stimuli of population movements and growth along the border. It is estimated that between 1900 and 1930 almost 10 percent of Mexico’s population migrated north to the United States. The influx of Mexican immigrants into the U.S. Southwest provided a large source of cheap labor that contributed to agricultural, mining, and petroleum production. This movement affected immigration policy, first, through a xenophobic reaction that restricted entry based on literacy and competence in the Immigration Act of 1917, and then, employers wanted certain restrictions lifted to maintain their source of cheap labor. Not only unskilled workers moved, however. Many middle-class professionals seeking asylum and greater economic opportunity from the turmoil of the Revolution settled in the larger cities of the border region.
154
Migration In addition to these long-term consequences on policies, economies, and social attitudes, the Revolution affected individuals that lived in the border region in different ways. Many lost property, family members, and businesses. Many were injured, displaced, and jaded by racist sentiments. It is apparent that the Revolution not only changed Mexico forever, but also changed the United States and the border they share. FURTHER READINGS: Benjamin, Thomas, and Wasserman, Mark, eds. Provinces of the Revolution: Regional Mexican History. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990; Coerver, Don, and Hall, Linda B. Revolution on the Border: The United States and Mexico, 1910–1920. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988; Lorey, David E. The U.S.– Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century: A History of Economic and Social Transformation. Wilmington, DE: S. R. Books, 1999.
Luke Goble Migration. Recent immigration from Mexico to the United States attracts great attention, because it is a society-reshaping process. However, its salience obscures the many sides of migration in the borderlands. There have been four centuries of migration in this region, rather than just recent movements; in this regard, it is helpful to distinguish between frontiers and borders. Internal migration (movement within Mexico and within the United States to the border region) as well as international migration are other factors. Local migration also occurs within the borderlands, both internal and border crossings, as well as long-distance migration from the interior of Mexico to the interior of the United States that simply passes through the border. Frontiers are interfaces of stratified, state-governed societies, such as Spain, England, or the United States, with less stratified and less politically centralized societies, such as the Native Americans north of central Mexico. Borders are interfaces between state-governed societies. The shift from frontier to border highlights a profound historical change that redefined migration from human movement per se to immigration from one territorially defined national space to another, a change that accompanied the rise of practices and ideologies of nation-state citizenship (for example, border patrolling) from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. Prior to these developments, migration occurred in the borderlands, but with very different implications. The Spanish expansion to the north was prolonged, if often patchy and thin. Small numbers of Spaniards and Africans and somewhat larger numbers of central Mexicans and mestizos (people of mixed ancestry) migrated northward. There, they entered into complex sexual, economic, political, and cultural relationships with diverse groups of Native Americans. The demographic results of these relations included mixed offspring, the stealing of people (women and children, notably), and identity shifts from indigenous to mestizo. The result was a sparse nonnative frontier population across all of the current states of northern Mexico, California, New Mexico, Texas, and bits of Colorado and Arizona. Toward the end of this period, from the 1830s on, Anglo Americans and African Americans began to migrate into these frontiers from the east. The contemporary border (finalized in 1848–53) and subsequent internal and international migrations overlie this history of frontier migration and consolidation. Indeed, the term borderlands is ambiguous, referring both to the more modern U.S.–Mexico border but also to postfrontier social formations, such as
155
Migration norte~ no Mexico, New Mexico/southern Colorado, the South Rio Grande Valley, and the mission communities of California and Texas. It is helpful to contrast this frontier migration to subsequent mass labor migration between Mexico and the United States from the 1880s to the present. Along with labor migration came family migration. The fundamental forces that created and continue to sustain mass labor and family migration are large-scale capitalist employers, efficient transportation and communications systems linking the two nations, and the combined and uneven linkage of the U.S. and Mexican economies and cultures. In the period from the 1880s through 1917, the United States hardly regulated permanent and temporary migration from Mexico to the United States, and there were relatively few and easily bypassed restrictions through 1929. The U.S. Border Patrol, for example, only formed in 1924 and initially focused on Chinese coming to the United States via Mexico. In this period, Mexican labor migration boomed as the railroads connected the two countries, and the U.S. West (and parts of northern Mexico) industrialized, including industrial-scale agriculture. The Mexican Revolution (1910–20) resulted in surges of refugees from Mexico to the north. Throughout this period, ideas, such as radical syndicalist politics, constantly flowed between the United States and Mexico. In 1929, the Great Depression dried up the labor markets and, more important, there was widespread scape-goating of Mexicans. This resulted in a mass expulsion of people of Mexican origin, called the Repatriation. Estimates vary between a half million and a million Mexicans driven out of the United States, including many citizens and legal residents caught up in the racialized view of ‘‘Mexicans as outsiders.’’ The U.S. economy recovered with World War II and, not surprisingly, again demanded Mexican labor. This resulted in the Bracero Program, a temporary legal labor migration program. People worked on contracts and were supposed to leave when contracts ended. Initially meant for strategic sectors during the war, it lasted from 1942 to 1965, and was widely used for farm labor. The official Bracero Program was accompanied, especially before 1954, by undocumented border crossings, involving workers who could not get contracts and employers who bypassed even the lax rules of the legal program. In 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched Operation Wetback, a large-scale sweep of Mexican-origin communities, farms, and highways of the borderlands, arresting nearly a million people, including many citizens and residents. After that, undocumented migration declined, the Bracero Program increased, and the United States settled into a relatively stable and legal (if often exploitative) arrangement for Mexican labor migration. In addition, throughout the 1940–76 period there was a slow but steady stream of legal permanent residents settling in the United States, sponsored by employers and family members. In 1965, the United States cancelled the Bracero Program. From this sudden U.S. policy change sprang, in substantial part, the redefinition of Mexican labor migration as ‘‘illegal immigration.’’ Indeed, many post-1965 undocumented border crossers were either former legal, braceros or they had networks of personal connections, family members, and hometowns that were traceable back to braceros. They also found former employers of braceros deeply involved in the new, undocumented migration. The initial basis of Mexican undocumented migration in post-Bracero farm work gradually diversified into new economic sectors, such as construction and urban services; into new source regions of Mexico, such as heavily indigenous states like Oaxaca and Chiapas; and into new destination points in the United States, such as New York City and the South.
156
Migration The line between undocumented and legal immigration has never been rigid, and many formerly undocumented migrants eventually become legalized, either through explicit legalization programs (such as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act) or the standardization of legal immigrant visas for Mexicans in 1976. As a result, there is a large population of Mexican-origin legal permanent residents, naturalized citizens, and descendents of immigrant families in the United States. These processes have resulted in a complex web of cultural practices and identities that cut across the two countries. The term ‘‘transnational’’ is often used for social, political, economic, and communicative practices that bypass the conventional boundaries of ‘‘Mexico’’ and ‘‘United States.’’ Since the late 1970s, the phenomenon of undocumented migration to the United States has been controversial, and in some cases, the controversy extends to all immigrants from Latin America. Only about half of U.S. undocumented migrants cross the U.S.–Mexico border without authorization; others come legally, through air and land ports, and then overstay their visas. However, the image of mass invasions across the Mexican boundary has captured the U.S. public imagination, and it now shapes both general attitudes about the border and concrete law enforcement and military policies along this line. This has resulted in a huge buildup of policing along the border. In turn, the border passage has become more dangerous and expensive, apparently without effect on stemming the main flow of migration between the interiors of the two countries. Undocumented migrants experience the border as a zone of uncertainty and in-between-ness, with overtones of death, injury, and danger, when making a transition from a familiar and staid home to a venturesome new land. Although long-distance international migration dominates attention to the border, there is a constant and complicated set of migratory flows back and forth within the borderlands itself, which accounts for much of the population of the region. For example, although most undocumented migration from the interior of Mexico to the interior of the United States occurs for work (to reach family is secondary), migrants to El Paso travel from nearby places along the border of Mexico to join family and friends as well as to seek further education. Along the border, citizens of one country often live in the other, and commute to work or to be with family members; this quilt pattern of binational residence, education, services, and work gives the borderlands much of its special flavor. Likewise, internal migration within the United States and Mexico is fundamental to the shaping of the borderlands and more widely, the border states. The explosive growth of California, United States, and Baja California, Mexico, exemplify this phenomenon. Mexican northern border cities have grown at a remarkable pace, due to internal migration within Mexico after 1940 and especially after 1982; likewise, U.S. internal migration has largely filled the vast metropolitan areas that usually lie to the interior of the border (including San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio). Many people are migrants, not just the ones who are labeled as such, having crossed formal, international borders. The border experience is not peculiar, but rather is fundamental and constant. See also Anthropology; Central American Migration; Maquiladoras; Operations. FURTHER READINGS: Balderrama, Francisco E., and Rodrıguez, Raymond. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995; Binford, Leigh. ‘‘A Generation of Migrants: Why They Leave, Where They End Up.’’
157
Militarization NACLA Report on the Americas 39, no. 1 (2005): 31–37; Brooks, James. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002; Calavita, Kitty. Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. New York: Routledge, 1992; Chavez, Leo R. Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001; Chavez, Leo R. Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society. Fort Worth: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1992; Conover, Ted. Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America’s Illegal Aliens. New York: Vintage Books, 1987; Garcıa, Juan Ram on. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980; Gamio, Manuel. The Mexican Immigrant. Salem, NH: Ayer Co., 1989 [orig. 1931]; Garcıa, Mario T. Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880–1920. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981; Heyman, Josiah McC. Finding a Moral Heart for U.S. Immigration Policy: An Anthropological Perspective. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1998; Hoffman, Abraham. Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929–1939. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974; Martınez, Ruben, Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001; Massey, Douglas S., Alarcon, Rafael, Durand, Jorge, and Gonzalez, Humberto. Return to Aztl an: The Social Process of International Migration from Western Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987; Massey, Douglas S., Durand, Jorge, and Malone, Nolan J. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage ~iga, Foundation, 2002; Nazario, Sonia. Enrique’s Journey. New York: Random House, 2006; Z un Vıctor, and Hernandez-Leon, Ruben, eds. New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2005.
Josiah Heyman Militarization. The U.S.–Mexican War that resulted in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo largely created the current U.S.–Mexico boundary. In the aftermath of that war, a violent police force helped dispossess the Mexican-origin population of land, water, and the machinery of governance, to a variable degree in different regions. There were several armed rebellions and efforts at rebellion in the borderlands (the uprising of Catarino Garza, the Plan de San Diego) that were suppressed by military-like police operations. Extensive military operations in both the United States and Mexico against Apache groups closed the frontier in the west Texas/New Mexico/Arizona borderlands, and similar operations against indigenous peoples took place in the U.S. and Mexican borderland interiors (for example, against the Yaqui). Thus, military and military-like force has been fundamental to the geographic shape and social hierarchies characterizing the border region to the present day. During the Mexican Revolution (1910–17), there was extensive fighting in the northern Mexican borderlands, including major battles in Ciudad Juarez and Agua Prieta. The United States had extensive military involvement in the Revolution, much of it conducted through the border. The colossus of the north supported its favorites with weapons, munitions, logistics (for example, rail transport through U.S. territory), and intelligence, such as assisting Plutarco Elıas Calles in his successful defense of Agua Prieta against Pancho Villa. This favoritism enraged Villa, who had also become aware of secret agreements between Mexican constitutionalist leader Venustiano Carranza and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson that subordinated Mexico to the United States. Eventually, Villa carried out a short incursion into U.S. territory at Columbus, New Mexico, to disrupt relations between the two countries. The United States then sent General Jack Pershing on a wild, unsuccessful chase through
158
Militarization northern Mexico against Villa’s guerrilla forces. Throughout the Revolution, the United States used military means to attempt to manage complex social and political forces that were in fact substantially beyond its control. The militarization of the border in the recent sense contrasts with the long postRevolutionary demilitarization of the region. The U.S.–Mexico border has been, since the 1920s, one of the great peaceful borders of the world, in the sense that neither central state poses any military threat to the other, or guards the border as though there were such a threat. The border has become militarized since the late 1970s largely on the U.S. side, but also in a subordinate way in Mexico. The border has militarized through the use of military units and tactics to attempt to control civilian processes, such as drug trafficking and undocumented migration. Militarization in this period is best understood as diverse state organizations and policy measures converging on a blended police/military approach to border control, rather than just formal military operations. These blended activities utilize ‘‘low-intensity conflict’’ doctrines, which are military tactics designed for guerrilla war and nation-occupation situations. Such doctrines combine small-scale and highly trained operations, close interaction with civilians, cultivation and collection of intelligence, detailed tools of surveillance (such as electronic surveillance), persuasion and involvement in civilian activities (such as infrastructure building and law enforcement), and use of deadly force as a tool of control. Not all of these elements are equally applied in all situations, and the U.S.– Mexico border is still far from being a site of guerrilla warfare, but low-intensity doctrine does represent a particular package of militarized solutions to the regulation of social processes. The involvement of the U.S. military in land border policing began in the 1980s with the shift of drug smuggling flows from the Caribbean to the southwest border. The military was generally reluctant to enter border control, and its move into this domain was forced by political pressure, but there long has been a low-intensity doctrine as well as Latin American militarized policing advocates within the military. After the end of the Cold War, the military was searching for new budgets and missions, which it found in this region. The U.S. military is restricted from enforcing domestic laws by the 1879 Posse Comitatus Act, except in narrow circumstances. This Act does not apply to National Guard units when operating under state rather than federal authority. Over the last two decades, Posse Comitatus has gradually been narrowed and weakened. (The Mexican military is also involved in drug smuggling, drug law enforcement, and suppression of drug violence along the border, in ways that are poorly documented above the level of rumor.) The U.S. military carries out a number of specific law enforcement operations along the border. The most important is surveillance, including electronic and visual monitoring from planes, balloons, and possibly satellites, as well as ground units deployed in listening/observation posts in frontal positions near the boundary. The military also supplies and supports ground-based electronic and visual surveillance for federal police agencies. Such operations attempt to detect and identify airplanes, people, and vehicles on the move across, over, and under the border. Listening/observation posts also demonstrate force, presenting visibly armed units near the boundary. Intelligence sharing is a significant, though relatively hidden dimension of border militarization. It would be valuable to trace the linkages, if they exist, among the El
159
Militarization Paso Intelligence Center at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas (EPIC, a civilian law enforcement consortium on a military base), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, defense intelligence operations (including the Defense Intelligence Agency), the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Administration. Another major role of the military is logistical support, such as construction of walls and roads, as well as equipment supply and training. A key military unit is Joint Task Force North (JTF-N), previously known as Joint Task Force Six, located at Fort Bliss. JTF-N coordinates military organizations with civilian federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. It arranges to supply particular military resources, including units, equipment, and training, to border law enforcement. As a relatively generous resource pool for civilian agencies, it is a major way of attracting their connection to the military. Civilian law enforcement agencies are adopting low-intensity conflict tactics, units, and equipment, such as the Border Patrol’s special tactical response unit, BORTAC, demonstrating that militarization involves convergence between civilian and military units. In 1997, outside of Redford, Texas, a Marine unit on a listening/observation post operation killed a teenage goatherd, Ezequiel Hernandez, who was a U.S. citizen. In a situation in which an armed military unit was in frontal position, convinced that they were operating against dangerous armed smugglers, supervision and communications failed and a number of guidelines were violated. After investigation of this incident, all active-duty military were pulled out of frontal operations, although JTF-N and other behind the scenes activities continued. In 2005 and 2006, amid a national immigration debate and often-extreme mass media coverage of the border, the National Guard was heavily deployed along the border. This was done first by state governors mobilizing Guard units under declarations of emergency, and then by the federal government. Guard activities range from construction and logistical support to frontal demonstration and listening/observation post operations of the type involved in the Redford incident. Much needs to be learned about National Guard training, including their understanding of the border, differences between military operations and civilian law enforcement, and human rights guidelines. Recent militarization at the border is part of a wider set of developments. Globalization has created dynamic processes in places that are incompletely controlled by the United States. These include the booming border region, as well as its cities, industries, and working classes. They also include effective networks (including smugglers, suppliers, vendors, and users) connecting migrant and drug-producing and drug-transiting regions in Latin America with migrant and drug destinations inside the United States. Low-intensity control mechanisms respond to forces wider than the United States, and there is little reason to think such mechanisms will succeed. Military operations on the border are thus linked, through command, intelligence sharing, and movement of Spanish-speaking personnel, with U.S. low-intensity conflict operations in Latin America. This includes the Colombian and Central American civil wars and antidrug operations in Central America, the Andes, and the Caribbean. The U.S. borderlands, with a poorly performing economy and large numbers of Spanish speakers, is an important recruitment area for both the active-duty U.S. military and various federal police agencies. In a region still largely ruled from afar, Latinos form a majority of the controlled population and the local arms of state power. See also Catarino Garza; Central American Migrants; Immigration Legislation; Operations; Texas Revolution.
160
Mining FURTHER READINGS: Andreas, Peter. Border Games: Policing the U.S.–Mexico Divide. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001; Dunn, Timothy J. ‘‘Border Militarization Via Drug and Immigration Law Enforcement: Human Rights Implications.’’ Social Justice 28, no. 2 (2001): 7–30; Dunn, Timothy J. The Militarization of the U.S.–Mexico Border, 1978–1992: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin: CMAS Books, University of Texas at Austin, 1996; Heber Johnson, Benjamin. Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003; Katz, Friedrich. The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981; Mariscal, Jorge. ‘‘Military.’’ In Suzanne and Deena J. Gonzalez, eds. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, Vol. 3, 155–59. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005; McC. Heyman, Josiah. ‘‘State Escalation of Force: A Vietnam/ US-Mexico Border Analogy.’’ In Josiah McC. Heyman, ed. States and Illegal Practices, 285–314. Oxford: Berg, 1999; McC. Heyman, Josiah. ‘‘U.S. Immigration Officers of Mexican Ancestry as Mexican Americans, Citizens, and Immigration Police.’’ Current Anthropology 43 (2002): 479– 507; Payan, Tony. Cops, Soldiers, and Diplomats: Explaining Agency Behavior in the War on Drugs. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006; Payan, Tony. The Three U.S.–Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration, and Homeland Security. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006; Toro, Marıa Celia. Mexico’s ‘‘War’’ on Drugs: Causes and Consequences. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995; Young, Elliott. Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the TexasMexico Border. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
Josiah Heyman Mining. The search for mineral wealth and the establishment of mining settlements has had important consequences for the borderlands. The excavation of valuable ores served as the impetus for Spanish colonialism and the migration of people from central Mexico. The area encompassing Mexico’s northern states and the territory it lost that eventually became part of the United States witnessed various mining strikes. After the 1846–48 U.S.–Mexican War, California and Colorado experienced major discoveries of gold and silver. These developments ensured the migration of peoples from Latin America, Asia, and the eastern United States. The integration of the region to larger markets introduced intensive methods of mining. Many of the groups working in the borderland’s mines were organizing by the turn of the twentieth century. Mining in the borderlands has been an important economic engine that influenced not only population growth but also social change. Major Spanish colonization in the borderlands initially emanated from the cities of Zacatecas and Guanajuato during the middle of the sixteenth century. A major discovery of gold and silver mines attracted miners to San Luis Potosı in 1583. The mining frontier in north-central New Spain served as the impetus for the consolidation of Spanish power in the region. Along with sugar from the Caribbean, mining areas were the most significant revenue sources for the Spanish empire. Mining fueled secondary economic development by urging the creation of agriculture, ranching, and trade networks to supply the new mining centers. The Spanish sought to occupy the northern borderlands to create a buffer between their mining empire and rival European powers in North America. However, Spanish efforts in these outlying territories remained peripheral and limited. Without major gold and silver strikes, a costconscious monarchy was constrained in its support of colonization efforts. The mining frontier eventually extended north. Parral in the province of Nueva Vizcaya was the site of a major silver strike in 1631. In 1702, 120 miles to the north of Parral, San Felipe el Real de Chihuahua and its adjacent mining camp of Santa
161
Mining Eulalia experienced a boom in silver mining. In 1737, the area produced 60 million pesos worth of silver. From 1705 to 1790, Chihuahua accounted for one-eighth of the silver produced in New Spain. During the bonanza years of the 1720s, the combined population of Chihuahua and Santa Eulalia was more than 10,000. This number included a small number of Peninsulares, Espa~ noles, who were born in Spain and enjoyed the highest privilege. More numerous were the creoles, Spaniards born in the Americas, mestizos, Afro-mestizos, and indigenous peoples such as the Tarahumaras. Chihuahua’s mines were attractive because the silver lay near the surface. Working a mine in Chihuahua entailed less labor and startup capital than areas where shafts ran deeper. Even the refining process was simplified in Chihuahua. The quality of the ore and its high concentrations of lead made smelting by fire viable over the toxic process of mercury. The difference meant a cheaper refining process that took one day instead of two or three months. Even in Chihuahua where the mining process could be less rigorous, the key to achieving success hinged on labor. An aspiring mining magnate needed to arrive early to a claim, have the necessary startup capital to afford mining equipment, and muster and maintain enough workers. During the Spanish colonial period, this meant a reliance on coerced indigenous labor such as the repartimiento, an allotment of indigenous labor for the public good but sometimes unscrupulously utilized in private business ventures. Also present, the encomienda, involved a grant of tribune (labor and goods) from indigenous peoples to privileged citizens. In Chihuahua, the mandamientos were forced labor drafts on indigenous peoples from nearby pueblos and missions to work in shifts at the mines. However, these institutions met with limited success. Unlike central Mexico, the indigenous peoples in the borderlands were more successful in resisting reduction into towns and long-term labor service. Unlike stereotypical images of feudal estates with docile and submissive peons, miners in colonial New Spain worked for wages and held the power to negotiate. Labor scarcity meant miners could and often received incentives for signing up with a mine owner. The most popular option for miners was the partido, also known as pepena, which was a bonus used to entice workers. Miners were given a quota of ore they had to deliver daily; once they achieved that goal, they were free to keep part or all of the remaining ore. Workers enjoyed a measure of autonomy by being able to sell their ore to independent merchants. This benefited mine owners who saved on wages, rations, and supplies. Nonetheless, mine owners thought the pepenas lessened their control and reduced their profits. The abolition of the pepenas in 1730 by mining magnates in Chihuahua led to walkouts and strikes with armed workers camped in the hills. Nevertheless, mine owners were successful in ending pepenas and instead relied on credit. They extended credit to workers to entice and entangle them into their labor force. Because workers remained extremely mobile, some left without ever repaying their advances. Major mining claims in the northern borderlands were exploited after the U.S.– Mexican War. The California Gold Rush caused major immigration into the territory, including European Americans, Asians, and Latinos, especially Mexicans from Sonora. The Sonorans bought considerable experience and knowledge of mining techniques. This was also the case in the Colorado mines after the late 1850s. The Mexican miners introduced the stair-step separator, known as the sluice box. They also utilized methods of dragging to crush ore. However, Mexican miners and others who were considered foreign faced violence and discrimination. California’s 1850 Foreign Miners’ Tax Law stipulated that ‘‘foreigners’’ pay $20 per month for a mining permit.
162
Mining Mining was instrumental in igniting European American migration and turning California into a full-fledged state by 1850, whereas other western areas remained territories. For nonwhites, this meant economic, political, and social marginalization. The integration of the borderlands to U.S. and world markets, as well as the application of economic principles based on capitalism, initiated significant changes. The railroad made the mining of distant ores viable. New technology made deeper shafts possible, reviving older mines thought defunct. Copper became a major commodity because of the electrical revolution of the 1880s and for its value as an industrial metal. Copper mines throughout Arizona and Sonora became desirable. Investors from the United States purchased mines throughout the borderlands. Mexican dictator Porfirio Dıaz embraced liberal economic policies and believed that foreign investment was the key to modernizing Mexico. The Codigo Minero was changed in 1884 to weaken the provision that the subsoil belonged to the nation. By 1910, American investment in Sonora’s mines totaled $27 million. American companies, with ties to such major corporations as American Smelting and Refining (ASARCO), Phelps Dodge, and Greene Consolidated Copper Company, wielded immense power. They enforced European American racial codes within the mines and segregated company towns. All of the skilled and well-paid positions went to European Americans while Mexicans miners worked under harsh conditions, including embarrassing strip searches. In 1906, Mexican miners at Cananea, Sonora, protested pay cuts and wage discrepancies with European Americans. Mine owner William C. Greene was able to call upon the Arizona Rangers to crush the strike, demonstrating the autonomy of foreign mine operators within Mexico. The development of copper mining, immigration, unionization, and miner strikes in the borderlands continued into the twentieth century. El Paso with its ASARCO smelter became a focal point as a refinery for northern Mexican and southwestern gold, silver, lead, and copper mines. This attracted many Mexican immigrant laborers to the city, and some continued on to other U.S. mining areas. One of the few unions to include Mexican miners was the Western Federation of Mines (WFM), which represented miners in strikes in Colorado and other western areas. In 1903, the union assisted Mexican workers in the Arizona mines of Clifton and Morenci. The strike failed to revoke a 10 percent wage cut. The WFM was more successful in 1915 when the union demanded equal pay for all miners. Many of the strikes were met by violence and vigilante groups. The union also took part in the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which also helped organize miners. The IWW was present in the major 1917 strike at the copper mines of Globe, Arizona. The strike effectively ended when the U.S. cavalry entered the town. Another major strike was documented in the 1953 film Salt of the Earth. The blacklisted motion picture by Herbert Biberman depicted Mexican miners associated with the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers in Bayard, New Mexico, striking in 1951 against a subsidiary of the New Jersey Zinc Corporation. Mining was a key economic activity that influenced the development of the borderlands. The consequences of mining in the region included population growth, economic development, state centralization, and equal wages for miners. Negative aspects of excavating ores included indigenous exploitation, harsh working conditions for miners, inadequate pay, and suppression of strikes and unions. Mining was rarely the economic panacea many thought the industry would be. See also Economy; Labor Unions; War of the Gran Chichimeca.
163
Minutemen FURTHER READINGS: Calderon, Roberto R. Mexican Coal Mining Labor in Texas and Coahuila, 1880–1930. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000; English Martin, Cheryl. Governance and Society in Colonial Mexico: Chihuahua in the Eighteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996; Garcıa, Mario T. Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880–1920. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981; Ruiz, Ram on Eduardo. The People of Sonora and Yankee Capitalists. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988; Tinker Salas, Miguel. In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border During the Porfiriato. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997; Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
John Paul Nu~no Minutemen. The Minutemen are organizations that received widespread national publicity in 2005 and 2006 as volunteer ‘‘enforcers’’ of immigration laws along the U.S. side of the U.S.–Mexico border. Their main focus is the Arizona and California borders, and they have spread only weakly to Texas and New Mexico. They also engage in harassment of workers (such as day laborers) in interior areas of the country. The Minutemen often carry arms and wear military or pseudo-military clothing. Their patchy presence along the border probably discourages crossings in their immediate zones of activity, but crossers then shift short distances along the border. The Minutemen operate by spotting putatively undocumented migrants and reporting them to the Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies. It has been alleged that the Minutemen have seized undocumented migrants and held them coercively, either by threats of force or by exploiting the migrants’ fear of these armed civilians, until released or turned over to government authorities. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has voiced disapproval of the Minutemen’s volunteer law enforcement activities, but it is unclear whether and how collaboration actually occurs between this group and government officers in the field. The mass media greatly exaggerated the scale of the Minutemen, and by 2006, they had fallen into fighting among themselves over organizational names and assets, policies, and personalities, including serious charges of malfeasance directed at two key leaders, Chris Simcox (Minuteman Civil Defense Corps) and Jim Gilcrist (The Minuteman Project). The Minutemen are but the most recent of a long lineage of volunteers who aim to draw attention to illegal entry at the border, activities that range from assertive but peaceful to dangerously violent. For example, in 1990, Light Up the Border sought to illuminate the California boundary with headlights. Violent and unlawful detentions have occurred with some regularity on the Arizona border (especially in Cochise County), such as the torture and shooting of three migrants by the Hanigan brothers in the 1970s. Other organizations in the lineage of the Minutemen include the 1980s Civil Materiel Assistance, American Border Patrol, Ranch Rescue, and Civil Homeland Defense, and key figures include Roger Barnett and Glen Spencer. The Minutemen form part of a network of anti-immigrant or immigration restrictionist organizations, some small and others with significant budgets and presences in Washington. Individuals associated with the Minutemen have participated in white supremacy and direct military action movements, and there is some overlap between racist ideologies and Minutemen rhetoric, although the connections are not always present, and not all Minutemen are Anglo American. The Minutemen’s connections and contexts are interesting. First, it has been intimately associated with the regional and national mass media, both television and
164
Minutemen
California Minutemen volunteers look over the border wall for immigrants trying to cross into the United States in 2005 along the U.S.-Mexico Border in Campo, California. (AP Photo/ Sandy Huffaker)
print. It used the Internet at the level of activist networking. The mass media feed off sudden and dramatic news, and the Minuteman leaders supplied this generously. Some venues, such as the Lou Dobbs show on CNN, were already building an emotionally charged loyal audience by taking a one-sided and fear-inducing approach to the border and undocumented migration. The result was a dust-swirl of noise and exaggeration. The Minutemen also interact with politicians, including explicit supporters (Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado), explicit critics (Congressman Raul Grijalva of Arizona), and those who come in and out of support according to the immediate political winds (Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California). What is not clear is whether the Minutemen were creators or tools of more sophisticated anti-immigrant politicians (mostly Republican), media producers, and anti-immigrant organizations, but the connections are clear. The historical context, including the failing Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina, suggests that the Minutemen were used by segments of the Republican Party to reignite nationalist fervor. If so, Republican losses in the 2006 elections demonstrate the failure of this tactic, even in the heart of Minutemen activity in southeastern Arizona, where an anti-immigrant Republican lost a House race to a moderate Democrat. The Minutemen and their focus on Mexicans and the border can be seen in the context of ideological tendencies in some sectors of U.S. society. From the most general to the most specific, these include anxiety about a changing and disorderly world (for example, September 11 terrorism, economic globalization), for which Latin American immigrants can be seen as scapegoats. The border, then, is a clear line that maintains ‘‘here’’ versus ‘‘there,’’ safety versus danger, and symbolically holds back the influx of disorder.
165
Minutemen Law is also seen as a powerful symbol of order (in actuality law is a complicated and highly imperfect source of order). ‘‘Illegal’’ aliens are, in this view, a walking human contrast with perfect law. The United States is undergoing a steady, though not extreme, ethnic shift (called Hispanization). Racist reactions against Mexicans and Latin Americans are emerging rapidly, as well as a prejudice against the people who do the least valued and most stigmatized work in society. White conservatism faces waning social and political power, notably in its old heartland, southern California and Arizona, key locations for the Minutemen. This scenario can be seen as an explanation of why general concerns about change and disorder have focused on a poor, largely defenseless migrant working class. The U.S.–Mexico border attracts a wide variety of activists and media producers. It is a key symbol of the dynamics at work in Mexico and the United States today and evokes emotional responses from both the left and right. Though a location of much bureaucratic state action and ordinary social life, the border also seems to draw out extraordinary moral projects of various kinds. It provides a place to ‘‘perform’’ these projects, and the play dimension (in both the sense of theater and of childish acting) is one of the most striking feature of the Minutemen. This is not to say that the Minutemen and their pro-immigrant counterparts, such as Paisanos al Rescate (which rescues people and drops water in the southwestern deserts), are all the same. The Minutemen are engaged in an essentially authoritarian project, one of restoring lost hierarchy and order, and thus they adopt accoutrements of coercive state authority, carry weapons, wear ersatz uniforms, and follow radio traffic about what they perceive as drug gangs ready to attack. The other border-oriented groups hold different ideologies, such as cross-border humanitarianism, and thus adopt different philosophies and practices. See also Operations; Policy. FURTHER READINGS: ACLU of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. ‘‘Creating the Minutemen: A Misinformation Campaign Fueled by a Small Group of Extremists.’’ November 3, 2006. http:// www.acluaz.org/News/PressReleases/PDFs/minutemen6view.pdf; ‘‘Anti-Immigration Groups.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 101 (Spring 2001). http://www.splcenter. org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid¼175; Beirich, Heidi, and Potok, Mark. ‘‘Broken Record: Lou Dobbs’ Daily ‘Broken Borders’ CNN Segment Has Focused on Immigration for Years. But There’s One Issue Dobbs Just Won’t Take On.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 120 (Winter 2005). http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid¼589; Buchanan, Susy, and Kim, Tom. ‘‘The Nativists: Around the Country, an Anti-Immigration Movement is Spreading like Wildfire. An Array of Activists Is Fanning the Flames.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 120 (Winter 2005). http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/ article.jsp?aid¼701; Buchanan, Susy, and Holthouse, David. ‘‘Playing Rough: The AntiImmigration Minuteman Project Set Off an Avalanche of Imitators. Some of Them are Downright Frightening.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 119 (Fall 2005). http:// www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid¼571; Chavez, Leo R. ‘‘Spectacle in the Desert: The Minuteman Project on the U.S.–Mexico Border.’’ In David Pratten and Atreyee Sen, eds. Global Vigilantes: Anthropological Perspectives on Justice and Violence. New York: Columbia University Pess, 2007; Holthouse, David. ‘‘Arizona Showdown: High-Powered Firearms, Militia Maneuvers and Racism at the Minuteman Project.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 118 (Summer 2005). http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid¼557; Holthouse, David. ‘‘Ruckus on the Right: Angry Former Supporters of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps are Questioning Group Founder Chris Simcox’s Accounting.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 123 (Fall 2006). http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/
166
Missions article.jsp?aid¼689; Moser, Bob, ‘‘Open Season: As Extremists Peddle Their Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Along the Troubled Arizona Border, a Storm Gathers.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 109 (Spring 2003). http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/ article.jsp?aid¼19; Moser, Bob. ‘‘Vigilante Violence: Crimes against Border-Crossers are Hard to Detect in the Lonely Arizona Desert—But Suspicious Incidents Keep Cropping Up.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 109 (Spring 2003). http://www.splcenter.org/ intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid¼9; Yoxall, Peter. ‘‘Comment, The Minuteman Project, Gone in a Minute or Here to Stay? The Origin, History and Future of Citizen Activism on the United States-Mexico Border.’’ University of Miami Inter-American Law Review 37, no. 3 (2006): 517–66; Zaitchik, Alexander. ‘‘Operation Sovereignty: a Bang, a Protest, and a Whimper.’’ Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report no. 124 (Winter 2007). http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid¼399. http://www.minutemenproject.com
Josiah Heyman Missions. In 1524, three years after the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, twelve members of the Order of Friars Minor of the Observance, commonly known as the Franciscans, arrived in Mexico to spread Christianity. They were instructed [T]o convert with words and example the people who do not know Jesus Christ Our Lord, who are held fast in the blindness of idolatry under the yoke of the satanic thrall, who live and dwell in the Indies . . . And win them for Christ in such a manner that among all Catholics an increase of faith, hope, and love may result. The Franciscans were soon joined in their efforts by the Dominicans, then the Augustinians, and later by the Jesuits. Up to Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, missions were established throughout the viceroyalty of New Spain. Concentrating initially in central of Mexico, the missionaries gradually expanded their activities northward. The Franciscans and Jesuits founded hundreds of missions in the northern reaches of the viceroyalty, in the present-day states of Durango, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California in Mexico; and California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida in the United States. Conversion was viewed as crucial not only to save Indian souls but also to teach indigenous populations Spanish values, behavior, and customs to transform them into productive members of society. By teaching skills such as carpentry, blacksmithing, and the care of animals and plants introduced by the Spanish, the otherwise limited labor force was multiplied, allowing Spain to expand and strengthen its hold on its territory and to further the crown’s colonial enterprise in the New World. This enterprise had an enormous human cost, as the introduction of European diseases caused the death of as much as 90 percent of the Indian population in the borderlands from the time of the Spaniards’ arrival in 1519 to 1750. The Jesuits evangelized in the borderlands between 1566 and 1572, and they attempted unsuccessfully to establish missions in the area stretching from Virginia to Florida. Their first incursion in northwestern New Spain was into Sinaloa in the late sixteenth century, then into Sonora and Chihuahua in the early seventeenth century, into Baja California in 1697, and into the Pimerıa Alta of northern Sonora and southern Arizona in 1700, remaining until they were expelled from Spain’s colonies in
167
Missions
Mission San Jose, San Antonio, Texas, ca. 1890. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LCUSZ62-4154.)
1767 by Carlos III. The Franciscans were even more active in the borderlands. In 1573, they replaced the Jesuits in Florida, and in the following year, they founded their first mission in Chihuahua. In the 1590s, they expanded their efforts in Florida and went to New Mexico, where they increased their activities substantially in the 1620s. In the 1670s, they attempted to found missions in Alabama and Georgia, though neither they nor the Jesuits were successful in the southeastern United States. They entered Texas in the 1690s and returned there in 1716 to establish themselves more firmly. The Franciscans undertook the final phase of missionary activity in northern New Spain when they founded missions in Alta California between 1769 and 1823, by which time Mexico had obtained its independence. The missionaries faced considerable obstacles and, in many cases, persistent resistance to their efforts. From the 1570s on, missionaries were frequently accompanied by Spanish soldiers who offered protection against Indians hostile to their efforts. The vast geographic expanse of the borderlands was not only physiographically, but also culturally and linguistically, diverse. Its indigenous inhabitants spoke at least seventy different languages and probably more, and even within relatively restricted geographic areas there could be tremendous linguistic diversity. Seeking to ameliorate this problem, both the Franciscans and the Jesuits learned a number of native languages, producing dictionaries, grammars, and catechisms, sermons, and various doctrinal books in indigenous languages, although frequently Indians learned Spanish. Some tribes were hunter-gatherers, others were nearly equally dependent on a combination of wild resources and agriculture, and some relied heavily on agriculture. Some were nomadic, others sedentary, and even among those who were sedentary, some lived in compact villages, while others lived in dispersed rancherıas or homesteads. Some tribes were matrilineal, others patrilineal, and still others bilateral or a combination of both. The Indians’ diverse patterns of life thus contrasted sharply
168
Missions with the Spanish model that the missionaries sought to transform native cultures according to Spanish models. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that Indian responses to conversion ranged from passive or even willing acceptance of Catholicism to violent rejection, though not solely to evangelization but also to the imposition of the colonial system as a whole to which the missionary enterprise was inextricably linked. Even in those instances in which tribes accepted the missionaries’ teachings, however, they did not abandon their own religious traditions and ceremonies, often to the missionaries’ frustration. Thanks to the missionaries’ fastidious recordkeeping, there is extensive information on various activities at the missions, including the number of Indians whom they baptized, figures often cited by the missionaries as evidence of their progress. The missionaries’ first task was to persuade Indians to seek baptism and then gradually to instruct them in the tenets of the Catholic faith. Children were typically viewed as potentially the most receptive targets, having not yet been fully initiated into their own tribes’ religious practices. Only after an Indian was judged to have gained a sufficient understanding of Catholicism would he or she be given the sacrament of the Eucharist. Missionaries’ simultaneously sought to eradicate native beliefs and practices they regarded as heretical, immoral, or otherwise antithetical to Catholic teaching and a Christian life. In practical terms, these encompassed virtually all native theology, most religious ceremonies, and a wide range of other customs. Missionaries are also known to have destroyed ritual objects used by Indians in their ceremonies. Although the use of coercion or force was specifically prohibited, there is ample evidence that the missionaries and the Spanish soldiers who accompanied them sometimes resorted to corporal punishment and other measures with Indians who exhibited behavior the friars considered threatening to the community as a whole. In some areas of the borderlands, for example, baptized Indians who ran away from the missions were recaptured by Spanish soldiers and forcibly returned. It is hardly surprising that under these circumstances there was such widespread resistance to the missionaries’ efforts. There was considerable organizational and architectural variety in the missions of northern New Spain, some attributable to differences between Franciscan and Jesuit traditions and proclivities. Nonetheless, the missions shared many features in common. Once the missionaries decided to found a mission in an Indian village or what was otherwise considered a suitable location, various temporary buildings including a church, living quarters, and storage facilities were constructed. If their initial efforts met with success, over time more permanent structures would be constructed for these purposes using local materials such as stone or adobe. This construction was in large part carried out by the Indians. In addition to indigenous crops like maize, there were fields for crops and livestock introduced by the Spanish whose size was dependent to a degree on the terrain, climate, and availability of water as well as the size of the native population whose labor was essential for their care. The missions of Alta California and Sonora, for example, were among the most productive in this regard, reporting at their peak herds of cattle and flocks of sheep numbering in the thousands, with abundant annual crops of grains, fruit and olive orchards, and vineyards. Some missions produced surpluses that they sold to support other colonizing efforts. The churches were the largest and most significant structures at the missions. They were often designed by the missionaries, architects, and builders who traveled with them. Indians were sometimes trained to assist with exterior or interior decorations
169
Missions such as wood or stone carving or wall painting. The missionaries carried with them chalices, crosses, candlesticks, and liturgical vestments and books considered necessary for the celebration of the mass, the central ceremony of Catholic worship. In addition, the missionaries requested paintings, sculptures, and additional liturgical objects from their superiors in Mexico City to decorate their churches, paid for by the crown, the orders, or private patrons. Missionaries regarded these works of art as vital for religious worship and to teach Indians in the Catholic faith. They were produced primarily by accomplished artists and artisans in Mexico City, although ivory sculpture was brought from the Philippines, and liturgical vestments were made of both Chinese and European textiles. This rich variety of works of art was found in virtually every mission church in northern New Spain. Some objects such as largescale altarpieces, furniture, a relatively small number of paintings and sculptures, and even silver pieces were made at the missions themselves. The vast majority of these were made by Hispanic craftsmen, but some were made by Indian artisans as well, occasionally employing traditional native materials or techniques. Mexican independence in 1821 had a significant impact on the missionary enterprise, effectively bringing it to an end. The most obvious effect was Spain’s expulsion from its former territories, which included the expulsion of its citizens, among them its Franciscan missionaries, from missions in northern New Spain. Initially, at least, Mexican-born Franciscans replaced most of them, but decrees of succeeding Mexican governments in 1828, 1833, and 1839 were enacted to secularize the missions. In simplest terms, secularization meant turning over a church from the missionary order to secular clergy and incorporating it within the larger administrative structure of a diocese or archdiocese. Secularization was, in fact, the goal of missionary activity, as it signaled the stability of a Catholic community whose Indian members had undergone conversion by the missionaries. In practical terms, however, postindependence secularization frequently enabled Mexican authorities and settlers to gain control over enormous land holdings, herds of livestock and crops, and other tangible products of the missionary enterprise. Moreover, there were not enough diocesan priests, or enough who were willing, to preside in the many missions scattered throughout the borderlands. In 1843, recognizing the shortcomings of secularization, the Mexican government attempted to revive the missionary system by placing a few of them under the control of Franciscans, but these efforts were insufficient to the task and were not sustained during the political turmoil in Mexico during this period. Moreover, in 1859, legislation nationalized all church property except those churches to be sold at auction, part of a broader effort to separate church and state in Mexico that continued through the 1860s. With the departure of the missionaries and the loss of property, agricultural resources, and financial support, the missions rapidly deteriorated and many were abandoned, in many cases devastating the Christanized Indian communities that had grown up around them. Secularization had essentially the same impact on missions in what became the United States as it aggressively expanded its territory westward. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the U.S.–Mexican War gave the United States control of the missions located in the present-day states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Settlement of the U.S. Southwest, encouraged by the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, resulted in increasing exposure to and growing fascination with the missions. Published
170
Missions accounts by numerous Americans, including leaders of military expeditions, consistently reported that the missions were in ruinous condition with their Indian communities severely dislocated. Nonetheless, in California and New Mexico, in particular—even in, and often because of, their diminished state—the missions were often viewed in romantic terms that provided these new states with direct connections to historic and the perceived heroic character of missionary activities that took place there. Painters such as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, John Mix Stanley, George Bellows, John Sloan, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as photographers Timothy O’Sullivan, John K. Hillers, William Henry Jackson, Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Laura Gilpin, and Lee Marmon are among the many who depicted the missions of the American Southwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the same time, Bret Harte, Robert Louis Stevenson, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Willa Cather wrote about them, and directors D. W. Griffith and Alfred Hitchcock featured them in their films. The missions, whose restoration was avidly undertaken from the late nineteenth century on, have thus figured prominently in American culture for more than a century, during which time they have been popular tourist destinations. Their legacy can be measured by the number of now populous cities whose names reflect their founding as Spanish missions, from San Francisco in California to San Antonio in Texas. No such situation existed in northern Mexico, the reasons for which are as much about geography as Mexico’s own founding myths. There, the missions of what had been northern New Spain were located at the far edges of the frontier, separated by great distances and frequently inhospitable terrain from Mexico City, the center of both government and culture. Railroads only gradually reached some of these mission sites, while others remain in isolated rural areas, in part explaining why neither settlers nor artists sought them out. Moreover, as vestiges of Mexico’s colonial past, these churches occupy a far more complex position in the country’s history. As the art of Mexico developed after the middle of the nineteenth century, it is clear that its subject matter was determined by a strong desire to employ images of Mexico’s preHispanic, indigenous culture to construct a national identity. The Aztecs and their culture were featured in this narrative, and their presence in central Mexico was used to emphasize the historical and cultural importance of Mexico City. Broadly speaking, the disparately located Indians of Mexico’s vast northern frontier, and consequently the missions founded to convert them, had a limited place in this construct. Nonetheless, the vast missions in northern Mexico have enjoyed increasing attention in recent decades, and they constitute a rich and still relatively unexplored aspect of the country’s cultural and artistic heritage. See also Art; Native Americans; Presidios. FURTHER READINGS: Castillo, Edward D., ed. Native American Perspectives on the Hispanic Colonization of Alta California. New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1992; Castillo Edward D., and Jackson, Robert H. The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995; Costello, Julia G., ed. Documentary Evidence for the Spanish Missions of California. New York: Garland Press, 1991; Costo, Rupert, and Costo, Jeannette Henry, eds. The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide. San Francisco: The Indian Historian Press, 1987; de la Teja, Jes us F. San Antonio de Bexar: A Community on New Spain’s Northern Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995; D’Emilio, Sandra, Campbell, Susan, and Kessel, John L. Spirit and Vision, Images of Ranchos de
171
Monroe Doctrine Taos Church. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987; Deverell, William. ‘‘Privileging the Mission over the Mexican: The Rise of Regional Identity in Southern California.’’ In David M. Wrobel and Michael C. Steiner, eds. Many Wests: Place, Culture, & Regional Identity. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997; Flores, Richard R., ed. History and Legends of the Alamo and other Missions in and around San Antonio. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1996; Galgano, Robert C. Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005; Gendzel, Glen. ‘‘Pioneers and Padres: Competing Mythologies in Northern and Southern California, 1850–1930.’’ Western Historical Quarterly 32 (Spring 2001); Hurst Thomas, David. ‘‘Harvesting Ramona’s Garden: Life in California’s Mythical Mission Past.’’ In David Hurst Thomas, ed. Columbian Consequences, Vol. 3. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990; Jackson, Robert H. Missions and the Frontiers of Spanish America: A Comparative Study of the Impact of Environmental, Economic, Political, and Socio-Cultural Variations on the Missions in the Rıo de la Plata Region and on the Northern Frontier of New Spain. Scottsdale: Pentacle Press, 2005; Kessell, John L., and Hendricks, Rich. The Spanish Missions of New Mexico. New York: Garland, 1991; Officer James E., et al. The Pimerıa Alta: Missions and More. Tucson: The Southwestern Mission Research Center, 1996; ‘‘Orders Given to ‘the Twelve.’’’ In Kenneth Mills and William B. Taylor, eds. Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary History. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1998; Perry, Claire. Pacific Arcadia: Images of California, 1600–1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999; Quirarte, Jacinto. Art and Architecture of the Texas Missions. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002; Stern, Jean. Romance of the Bells: The California Missions in Art. Irvine, CA: The Irvine Museum, 1995; Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992; Weddle, Robert S. The San Saba Mission: Spanish Pivot in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964.
Michael K. Komancecky Monroe Doctrine. Articulated by President James Monroe during his annual address to Congress on December 2, 1823, what by the 1850s became known as the Monroe Doctrine sent a message principally to the major European powers that the United States would not tolerate any Old World interventions in the American hemisphere. These remarks came on the heels of Monroe’s recognition of the new Latin American republics following their wars of independence. At the time, Monroe’s speech responded to a coalition recently formed by the monarchies in Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, and, briefly, England (dubbed ‘‘the Holy Alliance’’), which sought to claim Latin America once again for Europe. One particular expression of possible Holy Alliance encroachment came when Alexander I of Russia declared that foreign vessels would not be allowed any closer than 100 miles off the Alaskan coast (at the time controlled by Russia). Hearing this, Monroe drafted what would be later understood as one of the first statements of U.S. foreign diplomatic policy. The portion of his address from which the Monroe Doctrine is articulated proclaims American sovereignty over the hemisphere and the United States as the primary protector against European aggression. Although difficult to enforce at the time, Congress, journalists, and others embraced Monroe’s assertion of U.S. power. In contrast, Europeans tended to scoff at what they viewed as overconfident hubris on the part of the Americans. For their part, Latin Americans considered the proclamation with skepticism. In fact, when Napoleon III sent forces to invade and occupy Mexico in the mid-1860s, U.S. officials understood the intervention as a clear violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Because of the civil war, however, they were virtually powerless to do anything about the situation in Mexico.
172
Mormon Colonies in Mexico In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt would add a corollary to the doctrine stating that the United States had the right to intervene in Latin America. After nearly three decades of aggressive interference in the affairs of several nations (that is, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic) a Washington policy statement known as the Clark Memorandum reversed the Roosevelt Corollary. Nevertheless, future invocation of the Monroe Doctrine would come during the Cold War as U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Reagan sought to maintain influence in the region while seeing themselves as protecting the hemisphere from communism. See also Manifest Destiny; James K. Polk; Texas Revolution; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; U.S.–Mexican War. FURTHER READINGS: Kryzanek, Michael J. U.S.–Latin American Relations. 3rd edition. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996; May, Ernest R. The Making of the Monroe Doctrine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975; Murphy, Gretchen. Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of U.S. Empire. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Andrew G. Wood Mormon Colonies in Mexico. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as the Mormon Church, has a long history of involvement in Mexico, beginning in 1846. Driven from Nauvoo, Illinois, by mob violence that had killed Joseph Smith, the movement’s founder, Brigham Young led the main body of Mormons toward the West. Young would become the new prophet and president of the Mormon Church. They planned to leave U.S. sovereign territory altogether and establish themselves in what was then the borderlands between Mexico and the disputed Oregon Territory. En route to their illicit settlement of Mexican land in the Salt Lake Valley, the U.S.–Mexican War broke out. The U.S. government, though having recently shunned the Mormon emigrants’ petition for federal help against mob violence, asked the Mormons to raise a company of volunteers to fight in the war. A 500-plus man Mormon Battalion was quickly formed. It set out on an epic march of more than 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, south through Santa Fe, west through Tucson, and finally concluding in San Diego, California. Though the battalion secured vast amounts of territory for the United States, it never saw battle, as the disparate and scattered Mexican defenders along the route never engaged them. In 1848, the war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the massive Mexican Cession it entailed once again placed the Mormons within U.S. sovereignty. Utah Territory was eventually carved out of the newly acquired lands. Mormon relations with the U.S. government deteriorated, especially once the Mormons began to openly practice polygamy in Utah Territory. The friction between the government and the Mormons even led to claims of rebellion on the part of some federal officials and the Buchanan administration subsequently sent an army to Utah in 1857, although no fighting ensued. In 1862, in the midst of the raging American Civil War, the Republican-dominated Senate passed an antipolygamy bill aimed at the Mormons in particular and declaring their doctrine of polygamy to be in direct violation of the law. Difficulties in enforcing the law due to Mormon reluctance to abandon their religious tenet led to mounting animosity between the U.S. federal government and the Mormons in Utah Territory. In 1875, Brigham Young sent missionaries to northern Mexico after nearly 100 pages of the Book of Mormon were translated into Spanish. Not only were the
173
Mormon Colonies in Mexico missionaries to preach the gospel to the Mexicans, but they also were to reconnoiter possible settlement areas for Mormons to flee to from the United States if the increasing government hostility made such a move necessary. They reported back on several areas that were favorable to Mormon settlement, primarily in northern Chihuahua. In 1877, missionary groups were sent to Sonora with a similar commission, though they reported back that frequent Apache raiding parties made the situation too tenuous for colonization at that time. Young’s death later that year, likely the result of a ruptured appendix, ended missionary work and colonization efforts in Mexico for several years. Young’s successor, John Taylor, again visited the question of Mexican colonization following the passage of the Edmunds Act of 1882, which sought to strictly enforce previous antipolygamy statutes. Subsequently, Taylor sent missionaries in 1882 to Mexico with instructions to search for land to colonize, particularly for the purpose of shielding polygamists from threatened prosecution. Permanent Mormon settlement began with the arrival of nearly 350 Mormons in the Casas Grandes Valley of northern Chihuahua in the early spring of 1885. As more and more Mormons entered the sparsely settled Mexican state, the acting governor, General Fuero, became alarmed. Citing the United States’s illegal appropriation of Texas that had resulted from previous American colonization attempts, Fuero ordered the Mormons to leave the state within fifteen days. The Mormons, desperate to find refuge in Mexico from U.S. persecution, sought an audience with President Porfirio Dıaz himself. Dıaz, in a classic example of the centralization of power and pro-American stance that would eventually lead to his overthrow, countermanded Fuero’s order and welcomed the Mormon colonists to Mexico. When Fuero again ordered the removal of the Mormon colonists, he himself was removed from his position by the Dıaz government. The Mormons subsequently settled in eight separate colonies throughout Chihuahua and Sonora. The first, Colonia Dıaz, named for their presidential benefactor, was located on the Casas Grandes River, 200 miles southwest of El Paso, Texas, and 250 miles northwest of the city of Chihuahua. Colonias Juarez (1885), Dublan (1888), Pacheco (1887), Garcıa (1894), and Chuichupa (1894) were all founded within the next ten years in Chihuahua, with Colonia Juarez and its central location becoming the cultural and religious center of the Mormon colonies. Three other settlements would be established in Sonora. Colonia Oaxaca (1893) was established about 100 miles southwest of Bisbee, Arizona. Colonias Morelos (1899) and San Jose were founded just northwest of Colonia Oaxaca. The colonies prospered for a brief period, even being singled out by President Dıaz as models of development in Mexico. Much to the dismay of some in the United States, Mexico did not attempt to enforce any antibigamy laws against the colonists. By 1910, there were approximately 4,000 Mormons living in northern Mexico, and Mormon missionary efforts in central and southern Mexico had yielded hundreds more adherents. By that time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had officially discontinued the practice of polygamy, hence the need to flee U.S. authority had evaporated. However, the Mexican Revolution would devastate the Mormon colonies. Though they declared themselves officially neutral, their prosperity and their nationality would make such protestations of neutrality effectively mute. The Mormon colonies became tempting supply points for the various armies that ranged across northern Mexico. Federal troops, Maderistas, Villistas, and Orozquistas
174
Mormon Colonies in Mexico would all occupy the main Mormon colonies in Chihuahua and demand provisions and arms of the Mormons. The anti-American nationalism that accompanied many of the rebel armies labeled the Mormons as derisively as any other foreigners in Northern Mexico and some sought to evict the Mormons by force. The Mormons soon found themselves in an ironic situation. Having been driven from the United States because Americans saw their religion as illegal and un-American, the Mormons would now be driven from Mexico not because of their unique religion, but because they were recognized, in fact, as Americans. Finally, in 1912, fearing for the safety of the colonists, the Church leaders ordered an evacuation of the colonies. In what had become a familiar experience for generations of Mormons, men and women packed up all they could and left their homes behind to certain looting and destruction at the hands of the various armies, unsure when, or if, they would ever return. Most sought refuge in El Paso or Douglas, Arizona. Many took advantage of generous U.S. assistance that supplied not only necessities of life but also train tickets to other parts of the country where the refugees had families and friends. Many Mormons began returning to the colonies as early as 1915 and took an active role in supplying General John Pershing’s punitive expedition into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa, an economic boom that helped the colonies reclaim lost profits. Missionary work, using the colonies as a springboard, resumed in central Mexico in 1917. Many of the Mormon colonies were abandoned, but Juarez continued to thrive. Though the 1926 order expelling all foreign clergy from Mexico stymied Mormon proselytizing efforts for a time, by 1961, there were more than 25,000 Mormons in Mexico, nearly all native-born Mexicans. The number of Mexican adherents to the Mormon faith exploded in the last half of the twentieth century. By 2004, the Mormon Church had more than 1 million members in Mexico, making it the largest population of Mormons living outside of the United States. Mexico now contains twelve Mormon temples, centers of religious practice for devout Mormons, more than any other country outside of the United States. What had begun as a few borderlands settlements, populated in large part by fleeing Mormon polygamists, has resulted 130 years later in a substantial Mormon presence throughout Mexico. The connection of the Mormon Church to Mexico was highlighted by Mexican President Vicente Fox’s 2006 visit to the United States. Surprising some, one of the three states he chose to visit was Utah. There he not only met with state leaders, most of them Mormons, praising their conciliatory policies toward illegal Mexican immigrants, but also met with the prophet and president of the Mormon Church, Gordon B. Hinkley and his counselors while he was in Salt Lake City. See also Catholic Church; Francisco ‘‘Pancho’’ Villa; Protestantism. FURTHER READINGS: Desert Morning News 2006 Church Almanac. Salt Lake City: Deseret Morning News, 2005; Hatch, Nelle. Colonia Juarez. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1954; Ricketts, Norma B. The Mormon Battalion: U.S. Army of the West, 1846–1848. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1996; Romney, Joseph B. ‘‘The Stake President’s View of the Exodus from the Mormon Colonies in Mexico in 1912.’’ Times of Transition: Proceedings of the 2000 Symposium of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at Brigham Young University. Provo, UT: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, 2003; Romney, Thomas Cottam. The Mormon Colonies in Mexico. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1938; Swenson, Jason. ‘‘A Million in Mexico on Aug 1, After 128 Years.’’ LDS
175
Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) Church News, July 10, 2004; Swenson, Jason. ‘‘Mexican Leader Makes Visit: President Vicente Fox Calls on First Presidency.’’ LDS Church News, May 27, 2006; Thomas, Estelle Webb. Uncertain Sanctuary: A Story of Mormon Pioneering in Mexico. Salt Lake City: Westwater Press, 1980; Tullis, F. LaMond. Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1987; Turley, Clarence F., and Turley, Anna. The History of the Mormon Colonies in Mexico (The Juarez Stake) 1885–1980. Salt Lake City: Lawrence Benson Lee, 1996; Whetten, Lester B. The Mormon Colonies in Mexico: Commemorating 100 Years. Deming, NM: Colony Specialties, 1985; Young, Karl E. Ordeal in Mexico: Tales of Danger and Hardship Collected from Mormon Colonists. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1968.
Gerrit Dirkmaat Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA). El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, known by the acronym MEChA, was formed in 1969 from various fragments of the Chicana/o student movement. Although an acronym, the organization’s name MEChA serves as a double-entendre in that mecha is also the Spanish word for match. This signification is extremely important as activists saw themselves as both committed constituents of the movement in addition to being the revolutionary sparks. In the minds of many veteranas/os (old-school activists) a mecha was chosen for its abilities to spark an incendiary movement, and for its inability to control the fire lit from this source. This demonstrates the manner in which mechistas, as members of MEChA are called, envisioned themselves, not as the vanguards of Chicanismo, but rather as agitators that would sow the seeds of resistance before allowing the movement to grow organically. Prior to consolidation of the various student groups, different regions of the United States had distinct Mexican American youth organizations that articulated their own localized philosophies. Beginning in the early 1960s, the activities of the Chicana/o youth movement increased throughout the United States, predominantly in the Southwest but also the Pacific Northwest and Midwest. In 1967, these activities heightened in scale and force. In California, the organizing activities of the United Farm Workers, albeit not an overtly Chicano organization, were central to the overall movimiento. In Colorado, Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales led the Crusade for Justice, while Reies L opez Tijerina organized land grant communities in Northern New Mexico. Although these three individuals, and the organizations they spearheaded, have been considered the main impetus for the Chicana/o movement, it was actually the development of the Brown Berets and MEChA that coalesced the fragmented perspectives into a singular (although diverse) faction. In October 1967, Tijerina called Chicana/o youth activists to a summit in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was here that Jose Angel Gutierrez, a Tejano activist associated with the Mexican American Youth Organization, argued that Chicanas/os should used the term La Raza to self-identify, because Chicano had not gained widespread usage. Likewise, in Burque, as Albuquerque is affectionately dubbed, the sparks were ignited for the 1969 National Chicano Youth Conference and the foundations for a Chicana/o political party (La Raza Unida Party). By the time the National Chicano Youth Conference came around, Chicana/o student and youth organizations existed throughout the country, with solidarity networks across Mexico. In Texas, there was the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO or MAYA [Mexican American Youth Association]). California and New
176
Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA)
Dancing to music performed by Mariachi Flor y Canto at the Chicano Festival on April 29, 2006, in Laramie, Wyoming. The women were volunteering at a booth for the University of Wyoming Chicano student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan. (AP Photo/Laramie Daily Boomerang, Barbara J. Perenic)
Mexico had United Mexican American Students (UMAS), and California also had various chapters of the Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC). There was also the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education (CCHE). These organizations also existed in barrios and colonias with large Latina/o populations in other parts of the country, particularly Chicago, Michigan, and Washington state. When these organizations came together at the 1969 National Chicano Youth Conference (sometimes called the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference) in Denver, Colorado, their diverse organizing principles of the various Chicana/o factions were centralized into a international ethno-class alliance. By doing so, Chicana/o activists were not producing a cookie-cutter structure for el movimiento, but rather creating a network in which autonomous mechistas could interact and work together. Within a month of the Denver symposium, California students and professors involved in CCHE organized a summit at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was here that activists wrote El Plan de Santa Barbara and brought together all Chicana/o student groups under the name MEChA. While multiple names were up for debate, in the end, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan was chosen over the Chicano Alliance for Student United Action (CAUSA). Seeing the U.S. Southwest as Aztlan, the mythical homeland of the Mexica (Aztecs), and as such their ancestral birthright, Chicana/o student preferred MEChA for its double signification and inference to Aztlan. As an organization, MEChA is founded on the principles of two fundamental documents: El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan (written at the Denver conference) and El Plan de Santa Barbara (written in Santa Barbara). With the writing of these texts in
177
Murieta, Joaquın (ca. 1829–53) the 1969, MEChA, and the Chicana/o movement as a whole, constructed a framework for its libratory struggle. Written ambiguously so as to not create a monolithic solution to the problems confronting Mexican Americans, El Plan de Santa Barbara advocated community education, organizing, and self-determination. In the end, MEChA’s main precept, as articulated in Santa Barbara, was that ‘‘we do not come to work for the university, but to demand that the university work for our people.’’ While some proto-nationalist sectors of the movimiento promoted a dismissal of the university as a ‘‘white’’ activity, the framers of the Plan de Santa Barbara recognized the role that higher education could play within the liberation of working-class Chicanas/os. According to the Plan published by La Causa in Oakland, ‘‘the inescapable fact is that Chicanos must come to grips with the reality of the university in modern society. . . . The role of knowledge in producing social change, indeed revolution, cannot be underestimated.’’ By and large, MEChA has served a significant percentage of Chicana/o high school and university students by offering them a dialogic engagement with U.S. mainstream society. MEChA has helped to legitimate and institutionalize Chicana/o Studies, as well as help countless first-generation college and university students deal with the complexities of that structure. To this day, active MEChA chapters exist throughout North America. During the early 2000s, MEChA received negative media attention when Cruz Bustamante, then lieutenant governor of California, was attacked for his movimiento involvement as a mechistas. The media criticized Bustamante, calling MEChA a racist organization, likening it to a Latina/o Ku Klux Klan. See also Chicana/o Movement; Education; Legal Issues. FURTHER READINGS: Mariscal, George. Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965–1975. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2005; Navarro, Armando. Mexican American Youth Organization: Avant-Garde of the Chicano Movement in Texas. Austin: University of Texas, 1995; Rosales, F. Arturo. Chicano: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1997.
Dylan A.T. Miner Murieta, Joaquın (ca. 1829–53). Joaquın Murieta (also spelled Murrieta or Murietta) was a largely legendary and somewhat controversial Sonoran emigre to California during the California Gold Rush of the mid-nineteenth century who, not meeting with success in the mining profession, allegedly turned to banditry. Between 1850 and 1853, Murieta and his affiliates (including Manuel Garcıa, also known as ‘‘ThreeFingered Jack’’) terrorized the Californian countryside. On Sunday, July 25, 1853, Murieta’s campaign of violence came to an end in the Arroyo Cantua of the Tulare Valley (now the San Joaquın Valley) following his death and subsequent beheading in a shootout with a detachment of California Rangers led by Captain Harry Love. To prove the Rangers’s accomplishment, Love ordered Murieta’s severed head (along with the supposed head and hand of Garcıa) to be removed from the Cantua for positive identification and preservation. Five decades later, during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Murieta’s disembodied appendage was lost, allegedly being buried with ruined rubble. Reconstructing Murieta has traditionally been a complicated task, even for the most astute scholar, as the limited reliable facts regarding Murieta’s life are largely eclipsed by the various legends that arose about Murieta following the Sonoran’s
178
Music death, legends that often replace the historical Murieta with a more fictive, albeit popular, interpretation. Indeed, Murieta was, and continues to be, more than a criminal of a bygone era, being seen by many as a powerful symbol of subaltern resistance to Anglo American oppression and representative distributor of retributive justice for the oppressed. See also California Gold Rush; Californios; Migration. FURTHER READINGS: Aleman, Jesse. ‘‘Assimilation and the Decapitated Body Politic in The Life and Adventures of Joaquın Murieta.’’ Arizona Quarterly 59 (2004): 71–97; Rollin Ridge, John (Yellow Bird). The Life and Adventures of Joaquın Murieta, The Celebrated California Bandit, 1854. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954; Thornton, Bruce. Searching for Joaquın: Myth, Murieta and History in California. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003.
Robert W. Lever Music. From Native American music for celebrations and ritual to European polka, Mexican corrido, norte~ no, Tex-Mex conjunto, banda, country, blues, jazz, rock, postmodern punk, hip-hop, and electronic, the far-ranging sounds of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands are as varied as the people who live and have lived in the region for thousands of years. Native American music should be understood as an expression of life rather than art as such. The music of the many indigenous groups that reside in the borderlands is part of religious worship and not a demonstration of individual virtuosity or feeling. As is true for other native groups, the Southwest Pueblo Indians (Spanish for ‘‘village’’ or ‘‘peoples’’ whose settlements shared a certain commonality) used music in association with agrarian-related ceremonies and rituals. Often, as in the case of the ceremonial Ko-ko dance of the Zuni or snake song of the Hopi, music and accompanying dance is used to bring rain. Generally, in Native American music, rhythm predominates while a singer improvises a melody that, upon analysis, could reveal any number of scale formations. Many observers have noticed a predominance of pentatonic patterns. Vocal techniques distinguish Native American music with a characteristic tenseness in the vocal cords and frequent use of grace notes and sliding between intervals. Indian groups living along the Rio Grande are known for ceremonies that honor ancestral spirits known as the Katcinas. In these songs, singers alter their voices to produce a unique nasal sound. In contrast to native cultures further north, those living in the borderlands often sing song lyrics that deploy symbolic content and also refer to the natural world with great poetic beauty. A notched stick for scraping against another stick is an important ritual instrument. People of Spanish descent living in the north of New Spain and (what would later become) Mexico and the American Southwest danced to the music of violin and guitar at fandangos and (more upper-class) bailes. Prior to the nineteenth century, folk dances such as Aragonese jotas, contradanzas, reels, and jarabes, among other forms, enjoyed great popularity. In the nineteenth century, musicians introduced various European salon musics such as the waltz, polka, redowa, mazurka, danza habanera, and schottische to the region. As new European immigrants brought brass and wind instruments to the region around the turn of the twentieth century, brass bands—and soon an assortment of small orchestras that often combined winds and strings (orquestas tıpicas)—appeared in nearly every major city.
179
Music Many other kinds of music could be heard in the region. Quite characteristic are Mexican corridos (ballads), a traditional song form that generally chronicles dayto-day events and various narratives. The genre derived from the sixteenth-century troubadour music of Spain, which featured the decima form (ten verses with eight syllables each). Using this framework, traveling musicians (trovadores) entertained listeners in a variety of informal settings—at parties, in bars and restaurants, on the street, and so on. The modern Mexican corrido took shape in nineteenth century as war with the United States and the ensuing loss of national territory reconfigured social, political, and cultural relations between the two countries. With this, songs of individual valor, resistance to authority, and the pursuit of social justice became popular among people of Mexican descent as they gave voice to feelings of cultural pride in the face of Anglo expansionism. Likewise, the Mexican Revolution gave rise to a vast collection of corridos relating important events and heroic deeds. Not surprisingly, there are ballads about heroes Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Lazaro Cardenas. Other songs about mythic or archetypal female figures such as Marijuana la soldadera, Adelita, and Valentina are also well known. Closer to the border, there are corridos about tragic heroes (Gregorio Cortez, Juaquın Murrieta), cattle drives (‘‘El corrido de Kiansis’’), and murders (‘‘La Tragedıa de Oklahoma’’), as well as tales of bootleggers, workers, orphans, and any number of other ‘‘mini-histories.’’ With the corrido, accompaniment is usually on guitar, the lyrics are easy to understand, and the melodies relatively simple. Since the proliferation of commercial recordings beginning in the 1930s, some have observed an increase in the number of corridos (although not all) that are largely fictional. In part, this is because a rendering of ‘‘true’’ tales circulated widely present the possibility of lawsuits and political repercussions. Further adapting the corrido, more recent exponents have developed a narco-corrido subgenre, which, as it sounds, deals with the subject of contraband trade. To this, state officials in Sinaloa tried to ban public performance of songs thought to celebrate drug trafficking, but their efforts have largely proven unsuccessful. One of the most famous contemporary groups upholding while also adapting the corrido genre is Los Tigres del Norte. Among many creative artists, singer-songwriter Lydia Mendoza stands as one of the most important performers in the history of borderlands music. Born in Houston, Texas, in 1916, Mendoza and her family are revered as classic examples of Depressionera Tejanos, and, more generally, Mexican American music around the world much like Virginia’s Carter Family is seen as embodying the tradition of southeastern American folk music. Lydia and her sisters Juanita and Marıa recorded many different kinds of song styles (more than 1,200 in all) and gained tremendous popularity in both North and South America. With a career that spanned seven decades, she gained initial fame with her first hit ‘‘Mal Hombre’’ in 1928. Ranchera, a genre that includes mariachi, norte~ no (northern Mexico), Texas-based conjunto, and the more recent banda are all important borderlands music styles. Railroad connections established between industrializing Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, and Texas during the second half of the nineteenth century helped facilitate contact across the U.S.–Mexico border. This exchange exposed those living in Texas to new musical styles, including Italian opera, string, and later, wind ensembles (orquestas tıpicas). Apart from elite groups who lived in major cities, many Tejanos remained fairly isolated and had little disposable income when it came to obtaining instruments and the
180
Music latest music. Instead, they made do—often developing solo or duo acts that paired accordion (invented in Europe during the 1820s and brought to the borderlands by both central Mexican as well as German, Polish, and Czech immigrants shortly thereafter) and violin, but sometimes also incorporated guitar, bajo sexto (a twelve-stringed guitar mixed with bass). Relatively inexpensive and full sounding with little need for accompaniment except for the ever-popular bajo sexto (and therefore easy to hire for parties), it would be the accordion that would define this new borderlands music by the early twentieth century. More of a middle-class music ensemble or orquesta music developed in parallel with, and in many ways with a contradistinction to, the working-class conjunto during the twentieth century. Advanced by a handful of well-traveled bandleaders such as Beto Villa, Isidro L opez, and Balde Gonzalez after World War II, their music embodied the hopes and dreams of socially mobile Mexican Americans at the time with their jaiton (high-tone) sound and sophisticated arrangements. The advent of modern electronic media (commercial recordings, radio, and film) greatly popularized the sound of borderlands musicians. Aside from major labels such as RCA, pioneering postwar regional outfits such as Armando Marroquin and Paco Betancourt’s Ideal Records in Texas as well as other companies in Southern California played an important role in advancing the careers of countless borderlands musicians. Meanwhile, residents of the state of Sinaloa had long been combining brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments to form popular bands called tamboras (from tambora—a double-headed bass drum) that played weddings, parties, civic celebrations, and other social gatherings. Mixing with musicians who received training while in the military and then later played in municipal bands, orchestras, and various other configurations (such as jazz ensembles), a majority of players in these popular groups were self-taught as they developed a repertoire that featured regional tunes played by ear. Over the twentieth century, banda gained popularity as a dance music. Adding electric guitars and synthesizers (and the use of amplification more generally) in the mid-1980s, the genre became known as technobanda. First recorded in Guadalajara, technobanda migrated north and soon became a huge hit not only in Mexico but also in parts of the United States—especially Los Angeles where radio stations like KLAX and KBUE helped promote the music. An associated dance known as the quebradita became all the rage in dance halls and private clubs where the clientele dress in fashionable cowboy boots, hats, and jeans. Wider considerations of borderlands music should make mention of several important local and regional music scenes where artists developed innovative sounds. In East Los Angeles during the 1950s, for example, young Mexican Americans (soon to identify as Chicanos) eschewed the more traditional ranchera music of their parents and took to the dynamic sounds of rhythm and blues played by African Americans such as Johnny Otis, Johnny ‘‘Guitar’’ Watson, Big Jay McNeely, Chuck Harris, and Richard Berry. Berry, who in 1956, sang for a multiethnic group called the Rhythm Rockers, wrote and recorded the classic song ‘‘Louie, Louie.’’ Subject of an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, because of Berry’s largely unintelligible lyrics, the tune would eventually become a hit after the Anglo group The Kingsmen covered it in 1963. Berry and many L.A.-based rhythm and blues performers testify to the important role Chicano audiences played in the early years of rock and roll. In the coming decades, performers such as Richie Valens, The Midnighters, Cannibal and the
181
Music Headhunters—along with a curious Mexican-music-turned-rock-band named Los Lobos, among others—would take a determined and ethnically self-conscious Mexican American/Chicano-based rock-and-roll sound to international heights. Of course, Texas has long been the home of several notable musicians playing a distinctive (greater) borderlands sound. From ragtime pioneer Scott Joplin to jazz guitar great Charlie Christian to Doug Sahm, Flaco Jimenez, Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Butthole Surfers, and the Dixie Chicks, the history of Texas music, much like the state itself, is just too big to summarize. To the west in Tucson, musicians have more recently developed a dynamic postpunk scene with artists and groups such as Howe Gelb, Al Perry, David Slutes, Bob Log III, and Calexico, representing some of the most popular. Since the dawn of the new millennium, new styles, including a fusion largely of traditional norte~ no and tambora sounds with electronic music, have emerged. Based in Tijuana, the Nortec Collective is a group of five musicians who have collaborated on combining styles in creating a uniquely postmodern sound now popular in clubs and discos around the world. See also The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez; Cinema; Literature; Americo Manzano Paredes; Radio. FURTHER READINGS: Boulton, Laura C. Liner notes. Indian Music of the Southwest. Folkways 8850, 1957; Collaer, Paul. Music of the Americas. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970; Marsh, Dave. Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the World’s Most Famous Rock ’n’ Roll Song; Including the Full Details of Its Torture and Persecution at the Hands of the Kingsmen, J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I., and a Cast of Millions; and Introducing, for the First Time Anywhere, the Actual Dirty Lyrics. New York: Hyperion, 1992; Morales, Ed. The Latin Beat: Latin Music from Bossa Nova to Salsa and Beyond. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2003; Nortec Collective. http:// www.norteccollective.com/; Paredes, Americo. A Texas-Mexican Cancionero. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976; Paredes, Americo. With a Pistol in His Hand. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958; Pe~ na, Manuel. The Mexican-American Orquesta. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999; Pe~ na, Manuel. The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: A History of a Working-Class Music. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985; Reyes, David, and Waldman, Tom. Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock ‘n’ Roll from Southern California. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1998; Simonett, Helene. Banda: Mexican Musical Life Across Borders. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001; Strachwitz, Chris. ‘‘A History of Commercial Recordings of Corridos.’’ In The Mexican Revolution: Corridos about the Heroes and Events, 1910–1920 and Beyond! 11–17; Strachwitz, Chris. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In Corridos y tragedias de la frontera, 3–12. Arhoolie Productions, 1994; Strachwitz, Chris, with Nicolopulos, James. Lydia Mendoza: A Family Autobiography. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1993; Texas Music History. http://ctmh.its.txstate.edu/index.php; Tschopik, Harry, and Rhodes, Willard. Liner notes. Music of the American Indians of the Southwest. Folkways 4420, 1951; Wald, Elija, Narcorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.
Andrew G. Wood
182
D
Narvaez, Panfilo de (?–1528). In 1526, Panfilo de Narvaez received a royal patent from the Spanish government to explore, conquer, and colonize the lands between the Rıo de las Palmas (Rio Grande) and Florida. On June 17, 1527, Narvaez along with 600 colonists and a number of Franciscan friars departed Spain aboard five vessels. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the party landed in Santo Domingo to gather provisions and horses. As the ships remained in port, nearly 140 men deserted the expedition. With the remaining colonists, Narvaez sailed to Cuba, where sixty crewmembers perished and two of the vessels were partially destroyed when a hurricane struck the island. After the five vessels were reoutfitted, Narvaez along with 400 crewmembers sailed toward the west coast of Florida near present-day Sarasota Bay. In April 1528, Narvaez led an overland expedition in search of gold and an ideal location for a permanent colony. However, the land party became detached from their support vessels. By June 1528, food shortages, Indian attacks, harsh weather conditions, and disease forced Narvaez’s expedition to depart Florida and travel along the Gulf Coast to Mexico. Lacking boats, they constructed five makeshift vessels from their horses’ hides. As the remaining 242 men journeyed westward, the party encountered a severe storm as they approached the mouth of the Mississippi River. While the crafts survived the storm, Narvaez and others aboard his boat were later blown into the deep waters off the coast of Matagorda Bay, where they presumably drowned. ~ez Cabeza de Narvaez’s expedition was best known for the survival of Alvar N un Vaca, whose later accounts about the vast lands of the American Southwest generated Spanish interest in the region. FURTHER READINGS: Chipman, Donald E. Spanish Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992; Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Kevin M. Brady Native Americans. In the early twenty-first century, Native Americans remain an enduring fixture in the U.S.–Mexico border region. Their presence in the region predated the establishment of the U.S.–Mexico border, which achieved its present outline with few changes as a result of the U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48) and the ratification
183
N
Native Americans of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced many Native American groups from the eastern United States into the west, the series of ‘‘Indian Wars’’ engaged in by the United States government between 1876 and 1890, the extermination campaigns against indigenous people like the Apaches and the Yaqui undertaken by the regime of Porfirio Dıaz between the 1876 and 1911, and the Reciprocal-Crossing Treaty of 1882, which allowed for the limited military crossing of the border in ‘‘hot pursuit’’ of fleeing Indians highly affected indigenous and Native American groups. Scholars have long debated which indigenous groups are culturally related in the borderlands region and how far north and south the borderlands extend. This is because linguistically, except for the Seri and the later-arriving Apache, all of the indigenous cultures of the Mexican northwest are Uto-Aztecan and more closely tied to Mesoamerican indigenous cultures than they are to their North American brethren. Regardless, this area has seen Indian, Hispano-Mexican, and Anglo American cultural contact and mixing, resulting in great modifications in all three cultures. Furthermore, its indigenous people exhibit a bewildering variety of social structures. Over twenty indigenous groups claim the borderlands area as either their homeland or as an important part of their history. Included among these are the Walapai, Havasupai, Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, Chiricahua, Cahuilla, Halchidhoma, Quechan (Yumaa), Tipai, Cocopa, Pai Pai, Maricopa, Papago (Akimel O’odham, Hia C’ed O’odham, and Tohono O’odham), Pima, Jacome, Jano, Suma, Eudeve, Opata, Jova, Guarijio, Tepehuana, and Tarahumara peoples. Although the parallels between these different indigenous groups are often sparse and ambiguous, their geographic location and settlement strategies tie them together. With few exceptions, their homelands in the arid border regions forced them to locate their settlements along permanent streams where the availability of water and alluvial soils made agriculture possible. Other indigenous peoples have used the borderlands region as a transportation route, for commerce and trade, or for access to resources but do not locate their homelands or a major part of their history there. The Western Apache, Chiricahua Apache, Mohave, Seri, Kickapoo, Seminoles, Mayo, Yaqui, and Pueblo peoples crossed the area to explore, harvest salt, practice ceremonies and rites, visit sacred shrines or attend religious gatherings, trade goods, visit friends or relatives, talk politics, make war, form alliances, look for seasonal work, or flee from political persecution. Some Apaches, for example, engaged in raids against (and in turn were raided by) other indigenous peoples as well as early Anglo and Mexican settlers in the borderlands region until the late nineteenth century. On the other hand, the Seminoles and a branch of the Kickapoo signed an agreement with the Mexican government in 1852 to defend the border region against the Apache and Comanche. In addition, many Yaqui, Mayo, and Seri fled to the United States to avoid racial cleansing at the hands of the Mexican government between 1876 and 1911 while the Republic of Texas expelled the Mexican Kickapoo in 1839. They relocated to Coahuila to avoid similar treatment at the hands of Anglos. Furthermore, Tohono O’odham, Yaqui, and Mayo peoples often engaged in seasonal labor in mining camps, rail yards, or on cotton plantations to supplement the agricultural production of their homesteads. Even those indigenous groups not directly living in the area often engaged in at least indirect trade with those who did. Beginning in 1851, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act, authorizing the creation of Indian reservations. Many indigenous groups ignored relocation to their new reservation lands and had to be forced to relocate. In the
184
Native Americans borderlands region, for example, the U.S. military forcibly removed much of the Navajo Nation from their homeland on the Colorado Plateau and resettled them in Ft. Sumner in eastern New Mexico in 1863 in what is known as the Long Walk. The government also began trying to ‘‘civilize’’ indigenous people through assimilation into mainstream culture by sending their children to boarding schools (often run by religious organizations) and placing girls into the homes of middle-class whites as servants through an ‘‘outing’’ system. In 1891, the government opened the Phoenix Indian School, the largest Indian boarding school in the borderlands region. In Mexico, positivist bureaucrats believed that indigenous people created a major obstacle to national economic development. They promoted polices ranging from the eradication of the Yaquis (through their deportation to haciendas in the Yucatan peninsula where few survived) to the complete assimilation of indigenous people through education. The positivist version of assimilation aimed at the creation of a racially mixed, Hispanized society that combined the best traits of its indigenous and Spanish origins. The Mexican Revolution (1910–20) resulted in the Mexican government’s adoption of indigenismo to redeem Mexico’s Indian population, at least in part because of President Alvaro Obreg on’s (1920–24) debt to Yaqui soldiers who fought under his command. Indigenismo argued that the Anahuac (the civilization of the Mexica or Aztecs) was the root of Mexican history and culture and that indigenous people were not necessarily a hindrance to Mexico’s modernization. Instead, given a proper diet and education, they could overcome their rural isolation and material poverty and be incorporated into mainstream Mexican society. Mexico’s Ministry of Education established the Casa del Estudiante Indigena (an experimental boarding school) in 1926; the 838 students included several Tarahumara and Tohono O’odham children. The Ministry of Education also created its first boarding school in the Sierra Tarahumara in 1926; however, as evidenced by the need to lock the indigenous children in the school at night and put metal grates over the windows to prevent their escape, they were not well received by most Tarahumara. Many Native Americans participated in World War I. Both to honor their service and to promote their assimilation into mainstream culture, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which gave them citizenship for the first time (though it did not necessarily confer upon them the right to vote). Between the World Wars, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (or Indian New Deal), an act aimed at encouraging indigenous self-government and land management and reversing the allotment of indigenous lands originally promoted by the Dawes Act of 1887 (though the reservations in the borderlands region were allotted but held in trust). In Mexico, the newly created Department of Indigenous Studies took over indigenous education. The department, much like the Indian New Deal, promoted greater indigenous self-government, bilingual education, and greater acceptance of indigenous historic ways of life. For example, the Mexican government worked closely with the Seri to set up a fishing cooperative stimulated by a market for shark fins and livers in 1938. Nonetheless, government promotion of indigenous elites often resulted in caciquismo (bossism). World War II saw the contributions of many Native Americans. One of the most famous contributions of borderlands indigenous peoples was that of Ira Hayes, an Akimel O’odham (Pima) who became immortalized through the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima and the song ‘‘The Ballad of Ira Hayes.’’ Another equally important contribution came from the 400 Navajo members of the
185
Nepomuceno Cortina, Juan (1824–94) U.S. Marine Corps who, as code talkers, took part in every assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. Because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity, the Japanese never broke it. Nonetheless, beginning in 1944, the United States adopted a termination policy vis-a-vis Native Americans. The policy was designed to produce rapid, forced assimilation. The federal government trained indigenous people for work off Indian reservations and transferred many federal responsibilities to state control. The piecemeal withdrawal of federal control often worked to the benefit of indigenous groups such as the Navajos as they took advantage of the new areas of freedom resulting from the power transfer. In Mexico, the postwar years saw the inauguration of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (National Indigenous Institute) in 1948, which worked to integrate anthropological insights into the indigenous problem, bilingual education, and the work of other government agencies to promote indigenous development. The Civil Rights era spawned the policy of self-determination after 1961. The premise of self-determination is that Indigenous Nations are basic governmental units and that Indigenous Nations possess certain sovereign powers to exercise government, enter into agreements, and develop and protect natural resources. The American Indian Movement, the most important civil rights organization in the Red Power Movement, caused conflicts with many nonindigenous people in its fight to reclaim many Native American lands and natural resources; the Papagos (Tohono O’odham) won a $26 million settlement with the federal government for past land and mineral claims. Borderlands peoples have harnessed the principles of self-determination to promote the preservation of their cultural heritage, bilingualism, and local control of schools. In Mexico today, indigenous groups have the right to self-government based on usos y costumbres (uses and customs); theoretically usos y costumbres are based on precolonial cultural and legal norms. In 2001, however, the Mexican Congress passed a watered-down version of the San Andres Accord on Indigenous Rights and Culture that has been overwhelmingly opposed by indigenous organizations. Many indigenous groups believe that passage of the original version would have been an essential step in enabling them to strengthen their local communities, reaffirm their cultures through control over local education, and gain a political voice. See also Anthropology; Atzlan; Juan Bautista de Anza; Manifest Destiny; Missions; Music; Juan de O~ nate; Seven Cities of Cibola. FURTHER READINGS: Bowen Hatfield, Shelley, Chasing Shadows: Apaches and Yaquis Along the United States-Mexico Border, 1876–1911. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998; DeLay, Brian, ‘‘Independent Indians and the U.S.–Mexican War.’’ American Historical Review 112, no. 1 (February 2007); Felger, Richard Stephen, and Broyles, Bill eds. Dry Borders: Great Natural Reserves of the Sonoran Desert. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2007; Ortiz, Alfonso, ed. Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest, Vol. 10. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1983; Resendez, Andres. Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Sheridan, Thomas E. Landscapes of Fraud: Mission Tumacacori, the Baca Float, and the Betrayal of the O’odham. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006.
Andrae M. Marak Nepomuceno Cortina, Juan (1824–94). Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, born in Camargo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, is best understood as a folk hero/villain of the border.
186
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) He was affectionately known as Cheno and unsympathetically as the Red Robber of the Rio Grande. Ranching near Brownsville/Matamoras on a large tract that his mother inherited, Cortina was a South Texas Democratic Party boss often in conflict with powerful Brownsville judges and lawyers. During the U.S.–Mexican War, Cortina commanded a Mexican cavalry regiment in opposition to U.S. General Zachary Taylor. This and Cortina’s protection of Tejanos against the dominant Anglos made him a popular local hero. Cortina also led Tejanos during the Cortina Wars. The first Cortina War (1859) began when Cortina shot U.S. Marshall Shears of Brownsville for his maltreatment of a Tejano. Within weeks, Cortina raided Brownsville with a forty- to eighty-man posse and occupied the town for days. Cortina issued his ‘‘Proclamation’’ asserting the rights of Tejanos. Opposed by the Texas Rangers led by Captain ‘‘Rip’’ Ford and the U.S. Army under Major Samuel Heintzelman at Fort Brown, Cortina retreated to Rio Grande City and was defeated. During the second Cortina War (1861), Cortina allied with the United States. Cortina invaded Zapata County but was defeated by the Confederate Army. Cortina was later appointed military commander by Mexican President Benito Juarez and defeated the French at Tampico. Cortina was present at the execution of the ill-fated emperor Maximilian. He died in Atzcapozalco, Mexico. See also Texas Revolution. FURTHER READINGS: Acu~ na, Rodolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 2nd edition. New York: Harper and Row, 1981; Dobie, J. Frank. A Vaquero of the Brush Country. 3rd edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1943; Handbook of Texas Online. ‘‘Juan Nepomuceno Cortina.’’ November 2006. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/CC/ fco73.html; Los Caminos del Rıo Heritage Project. A Shared Experience: The History, Architecture and Historical Designations of the Lower Rio Grande Heritage Corridor. 2nd edition. Austin: The Texas Historical Commission, 1994; Thompson, Jerry D., ed. Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier 1859–1877. Southwestern Studies No. 99. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1994.
Richard W. Griffin North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush, Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on December 17, 1992. With the precedent set by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) a decade earlier, the North American partners sought to further connect their nations’ economies through a bold initiative that reduced government controls, eliminated duties on the majority of tariffs, and fostered overall economic integration and cooperation. Unlike the European Union, however, NAFTA did not create a set of supranational governmental bodies to facilitate commerce nor did it create a body of law superior to national law. Instead NAFTA is a treaty regulated under international law. With the agreement institutionalized by 1994, the NAFTA signatories ushered in a new phase of regional economic development, particularly for Mexico, which had now been drawn into an economic pact with the United States and Canada who had had an agreement since 1989. In essence, NAFTA established a framework to facilitate and regulate future commerce and financial flows within North America. NAFTA serves to illustrate a larger trend under globalization in which global capital has sought new localities of cheap labor and contributed to the
187
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) internationalization of production in which manufacturing and assembly takes place in the Global South, whereas profits and consumption of finished goods are often reverted to the homes of capital investment. Embodied in maquiladora processing, this development strategy centers on the notion that multinational corporations are lured to locations of cheap labor with added incentives of tax breaks and lax labor and environmental regulation, while receiving nations gain and the benefits of financial investment and increased employment opportunities. The passage of NAFTA has met both a welcomed reception as well as fierce criticism. Proponents of free trade argue that NAFTA has made North America more competitive in the face of growing financial strength of other regional economies in Europe and Asia as well as opened opportunities for employment and investment in financially strapped regions of the three participating nations, especially Mexico. Commercial flows across the U.S.–Canada and U.S.–Mexico borders have increased widely, indicating that these measures have made all partnering economies more robust. In 2000, trade and investment between Canada and the United States reached US$411 billion and between Mexico and the United States US$263 billion, making Canada and Mexico the United States’ first and second leading trade partners, respectively. Proponents of NAFTA argue that the trilateral free trade agreement has been a commercial and investment success, pushing some to advocate for the creation of a North American Community to reduce border congestion and transaction costs and further broaden the terms of economic cooperation. Opponents argue that NAFTA has served to benefit global capital at the expense of environmental protection while displacing local labor and eroding hard-won labor and health protections for workers in the three-member nation-states. Of particular concern has been the impact that NAFTA has had on the agricultural sector in Mexico, where local farmers have been unable to compete with large agribusiness and have been subsequently displaced as the ejido sectors or traditional small-scale farms have been taken over. Under NAFTA, U.S. agribusiness sells corn to Mexico at reduced prices with devastating effects for local corn farmers. In essence, a leading criticism of NAFTA is that development has been asymmetrical with greater benefits to the United States over Mexico, reinforcing the notion that the free trade model has fostered uneven and unequal development outcomes. In the past, Mexico’s export operations were almost entirely concentrated at the northern border and major interior cities. Today, most of the thirty-one Mexican states, including rural states, participate in international trade. Canadian provinces have also dramatically expanded their exports bound for the United States as well as exports from individual U.S. states bound for Canada and Mexico. Arguably many of the new streams of migrants from Mexico in the post-NAFTA era are displaced farmers who have been uprooted as a result of massive restructuring in agriculture and other industry. The increased flows of migrants to the United States from Mexico have also resulted from the very infrastructure created by NAFTA, that is, rail lines, truck routes, and superhighways, which facilitate the movement of goods, commodities, and capital. Many new ports of entry at the U.S.–Mexico border have been established as well, bringing the number to 50. At the U.S.–Mexico border, a resulting strategy to manage the unintended consequences of free trade under globalization, namely undocumented labor, has been the expansion of a militarized approach to securing the border.
188
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) The militarization of the border has resulted in increased surveillance technologies, border fencing, and an exponential increase in Border Patrol personnel and funding to quell and manage the movement of people northward. In some respects, such border control policies have created a tightened balloon effect in which pressure is placed on one end only to balloon out in another area. This has lead some border scholars to argue that border control has served a greater politically symbolic measure to control entry than it has effectively deterred the movement of people across the border. In this sense, border enforcement has redirected rather than reduced the flow of unauthorized migrants. Under NAFTA, the border has become not only more porous and blurred to accommodate commercial and business interests but also increasingly demarcated and fortified through border enforcement and measures to control labor. Now, more than a decade and a half since its passage, NAFTA has become a mainstay of the economies of the region. Much of the discussion today is not whether NAFTA can continue to be a viable plan for economic development but rather how regional integration can evolve to better meet the needs of the three partner states. A significant issue to emerge is the extent to which NAFTA may be able to accommodate the free movement of labor across international borders, particularly from Mexico toward nations to the north. In a bold vision proposed by Mexican President Vicente Fox in early September 2001, a case was made for open borders under what was being called NAFTA-Plus or the North American Community. This proposal, which initially received a warm reception by the George W. Bush administration, was derailed following the September 11 terrorist attacks. The issue being addressed was the contradiction in having a plan of economic integration while adopting policies of labor exclusion and separation. The notion first advanced by President Vicente Fox has again resurfaced with proposals for more responsible social investment in economic development in Mexico to assuage Mexican migration. In other words, rather than reinstituting a guest-worker program much like the Bracero Program a half century ago, it might be wiser to focus on infrastructural investment that is more likely to foster Mexico’s socioeconomic development and hence its competitive position in relation to its partner states. Looking to the European Union as a model, the goal is to incrementally create more uniform economic development for the region to attenuate labor migrations. To do so will require a more vigorous effort to uplift depressed sectors in Mexico. Interestingly, efforts driven by migrants themselves through remittances, hometown association funding, and government matching grant incentives are part of these new development strategies. Under a climate of national and regional security resulting from events following September 11, there is much discussion as first initiated by President Vicente Fox, to broaden the terms of NAFTA to move beyond issues of economic integration and to embrace issues of continental security reflecting mutual security concerns. Canadian and U.S. governments have tightened cooperation among their respective law enforcement agencies. Mexico has taken the position that continental security offers a window of opportunity to make NAFTA something more than a trade agreement to broaden the parameters to make agreements more trilateral. Political forces in the three partner nations view strengthened trilateral relations with both optimism and trepidation. The United States, Canada, and Mexico already evidence well-advanced continental integration much of which was jump-started by the NAFTA process. To what extent this will translate into a further integrated North American Community
189
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with equal partnership for Mexico with possibilities for advancing interregional labor mobility remains unknown. See also Labor Unions; Legal Issues; Policy. FURTHER READINGS: Andreas, Peter, and Biersteker, Thomas. The Rebordering of North America. New York: Routledge, 2003; Massey, Douglas, Durand, Jorge, and Malone, Nolan. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Integration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2002; Miller, Mark, and Stefanova, Boyka. ‘‘NAFTA and the European Referent: Labor Mobility in European and North American Regional Integration.’’ In Anthony Messina and Gallya Lahav, eds. The Migration Reader: Exploring Politics and Policies. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006.
Linda Allegro
190
D
Oil Companies. Oil companies, producing, refining, and selling petroleum products, have had a significant influence on the history of the borderlands region. Petroleum production in the borderlands has occurred mostly in the Gulf of Mexico basin. Since the late-nineteenth century, the Gulf basin has produced, more than an estimated trillion barrels of oil. The Gulf of Mexico continues to be the primary source of domestic oil and natural gas production for the United States and Mexico. Before the mid-nineteenth century people on the Gulf Coast used petroleum deposits called chapopotes naturally exuded on the surface for, among other things, waterproofing boats and canoes. Demand for petroleum products increased in the second half of the nineteenth century with industrialization, the expansion of railroad networks, and the spread of kerosene use for lighting and fuel. In the nineteenth century, the few local drilling and refining operations in the borderlands were handicapped from meeting this rising demand for oil products by a lack of expertise, shortage of investment capital, and isolation from urban markets. The liberalization of Mexico’s economy during the presidency of Porfirio Dıaz gave U.S. and European oil companies access to the Mexican market for the first time. Foreign oil companies supplied capital, managerial skills, and technical expertise, which they combined with Mexican labor, to develop large-scale production, refining, and distribution operations in the so-called Golden Lane in the states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz. By 1938, hundreds of large and small oil companies operated in Mexico’s borderlands and along the Gulf Coast. Three oil companies are of particular importance: the Waters-Pierce Oil Company of St. Louis, Missouri; the Mexican Petroleum Company of Los Angeles, California; and the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company of London, England. The first foreign oil companies in Mexico sold, rather than produced or refined, petroleum products. From 1878 to 1908, the Waters-Pierce Company was the most important oil vendor in the south-central United States and Mexico. Waters-Pierce was owned and operated by the American industrialist Henry Clay Pierce, and was part of John J. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. Waters-Pierce never drilled or produced an oil well; the company functioned solely as a refiner and distributor of oil produced by Standard Oil in Pennsylvania and transported by railroad to Waters-Pierce refineries in Mexico City, Monterey, and Tampico. For thirty years,
191
O
Oil Companies Waters-Pierce held a virtual monopoly on the sale of petroleum products in the borderlands market. This monopoly came to an end after the discovery and development of oil fields in the south-central United States and on Mexico’s Gulf Coast. The 1901 Spindletop strike in southeast Texas and the subsequent creation of the Gulf Oil Company and Texas Oil Company undermined Waters-Pierce dominance in the southwestern United States. In Mexico, Waters-Pierce was marginalized by the decision of President Porfirio Dıaz, who was wary of the Standard Oil monopoly, to promote competition in Mexico’s oil sector by granting lucrative concessions to Waters-Pierce’s competitors and by imposing higher duties on petroleum imported to Mexico. Waters-Pierce’s ultimate demise came after 1911 with the fatal disruption of Mexico’s internal oil market by the Mexican Revolution. Significant domestic oil production in Mexico did not begin until after 1901. That year, the Mexican Petroleum Company, owned and operated by Edward L. Doheny, developed Mexico’s first oil field at El Ebano in Tamaulipas. Doheny had success with oil fields in Los Angeles, California, before migrating to Mexico to exploit surface oil deposits along railroad right-of-ways in the 1890s. Under the terms of the 1884 and 1892 Mining Reform Laws, Doheny accumulated mineral rights in the Huasteca region of Tamaulipas and in the famed Golden Lane west of Tuxpan in Veracruz. In 1903, Doheny incorporated in the United States four wholly owned subsidiaries of the Mexican Petroleum Company: the Huasteca, Tamiahua, and Tuxpan Oil Companies to manage oil properties in Tamaulipas and Veracruz, and the Pan American Transport Company to control export operations. The oil produced by Doheny, however, was too viscous for most domestic and commercial uses. It was good mainly for asphalt paving, a fact that led Doheny to establish Mexico’s largest asphalt paving company in Mexico City. This changed after the Mexican Petroleum Company made large strikes of light crude oil at Tuxpan in 1905 and at Casiano in 1910. In 1911, Doheny made a deal with Standard Oil, which by then had ended its relationship with Waters-Pierce, to export Mexican oil to the United States. This event signified a dramatic shift of Mexico’s place in the global oil market. For the first time after 1911 Mexico became a net exporter of oil. By far, the largest and most important oil company to operate in Mexico before 1938 was Sir Weetman D. Pearson’s Mexican Eagle Oil Company. Weetman Pearson was a wealthy entrepreneur, a member of the English Parliament, and founder of the Pearson media group. In 1910, Pearson was conferred a peerage with the title Lord Cowdray. During his life, however, Pearson’s main interest was the engineering and construction firm founded by his grandfather in 1844, S. Pearson and Sons, Ltd. The Pearson firm was renown for its expertise at large civil engineering projects. It was responsible for the construction of docks, harbors, dams, tunnels, railroads, and electrical plants around the globe. In Mexico, the Pearson firm engineered the drainage of Mexico City and constructed the harbor and docks at Veracruz. In 1898, Porfirio Dıaz asked Pearson to complete construction of the beleaguered Tehuantepec National Railway. During construction, surface oil deposits were discovered along the route of the railroad. Inspired by the Spindletop strike in Texas, Pearson began acquiring options on land for future oil development along the Gulf Coast from Veracruz to Tabasco, Chiapas, and Campeche. In 1906, Dıaz granted Pearson a fifty-year government concession to exploit oil resources on all national lands and waterways in the state of Veracruz. In 1908, Pearson’s drilling crews made large strikes at San Diego and Dos Bocas. The Dos Bocas well caught fire and burned for two months,
192
Oil Companies consuming 100,000 barrels a day in flames. In December 1910, Pearson made a giant oil discovery at the Hacienda Potrero del Llano near Tuxpan. There Pearson’s crew brought in the world’s largest well, the Potrero No. 4, which ultimately produced 90 million barrels of oil. Oil produced in Pearson’s Tuxpan oil fields was sent by pipeline to Tampico where it was refined and made ready for export to the United Kingdom and Europe. Pearson’s main advantage over his rivals in Mexico was the personal and business relationship he maintained with Porfirio Dıaz. Dıaz favored Pearson for his cultivated style, international expertise, and access to London capital. Diaz found it useful to use Pearson as a hedge against the encroachments of U.S. companies, particularly Standard Oil. In 1909, at Dıaz’s behest, Pearson incorporated the Compa~ nıa Mexicana de Petroleo ‘‘El Aguila,’’ S.A. to manage oil interests north of Veracruz. Several prominent Mexicans sat on the board of directors, including Guillermo Landa y Escandon, governor of the Federal District; Enrique Creel, governor of Chihuahua; Pablo Macedo, chairman of the National Railways of Mexico; Fernando Pimentel y Fagoaga, president of the Central Bank; and Porfirio Dıaz Jr., the president’s son. The Mexican Eagle Oil Company benefited from preferential government policies. These included increased duties on oil imported by Pearson’s competitors and a contract to supply one-third of the National Railways’ lubricating oil. After 1909, Dıaz preferential treatment allowed Pearson to defeat Waters-Pierce in the ‘‘Great Mexican Oil War,’’ which caused the simultaneous decrease of oil prices and increase of oil consumption in Mexico. In 1919, Pearson sold management control of the Mexican Eagle Oil Company to Royal Dutch Shell. The massive Poza Rica strike in 1932 sustained Mexican Eagle until Mexico’s oil industry was nationalized in 1938. During its existence, the Mexican Eagle Oil Company was generally less intransigent and more responsive to the demands of workers and the state than its American counterparts. The years between 1911 and 1921 marked a period of dramatic expansion and profitability for oil companies in Mexico. Mexican oil production increased from 3.6 million barrels of oil in 1910 to 12.6 million barrels of oil in 1912 to 200 million barrels of oil in 1921. Although revolutionary conflict consumed Mexico’s interior, oil exporters thrived as commodity prices and foreign demand rose steadily through the decade. Other companies organized operations in Mexico. Shell organized the La Corona Oil Company, Standard Oil purchased the Transcontinental Oil Company, Sinclair bought out Waters-Pierce, and the Gulf and Texas Oil Companies expanded operations south of the border. Both production and the price of oil peaked in 1921, and thereafter fell precipitously. The following seventeen years were marked by conflict between foreign oil companies and successive Mexican governments, which sought to exercise greater control over the Mexican oil industry in accordance with provisions of the 1917 Mexican Constitution that nationalized surface hydrocarbon deposits. The Petroleum Law of 1925 required oil companies to convert private holdings into government concessions to receive new drilling permits. The 1927 CallesMorrow agreement between the United States and Mexico sanctioned the doctrine of ‘‘positive acts,’’ which meant that oil companies relinquished property rights to pre1917 oil leases, to which they had made no improvements. During the 1920s, foreign oil companies began disinvesting from Mexico. After 1930, foreign oil companies in Mexico were marginalized on the international market as increased production in the United States, Venezuela, and the Middle East came online. A combination of declining production, growing concern about
193
Operations the export economy, and political circumstances caused the nationalization of Mexico’s oil industry in March 1938. President Lazaro Cardenas established Petr oleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) to administer the nationalized properties. The nationalization of the oil industry was highly popular in Mexico, even though PEMEX developed a reputation for corruption, inefficiency, and politicized decision making. PEMEX became a critical component of Mexico’s corporate state committed to producing oil to meet domestic needs. The government determined the price of oil products and wages paid to workers. During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, PEMEX played an important role in financing the government through its tax payments and providing cheap oil at subsidized prices. Oil production in Mexico declined throughout this period. In 1966, Mexico abandoned the export of crude oil, and by 1971, it became a net importer of oil. Large oil discoveries in southeast Mexico and offshore in the mid-1970s brought new life to Mexico’s oil industry and substantial revenues to the state. The decline of oil prices in the mid-1980s combined with the mismanagement of oil revenues by the Mexican government, however, contributed to a major financial crisis in Mexico in the 1980s. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 gave U.S. and Canadian oil companies greater access to the Mexican market. For the foreseeable future, PEMEX will continue to be the dominant producer, refiner, and vendor of petroleum products in Mexico. See also Mining. FURTHER READINGS: Ansell, Martin R. Oil Baron of the Southwest: Edward L. Doheny and the Development of the Petroleum Industry in California and Mexico. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998; Brown, Jonathan C. ‘‘Domestic Politics and Foreign Investment: British Development of Mexican Petroleum.’’ The Business History Review 61, no. 3 (1987): 387–416; Brown, Jonathan C. Oil and Revolution in Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; Brown, Jonathan C., and Knight, Alan. The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992; Meyer, Lorenzo. Mexico and the United States in the Oil Controversy, 1917–1942. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.
Sam Stalcup Operations. The term ‘‘operations’’ here refers to concentrated law enforcement campaigns against stigmatized groups (migrants or populations of minority ethnonational background) and proscribed goods. An older set of operations involve coercive sweeps of targeted populations in interior sites, including residences, workplaces, businesses, and roads, and their expulsion from the national territory. A more recent set of operations involves amassing law enforcement directly along the boundary to prevent the entry of people or goods or to displace them to some other place along the border. Operations are significant at three levels: their tactics and effects; their uses and limitations as policies; and their broader causes and consequences as symbolically and physically coercive forms of societal action. In the 1930s, between 500,000 and 1 million people of Mexican origin left the United States for Mexico. Despite the label ‘‘repatriation,’’ implying that people were returning to their natural home country, this movement included many U.S. citizens and legal residents. People of Mexican origin were treated as indelibly Mexican and never permanently part of the U.S. community, a notion of Mexicans as quintessential temporary outsiders that persists, in tempered ways, to the present. The repatriation occurred throughout the U.S. interior, partly voluntarily but mostly through
194
Operations threats and imposed incentives. Officials of various sorts, mostly local and state (with some federal connivance) pressured people to leave, while employers and communities gave small sums of money for transportation to Mexico, with the threat of expulsion in the background. Chinese in Mexico (particularly in Sonora and Sinaloa) were subject to a similar, though smaller, expulsion in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1954, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) carried out Operation Wetback, a centralized sweep of worksites, residential areas, and roads, targeting undocumented Mexican immigrants. The INS claimed more than 1 million arrests, although recent research has put this in doubt. U.S. citizens and legal residents were among those arrested in sweeps of Mexican communities. This mass operation marked a transition from state-employer conflict to state-employer consensus around a strengthened Bracero Program. The last time massive immigration law enforcement operations targeted interior areas of the United States was in 1954; since then, large operations have focused on the border. There are still smaller-scale workplace and community sweeps, however. The end of massive sweeps may indicate the ability of U.S. immigrant and postimmigrant communities to resist persecution in the interior. Nevertheless, with a resident undocumented population of 10.5 to 12 million people and a moral panic about immigrants stewing, mass interior expulsions remain a threat. Frontal border enforcement operations began in late 1993 and have continued to the present. These operations involve the placement of Border Patrol officers in fixed or relatively fixed positions right at the edge of the border, as well as the installation of iron walls, stadium lighting, and low-altitude helicopter flights. These tactics differed from the main previous tactic, which had been to allow undocumented entrants to slip into the United States for sufficient distance that they could be trapped and arrested, unable to run back to Mexico. Frontal operations visibly and physically deter undocumented crossers; however, they are so resource intensive that they can apply only to relatively short segments of the border, at main border cities, and in the immediately surrounding areas. Before the frontal operations, such places had been the main crossing corridors. With the main corridors closed, core migrant flows shifted around their sides, into the rugged mountains and deserts, rather than being deterred from crossing. Operation Blockade, later renamed Hold-the-Line, came first. Launched by Sector Chief Silvestre Reyes in late 1993, the tactic of moving patrol officers right next to the boundary responded to a class action law suit and other local criticism of the Border Patrol for pursuing and arresting people in the streets and school grounds of El Paso. Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego County, California, came next in 1994 as a visible federal response to politicians in California who scape-goated Mexican migrants for that state’s post–Cold War economic slump. Operation Safeguard in Arizona followed the displacement of migrants to this desert state from the previous two primary corridors, El Paso and San Diego County. In this long and remote section of the border, the Border Patrol applied walls and frontal policing only to the towns and outskirts of Nogales and Douglas, while the more remote desert became the focus of migrant crossings. Finally, in 1997, Operation Rio Grande applied frontal enforcement tactics to south Texas, but again only along short (usually urban) segments of a much longer and still partly open boundary. These operations did not stop the main flow of undocumented migration from the interior of Mexico to the interior of the United States, their ostensible policy aim.
195
Operations Rather, migrant flows shifted along the border, in particular moving to rural Arizona and New Mexico. They did deter minor flows, such as local illegal border visitors (shoppers, kids on a lark), however. Two negative consequences ensued. First, deaths and injuries increased substantially, because migrants went through more dangerous and more remote crossing areas. Frontal enforcement operations have caused at least 100 additional border-crossing deaths annually, compared with previous tactics, and border-crossing deaths are now reaching more than 400 a year. Second, smuggling fees have likely increased by two to four times, although scholars do not fully agree on this matter. Increased costs of smuggling, in turn, raise the level of debt and exploitation of migrants. Given that these tactics do not solve the core issue of undocumented immigration, why they emerged and continued and grown have been subjects of scholarly inquiry. It has been argued that frontal operations are visible, symbolic performances of national territorial identity that comes from the intersection of two processes: the long-term development of a rigid U.S. spatial identity intersecting with its opposite, increasing spatial fluidity under conditions of globalization. The increase of drug law enforcement at the border since the 1980s involves a long sequence of frontal policing operations that parallel and combine with the immigration operations described above. In 1969, notably, the U.S. government imposed meticulous inspections at ports of entry (Operation Intercept), ostensibly to interdict smuggled drugs but in reality to pressure the Mexican government about broader drug control policies. It was highly disruptive and short-lived, but demonstrated the use of border tightening as a tool of foreign policy. Post–September 11 meticulous inspections had a similar effect on the Mexican and Canadian borders, during an unfocused panic immediately after a horrific act of foreign-based terrorism unrelated to land borders. See also Immigration Legislation; Militarization. FURTHER READINGS: Andreas, Peter. Border Games: Policing the U.S.–Mexico Divide. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001; Balderrama, Francisco E., and Rodrıguez, Raymond. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995; Calavita, Kitty. Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. New York: Routledge, 1992; Craig, Richard B. ‘‘Operation Intercept: The International Politics of Pressure.’’ Review of Politics 42 (1980): 556–80; Dunn, Timothy J., and Palafox, Jose. ‘‘Militarization of the Border.’’ In Suzanne and Deena J. Gonzalez, eds. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, Vol. 3, 150–55. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005; Eshbach, Karl, Hagen, Jacqueline M., Rodrıguez, Nestor P., Hernandez-Le on, Ruben, and Bailey, Stanley. ‘‘Death at the Border.’’ International Migration Review 33 (1999): 430–40; Eshbach, Karl, Hagen, Jacqueline M., and Rodrıguez, Nestor P. ‘‘Deaths During Undocumented Migration: Trends and Policy Implications in the New Era of Homeland Security.’’ In Defense of the Alien 26 (2003): 37–52; Garcıa, Juan Ram on. Operation Wetback: the Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980; Hoffman, Abraham. Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929– 1939. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974; Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. ‘‘Racism and AntiChinese Persecution in Mexico.’’ Amerasia Journal 9, no. 2 (1982): 1–28; Lytle Hernandez, Kathleen Anne. ‘‘Entangling Bodies and Borders: Racial Profiling and the U.S. Border Patrol, 1924–1955.’’ Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of History, UCLA, 2002; Nevins, Joseph. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the ‘‘Illegal Alien’’ and the Making of the U.S.–Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge, 2002; Renique, Gerardo. ‘‘Anti-Chinese Racism, Nationalism and State Formation in Post-Revolutionary Mexico.’’ Political Power and Social Theory 14 (2001): 89–137;
196
Organizations and Governmental Agencies Spener, David. ‘‘The Logic and Contradictions of Intensified Border Enforcement in Texas.’’ In Peter Andreas and Timothy Snyder, eds. The Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe, 115–38. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
Josiah Heyman Organizations and Governmental Agencies. Government agencies of Mexico and the United States crucially shape the border. Many activities along the border respond to the laws, regulations, and bureaucratic practices of these organizations. At a deeper level, much of the border’s population lives in the region precisely because they work for government agencies or engage in activities that respond to official rules and regulations, whether by smuggling, official commerce, or something in between. In turn, this nexus of interaction with government agencies flavors the social and cultural patterns of borderlanders. There is little empirical and analytical research on Mexican or U.S. government agencies, with the exception of the U.S. Border Patrol and its parent agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which in 2003 was broken up and dispersed into the Department of Homeland Security. The Mexican Comite Internacional de Limites y Aguas and the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission are paired organizations that maintain the exact boundary between the two countries and regulate the allocation of water between them. They operate at a diplomatic level and tend toward a technocratic, engineering approach to border issues. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) created two small but interesting organizations, in English named the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission and the North American Development Bank, that are not national agencies but genuinely binational entities. They plan and fund projects for amelioration of environmental problems of the border, such as water supply, waste water, and solid waste. Their approach includes economic and engineering analysis, but also a commitment to public participation, and their experience shows some of the challenges of creating a public sphere that crosses the international boundary. There are also modest public health agencies in the two nations that coordinate over infectious diseases. The government agencies on the Mexican side are almost entirely unstudied except for journalistic accounts and discussions of wider public policy issues. Mexican Customs has a crucial role in shaping the border, as a significant economic sector is fayuca, smuggling of consumer goods into Mexico, bypassing restrictive import licenses (and in the past, heavy customs duties). Mexican border cities have had tariff-free status, in varying ways and at varying periods, and hence there is a second customs border some distance to the interior of the international boundary. Mexican Immigration also operates at this interior border and at Mexico’s airports and borders with Guatemala and Belize. Mexican police agencies and its military have become border-regulating organizations due to Mexico’s contradictory role in U.S.–driven drug demand and the latter nation’s ‘‘drug war.’’ Drug and immigration flows, which of course are not at all identical phenomena, sustain an enormous infrastructure of state agencies on the U.S. side. These include local contingents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency, a cross-agency intelligence center (El Paso Intelligence Center), a military
197
Organizations and Governmental Agencies border-policing coordinating center (Joint Task Force North), other military units, federal attorneys and federal courts, the Bureau of Prisons, and large segments of the former Bureau of Customs Agency and INS now in Homeland Security. These federal agencies interlock with state and local police forces and attorneys, through combined operations, asset sharing, and interconnected laws and prison systems. Again, little is known about this important set of organizations, which wield huge budgets and command vast coercive powers. There is, however, recent work on bureaucratic conflicts over programs and turf, work that also identifies different orientations between agencies in how they envision and practice border control. An important theme in this literature is the blurring of lines between terrorism, drug, and immigration law enforcement, which helps to justify the rapid escalation of state power along the border. Labor and family migration and drug trafficking have been ‘‘securitized,’’ that is, envisioned and handled as if they were ultimate threats to the existence of the United States (‘‘national security’’ issues akin to weapons of mass destruction), a questionable interpretation of these phenomena. The IMS (since 2003, Homeland Security) has received the vast majority of the serious research and analysis done on border agencies. The Immigration Service dates to 1904 at the border, when immigration inspectors were placed at and between ports of entry to intercept Chinese (U.S. laws at that time focused on Chinese as the dangerous nationality). In the 1910s and 1920s, added immigration laws gradually shifted inspectors toward applying health examinations, literacy tests, and head taxes to Mexican crossers. The Border Patrol, which enforces laws against unauthorized entry in between ports, was founded in 1924. Again, it initially focused on Chinese, but by 1929 had shifted to Mexican entrants. The early Border Patrol often used informal punishment and worked closely with local farmers to open and close the cross-border labor supply. By the 1940s, however, a relatively more formal model of policing emerged, with arrests (but then, informal voluntary departure rather than deportation in most cases) and a sometimes-collaborative, sometimes-conflictive relationship with regional employers and political powerholders. This culminated in a major bureaucratic-political crisis and reconfiguration of the Mexican labor supply in the Bracero Program in 1954. Through these decades, two key processes occurred. First, the figure of the ‘‘illegal alien’’ became firmly associated with the Mexican people (often unfairly), a process termed racialization. Second, the Border Patrol and the INS as a whole fell into a political niche in which it enforced immigration laws, usually near the border, against powerless Mexican migrants but not against powerful interior employers who had proven capable of negating the law and punishing the agency. The everyday work culture of immigration officers emerged through these historical processes, and has endured into the 1990s and 2000s. In the late 1970s through the 1990s, a significant deracialization of the INS occurred, in which officers of Mexican origin, many from the borderlands, came to occupy many management and rank-and-file positions, so that it was no longer a matter of Anglos enforcing laws against Mexicans as such. The distinction of citizenship, U.S. insiders versus U.S. outsiders, increased in importance. However, outside the agency, in the U.S. political imagination, illegal aliens were still clearly racialized as Mexicans. Anthropologist Josiah Heyman has provided a series of ethnographic articles on officer work culture and sociologist Robert Lee Maril has written a book-length ethnography specifically about the Border Patrol. They explore, in the details of everyday work, how a covert
198
Organizations and Governmental Agencies policy of labor migration is reconciled with a framework of intensive, visible policing that symbolizes the border to the rest of the nation. Hence, they delved into the experiences of working officers, including how they handle the inherent contradiction of their work, trying to stop unauthorized migration in a nation that sucks up covert labor. In 2003, in the aftermath of the September 11 attack, a number of agencies previously under different U.S. cabinet departments were consolidated into the Department of Homeland Security. The INS and the Customs Service were broken apart and rearranged. INS, Customs, and Agricultural Service inspectors at ports of entry (in many ways, the central institutional manifestation of the border) were consolidated into Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP also swallowed whole the Border Patrol, although that entity retained its unity and continuity with the past. Customs enforcement units, which were quite large (for example, a significant air force) and INS Investigations were combined into Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which enforces goods smuggling and immigration laws in the U.S. interior, including its outer boundary. INS Examinations, which handled immigration and naturalization applications (and some other legal migration paperwork) was converted into Citizenship and Immigration Services. In the new agencies, there is a considerable ‘‘ghost’’ presence of the older bureaucracies, but in general, the Department of Homeland Security has become a unified arm of central state control over U.S. borders. Many issues have only been initially broached in the existing literature, or remain altogether to be explored on the border. There is much more to be investigated on the pervasive presence of state surveillance and coercion on the border, amid a world of hidden people and transactions. In-depth, empirically robust symbolic analysis of state performances at the border are only beginning, and the real effects of symbolic actions, such as migrant deaths along the border, are ripe for tracking. The extent to which particular state policies and agencies are imposed from the national capitals in Mexico and the United States, as well as the local capture of the central state by the borderlanders, is unknown. There is little information on central state employees as key social strata in the local border society, and analysis of state workers that addresses race, class, gender, and citizenship would be helpful. Corruption and subversion of the state are of immense importance on both sides, but serious analysis has barely started. See also Immigration Legislation; Militarization. FURTHER READINGS: Andreas, Peter. Border Games: Policing the U.S.–Mexico Divide. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001; Calavita, Kitty. Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. New York: Routledge, 1992; McC. Heyman, Josiah. ‘‘Putting Power into the Anthropology of Bureaucracy: The Immigration and Naturalization Service at the MexicoUnited States Border.’’ Current Anthropology 36 (1995): 261–87; McC. Heyman, Josiah. ‘‘Respect for Outsiders? Respect for the Law? The Moral Evaluation of High-Scale Issues by US Immigration Officers.’’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 6 (2000): 635–52; McC. Heyman, Josiah. ‘‘Class and Classification on the U.S.–Mexico Border.’’ Human Organization 60 (2001): 128–40; McC. Heyman, Josiah. ‘‘U.S. Immigration Officers of Mexican Ancestry as Mexican Americans, Citizens, and Immigration Police.’’ Current Anthropology 43 (2002): 479–507; Maril, Robert Lee. Patrolling Chaos: The U.S. Border Patrol in Deep South Texas. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004; Payan, Tony. Cops, Soldiers, and Diplomats: Explaining Agency Behavior in the War on Drugs. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.
Josiah Heyman
199
P
v
Paredes Manzano, Americo (1915–99). Americo Paredes Manzano was one of the foremost scholars of southwestern culture. He was born in Brownsville, Texas, in 1915 to Justo Paredes and Clotilde Manzano-Vidal. His father came from a long line of ranchers and allegedly rode with border rebel Catarino Garza. His mother’s family had migrated to the borderlands from Spain in the mid-nineteenth century. Paredes grew up hearing firsthand the music and stories of the borderlands. In high school, he began writing poetry and won a statewide poetry contest. Paredes then attended Brownsville Junior College in 1934. Shortly thereafter, he got a job writing and doing translations for the Brownsville Herald. In 1937, Paredes published his first book of poetry titled Cantos de adolescencia. After a brief marriage and a string of jobs, Americo joined the U.S. Army in 1944. After the war, he worked as a writer for a U.S. military publication in Tokyo and then the Red Cross. In Japan he met his future wife Amelia Nagamine. In 1950, Paredes returned to the United States and began coursework at the University of Texas in English and folklore studies. He received his doctorate in 1956 and took a job at Texas Western College (today the University of Texas at El Paso). Shortly thereafter, he accepted an offer to teach at the University of Texas at Austin. Paredes published his dissertation on the famous Ballad of Gregorio Cortez in 1958 and received much acclaim. With this work he articulated a new social and political interpretation of the Mexican ballad or corrido; one that saw the music and lyrics as part of a larger quest on the part of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Chicanos for opportunity, equality, and equal rights in an otherwise Anglo-dominated world. From early in his life, Paredes clearly understood the character and content of all borderlands expressive culture as revealing negotiations of ethnic struggle, class divisions, and identity politics. His pioneering writings on machismo further extended this approach into the realm of gender studies. In addition to many journal articles, other publications that established his reputation as a foremost scholar of borderlands culture include Folktales of Mexico (1970) and A Texas Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border, 1995. Over the years, Paredes has been widely recognized with a number of academic and other awards. He trained countless scholars and significantly developed the field of borderlands cultural studies.
200
Pico de Jes us IV, Pıo (1801–94) FURTHER READINGS: Barman, Richard, ed. Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993; Meier, Matt. ‘‘Biography of Americo Paredes.’’ http://www.lib.utexas.edu/benson/paredes/biography.html; Paredes, Americo. With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and its Hero. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958; Paredes, Americo. A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976; Paredes, Americo. Folktales of Mexico. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970; Paredes, Americo. George Washington Gomez: A Mexicotexan Novel. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1990; Pe~ na, Manuel. ‘‘Forward.’’ In Americo Paredes. A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border, xxv–xxxi. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976.
Andrew G. Wood Petr oleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company, Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), was established in 1938. Currently, it is one of Latin America’s largest oil and gas companies employing more than 130,000 people and reporting revenues of $86 billion in 2005. It specializes in the production, refining, and distribution of petroleum products, as well as the foreign exportation of fossil fuels. PEMEX is the sole supplier of all commercial gasoline stations in Mexico. On March 18, 1938, after a protracted strike by oil workers, President Lazaro Cardenas began the process of nationalizing the resources and facilities of all foreignowned companies in the oil and gas refining industry. This date is celebrated as the Expropiaci on Petrolera (oil expropriation) and is nationally recognized as a public holiday in Mexico. Although this precipitated widespread foreign opposition and complicated U.S.–Mexican relations throughout World War II, the increasing need for oil—both domestically and internationally—helped to substantiate PEMEX as a worldwide leader in the oil industry. However, PEMEX faces substantial financial restrictions, despite its international influence and dominance within Mexico’s economy. As a state-owned entity, PEMEX is obligated to subsidize the federal government’s budget routinely through high taxes and royalties. As a result, the company operates with substantial debt. Additionally, PEMEX has continually faced criticism of inefficiency and corruption. From a series of environmental disasters, including an explosion at one of its storage facilities in 1984 that killed more than 500 people, to several worker strikes and allegations of asset mismanagement, PEMEX is often cited as precipitating civil unrest and threatening Mexico with bankruptcy. See also Economy; Labor; Mining; Oil Companies. FURTHER READINGS: Ashby, Joe C. Organized Labor and the Mexican Revolution under Lazaro Cardenas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967; Jayne, Catherine E. Oil, War, and Anglo-American Relations: American and British Reactions to Mexico’s Expropriation of Foreign Oil Properties, 1937-1941. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000; PEMEX. http:/www.pemex.com.mx; Santiago, Myrna. The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
William Morgan Pico de Jes us IV, Pıo (1801–94). Primarily known as the last Mexican governor of Alta California, Pıo Pico de Jes us IV was an influential businessman and politician in the early history of California.
201
Plan de San Diego Born in San Gabriel in 1801 to parents of mixed heritage that included Mexican, African, Native American, and European ethnicities, Pico moved to San Diego in 1819 where he began his lifelong career as an entrepreneur. In 1821, Pico settled in Los Angeles as the proprietor of several businesses. Eventually recognized as one of the richest men in the northern region of Mexico, his economic success allowed him to purchase vast quantities of land and several buildings, including a three-story hotel, the Pico House, which still exists today as a Los Angeles State Historic Monument. In 1832, Pico began his political career as the Senior Vocal of the State Assembly and was a forceful opponent of Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado’s troubled government. As a result, Pico was imprisoned on several occaDon Pıo Pico, ca. 1897. (Courtesy of the Library sions. Pico became governor of Alta California in 1845 and subsequently relocated to the capiof Congress, LC-USZ62-85205.) tal to Los Angeles. Only a year later, Pico was forced to flee the city after American troops occupied the region during the U.S.– Mexican War. Pico eventually returned to Los Angeles to play a central role in the transition of the Mexican Alta California to American territory. Despite his achievements in business and land ownership, Pico’s life was often plagued by debt, and protracted bouts of drinking and gambling. He lived his final years in poverty and died in 1894. Pico’s legacy in California as a pivotal politician was established by the creation in 1927 of the Pıo Pico State Historic Park in Whittier, California. See also California Gold Rush; Californios. FURTHER READINGS: Gray, Paul Bryan. Forster vs. Pico: The Struggle for the Rancho Santa Margarita. Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1998; Pico, Pio. Don Pıo Pico’s Historical Narrative. Glendale, CA: A. H. Clark Co., 1973; Pıo Pico State Historic Park. http://www.piopico. org/.
William Morgan Plan de San Diego. The Plan de San Diego was a manifesto first published in January of 1915 that called for an uprising throughout the American Southwest by Mexican, black, and Japanese militias. A few months later, raids based from northern Mexico forced many white landowners to flee southern Texas. These raids provoked a massive response by the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers, who executed hundreds and perhaps thousands of Mexicans without trial. These raids were largely orchestrated by the regime of Mexico’s President Venustiano Carranza, who used the Plan and the guerrilla raids to pressure the American government into recognizing his regime. When the Plan first appeared on January 6, 1915, it called for an uprising to begin on February 20. The plan called for Mexicans, blacks, and Japanese to slaughter all white males over the age of 16 and declare the American Southwest independent.
202
Plan de San Diego This new nation would then cooperate with Mexico in seizing southern U.S. states to establish an independent black republic. The Plan de San Diego, named for a town in southern Texas, was not the first call for a Mexican uprising in the United States, but it was by far the most implacable. The authorship of the document is still disputed, although nine Mexican Americans were arrested and charged with sedition for signing it. Most historians agree that allies of the deposed Mexican President Victoriano Huerta drafted the Plan. Huerta was in exile in Texas and attempting to organize a counterrevolutionary army at the time. Most of the Plan’s adherents at this point were political radicals. American authorities launched an investigation to discover the Plan’s author, and they also prepared for the possibility of a widespread uprising. These preparations were relaxed when February 20 passed without incident. In July of 1915, forces loyal to Carranza seized the northeast of Mexico. The Carrancista faction quickly realized the Plan could be used to pressure the United States into recognizing Carranza’s government and providing aid. Support for the plan provided legitimacy to Carranza’s temporary alliance with anarchists and leftist radicals. Soon, raiding parties crossed the U.S. border and sabotaged railroads and telephone lines. Several white Americans were murdered by these guerrilla raiders. Tensions rose quickly along the border; the U.S. Army began sending troops to the area, while newspapers under Carrancista control drummed up support and volunteers for the raids. Officially, Carranza denied all involvement. As the Plan gained notoriety, the guerrilla movement broadened from its radical roots to embrace ex-soldiers, refugees fleeing the violence, and those who embraced the opportunity to seek vengeance or loot. As the raids continued, Carranza’s government struggled to maintain control over the growing violence. By mid-September, half of the U.S. Cavalry was concentrated in southern Texas. Despite this heavy military presence, Carrancista aid increased the numbers of the guerrillas. Carranza halted this escalation after a U.S. soldier was captured by his forces and killed in Mexico, since he was anxious to avoid all-out war. After a month of quiet passed, Carranza allowed the raids to resume. To end the crisis, the American government recognized Carranza’s regime as the legitimate government of Mexico. The cynical involvement of the Carrancista government caused intense suffering for thousands of Mexican Americans. After the raids began, the Texas Rangers launched a series of reprisal killings and extralegal executions. This persecutory campaign killed hundreds and perhaps thousands of Mexicans, against the less than 100 white Americans who died in violence inspired by the Plan de San Diego. Thousands of Mexican Americans fled southern Texas; this refugee movement reshaped the demographics of the region for generations, shifting control of southern Texas to whites. In Texas’ Cameron and Hidalgo Counties, seven thousand Mexicans fled to the south. This was approximately 40 percent of the area’s Mexican population. In the spring of 1916, thirty-four Mexican guerrillas arrested by American forces were brought to trial. Of these, four were convicted and two sentenced to death. This action did not bring the violence to an end. After Pancho Villa’s March 1916 raid at Columbus, New Mexico, the U.S. government launched General John Pershing’s Punitive Expedition on March 19, 1916. As U.S. military units crossed onto Mexican soil, Carranza became furious at the American government. Border tensions erupted again. Texas mobilized the National Guard and increased the number of the Texas
203
Policy Rangers, while Carranza sent troops to the border and repaired a railroad to the region. The tensions nearly led to war, but Carranza backed down at the last possible moment in early June and opted instead to resume guerrilla raids. American troops crossed into Mexico in pursuit of the guerrillas. Combined with the mobilization of the entire American National Guard and an exchange of fire between Mexican regulars and Pershing’s troops, the danger of war was in fact greater than ever. Carranza called off any further offensives. With the disarming and disbanding of the guerrillas, the crisis ended and the Plan de San Diego relegated to history. See also Flores Mag on Brothers; Industrial Workers of the World; Mexican Revolution. FURTHER READINGS: Harris, Charles H. III, and Sadler, Louis R. ‘‘The Plan of San Diego and the Mexican-United States War Crisis of 1916: A Reexamination.’’ The Hispanic-American Historical Review 58, no. 3. (August 1978): 381–408; Johnson, Benjamin Heber. Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003; Sandos, James A. Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan de San Diego, 1904–1923. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
James L. Erwin Policy. The word ‘‘border’’ refers to an area of interaction and gradual division between two separate political entities. The policy of establishing and maintaining a border includes measures to ensure the protection of a national territory regarding three main aspects: border crossing, commerce, and national security. The borderline between Mexico and the United States was officially defined by the purchase of Texas in 1848 establishing the Rio Grande as the southern limit of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Kansas, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming as part of the American territory. In spite of the established limits, during the 1800s the American government implemented a ‘‘pacification’’ process, which meant control or contention of any kind of violence, implying Indian raiding and all sorts of transboundary criminal activity by assorted gangs, vigilantes, filibusters, smuggling, and cattle rustling. It is during this period that controlling the flow of people became an issue for the American government, since transborder crossings were a quotidian activity for natives from both sides of the line, due to geography and lack of state capacity to fight against lawlessness in the area. However, migration control is a relatively recent phenomenon focused more on Europeans and Chinese who entered to the United States through Mexico and, in a lesser way, from Canada. The Immigration Act of 1904 was intended to halt this flow. It was not until 1917 that the Immigration Act formalized the immigration control procedures, increasing the number of authorities and immigrations inspection sites along the U.S.–Mexico boundary, also adding categories of ‘‘illiterates,’’ requiring a literacy test and the designations of ‘‘desirables’’ or ‘‘undesirables.’’ A similar attempt to limit the number of foreigners seeking to entry to the Unites States was the Temporary Quota Act, which limited the number of admissions of any particular nationality to 3 percent of the group’s population already in the United States according to the 1910 Census. The Temporary Act was the first quantitative immigration
204
Policy restriction in U.S. history, along with the Immigration Act of 1924, which made the quotas permanent but used the 1890 Census as its base. During the same year, the Border Patrol was founded as an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor. The tasks of the newly created force were focused on preventing the smuggling of alcohol into the United States and pursuing Chinese and Mexican immigrants trying to avoid the law along the border. The Border Patrol used motorboats, cars, trucks, radios, and horses as part of the strategy to control the flow of people along the border. Operation Wetback was a turning point in the border-crossing policy, which represented the recognition of the ‘‘wetback problem’’ and was focused on deterring the stream of unauthorized Mexican workers entering to the United States. Along with sensationalized media coverage, the U.S. government increased the number of Border Patrol forces deployed along the U.S.–Mexico border, resulting in numerous apprehensions and deportees. This was the most important outcome of the new policy to augment state and grower control over migrant labor. In 1986, the enactment of the Immigration Reform Control Act (IRCA) emphasized worksite enforcement and forms of interior control over border enforcement. Nevertheless, during Clinton’s administration, border control was built up to neutralize the anti-immigration backlash in California in 1992, embodied by California Proposition 187. The new border policy was based on the ‘‘prevention through deterrence strategy,’’ which was intended to raise the difficulty, financial cost, and physical risk of illegal entry to such a level that the deterrence would be achieved at points of origin in Mexico and other sending countries. The logic of this strategy was to secure the four main corridors in San Diego, El Paso, central Arizona, and south Texas, allowing the geography to do the rest. As part of this strategy, a series of operations have been launched by the Border Patrol, the most important being Operation Hold-the-Line (1993), Operation Gatekeeper in the San Diego/Tijuana area (1994), Operation Safeguard Arizona (1995), and Operation Rio Grande (1997). The consequences of this policy have been an overwhelming peak in the number of deaths along the border, which only during 2005 reached 464, according to official calculations. Increased difficulty on border crossings has encouraged many undocumented migrants to stay for longer periods on each trip they make, or even to settle permanently in the United States. As the border build-up has continued, migrants and people smugglers have developed techniques that make them even wiser at evading detection. In this regard, the downward trend in Border Patrol apprehensions during 2001 can be interpreted as a sign of more people staying in the United States for longer periods. After the attacks of September 11, the Department of Homeland Security created two immigration enforcement bureaus that replaced the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). These two bureaus are Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is tasked with investigations, detention, and removal of undocumented aliens; and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is in charge of ports of entry and unauthorized entries between the port of entry, transportation check, and entries on the coastal borders. The Border Patrol is aligned to the CBP. The post–September 11 strategy is focused on apprehending terrorists and their weapons as they try to enter illegally into the United States; detect and apprehend
205
Policy smugglers of humans, drugs, and contraband; develop ‘‘Smart Border’’ technology; and reduce crime in border communities to improve quality of life. On October 26, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law, authorizing the construction of a double-layer fence along the entire Southwest border and allowing for the creation of a ‘‘virtual fence,’’ implying roads, technology, and tactical infrastructure. Nevertheless, the law does not appropriate any funding to create the fence. These operations represent an overwhelming emphasis of U.S. immigration policy on border enforcement, despite the evidence that the border build-up has failed to deter significant numbers of unauthorized immigrants. Commerce between Mexico and the United States was a quotidian practice since the 1800s due to geographical proximity between both countries. However, negotiations to sign a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 raised questions about crossing issues regarding trailers and other kinds of commercial transportation and how to prevent drug trafficking along the U.S.–Mexico border. Regarding national security, as the means to maintain the survival of a nation-state through economic, military, political power, and diplomacy, relations between the United States and Mexico have been influenced by the asymmetries built into this relation and have been marked by the absence of an institutional framework, a pattern of intermittent cooperation, and a permanent disagreement over bilateral and common security threats. Mexico has always defended a nonmilitaristic foreign policy, maintaining at the same time an ambivalent posture to defend sovereignty and cultural identity, with the recognition of common threats as an exception rather than a usual event. This was the case during World War II, when the attacks of Pearl Harbor and the sinking of two Mexican ships by German forces in 1941 raised differences over the pursuit of security and defense cooperation. After the end of World War II, Mexico went back to its traditional principles of nonintervention. Vis-a-vis the bipolarity created during the Cold War, Mexico enjoyed a wide level of tolerance from the U.S. government compared with the rest of the Latin America countries. In this context, Mexico’s role was to restrain the communist tendencies of its neighbors in Central and South America performing as an independent, democratic country in exchange for a well-secured northern border, free of communist threats and instabilities. In the context of nuclear disarmament and arms control negotiation, particularly after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Mexico did not fundamentally challenge the U.S. monopoly and accepted security cooperation, albeit tacit. Nuclear weapons proliferation was perceived by both the United States and Mexico as a common threat, a fact that built a special relation between the two countries. This era ended with the Central American Crisis of the 1980s. Reagan’s security policy defined drug trafficking as a threat to the national security (due to its links with revolutionary guerrilla organizations) adding undocumented migration propelled by civil wars in Central America. The United States and Mexico hardly could pursue divergent policies in security cooperation. Common interests were recognized with negotiations of NAFTA, which, although intended to remain as no more than a trade agreement, established a basis to regain control along the southern border and guaranteeing continuity of the ‘‘prevention through deterrence’’ policy during the 1990s. The immediate American response to the September 11 attacks was to close its borders to ensure its national security. The aftermath of this strategy was to pose a
206
Political Participation in the Mexican Border States contradiction between the need for a hardened border against terrorists attacks and maintain continent’s economic prosperity depending on an open global system that facilitates movement of people and goods. After the September 11 attacks, transit delay on the southern border remained two hours above the twenty-minute average that preceded the attacks. Closing American borders, both northern and southern, was equivalent to imposing a trade embargo on the United States itself. Mexico’s first response to the ‘‘war on terrorism’’ campaign was to state that it would not involve Mexican troops as part of a security cooperation strategy. However, Mexican government restricted the entry of citizens from a number of Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries and provided U.S. authorities with intelligence information on possible suspects based in Mexico, created databases of suspected terrorists, trained border officials, and provided enforcement along the Mexico-Guatemala border, which seem to be in a process of becoming a buffer area as part of security cooperation. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government has demanded that Canada and Mexico use the appropriate technology to achieve a Smart Border. Only Canada has been able to undertake the challenge. In contrast, Mexico continues to face serious obstacles controlling drug trafficking and undocumented migration, remaining the uncomfortable neighbor. It is possible to foresee that, after the construction of the border fence, Mexico will be farther from the United States in terms of trade and migration than Canada, which makes integration of a North American Community a difficult goal to achieve. See also Coyotes; Immigration Legislation; Minutemen; Operations; Organizations and Governmental Agencies. FURTHER READINGS: Andreas, Peter. Border Games. Policing the US-Mexico Divide. New York: Cornell University, 2000; Andreas, Peter, and Biersteker, Thomas J. The Rebordering of North America. Integration and Exclusion in a New Security Context. New York: Routledge, 2003; Bailey, John, and Chabat, Jorge, eds. Transnational Crime and Public Security: Challenges to Mexico and the United States. La Jolla: Center for U.S.–Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2002; Calavita, Kitty. Inside the State. The Bracero Program Immigration, and the INS. New York: Routledge, 1992; Chabat, Jorge. ‘‘Drug Trafficking in US-Mexican Relations: The Politics of Simulation.’’ Working Paper no. 51. Mexico: Centro de Investigaci on y Docencia Economica. Division de Estudios Internacionales, 2000; Domınguez, Jorge, and Fernandez de Castro, Rafael. The United States and Mexico. New York: Routledge, 2001; Dunn, Timothy J. The Militarization of the US-Mexico Border, 1978-1992: Low Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin: Texas University Press, 1995; Garcıa y Griego, Manuel. ‘‘The Immigration of Mexican Contract Laborers to the United States, 1942-1964. Antecedents, Operation and Legacy.’’ Working Paper no. 11. La Jolla, California: Center for U.S.–Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1980; Massey, Douglas S., Durand, Jorge, and Malone, Nolan J. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors. Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002.
Anahı Parra Political Participation in the Mexican Border States. The turning point of the Mexican political transition started in the electoral arena. Since the early 1990s, arduous negotiations in the Mexican Congress have encouraged new electoral reforms, which gradually transformed the terms of political competition in the Mexican political system. Full autonomy for the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), increased accountability
207
Political Participation in the Mexican Border States of the political parties, limits to campaign spending, the placing of electoral law violations under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and the extension of the vote to 26 million extra citizens, including 11 million living abroad, are just some of the most relevant innovations. As a result of these changes made over a period of twelve years, electoral competition increased and voters switched allegiances. New trends indicate a clear change from the traditionally leading Revolutionary Institutional Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) to two other major parties, the National Action Party (Partido Accion Nacional, PAN), and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido de la Revolucion Democr atica, PRD). Yet, despite the enduring trend toward greater electoral competition, voting rates have proved rather stagnant. Between 1990 and 2006, the average rate of turnout in the whole country—including federal and local elections—was around 60.5 percent. This is the number of valid votes divided by the number of citizens included on the Voters’ Register (VR). There were temporal fluctuations, but overall, the turnout rate dropped during these sixteen years. From 1990 to 2006, the average rate of turnout among voters in the six states that border the United States (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas) was slightly below the national average at 58 percent. There is, however, variation among states ranging from the highest, Nuevo Leon with 62 percent turnout, to the lowest, Coahuila with 54 percent. The citizens that inhabit the states along Mexico’s northern border represent approximately 18 percent of the national electorate. To a certain extent, their numeric impact in the ballot boxes is less manifest than in those regions with larger populations. (The Federal District of Mexico City includes 12 percent of voters). Nevertheless, the socioeconomic characteristics of the voters who live along the northern border of Mexico have aided in the creation of a sort of ‘‘electoral regionalization,’’ which clearly divides the north from the south of Mexico. In some respect, this situation explains part of the exceptionality of the political behavior observed in the northern borderlands of Mexico. In economic terms, the northern region of Mexico contributes roughly 25 percent of the gross domestic product of the country. This situation reflects positive levels of economic development that have improved the living standards enjoyed by the middle classes in the industrial cities of the border. In addition, the intense economic interaction with the United States experienced through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has contributed to the opening and dynamism of the borderland economies where a qualified population experiences high levels of social mobility and employment. As a consequence of that prosperity, public opinion studies have reported that industrial cities in northern Mexico have experienced the emergence of a small but politically active group of mostly younger, better-educated, and urban citizens who tend to support the right-wing PAN at higher rates than in poorer states. This socioeconomic cleavage manifested itself recently in the 2006 presidential elections, where final results indicated a clear division between the more developed states of the north (which voted for PAN) and the less prosperous states of the south (which inclined politically for the leftist coalition ‘‘for the good of all’’ (por el bien de todos) headed by the PRD). In sharp contrast with the trends described, border states in the north of Mexico also have large groups of unqualified workers, with poor levels of education and therefore low income. Most of these citizens are internal migrants inside Mexico, coming north to look for work from other states further south (mainly Zacatecas, San
208
Political Participation in the Mexican Border States Luis Potosı, Aguascalientes, Michoacan, and Guanajuato). These internal migrants are partially disenfranchised, because Mexican residency requirements establish that people can only vote in state and local elections in the locality in which they officially reside. Consequently, local government in Mexico’s northern states is elected by the segment of the politically active citizens that lives permanently within them. A third group of the borderland population is represented by a large segment of citizens of moderately low income who, despite being permanent residents, remain independent (or unwilling to indicate a partisan attachment). To some extent, the paradox of growing electoral competition combined with stubbornly low turnout in this area can be explained by the effect exerted by this group. Studies conducted in recent local and federal elections suggest that many of these voters choose not to vote if they are not won over by convincing campaigns. Few keep a specific allegiance with any of the major parties, instead demonstrating their general dissatisfaction toward political problems (like those related with economic mismanagement, public insecurity, and corruption) by distancing themselves from the political realm. In sum, individuals who share the perception that parties and congressmen do not care about citizens’ needs and who have negative evaluations about democracy and elections tend to vote less than those who have the opposite view. Another potential source of low electoral turnout in the region can be associated with the gradual disappearance of the traditional mechanism of mass mobilization operated by the PRI during their long-lasting dominance. Studies of public opinion conducted before and after the federal elections of 2000 and 2006 report relevant changes in the strategies of electoral mobilization that once supplied plenty of votes for the candidates of the PRI. Traditionally, one of the key strategies of ‘‘mass voting’’ relied on the use of client list networks in which electors exchanged their votes for different kinds of payoffs (such as public services, regularization of land, food, and so on). Extreme cases even included the promise of jobs, loans, and promotion within the local bureaucracy to get votes. Furthermore, candidates of the dominant party previously organized and paid for the transportation of voters to the polls. Voters were rewarded with cash and food after casting their votes for its party. In general terms, these kinds of operations were usually established among the politically weak (low education, low income), who were often uninformed and sometimes disinterested. Today, acts of this sort are considered a severe abuse of campaign funds and regarded as illegal actions penalized by the Supreme Court. Finally, patterns of low electoral participation were observed beyond Mexico’s northern border when the presidential elections of 2006 became the first electoral contest that gave Mexicans living abroad the right to vote. Absentee balloting was passed in the Mexican Congress in June 2006 after years of effort by expatriates who are estimated to make up as much as 10 percent of the Mexican population. In the United States alone, the Mexican electoral authority estimated that approximately 4 million migrants have voter cards and are thus eligible to vote in Mexican federal elections. The electoral institute, however, was disappointed to receive only around 15,000 ballot requests from Mexicans living abroad, less than 1 percent of the whole electorate originally estimated. For comparison, about 49 percent of civilian Americans living overseas cast absentee ballots in the November 2004 U.S. presidential elections, according to a study by the Federal Voting Assistance Program. In the medium term, it is likely that the political behavior of citizens living along Mexico’s northern border will keep evolving. The Mexican political system is
209
Polk, James K. (1795–1849) undergoing a gradual but firm process of democratization; Mexicans exposed to other political traditions (notably, those of the United States and Canada) are acquiring new civic values and attitudes: these are just some of the drivers for the creation of a new culture of participation. See also Legal Issues; Policy. FURTHER READINGS: IDEA-International. ‘‘Administration and Cost of Elections Project (ACE). Vote Buying.’’ 2007. http://aceproject.org/; Klessner, Joseph. The Not So New Electoral Landscape in Mexico. Presentation given to the conference on ‘‘Mexico’s 2003 Mid-Term Election Results: The Implications for the LIX Legislature and Future Party Consolidation.’’ Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, September 15–16, 2003.
Marisol Reyes Polk, James K. (1795–1849). James K. Polk served as president of the United States from 1845 to 1849. Born in North Carolina but raised in Tennessee, Polk followed a career path that eventually took him to the U.S. Congress, where he served as speaker of the house from 1835 to 1839, and then to the governorship of Tennessee in 1839. He became the ‘‘dark horse’’ candidate of the Democratic Party in the 1844 presidential election, and during the campaign, Polk made clear his expansionist agenda by calling for the annexation of both the Oregon Territory and Texas. As president, Polk moved quickly to achieve his foreign policy objectives using a combination of negotiation and bluster to reach a compromise with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory. Although Texas already had been annexed, Polk in 1845 simultaneously pursued an advantageous settlement of the U.S.–Mexico boundary dispute north of the Rio Grande and the purchase of California by dispatching diplomat John Slidell to Mexico. When Slidell’s mission failed, Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor into the disputed region between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River where, in May 1846, Taylor’s troops clashed with Mexican cavalry. Proclaiming that Mexico had ‘‘shed American blood on American soil,’’ Polk persuaded Congress to declare war on Mexico, although his political opponents asserted that he had manipulated events to justify the war. The U.S.–Mexican War eventually cost Mexico its claims on Texas and both its Alta California and New Mexico territories, and on either side of the border Polk’s initiatives have come to signify aggressive expansionism in the nineteenth-century era of U.S. ‘‘manifest destiny.’’ See also Manifest Destiny; U.S.–Mexican War. FURTHER READINGS: Hayes, Sam W. James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse. 3rd edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006; Leonard, Thomas M. James K. Polk: A Clear and Unquestionable Destiny Wilmington, DE: S. R. Books, 2001; Mahin, Dean B. Olive Branch and Sword: The United States and Mexico, 1845-1848. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1997; McCoy, Charles Allan. Polk and the Presidency. New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1973; Nevins, Allan, ed. Polk: The Diary of a President 1845-1849. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1952.
William E. Skuban Popular Saints and Martyrs. Popular saints are saints canonized by the people as opposed to the official Roman Catholic Church. People venerate them even if the Church disapproves, which, in most cases, it does. Most of those who venerate
210
Popular Saints and Martyrs popular saints remain in the Church and also pray to those saints who have passed through the Church’s institutional canonization process. But their popular saints hold a special place in their faith and serve for protections and particular needs from which the official Church seems distant. The U.S.–Mexico borderlands has its own repertoire of popular saints, well known to, if not revered by, all. Juan Soldado reigns in Tijuana and Tiradito in Tucson. Jes us Malverde hails from Sinaloa, but small chapels to him dot the international line. Pedro Jaramillo serves the Lower Rio Grande Valley and beyond, while Charlene is worshipped by Louisiana’s Cajuns and adherents from the region. Veneration of El Ni~ no Fidencio is centered near Monterrey and has spread widely throughout northern Mexico. Devotions to popular saints originate in local, national, even international circumstances surrounding the faithful inextricably mixed with their spiritual beliefs. The two cannot be separated. The circumstances are filtered through belief, and belief is mediated by circumstances. For Juan Soldado (1938), conditions included the Great Depression; national, social, and religious reforms proclaimed by president Larzaro Cardenas; and rapid population and employment changes in Tijuana itself. Such circumstances were measured and weighed by the faithfuls’ belief in anima (the active presence of a deceased person’s spirit), religious ‘‘signs,’’ and a sense of fairness and justice. In brief, this is what occurred: In February 1938, an eight-year-old girl was raped and murdered. A twenty-fouryear-old Mexican soldier stationed in town confessed to the crime and was sentenced to death. The execution was staged at a public spectacle in a country that had not witnessed a public execution in fifty years and had recently outlawed capital punishment. Moreover, the soldier was executed by military firing squads utilizing the extralegal, and thoroughly detested, Ley Fuga (or Law of Flight), by which authorities blame a prisoner’s disappearance on attempted escape. So in this case, with much of the town’s adult population as witnesses, the soldier was made to run across a public cemetery and was then shot down by army firing squads. The act is normally accomplished out of sight—in forests or mountains, jail cells, or back alleys. Some spectators at the soldier’s shooting naturally thought that manner of execution cruel and unjust; they equated the spectacle with Christ’s travail on the Via Dolorsa, and they believed that those who die unjustly sit close to God. Within days of the execution, visitors to the cemetery reported seeing signs at the soldier’s gravesite: blood was seeping up out the ground; his anima was said to be claiming innocence and crying out for revenge. The signs indicated a divine presence; the prisoner, now called Juan Soldado (John the Soldier), had been favored by the Lord and would be an excellent intercessor before the Almighty. The believers, therefore, built a chapel at the site, left peticiones (requests for betterment) inside, and if rewarded, promised (promesas) to thank Juan with prayers and visits. Prayers were answered and miracles occurred, and once they did, Juan became known as muy milagroso, a miracle-working saint. Today there is a steady stream of pilgrims to the chapel, which is plated with plaques testifying to miracles received. Devotions to Tiradito and Jes us Malverde arose from an angry sense of injustice similar to that surrounding Juan Soldado. One significant difference, however, was that Tiradito and Malverde may never have lived as human beings but only as legends. At least, historical documentation of their lives is lacking. Those who worship popular saints (in fact, all saints, popular and official) are wonderfully creative in
211
Popular Saints and Martyrs retelling the biographies of the saints. There are many versions of the Tiradito story, the most common being that, in the late 1800s, the owner of a substantial rancho near Tucson caught one of his teenage workers having sexual relations with his (the owner’s) comely wife. The owner killed the transgressor and left him to rot where he fell. That is where an injustice arose, not in taking revenge, which was understandable and merited, but in leaving the errant suitor to decompose in the burning sun. By not having him buried in campo santo, a blessed cemetery and therefore holy ground, he deprived his quarry, regardless of his crime, of the opportunity to be reunited with God and immortality. That act was considered unjust and would be recognized by the Lord as such. Another intercessor had been born, and thrives to this day. Jes us Malverde was said to have been a Robin Hood–type bandit also in the late nineteenth century, robbing the rich to help the poor in the mountains above Culican, Sinaloa. When authorities finally caught him, the governor ordered Malverde hanged from a tree for public viewing. There the body decayed and then fell apart, piece by piece. Again, no decent burial in campo santo. People thought that treatment unjust, thought that God would take Malverde to His side, and thus began to venerate him. Malverde is still worshipped, and his devotion has spread to the border, where he is said to be the patron saint of drug dealers, known for their prominence in Sinaloa. Pedro Jaramillo and El Ni~ no Fidencio (real name, Jose Fidencio Sintora Constantio) lived and ministered to the sick during the first part of the twentieth century. They were curanderos (healers), honored by God with special healing powers for various illnesses and debilities, including cancer, tuberculosis, insanity, blindness, dropsy, birth defects, and intestinal diseases. Jaramillo did his healings in a small, humble dwelling on a bank of the Olmo River outside of Falfurrias, Texas, and many of his remedies are still in use. His shrine is covered with peticiones calling for all sorts of assistance and thanks represented by written notes, drawings and paintings, clutches of hair, crutches, baby clothes, photocopies of car registrations, and family pictures, which indicate favors requested and received. A Peruvian curandero still ministers at the site once a month. El Ni~ no claimed to have received the Holy Spirit, the power to heal, while working as a common hand on an hacienda at Espinozo, now a community of 15,000 with a post office, barber shop, and branch bank. In 1928, the president of Mexico, Plutarco Elıas Calles, visited him with a malady, which El Ni~ no treated with bees’ honey and wraparound bandages. No one knows (beyond Calles and El Ni~ no, both now deceased) whether the cure worked. El Ni~ no Fidencio’s spirit continues to thrive, successors (women are called materias and men, cajones) carry on the master’s healing work for free. Some 15,000 pilgrims celebrated the anniversary of El Ni~ no’s birthday at the site in 1999. Many wore purple T-shirts proclaiming, ‘‘In the name of God, we walk with Ni~ no Fidencio into the new millennium.’’ Devotion to Charlene began in a manner foreign to those popular saints already mentioned. She is revered for her godliness as she, only twelve years old, lay dying of leukemia in 1944. When a priest came to visit her in the hospital where she was painfully suffering, she cheerfully greeted him asking, ‘‘OK, Father, whom am I to suffer for today?’’ This and other such pronouncements led the faithful to believe that she had been touched by the Divine. They began to worship her as a saint, and miracle healings have been reported. Today, her grave outside Richard, Louisiana, is a pilgrimage site and procedures to have her declared a saint within the Church are under way.
212
Presidios Petitions at the shrines of popular saints reflect social conditions at that particular site. The great majority of requests concern health, family solidarity, employment, and the search for love or for a baby, but perhaps a fifth of the solicitations at the Juan Soldado shrine, located close to the border, concern immigrant workers who want help in crossing the line and finding jobs when they arrive in the United States. Known drug dealers from Sinaloa have asked for the protection of Jes us Malverde. When the Texas legislature required all residents to carry car insurance, a large number of photocopies of automobile registrations appeared at the Pedro Jaramillo shrine, posted by poor drivers who could not afford the fee. They were asking for protection against the law and to that point, at least, had avoided arrest. The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize any of these popular saints. Individual priests may call them the work of the devil or may endorse them saying, ‘‘Anything that brings people closer to God is good.’’ But what priests and prelates think of the popular saints does not much concern devotees. The believers intend to continue doing what serves them best, and many of them forecast that the Church will one day declare their popular saints as its own. See also Catholic Church; Folklore; Francisco ‘‘Pancho’’ Villa; Teresa Urrea. FURTHER READINGS: Durand, Jorge, and Massey, James S. Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States. Tucson: University of Arizona, 1995; Griffith, James S. Folksaints of the Borderlands: Victims, Bandits, and Healers. Tucson: Rio Nuevo, 2003; Vanderwood, Paul J. Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
Paul J. Vanderwood Presidios. Presidios in Spain’s northern American frontier functioned as military garrisons—conceptualized, designed, and instituted to enforce Spain’s claims to defend its economic, social, and political dominion over specified and imagined territories. The use of armed presidarios-soldados figured prominently in the implementation and enforcement of class-caste, race, and gender hierarchies. Often built in proximity to missions, presidios existed in dependent, and ultimately detrimental, reinforcement with and of the Spanish Catholic missions. Spain’s response to an increasing intolerance toward and defense against resistant indigenous populations— including, but not limited to, the Chumash, Seris, Comanches, O’odhams, Yaquis, Opatas, Mayos, Jumanos, Chiricahuas, Mescaleros, Lipanes, and Puebloan groups— intensified the militarization of a new administrative jurisdiction called Provincias Internas, which was part of a larger region of provincial/peripheral, resistant, and internal colonies. The Viceroy Bernardo de Galvez, accountable to the King of Spain, ordered the Reglamento e instruccion in 1772 implementing a revised, experimental policy for the northern frontier and the indigenous peoples, and ordering the relocation of presidios to guard and defend the long-term investment in the region and to buffer the more economically profitable ‘‘interior.’’ The order was carried forth in Nueva Vizcaya, Sonora, Sinaloa, Baja and Alta California, Nuevo Mexico, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Nuevo Le on, and Nuevo Santander and Tejas. In this plan, the presidio’s social, economic, and political aims directed great energy toward the refortifications of pobladores, or colonial settlements of Spanish Mestizo and indigenous subjects, which were key to maintaining Spain’s political objectives and presence in the isolated region.
213
Presidios Presidios existed in relationships intrinsically enmeshed in the social, economic, and political structure of, and in tension with, missions. Conflicting and complicated, presidios were bound up in mission systems, which fragmented, reorganized, managed, and contained indigenous communities. The presidio and mission, as reinforcing institutions of dominance, often served to intensify the punitive practices undergirding each one’s ideological base. The presidio, thus, must be examined from the root of its social, cultural, and political formations in feudal, penal systems of forced servitude in southern Spain, dating back to c. 1150. Presidios as institutions of punishment and as economic-political sites of colonizing propped up elites’ social control of the subaltern, and emerged and arose from the oppressive opus publicum of antiquity, an institutionalized system of state-imposed incarceration and forced physical labor, which allowed for the ruling classes to selectively criminalize conquered and colonized ethnic and marginalized groups. Presidarios, or prisoners, endured rigorous labor in difficult living environments. Harsh sentencing, often extensive years of public ownership by the state of their bodies, was the normalized plight of low castes (castas)—a social stratification of Spaniards, the indigenous, Africans, and racially mixed persons—in Spanish feudal societies in the Americas. Presidio soldiers, often recruited from among the colonized castas, enforced these norms over indentured castas through violence or threat of death. Spain’s earliest settlements, throughout the Americas, utilized presidios to serve as state-run institutions of penal servitude for public projects utilizing the casta’s forced labor. In effect, these were prisons for the indigenous, mestizos, blacks, and mulattos who were resistant to state indoctrination. Ultimately, presidio structures served to institute separatism, assimilation, slavery, and death sentences to those deemed impenetrable to religious conversion by a supervised hierarchical caste system along race, class, and gender lines. Castas, in the Americas, under Spanish colonization, were the indigenous, and the poor, mestizo children of indigenous women categorized as savage and resistant and naturalized as criminal ‘‘others.’’ They experienced the extreme deprivations of an all-surveilling prison complex, which defined, regulated, disciplined, and corrected race, gender, class, and sexual differences. In locations such as the Presidio of Monterey, the Presidio of Santa Barbara, Mission San Ignacio de Tubac, Mission Nuestra Se~ nora de Refugio, San Antonio de Valero, and others, soldiers assigned to labor in presidios not only guarded the fort, but also protected the friars carrying forth the proselytizing mission of reducciones, or conversion, by ‘‘reducing’’ the indigenous populations. Priests and soldiers enforced discipline over resistant neophytes. In addition, the presidio, as an institutional substructure that upheld, through militarism, the ideologies of the state-religion superstructure, patrolled localities nearby. This led to immediate and long-term impacts on gendered, matrilineal, indigenous social-cultural economies, and political-economic ecologies in the immediate surrounding areas. Presidio soldiers accompanied missionaries in their expeditions to perform scientific expeditions and to catalog taxonomies: naming of flora, fauna, and mammalian life, rivers, lakes, streams, lagoons, inlets, creeks, hillsides, mesas, mounds, mountains; accumulating linguistic tools and heuristic methods of application; gathering intelligence and knowledge regarding European colonizer-empires encroaching upon Spanish dominions, as well as indigenous populations resistant to the mission-presidio; and mapping and ordering geographies, borders, boundaries, economies, ecologies, genders, classes/castes, sexualities, and races.
214
Presidios Presidios, in some locations, played a significant role in ranching and farming, apart from the mission, which eventually led to tensions and disputes among assimilating soldiers, an emerging mestizo (or mixed-race indigenous and Spanish middle class), the elite criollo (or Spanish, ruling class), the Catholic church, the military, and the state. At the same time, presidio soldiers figured prominently in the accomplishment of daily work of mission priests, such as escorting royal mail routes and transfers, protecting the daily maintenance and production of livestock and agricultural enterprises, and tracking and rounding up runaway neophytes who sought to escape the physical rigors, depression, anxiety, and sexual violence in the mission-presidio heterotopia. Supervised not only by the mission priests, but ultimately under the armed authority of the militarized presidio soldier (who could be indigenous, mestizo, or mulatto), the indigenous populations and colonial settler communities exercised complex, networked systems of knowledge production, sharing, and agency over contested territoriality of their bodies, minds, traditions, territories, resources, communities, and ways of life. In particular, indigenous and poor mestizo ‘‘peasant’’ societies under the control of the presidio’s authority, in many locations, experienced high and patterned incidences of rape, molestation, infectious, and sexually transmitted diseases among young girls and women. Due to the naturalization of rape-as-conquest in many of the presidio-mission structure, indigenous women, throughout the Provincias Internas, opted to practice infanticide and suicide as resistance to domination over their bodies and reproduction. Other forms of resistance included indigenized forms of acculturation and accommodation. Indigenous matrilineal knowledge-sharing performed key roles in the successful strategies to thwart and attack presidio-mission oppressions. In many cases, indigenous women’s networks played central roles in the interruption of the oppression experienced by the numbers of indigenous, mestizos, and mulattos living within and outside the walls of, though in webbed relationships to and with, the presidio. Hence, the presidio in the Provincias Internas is an important institution through which to learn about colonization and resistance histories of North American indigenous (Native American) communities in the U.S.–Mexico border lands. See also Californios; Don Juan de O~ nate; Tejanos/as. FURTHER READINGS: Brinckerhoff, and Faulk, Odie B. Lancers for the King: A Study of the Frontier Military System of Northern New Spain, With a Translation of the Royal Regulations of 1772. Arizona Historical Foundation, 1965; http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/spanishfrontier/ bushnell.html; Casta~ neda, Antonia L. ‘‘Sexual Violence in the Politics and Policies of Conquest: Amerindian Women and the Spanish Conquest of Alta California.’’ In Adela de la Torre and Beatrız M. Pesquera, eds. Building With Our Hands: New Directions in Chicana Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; Chavez-Garcıa, Miroslava. Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2004; Deeds, Susan M. ‘‘New Spain’s Far North: A Changing Historiographical Frontier?’’ Latin American Research Review 25, no. 2. (1990): 226–35; Early, James. Presidio, Mission, and Pueblo: Spanish Architecture and Urbanism in the United States. Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 2004; Foster, William C. Spanish Expeditions into Texas 1689-1768. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995; Gerald, Rex, E. Spanish Presidios of the Late Eighteenth Century in Northern New Spain. Number 7. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1968; Jackson, Robert H. From Savages to Subjects: Missions in the History of the American Southwest. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 2000; Jackson, Robert H. Race, Caste, and Status: Indians
215
Prohibition (1915–33) in Colonial Spanish America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999; Langer, Erick, and Robert H. Jackson, eds. The New Latin American Mission History. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995; Salinas, Martın. Indians of the Rio Grande Delta: Their Role in the History of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990; Sanchez, Rosaura. Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995; Turner, Amy Bushnell. ‘‘Missions and Moral Judgment.’’ OAH Magazine of History 14 (Summer 2000). Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Margo Tamez
Prohibition (1915–33). ‘‘Prohibition’’ was a set of legal restrictions to the manufacturing, transportation, and selling of alcoholic beverages. Between 1915 and 1933, the United States, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway enforced total or partial bans on alcohol consumption. This radical approach to the problem of alcoholism derived from the constellation of values, ideals, and habits of thought that made up the international temperance movement, with its emphasis on self-restraint, self-sufficiency, purity, conscientiousness, discipline, and virtues. Rapid urbanization and industrialization had caused a dramatic increase in average alcohol consumption and its social costs were soaring. Strict limitations to the consumption of liquors were seen by many as indispensable and various popular movements were formed to lobby for a widespread and vigorous campaign against alcoholic drinks. Among the most well known were the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance (founded in Boston in 1826), the ‘‘American Temperance Union’’ (Philadelphia, 1833), and the ‘‘Anti-Saloon League of America’’ (Oberlin, Ohio, 1893). In 1896, the Prohibition Party was constituted, to add political weight to the moralist enterprise. These movements addressed the questions of health, hygiene, and uprightness, which were deemed to be inseparable within a modernizing society that called for order, discipline, mental and physical fitness, and efficiency. Temperance advocates, who were in the main progressively minded, maintained that the consumption of alcohol, which was often described as a psychotropic agent, was a privilege to be reserved only to those upper-class citizens who had demonstrated a clear commitment to moderation, self-control, and responsible drinking. Well-intentioned and generally aware that the problem of endemic alcoholism had powerful social and economic determinants, but at the same time also influenced by a rather conceited theory of human behaviour, prohibition endorsers believed that constructive norms of drinking would not apply to the masses, unable to practice self-regulation, and therefore abstinence would be best for them. But because the members of the middle and working classes did not seem to listen to reason and embrace a respectable, breadwinner ethic, the legal ban of alcohol became the only viable solution. Although by 1916 twenty-six out of forty-eight states had legally prohibited liquor consumption, the inception of the Prohibition era in the United States coincided with the promulgation of the National Prohibition Act in 1920. Overall, prohibition failed because it was unenforceable. The decline in alcohol consumption was not as substantial as prohibitionists expected it to be and alcohol production in illegal distilleries, the smuggling of liquor across the Canadian and
216
Protected Areas and Parks Mexican border (called ‘‘bootlegging’’ and ‘‘rumrunning’’), and the bourgeoning underground market of alcoholic beverages gave a major boost to organized crime. Starting in the early 1930s, the dramatic effects of the Great Depression, together with the mounting protest against the curtailment of individual liberty, generated a popular backlash against Prohibition. The newly formed Association against the Prohibition Amendment brought these criticisms to the attention of the political parties and, in December 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment was approved, which repealed the Eighteenth pro-Prohibition Amendment and officially ended the Prohibition era. See also Drug Trafficking. FURTHER READINGS: Blocker, Jack S., Jr. American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform. Boston: Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989; Blocker, Jack S., Jr. Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890–1913. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976; Levine, Harry G. ‘‘Temperance Cultures: Alcohol as a Problem in Nordic and English-Speaking Cultures.’’ In Malcom Lader, Griffith Edwards, and D. Colin Drummon, eds. The Nature of Alcohol and Drug-Related Problems, 16–36. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993; Morone, James A. Hellfire Nation. The Politics of Sin in American History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003; Pegram, Thomas R. Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800– 1933. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998; Rumbarger, John J. Profits, Power, and Prohibition: Alcohol Reform and the Industrializing of America, 1800–1930. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989.
Stefano Fait and Stefano Sosi Protected Areas and Parks. Approximately half of the lands on the U.S.–Mexico political border are politically designated as parks or protected areas. Most protected areas are chosen by one nation and terminate at the border but some areas, including the Big Bend area of Texas and Coahuila, have some protection on both sides. These designations were created to give attention to the diversity of life and nature on the border and to administer land for broader public use. In general, the areas gained protection during the latter half of the twentieth century as scientific appreciation for desert environments grew. Within 100 miles north and south of the political border, national parks, wildlife refuges, biosphere reserves, and conservation areas form a core amount of territory, often broken up by twin cities that meet on the border. These naturally protected areas range from islands in the Gulf of California to barrier wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico. They include mountains, canyons, and river systems. Parks protect a diverse array of native flora such as saguaro cacti or sable palms, which are endemic to this region. In some areas, such as southern Texas, the border parks form a biological corridor designed to help expand the habitat of endangered felines like the ocelot and bobcat. These parks also protect parts of the traditional habitats and ranges of various species, including the desert tortoise, Gila monster, Sonoran pronghorn, and the Mexican gray wolf. Management of protected areas along the border presents a series of special issues. Binational collaboration on ecosystems that span the border remains and important goal for managers, but in practice it is difficult to implement. Varied philosophies of nature protection among governmental agencies preclude integrated management. Cultural obstacles, such as language barriers, further prevent cross-border collaboration, and federal funding shortages limit enforcement and vigilance of existing laws within the protected areas. Furthermore, dividing natural areas with a political line separates the geologic, vegetative, climatic, wildlife, and hydraulic factors that shape
217
Protected Areas and Parks the area. Many natural areas were truncated by designating one section as a protected area and neglecting another. In some cases, this division disrupts the natural forces the area was designed to protect. For example, fences around natural areas prevent wildlife from roaming and inhibit the maintenance of ecological units. In Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, a vehicle barrier fence constructed along the border prevents smugglers from entering the park, but it may also complicate the passage of wildlife such as pronghorn and bobcats into and out of the protected zone. Human activities along the border, from maquiladora development to drug trafficking, disrupt natural processes and damage protected spaces. Smugglers often find it easier to cross the border in a protected area due to the isolation and lack of patrolling in those areas. Since these park zones exist for recreation, families picnicking may come into contact with illegal activities and federal pursuits or they may find the zone degraded. Smugglers trample vegetation, scare wildlife, and leave refuse, all of which disrupt the natural activities in the area. Maquiladora development and the growth of border cities has added to air pollution in the area, clouding some of the mountain and canyon views that have attracted tourists. The U.S. side of the border includes thirty-four separate protected natural areas administered by five federal agencies. The Bureau of Land Management administers the California Desert Conservation Area, Empire-Cienega Resource Conservation Area, Ironwood Forest National Monument, Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, and the Sonoran Desert National Monument. The Forest Service protects the Cleveland National Forest and the Coronado National Forest. The National Park Service manages the Amistad National Recreation Area, Big Bend National Park, Cabrillo National Monument, Chiricahua National Monument, Coronado National Memorial, Fort Bowie National Historic Site, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Padre Island National Seashore, Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, Saguaro National Park, and Tumacacori National Historic Park. The Fish and Wildlife Service administers the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, Lower Colorado River National Wildlife Refuge Complex, Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, San Bernardino and Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuge, San Diego National Wildlife Refuge Complex, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, and the San Andres National Wildlife Refuge. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration directs the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve. In addition, Texas, Arizona, and California state parks add numerous protected lands. Federal historical sites without nature-protecting elements also exist in this region. An estimated 20 percent of land on the Mexican side is marked as a natural site in ten areas administered by two federal agencies. These reserves are mainly managed by the System of Natural Protected Areas within the National Commission for Protected Areas and they include the Alto Golfo de California y Delta del Rıo Colorado Reserva de la Biosfera, Ca~ non de Santa Elena, Constitucion de 1857, El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar, Maderas del Carmen, Sierra de San Pedro Martir, Sierra de los Ajos, Buenos Aires y la P urica, and the Islas del Golfo de California. One additional protected area, Mapimı Reserva de la Biosfera, uses resources and management from the National Institute for Ecology. See also Environmentalism; Policy.
218
Pueblo Revolt (1680–96) FURTHER READINGS: Department of the Interior U.S.–Mexico Border Field Coordinating Committee. May 2005. http://www.cerc.usgs.gov/fcc/resources.htm#Protected%20areas%20a long%20the%20U.S./Mexico%20border; Gehlbach, Frederick R. Mountain Islands and Desert Seas: A Natural History of the US-Mexico Borderlands. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1981; Instituto Nacional de Ecologıa. Direccion de conservaci on de ecosistemas. September 2006. http://www.ine.gob.mx/index.html; Instituto Tecnol ogico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) and el Instituto de Informacion Fronteriza Mexico-Estados Unidos (InfoMexus). Report on Environmental Conditions and Natural Resources on Mexico’s Northern Border. May 2005. http://www.americaspolicy.org/rep-envt/ch-3_body.html; Kelly, Mary. ‘‘Carb on I and Carbon II: An Unresolved Binational Challenge.’’ In Richard Kiy and John D. Wirth, eds. Environmental Management on North America’s Borders. College Station: Texas A&M, 1998; Salazar, Joanna. ‘‘Adjacent US-Mexico Border Natural Protected Areas: Protection, Management and Cooperation Addendum to 1999 Report.’’ May 2005. www.scerp.org.
Emily Wakild Pueblo Revolt (1680–96). In 1680, the majority of the Pueblo peoples living in what is now New Mexico combined forces and rebelled against Spanish colonists. There had been previous isolated uprisings, but this was the first systematic attempt to oust Spanish settlers and missionaries. The carefully planned and coordinated revolt successfully expelled the Spanish from New Mexico until they returned in 1693 and put down the last serious uprising in 1696. Resentment against the Spanish had been building in the Pueblos over decades. The Spanish settlers had taken Amerindians as slaves beginning with their earliest forays into New Mexico. Soldier-settlers who had accompanied Don Juan de O~ nate in 1598, the first governor charged with settling and civilizing New Mexico, also held encomiendas, grants of Indian tribute consisting of maize, cotton cloth, and animal skins. Beginning in 1660, climate change caused drought and higher-than-normal temperatures, resulting in crop losses and poor hunting. The immediate consequences for the Pueblos were starvation and disease, but lack of trading surpluses also further upset the Amerindian economic system. Nomadic Amerindians, such as the Apaches, Navajos, and Utes, had begun raiding the Pueblos for the food they could no longer secure through barter when the Spanish began to commandeer Pueblo surpluses in the early 1600s. The situation became more acute in 1660 and raiding increased. The drought also led the colonists to increase their own demands for foodstuffs and labor. The Pueblos began to repudiate the Christian god and the missionaries, blaming both for their privation and misery, and many returned to native religious practices. A key turning point took place in 1675 when Governor Juan Franciso Trevi~ no had three Pueblo religious leaders hung and had forty-seven medicine men flogged and sentenced to slavery. However, armed Tewas threatened to kill all the Spanish at Santa Fe, the capital, if the medicine men were removed. Trevi~ no released the captives. The capitulation of the Spanish in 1675 brought into stark relief the precarious nature of Spanish settlement. Vastly outnumbered and far from Mexico City and any aid the government there could offer, Spanish survival on the frontier depended on conversion and acculturation of Amerindians rather than confrontation. Pope, a medicine man who had been punished by Trevi~ no, shrewdly assessed the situation and began to preach from Taos that life would not improve until the Pueblos repudiated Spanish religion and culture. He formed alliances with most of the other Pueblos and many
219
Pueblo Revolt (1680–96) of the Apache, although not all the Amerindians were willing to join his cause. After months of planning, Pope sent out messengers to the allied Pueblos with knotted cords marking the days remaining until the uprising, scheduled for August 11, 1680. Amerindians friendly to the Spanish revealed the plan on August 9, but not knowing the magnitude of what was coming, the Spanish did not adequately prepare. With their plans exposed, the Amerindians began the uprising a day early, August 10. The rebels used Spanish isolation and lack of preparedness to their advantage. They first secured Spanish horses and mules, and killed settlers on the fringes for their weapons and armor. They then divided northern New Mexico from the southern half, and within three days had destroyed the northern settlements, while survivors crowded into Santa Fe. Southern settlers and Amerindians choosing not to join the revolt fled to Isleta, a pueblo that did not join in the revolt. On August 14, those settlers, their slaves, and allied Amerindians set off along the Rio Grande to what is now El Paso, Texas. Santa Fe withstood a nine-day siege, but Governor Antonio de Otermın and the survivors had to evacuate the city on August 21. As they made their way south to join their comrades at El Paso, the colonists saw firsthand the extent of the destruction. The missions and friars had received the brunt of the Amerindian’s fury. Friars had been tortured, degraded, and mutilated. Mission churches had been desecrated and destroyed. On September 6, the survivors from Santa Fe joined those from Isleta at Socorro, just south of modern day El Paso. Less than 2,000 of the 2,500 Spanish settlers survived and now faced a precarious existence at Socorro. By 1684, the uprising had spread and taken hold in what is now northern Mexico. Spanish soldiers put down isolated rebellions and attacks on missions, but the systemic violence continued. In 1691, Don Diego de Vargas became governor of the territory then in the hands of the Pueblo rebels. After the initial uprising, old grievances weakened the alliances Pope had forged, and when Vargas ventured north in 1692 on an exploratory expedition, he won the allegiance of twenty-three villages. However, when he returned in 1693 intending to reoccupy the territory, these commitments evaporated. Vargas had to retake Santa Fe by force and conducted military maneuvers against the Amerindians across New Mexico throughout 1694. The natives launched another rebellion in 1696. They murdered five friars and burned rebuilt missions, but this less-coordinated uprising was small and short-lived. Within six months Vargas had regained control over all of the Pueblo peoples except the Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi dwelling in the west. They soon succumbed to Spanish rule, except for the Hopis who remained independent for the next 100 years. The Pueblo Revolt had important consequences. The rebellion further weakened the already suffering Pueblo peoples who never engaged in full-scale revolt again. Many Amerindians died in the fighting or permanently abandoned their pueblos. The Spanish eliminated the encomienda system in New Mexico and became more tolerant of some Pueblo religious practices. Assimilated Amerindians and Spanish settlers united to face a common enemy, the nomadic Amerindian raiders in the region. The settlement at El Paso grew and eventually became a sizeable town. New Mexico remained sparsely settled, but Santa Fe became an important trading center. See also Native Americans. FURTHER READINGS: Gutierrez, Ram on. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991; Hackett, Charles W., ed. Revolt of the Pueblo Indians
220
Pueblo Revolt (1680–96) of New Mexico and Otermın’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680-1682. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1942; Kessell, John L., Hendricks, Rick, and Dodge, Meredith, eds. By Force of Arms: The Journals of Don Diego de Vargas, 1691-1693. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992; Kessell, John L., Hendricks, Rick, and Dodge, Meredith, eds. Letters from the New World: Selected Correspondence of Don Diego de Vargas to His Family, 16751706. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992; Kessell, John L., Hendricks, Rick, and Dodge, Meredith, eds. To the Royal Crown Restored: The Journals of Don Diego de Vargas, New Mexico, 1692-1694. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995; Spicer, Edward H. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962; Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992; Weber, David J., ed. What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.
Joanne Kropp
221
Q
v
Queer Perspectives. Queer perspectives on the U.S.–Mexico border are traditionally unspoken, untheorized, and unrepresented both in academic and literary production. Despite a growing body of scholarship and literary work, allegedly sexually deviant subjects in the borderlands are far from being known and recognized not only in their home spaces but outside in the larger world of politics, arts, and academia. Perhaps the most likely place to begin is with Gloria Anzald ua and her 1987 book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Anzald ua, raised in the border region of South Texas, defied traditional classifications of genre, easing from essays to cr onica, from poetry to prose, with such dexterity that categorization becomes impossible whether speaking of a particular passage or of her work in its entirety. Her work displaces concepts of identity as fixed or stable and resists facile divisions of identity into its constituent parts. Most important, Anzald ua made border spaces, particularly those of the U.S.–Mexico border, and deviant sexualities within those spaces legible to a broader reading public on an international level. The border in this case is a specific material place that can be isolated geographically as well as on a cultural level. For studies focused on queer lives, her attention to the corporeal manifestations of borders is perhaps most important. The border becomes not only a geographical and cultural reality, but also a corporeal experience each time, as Anzald ua explained, ‘‘where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy.’’ Anzald ua invented new ways to speak of and to name diverse sexualities in the borderlands, always insistent on a plethora of terms: such as ‘‘tejana tortilleras’’ and ‘‘putas malas’’ in ‘‘To(o) Queer the Writer,’’ or, as she stated in Borderlands: ‘‘Los atravesados live here: the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-breed, the half dead; in short, those who cross over, pass over, or go throught the confines of the ‘normal.’’’ Her insistence on using terminologies indigenous to the communities about which she writes has influenced a generation of border scholars of sexuality who resist the imperializing tendency to label bodies in ways more characteristic of the ‘‘center’’ than the ‘‘periphery.’’ Anzald ua has been widely read and cited internationally across disciplinary boundaries, including sociology, anthropology, history, literary studies, and cultural studies. Because of this, Anzald ua has fundamentally configured the semantic field for studies about or literary production by queer people on the U.S.–Mexico border.
222
Queer Perspectives Nonetheless, the discussion of queer border lives and experience should not be limited solely to Anzald ua. While Anzald ua surely opened the field and established certain terms for its discussion, there are other writers, anthropologists, and historians doing important work on both sides of the border—in creative writing, for example, John Rechy, Alica Gaspar de Alba, and Arturo Islas in El Paso. The novels of John Rechy (1934–) reflect the underbelly of American life, representing, for example, traveling gay sex workers as in City of Night or a Chicana from El Paso living in Los Angeles in The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez. In these books, his work as a vocal gay man centers around themes of sex, borders, and societal barriers, often featuring protagonists who are natives of El Paso. Of the same generation as Rechy, Arturo Islas (1938–91) crossed numerous borders in his life, from his origins in El Paso to Stanford University where he studied and remained as a professor until his death. Islas is most well known for his novels, including The Rain God and Migrant Souls. His novels take on questions of family and migration, marginality, and secrets, painting a rich tapestry of life in El Paso. In recent years, Frederick Luis Aldama edited a collection of his unpublished work, including poetry and short fiction. His poetry includes courageous and explicit discussion of his queer sexuality and his struggles with health conditions, including a colonoscopy and, at the end of his life, HIV/AIDS. This poetry explodes some of the traditional critical takes on his work that have portrayed a certain reticence on Islas’ part to discuss his sexuality. In her academic work, fiction, and poetry, Alicia Gaspar de Alba (1958–) forcefully addresses questions of gender and sexuality in the border region. Her first published work, La Llorona on Longfellow Bridge (1989) begins her exploration of these questions, using a bilingual mix of language noteworthy for its precision and daring. In a short collection titled The Mystery of Survival and Other Stories (1993) and in her first novel Sor Juana’s Second Dream (1998), Gaspar de Alba returns to these themes. In her most recent book, Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders (2005), a Chicana lesbian academic returns to her native El Paso to adopt a baby from across the river in Juarez but quickly becomes embroiled in the wave of violence sweeping the border town targeting young women. Gaspar de Alba creatively reimagines through her writing many of the same issues first commented on by Glorıa Anzald ua years before. Numerous scholars have pointed out the need to identify new ways to theorize and to reconceptualize the existence of queer subjectivities along the border. As Chicana feminist critic, historian, and novelist Emma Perez has asked, ‘‘What about the gaps and silences?’’ Perez has pointed to crucial work in a variety of disciplines that is currently attempting to deepen our understanding of these important questions, particularly the work of historians like Deena Gonzalez, Yolanda Chavez Leyva, and Deborah Vargas and of cultural critics like Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano. There are numerous lines of research and exploration to be uncovered if thought on queer borderland lives is ever to really expand. A few questions are provoking: What of the queer lives on the other side of the border in Northern Mexico? Writers such as Abigail Boh orquez in Sonora and Joaquın Hurtado in Nuevo Leon might offer some starting places. What of transgender and transsexual border subjectivities? There have been real advances in thinking about queerness and the borderlands. Nonetheless, there is still a sizable amount of work to be done by academics and creative writers, this collective of what Anzald ua called nepantleras—border crossers and liminal space dwellers, who are researching and imagining new ways to think about these critical questions.
223
Queer Perspectives See also Literature. FURTHER READINGS: Aldama, Frederick Luis. Dancing with Ghosts: A Critical Biography of Arturo Islas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004; ‘‘Alicia Gaspar de Alba: Biography/ Criticism.’’ VG: Voices from the Gaps. September 15, 2006. http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/ entries/alba_alicia_gaspar_de.html; Anzald ua, Gloria E. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987; Anzald ua, Gloria E. ‘‘To(o) Queer the Writer—Loca, escritora y chicana.’’ In Betsy Warland, ed. Versions: Writing by Dykes, Queers & Lesbians, 249–63. Vancouver: Press Gang, 1991; Perez, Emma. ‘‘Queering the Borderlands: The Challenges of Excavating the Invisible and Unheard.’’ Frontiers (2003): 122–31; John Rechy Official Website. ‘‘A Substantial Artist.’’ September 15, 2006. www.johnrechy.com/bio.
John Pluecker
224
D
Radio. Border radio refers to commercial radio stations located close to the U.S.– Mexico border. As with all commercial radio, border radio got its start in the early 1930s when a host of independent producers built transmitters just south of the U.S.– Mexico border and began broadcasting. At the time, radio entrepreneurs who made their way to northern Mexico sought to free themselves from the influence of the major networks as well as recently passed U.S. legislation such as the Radio Act of 1927 and the 1934 Communications Act which sought to regulate crowed airwaves. Border radio entrepreneurs secured extremely powerful special transmitters (some up to 1 million watts) and gained the necessary permissions from officials in Mexico City who, in turn, assigned them call letters beginning with XE. As a result, the ‘‘big X’’ border stations could be heard for thousands of miles with programming largely marketed toward, although certainly not limited to, listeners in the United States. XED (later XEAW) proved the first of the border blasters when it began broadcasting from Reynosa, Tamaulipas (with studios also in McAllen, Texas) in the fall of 1930. Dubbed ‘‘the Voice of Two Republics,’’ XED’s 10,000 watts represented Mexico’s most powerful station at the time. Truly a transnational venture, three Texans and a Mexican owned the station and gained the cooperation of then-secretary of the Mexican Federal Department of Communications General Juan Almazan. Originally from North Carolina, Dr. John Brinkley became one of the best-known border radio entrepreneurs when he sold the popular Kansas station KFKB and moved to Del Rio, Texas. In October 1931, he began broadcasting from just across the Rio Grande in Ciudad Acu~ na, Coahuila, under the call letters XER. Initially powered at 75,000 watts, XER increased to 500,000 watts upon approval of the Mexican government a year later. This made Brinkley’s operation the most powerful radio station in the world. Dubbed the ‘‘Sunshine Station between the Nations,’’ XER offered a southern-style mix of folksy music, Christian evangelizing, popular mysticism (such as radio astrologers or ‘‘spooks’’ until 1932 when the Federal Radio Commission banned them from the airwaves), and Brinkley’s own medicine show programming (he was most famous for his ‘‘goat-gland’’ rejuvenation therapies). In 1934, Congress passed the Brinkley Act, which sought to shut down XER by prohibited programming originating in the United States from being broadcast via landlines just across the border in Mexico. In part, this action came as a result of Brinkley’s fascist leanings
225
R
Radio on the eve of World War II. About the same time, the Mexican government also targeted XER and briefly shut down the station. Legal arrangements were made and Brinkley’s XER—soon renamed XERA—continued to dominate the airwaves until Mexican President Manuel Avila Camacho expropriated the station in 1940 and shut it down. This came in the wake of a series of transnational negotiations between the Federal Communications Commission and the Mexican government under President Lazaro Cardenas who endeavored to ‘‘clean up’’ the border airwaves and more diligently regulate radio broadcasting. Another powerful ‘‘border blaster’’ broadcast from just south of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. On the air in late December in 1933, Iowa native Norman Baker operated station XENT much in the manner of his competitor Brinkley with an assortment of homey programming that included Mexican and Cuban orchestra music, gospel, hillbilly groups, and other popular favorites. To this Baker added his own commentary along with his trademark ‘‘cancer is curable’’ advertising campaign (he owned a hospital in Muscatine, Iowa). New stations, such as XEPN near Piedras Negras, Coahuila, began operations in the early 1930s. XEPN aired popular western swing, sagebrush waltzes, and hillbilly boogie. XEPN also featured ‘‘the king of border radio’’ cowboy Slim Rinehart and his occasional collaborator Patsy Montana. By the mid-1930s a total of nine border blaster stations operated in the region. Their combined wattage towered over the total number of U.S. stations. Not surprisingly, this caused much concern for other North American broadcasters who felt the border stations interfered with their operations. This situation would cause significant consternation for radio operators in both the United States and Mexico for years to come. Flour salesman Wilbert Lee ‘‘Pappy’’ O’Daniel was another prominent personality during the early years of border radio. O’Daniel got his start sponsoring fiddler Bob Wills, singer Milton Brown, and guitarist Herman Arnspiger on Forth Worth, Texas, station KFJZ in early 1931. O’Daniel soon assumed the role of folksy announcer and commentator to complement Wills and his newly named Light Crust Doughboys hillbilly and gospel sounds. Before long, they could be heard every noontime across much of Texas on stations WBAP in Forth Worth, WOAI in San Antonio, and KPRC in Houston. In the summer of 1933, Bob Wills split with O’Daniel and moved his band to Waco. O’Daniel tried to regain control over the band and a lawsuit ensued, which Wills eventually won. Wills and his Texas Playboys subsequently relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, while O’Daniel went on to become the first ‘‘radio governor’’ of Texas with his successful campaign as state Democratic candidate in 1938. O’Daniel defeated Lyndon Johnson to win a U.S. senate seat in 1941. World War II brought further attention to the border radio scene on the part of the U.S. and Mexican governments. Negotiations in early 1941 led to the closing of many border stations in exchange for Mexico receiving six ‘‘clear channel’’ frequencies (meaning one transmitter operating at a time). After the war, several stations such as XERF in Ciudad Acu~ na, XEFW in Tampico, XEXO in Nuevo Laredo, XEG in Monterrey, XEMO and XERB in Baja California (XERB being made famous with the release of George Lucas’s 1973 film American Graffiti), XETRA in Rosarito Beach, XEAK in Tijuana, and XELO in Ciudad Juarez could be heard for miles. All featured a wide mix of programming that ranged from colorful disc jockeys, such as Paul Kallinger and Wolfman Jack; evangelists, including Sam Morris, A.A. Allen, Dr. C.W. Burpo, Reverend Ike, and others; and countless
226
Railroads recording stars playing gospel, country, rhythm and blues, or early rock and roll. The classic era of border radio came to an end in 1986 when the Mexican and U.S. governments signed the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement. The measure permitted low-powered evening transmission on clear channel frequencies, which successfully interfered with reception of the more-powerful and largely Englishspeaking AM dial border blasters. In late November 1972, U.S. and Mexican officials negotiated the ‘‘Agreement Concerning Frequency Modulation Broadcasting in the 87.5 to 108 MHz Band.’’ This legislation set FM power and frequencies for stations on both sides of the border. Subsequent popularity of AM transmission has declined in comparison to the early decades of radio. Contemporary border radio programming has been taken up by Spanish language stations such as XERPS in Tijuana, XELO in Nogales, XEJ and XEROK in Ciudad Juarez, XERF in Ciudad Acu~ na, as well as several others. See also Culture; Economy; Music. FURTHER READINGS: Fowler, Gene, and Crawford, Bill. Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves. Revised edition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002; Haynes, Joy Elizabeth. Radio Nation: Communication, Popular Culture and Nationalism in Mexico, 1910-1950. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000; Zacatecas, Bertha. Vidas en el aire: pioneros de la radio en Mexico. Mexico City: Editorial Diana, 1996.
Andrew G. Wood Railroads. The coming of the railroads to the U.S.–Mexico borderlands in the second half of the nineteenth century set off a series of rapid and crucial transformations that forever changed the political economy, social organization, and everyday life of the border. For many, the railroads were an unmitigated good; as the railroad penetrated new areas, it brought modernity in its tow, warping peoples’ conceptions of time and space and bringing new mass-produced consumer goods to places that had long been outside of national markets. Additionally, as the railroads penetrated the transMississippi West, the U.S. government at last found the initiative to militarily and politically incorporate the borderlands to protect investments and property. The final pacification of the Apaches occurred in the 1880s, concomitant with opening up the border to commerce through the railroads. The railroads set some people at a distinct disadvantage, particularly those who lived and worked the land promised to railroad companies as an incentive to development. The railroads represent a shift toward ‘‘bigness’’ in U.S. history felt, in one way, through the integration of a national rail network that tied the country together, dramatically reducing the amount of time it took to move between disparate locations. The railroad also encouraged the growth of big business as the types of capital necessary to build the railroads required bureaucratic administration and limited liability, signaling a definitive shift away from market capitalism to corporate capitalism. As the railroad opened up the hinterlands of the American continent to corporations, it brought new people into the borderlands who were better connected to national and even hemispheric markets. This infiltration ultimately yoked the economies of the borderlands to distant, much larger, and more highly organized markets at the expense of local producers. Control of the railroads provided a distinct advantage to whoever sought influence and power in the borderlands.
227
Railroads
Trains transporting insurrectionists (insurrectos) during the Mexican Revolution. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-89087.)
The impact of the railroads on the borderlands began with the planning of a transcontinental route in the 1850s. Though the Southern Pacific would not reach the Rio Grande until the 1870s, the border took its present shape with the Gadsden Purchase. Jefferson Davis and other Southerners engineered the annexation of this piece of Mexican territory south of the Gila River to propose an alternative to Stephen Douglas’s plan for a northerly transcontinental route. In the 1870s and 1880s, work began on a southern transcontinental route that passed through this territory. North American railroad developers would settle on subsidies and economic penetration rather than territorial annexation in the later half of the nineteenth century as they expanded the rail network into Mexico. The first and perhaps most important railroad in the borderlands was the Southern Pacific. Owned originally by the Big Four—Leland Stanford, Colis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker—this railroad became a colossus. It absorbed the majority of smaller lines in the U.S. Southwest, even taking over operations for the Central Pacific in 1885. The Southern Pacific reached San Antonio in 1875; it reached Eagle Pass in 1878 and El Paso in 1881 before linking up with its western half via a golden spike at the Pecos River in 1883. Smaller lines also moved into the borderlands as Laredo became attached to the U.S. rail network through the International and Great Northern in 1883. By 1881, four lines converged in El Paso, including the first trunk lines that added Mexican territory to the rail network. Four years later, in 1885, the Mexican Central Line linked El Paso to Mexico City. Most of the rail lines that ran through Texas and Mexico reinforced older trading patterns. In contrast, when the Southern Pacific Railroad reached Arizona from California, it reoriented the traditional north-south trade corridors onto an east-west axis, linking the area much more closely to U.S. than Mexican commerce. Even with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe connecting Arizona and Sonora through Ambos Nogales in the early 1880s, this area still remained unconnected to Mexico City; the rail line terminated at Guaymas on the Pacific Ocean. By the time of the Mexican
228
Railroads Revolution, there were still no lines that tied Sonora to the interior of Mexico. This gave a tremendous advantage to Pancho Villa’s Division del Norte operating in Chihuahua one state over. Unlike the Hueristas in Sonora, Villa was able to command an extensive and well-developed rail network tied to Mexico City. The impact of the railroad extended well beyond shifting the border’s location and reorienting markets. All along the border, the railroad brought increasing numbers of white North Americans following in the wake of the prospects created by the railroad, ultimately drawing racial lines in these formerly fluid border societies. Likewise, the increased migration of Mexicans into the area as laborers following the opportunities created by the railroad reinforced the creation of class lines along racial lines. Only south Texas retained its older character and Mexican Anglo interculture beyond the 1880s. This was due to the fact that Richard King and allied railroad developers, in response to internecine rivalries among economic elites in the Brownsville area, decided to build the railroad 200 miles north on a path that ran westward through Corpus Christi and Laredo. Some laborers prospered from the growth of the economy in sectors that boomed with the coming of the railroad. Copper mining in Arizona and industry in Monterrey, both of which would have been impractical before the railroad, offered profits for some and wage work for others. Building the railroads also offered good wages— higher than was customary in Mexico. Mexicans did, however, receive substantially lower wages than the compensations offered to white workers. Nevertheless, railroad work would continue to draw laborers from Mexico; in due course, Mexican labor would replace Chinese labor on the railroad. Significantly, the Yaquis of Sonora also offered their labor and received decent payment. When the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe reached Sonora, the railroad had to compete with wages offered by cattle dealers for Yaqui labor. At the same time as the railroad offered some new opportunities for wage work, other ways of making a living disappeared forever. Almost overnight the overwhelmingly Mexican freight operators and muleteers faced obsolescence; artistans and peasants alike suffered with the new appearance of mass-manufactured goods and refrigerated cars carrying food grown far away; the rail routes made the cattle trails redundant. Cowboys and vaqueros even helped build the Southern Pacific, ultimately contributing to the growth of the object of their displacement. Perhaps most significant of all, the profits promised by railroads—in addition to the enormous land grants offered to railroad impresarios—provided the incentive once and for all to enclose communal Indian and peasant lands. Adding to the pressure on Native American populations produced by the expropriation and privatization of their land was the population growth and consequent ecological pressure that accompanied development in the Mexican North and the U.S. Southwest. Among the Indians, only the Bronco faction of the Sonoran Yaquis sustained a long-term rebellion that ultimately blocked the construction of a proposed trunk line from Guaymas to El Paso. This rebellion eventually merged with the Sonoran contingent of the Mexican Revolution. The changes associated with the railroad actually helped bring on the Mexican Revolution. Adding to the grief of a prolonged depression and rapid decline in the standard of living toward the end of the Porfiriato, the railroad had for many in the Mexican North failed to deliver on its promise of prosperity. Porfirio Dıaz’s government had granted more than 8 million acres in land concessions to overwhelmingly
229
Ranching North American railroad developers, growing the national economy and also increasing foreign dependence and inciting agrarian violence. Even with these generous concessions to North American railroad impresarios, many areas remained isolated. Venture capital could never finance such expensive propositions (for instance, passing a railway through the Sierra Madre—the original intention of Albert Kinsey Owen’s failed San Antonio and Border Railroad Company). Nor were there many east-west routes built across Mexico. Adding to these woes, the boom-and-bust cycle connected to building railroads and exploiting natural resources failed to produce sustained growth in the country. The railroad had tied the formerly independent and autonomous fronterizos to not just the Mexican state, but also to U.S. markets. The railroad and attendant commercial development took the formerly distant and independent northern frontier and turned it into ‘‘the border.’’ After the railroad, and the development and exploitation that followed in its wake, Mexicans in the northern states lived within the reach of not just one, but two distant powers. During the Revolution, Pancho Villa commanded the rail from El Paso through Chihuahua, and in 1914, he used it to move his enormous Division Del Norte to Mexico City. The railroads had made the borderlands dependent on distant markets; railroads had likewise shifted power to enormous, centrally organized, and bureaucratically administered corporations and their deputies; railroads had also changed local consumption and work patterns. But in the end, the Mexican Revolution showed how the railroad could on occasion put the core at the mercy of the periphery. FURTHER READINGS: Coatsworth, John. Growth Against Development: The Economic Impact of the Railroads in Porfirian Mexico. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 1981; Hart, John Mason. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War. Berkeley: University of California, 2002; Katz, Fredrick. The Secret War in Mexico. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
James Nichols Ranching. In the broadest sense, ranching can be defined as livestock production under capitalism that is continuous with its precapitalist precedents. Historically the U.S.–Mexico border has been a major region in the dispersion of European-based livestock and the development of commercial ranching in North America. Ranching spearheaded the intrusion of global capitalism into the region, producing conflicts, dreams of wealth, and cultural pride, as well as economic failures and environmental destruction. Ranching became a way of life and a source of identity, but also a massive yet precarious industry. Livestock and the practice of open-range herding by horse-mounted drovers were part of the baggage the Spanish brought with them to enable survival and conquest. From the mid-1500s, silver mining created a strong demand for livestock in Northern New Spain. In the Rio Grande Valley raising cattle for meat, hides, and tallow began when Juan de O~ nate’s men trailed more than a thousand heads into the area in 1598. Spanish soldiers often drove the animals with them while the missions and presidios took up cattle raising. The Spanish, however, quickly lost the monopoly of control over the animals, although cattle and sheep never spread as far or as fast as the horse. While most indigenous peoples remained raiders of livestock, some groups like the Pueblos and the Navajos took up livestock raising. Interestingly, the first stock raisers
230
Ranching in what today is Arizona were the Hopi and the O’odham Indians in the vicinities of the Spanish missions. During the reservation era, cattle ranching has only expanded and today forms one of the most significant economic practices in many reservation communities. During the Spanish era, smaller ranchos and especially grand livestock haciendas that persisted into the twentieth century came to dominate Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, and Tamaulipas. Throughout the border area, relative peace and reforms in the Spanish empire by the late 1700s led to a modest commercial boom in livestock operations that still remained vulnerable to raiding, war, theft, political unrest, and limited markets. In California, the American and British trading vessels that arrived to collect hides and tallow increased demand, while the secularization of mission cattle brought more commercially minded ownership. In New Mexico, thriving sheep raising collapsed during the turmoil that led to Mexico’s independence. It resumed again in the 1830s, and New Mexico sent tens of thousands of sheep per year south until disrupted by the American conquest. The California Gold Rush offered markets for both New Mexico sheep and California cattle. Overconfidence and spending, floods, drought, and disease, however, brought a collapse for the California cattle industry, which in turn allowed the sheep industry to take over. By 1870, California flocks had grown to almost 3 million head, which discontinued the sheep drive from New Mexico. Between the 1750s and 1810s, Texas ranches developed in three distinct areas: between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River, on the San Antonio River, and on the Louisiana border near Nacogdoches. During the time that Texas was independent, Anglos took control of livestock operations. They adopted the Mexican practice of allowing the herds to roam free, and by crossing their stock with Spanish cattle, they developed the Texas Longhorns that formed the majority of the roughly 5 million cattle in Texas between 1836 and 1865. During the U.S. Civil War, the cattle raisers and the markets in California, Missouri, and the Caribbean vanished, so that by 1865 an estimated 5 to 6 million feral longhorns were free for the taking. Because New Orleans was a commercial wreck after the war, the cattle produced in Texas was driven north toward Missouri and Kansas and west into New Mexico and Arizona. In two decades, more than 5 million heads were sent out from Texas. At first, cattle was trailed mostly to mines, military posts, and Indian reservations, but the real potential for profit was in the eastern part of the United States. Inventions in refrigeration that prevented the spread of the dreaded tick-carried Texas fever opened the way, while the expanding railroads that badly needed traffic solved the question of transportation. Cattle passed the Chisholm trail and its successors on their way to Kansas cattle towns and onward by rail to major distribution points in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago before ending up in the dinner tables of eastern consumers. In this process that fundamentally changed American dietary habits, Texas Longhorns had to make way for tender better-quality beef as cattlemen began to interbreed the Longhorns with improved stock from the East. While cattlemen cultivated a vision of individualism, as a whole ranching became more and more like an industry of slaughterhouses, mass-production, and corporations driven by a belief in limitless growth in the free and, seemingly, overabundant open ranges of the West. For example, the King Ranch of south Texas employed 300 vaqueros to work 65,000 heads of cattle, while John Chisum’s ‘‘Rancho Grande’’ on the Texas-New Mexico border covered an area the size of southern New England.
231
Ranching Cattle and sheep reshaped the land, opened it for invasion through overgrazing, and threatened or replaced native plants and wild animals, which were either competitors for the grass or predators of the domestic stock. By the mid-1880s, growing debts, overused grasslands, and uncontrollable weather caused a disaster, and panicky ranchers pushed animals to the market. Many remained unsold, and the prices dropped in the pressure of declining market demand and oversupply. In Mexican Arizona, attacks by hostile Apaches, drought, lack of markets, and natural predators kept the number of cattle relative low, while during the 1850s most cattle passed through Arizona to California. After the Civil War, many of the cattlemen who decided to stay on Arizona’s stretches of good range were small operators, but others were investors with ties to Eastern and European capital. During the 1880s, cattle fever spurred by railroad development swept across the territory. More and more cattle poured into Arizona as the violent decline had already hit the Plains and every source of permanent water was taken rapidly. The range faced overstocking by approximately 2 million cattle and sheep that devastated the Arizona grasslands. As elsewhere, the market in Arizona became glutted, the prices plunged, and the industry suffered. After the widespread bust in the 1880s and 1890s, the cattle industry regrouped. Many opted for smaller-scale operations where the stock was winter fed and fenced. Ranchers aimed for tighter disease control and used improved breeds that would mature more quickly, offer increased profit, and keep a high turnover rate. Although cattle were still seasonally driven to public land, the operations began to depend on federal permits. In some parts, sheep expanded to the shrinking domain of the cattle. In Arizona, sheep spilled over from California and combined with Mormon and Navajo sheep. New Mexico was the heartland of sheep ranches all along with nearly 5 million head in the late 1880s. Sheep ownership was concentrated in New Mexico, but elsewhere, sheep offered an alternative for poor people for an enterprise that large cattle companies hoped to deny for small cattle operators. Political disruptions in the 1860s had already made the large ranches in northern Mexico a battlefield, but during the revolutionary fervor in the early 1900s, ranchers lost their herds as armies swept through their lands in advance or retreat. Violence and disorder nearly destroyed the livestock industry, although the stratified hacienda social order was not overturned. Only slowly the industry recovered after the 1920s. In the United States, ranching remained tied to a cycle of boom and bust as the industry became more concentrated and mechanized. Before World War I, production and capital costs mounted, but the prices remained low only to rise to unprecedented heights during the war. Many expanded their herds only to face the postwar bust. By the 1920s, however, the desire for hamburgers swept across the country and things looked well, but during the New Deal era, cattlemen hit by drought, the consequences of overgrazing, and dropping prices needed federal help. After World War II the demand for beef reached record highs and the industry again boomed. In recent decades, surplus supply, high interest rates, federal regulation on grazing, pressure from urban or recreational developers or from expanding industries, and consumer perceptions on the health impacts of red meat have kept commercial ranching precarious. Texas remains the center of cattle ranching, and the industry is alive throughout the border region where ranching still ranks as a primary source of farm income. The trend is for larger and more efficient units. Half of the independent western ranchers went out of business during the second half of the twentieth
232
La Raza Unida century, while the size of the remaining operations increased by 125 percent. In the saga of modern ranching, cattle and sheep have increasingly become machines of exchange able to turn grass into meat or wool, which can be made into dollars. See also Barbed Wire; Economy; Native Americans. FURTHER READINGS: Iverson, Peter. When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994; Jordan, Terry G. North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and Differentiation. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993; Sayre, Nathan. ‘‘The Cattle Boom in Southern Arizona: Towards a Critical Political Ecology.’’ Journal of the Southwest 41 (Summer 1999): 239–71; Slatta, Richard W. Cowboys of the Americas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990; White, Richard. ‘‘Animals and Enterprise.’’ In Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West, 237–73. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Janne Lahti La Raza Unida. La Raza Unida Party (LRUP) was a political party founded in South Texas in 1970 that sought to harness the electoral power of Mexican Americans to challenge the two-party political system. LRUP soon expanded beyond its base of South Texas to become a national organization that briefly became the primary organization of the Chicano Movement in the early 1970s. Despite a number of early successes in the Chicano-majority areas of Texas, the party had effectively collapsed by the middle of the decade after a series of damaging tactical errors and in-fighting within the party stripped it of its organizational momentum and unity. The origins of the LRUP lie in the farm-worker movement that emerged in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas in 1966. Shortly after Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers of America received national attention for their strike against the grape growers of California, farm workers in Starr County, Texas, began their own strike against the citrus growers of the region. The strike collapsed a little more than a year after its inauguration, but in its wake remained a new generation of activists who had participated in unionization drives and publicity campaigns for the strike effort. Students at schools like St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, A&M University in Kingsville, and barrio activists in cities and towns throughout Texas took the energy of the strike campaigns and began to pour them into new efforts to fight for some of the more basic human rights that were still denied many Chicanos in South Texas. The most important of these groups, the Mexican American Youth Organization, was founded in 1967 and soon orchestrated a series of school boycotts in South Texas that brought more Chicanos into the growing reform movement in the years from 1967 to 1970. In January of 1970, under the banner of LRUP, these activists turned their attention to an electoral takeover of four counties in South Texas that had Chicano majorities. Despite fierce campaigns to defeat and discredit the new party, LRUP achieved success in the majority of its first elections, especially the complete takeover of the city council of Crystal City, an important agricultural community in the Winter Garden region, an area southwest of San Antonio and adjacent to the TexasMexico border. After these initial victories, however, the party decided to widen its base of operations, first focusing on statewide elections, and then forming a national party. These
233
Remittances efforts drained much of the party’s limited financial resources, and led to a fracturing of the leadership of the party as the national party became divided between factions of the party based in Texas, California, Colorado, and the Midwest. LRUP maintained electoral offices in its old base of operations in the Winter Garden of South Texas, but by the end of the 1970s, even these victories disappeared. Thus, LRUP endured only a few years and achieved few obvious victories. In spite of this, LRUP forced local, state, and federal governments to take notice of the problems of the Chicano communities in places like South Texas, while also spawning a number of groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the Southwest Voter Registration Project (SVREP), which continue to work for the advancement of Chicano civil rights. See also Chicano/a Movement; Labor Unions. FURTHER READINGS: Foley, Douglas E., et al. From Peones to Politicos: Class and Ethnicity in a South Texas Town, 1900-1987. Austin: University of Texas, 1988; Garcia, Ignacio M. United We Win: The Rise and Fall of La Raza Unida Party. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989; Gutıerrez, Jose Angel. The Making of a Chicano Militant: Lessons from Cristal. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998; Navarro, Armando. La Raza Unida Party: A Chicano Challenge to the U.S. Two-Party Dictatorship. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.
John Weber Remittances. Remittances, or remissions, are the goods and money that people send to others in different states within a country or across international borders commonly as the byproduct of labor migration. Many migrants mention the intent to earn higher wages to save and send home as the main reason to work temporally away from home. Remittances are not a new phenomenon, and they occur despite the form of migration. Remittances can be observed historically, for example, among German, Polish, Italian, and Greek migrants in the United States; Algerians, Moroccans, and sub-Saharan Africans in France, as well as Polish, Albanian, and Turkish migrants in Germany, among many other transnational communities. Today, because of their large size, Chinese, Indian, and Mexican diasporas send the largest aggregate amounts in remittances. Mexican traders selling goods in the United States have sent remittances to family members and providers back home since the colonial days, and the same can be said of foreigners living and doing business in Mexico. Mexicans working in mining or agriculture in the Southwest have sent remittances as early as the new international borders were drawn following the U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48). After their exile and persecution by Dictator Porfirio Dıaz, the Flores Mag on brothers lived in San Antonio, Texas, and San Louis, Missouri. Ricardo Flores Magon not only kept communications with people in Mexico through letters and his influential political writings but also occasionally sent remittances, guns, and ammunition that would be used to fight the Dıaz followers, especially in the border region in the Mexican Revolution. Mexican workers enrolled in the Bracero Program (1942–64) were avid remittancesenders. Their wives and children depended on this income to survive. Their remittances ended after the migrants came back home or when the whole family settled in the United States. Nonetheless, new migrant waves have kept migration and the flow of remittances in continuous increase.
234
Remittances A common modern example is the money that Mexican immigrants in the United States send to their family members living in their towns of origin. Thus, remittances are regularly offered as an indicator of the strength and extent of the social relations between people working in the United States and people living in Mexico. This should not be surprising since the bulk of this money goes to family members and close associates and friends. Migrants leave their family behind only geographically. They go abroad but most of the time they keep their commitment to provide for their family back home and therefore usually send a stable amount of remittances consistently to cover for the everyday expenses of their dependants. To put this in perspective, the aggregate amount of these private transfers in Mexico has surpassed in the first years of the twenty-first century the income from tourism and many export sectors, has been higher than foreign aid or foreign direct investment, and has approached the resources obtained through oil sales abroad. This does not mean that this is free-money from abroad or an easy road to development, because remittances represent the sweat, sacrifice, and loneliness that migrants endure to provide their families with basic goods and a humble increase in living standards. Remittances often work through trusted community members who travel back and forth; through organic and semi-informal networks such as the hawala or hundi systems that extend throughout Middle East, Africa, and Asia; or through other trust networks in which transmission is based on honor and reciprocity. The U.S. Postal Service has been used by transnational communities to send letters and packages, as well as money in the form of cash, checks, or money orders, also known as giros, to family members and friends far away. Many companies specializing in this endeavor have developed. Founded in 1852, Wells Fargo’s original business was the delivery of money and goods across the West following the California Gold Rush in the wake of the U.S.–Mexican War. Western Union founded in 1851 as a telegraph company was later involved in the transmission of money orders, and today it is one of the most widespread commercial means for sending and receiving remittances around the world. Competition from small local companies, as well as from larger banks, has been increasing in recent years. The sending of remittances has historically been an important business for intermediaries and has been connected to developments in transportation, telecommunications, and banking. But despite the channel of transmission and delivery, remittances continue to represent a transfer of economic resources earned through retail or labor by people living away from the recipients who keep strong contact and a shared culture and values with family members, friends, neighbors, business partners, communal and mutual aid organizations, and religious or political organizations requesting funds for common purposes. The former examples could also be called repatriated wages. The latter ones are examples of collective remittances. Remittances have received a lot of attention in the past years because of the foreign currency they bring to the receiving countries, the extra resources they bring to recipients in certain countries, their contagious spread among contiguous social units, and their potential to create economic development for which the evidence is mixed. Most of the remitters send a big part of what they can save from their wages abroad after they cover their basic expenses. At home, remittances are used to cover basic expenses, as well as increases in food consumption, education, house construction, and renovation. Remittances are often seen by neighboring households that do not receive them as ‘‘manna from heaven.’’ This creates social expectations among
235
Repatriados potential migrants and encourages a culture of migration within small towns that have a history of migration to areas where they can count on acquaintances and social ties to form networks between the sending and receiving communities. This gives rise to transnational communities that not only exchange labor and remittances in cash but also food, goods, values, practices, and cultural understandings—something that has come to be called social remittances. Some claim that remittances cause development but the evidence is mixed. Remittances do not cause development by themselves, but they can be of great help when the recipients put this money toward the right structural reasons, allowing them to put some of these remittances to work in productive activities. These activities include markets in which to place their products and an infrastructure through which to move them. Remittances are an example of globalization from below since migrants cross borders despite state designs. Remittances show they keep meaningful social connection through space. At the same time, however, most of the wages of unskilled labor migrants are spent in the host societies to which they contribute with their labor; where they pay for housing, transportation, food, and consumer goods; and which they enrich with their food, language, music, and culture in general. FURTHER READINGS: Cortina, Jeronimo, de la Garza, Rodolfo, and Ochoa-Reza, Enrique. ‘‘Remesas Lımites al Optimismo.’’ Foreign Affairs en Espa~ nol. (Julio Septiembre 2005). ITAM; Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. Gendered Transitions. Mexican Experiences of Immigration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994; Levitt, Peggy. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001; Massey, Douglas, Alarc on, Rafael, Durand, Jorge, and Gonzalez. Humberto. Return to Aztl an: The Social Process of International Migration from Western Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987; Parre~ nas, Rachel Salazar. Children of Global Migration. Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford University Press, 2005.
Ernesto Casta~neda-Tinoco Repatriados. Repatriados are most often Mexican laborers and their families residing in the United States who are compelled to return home due to economic crisis. Repatriation is distinct from the natural progression when immigrants return home as part of their habitual migration trek. Although the most studied repatriation phase occurred during the Great Depression, similar incidents occurred in 1848, 1907, and 1920–21. The February 2, 1848, signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo concluded the U.S.–Mexican War and left some 117,000 Mexicans in the ceded territories. The treaty’s provisions protected the rights and land titles of Mexican citizens; however, nearly 3,000 Mexicans repatriated immediately after the war’s conclusion. On June 14 the Mexican government authorized 200,000 pesos for Commissioner Father Ramon Ortiz to aid repatriados, and state officials in Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Sonora offered them public land. Additional support came from Father Miguel Molina y Pacheco of the Colegio Apost olico de San Fernando in Mexico City who committed 200,000 pesos for repatriados and earmarked 25,000 pesos for Alta California mission residents. An additional 75,000 pesos purchased property for repatriado communities along the northern frontier. A large number of Mexicans were unable to return due to insufficient resources, and New Mexican state officials forced many potential repatriados to apply for U.S.
236
Repatriados citizenship for fear of labor shortages. This period’s repatriation schemes came to an end in 1863 when the French forced the Benito Juarez administration to abandon Mexico City. As would be the case in the twentieth-century, governmental efforts were cumbersome, lacked adequate resources and planning, and were sabotaged by U.S. employers. Because of population and labor shortages, especially in the North, repatriados was a significant policy concern for the 1876–1910 Porfirio Dıaz dictatorship. Officials encouraged repatriados to take advantage of the 1883 Public Land act, which sought European and Asian immigrants to promote economic development in northern rural areas, to defend Mexico from U.S. filibusters and marauders, and to minimize contraband trading. Policymakers believed that repatriados were less expensive to attract and more likely to colonize those regions. They were offered 100 free hectares of land, a ten-year release from military service, and tax exemptions. Some 31,658 repatriados took advantage of the program with the majority coming from New Mexico and south Texas. The 1907 worldwide recession interrupted the United States’s growing demand for Mexican workers and the economic interdependency between the two nations, and foreshadowed similar calamities in 1921 and 1929. Recently arrived immigrants were the first to be fired and pressured to repatriate just months after they were recruited to work in various U.S. industries. Local officials and consular personnel aided the destitute, but the overwhelming response from Southwestern communities was for their exodus. Church groups and city officials provided transportation southward, which created tremendous stress for border communities and left many repatriados far from home. The Los Angeles and El Paso consulates were particularly successful in helping the majority of repatriados return. As a result of the economic crisis, more than 2,000 Mexicans returned via railroads, many employees of the same companies that expelled them. Mexicans eventually returned to the United States in greater numbers due to economic recovery, the 1910–20 Mexican Revolution, and World War I. Because of the political instability engendered by the Revolution, the Mexican government was hard pressed to aid its compatriots abroad during the 1920–21 postwar recession. Relief agencies demanded that the U.S. government implement a massive deportation program to eliminate the burden of helping Mexican immigrants. U.S. officials recommended that the employers of the 70,000 Mexican workers who were exempted from the 1917 Immigration Act should assist the repatriados. Nonetheless, for the 1920–21 fiscal year, the U.S. federal government deported 1,268 Mexicans, mostly for reasons of indigence. President-elect Alvaro Obregon mustered the few resources at his disposal to aid the growing repatriado population. Although his administration aided more than 150,000 repatriados, dependence on repatriation as a primary instrument of protection was not a feasible long-term option given its cost and the government’s limited resources. On October 23, 1921, the emergency repatriation drive was terminated. Although, the $1 million spent on food and railway passages helped more than 50,000 repatriados return, once within the Republic, family and friends were their only support. Obreg on also established the Department of Repatriation within the Ministry of Foreign Relations to handle future repatriation projects more efficiently. However, immediate financial limitations forced the government to reassess its commitment because demand far exceeded its capability. The 1924–28 Plutarco Elıas Calles administration continued the streamlined repatriation policy, because of the government’s inability
237
Rhetoric to conduct large-scale repatriation drives and because Calles believed that most repatriados expected that the Mexican government would pay for their return, regardless of their circumstances. The tremendous unemployment that overtook the United States as a result of the Great Depression again caused significant nativist movements to blame Mexican workers for the period’s horrible plight, which left one out of four U.S. workers unemployed. Approximately 300,000 repatriados were forced out of the United States in varying forms. Repatriados were offered free train rides, and some went voluntarily, but unfortunately many were tricked and coerced into leaving, and in some cases, U.S. citizens were deported on suspicion of being Mexican. Local immigration officers, law enforcement agencies, and journalists publicized deportation raids to frighten repatriados. In California, between 50,000 and 75,000 Mexicans with their American-born children left California. Similar repatriation schemes took place throughout the United States, especially in the Southwest, and on a smaller scale in the Midwest such as in Kansas City, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois. Within Mexico, various measures were implemented to reduce the flow of immigration. Government officials through newspapers and other outlets warned of potential injustices, lack of protection, and violence. The Ministry of Government banned the immigration of foreigners into Mexico to protect jobs for its compatriots and returning repatriados. President Pascual Ortiz Rubio ordered Mexican consuls to focus their efforts on aiding their compatriot’s return at all costs. Despite the various plans that returned more than 1,186,099 repatriados from 1920 to 1940, many factors prevented the Mexican government from creating a policy based solely on repatriation, such as an unstable economy, modernization goals, and government instability. Also, because of World War II, the 1942–64 Bracero Program, and a perpetual demand for Mexican workers in the United States, large-scale repatriation programs were no longer feasible. In 2005, the California State Assembly passed the Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program, officially recognizing the ‘‘unconstitutional removal and coerced emigration of United States citizens and legal residents of Mexican descent’’ and apologizing to residents of California ‘‘for the fundamental violations of their basic civil liberties and constitutional rights committed during the period of illegal deportation and coerced emigration.’’ See also Foreigners Expelled from Mexico; Immigration Legislation; Policy. FURTHER READINGS: Aguila, Jaime R. ‘‘Protecting ‘Mexico de afuera’: Mexican Emigration Policy, 1876–1928.’’ PhD dissertation, Arizona State University, 2000; Balderrama, Francisco, and Rodrıguez, Raymond. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006; Cardoso, Lawrence. Mexican Emigration to the United States, 1897–1931. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980; Moyano Pahissa, Angela, ed. Proteccion Consular a Mexicanos en los Estados Unidos, 1849–1900. Mexico City: Archivo Hist orico Diplomaico Mexicano, 1989; Reisler, Mark. By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States, 1900–1940. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976; Rosales, F. Arturo. Chicano: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1997.
Jaime R. Aguila Rhetoric. A rhetoric or rhetorical tradition is a typified pattern of oral, written, visual, and electronic communication that corresponds to a relatively coherent set of cultural
238
Rhetoric values of a group of people. The typified communication pattern gives structure to— and is structured by—the cultural values of a given group, forming a mutually constitutive relationship. Often, the typified patterns are the only surface manifestation of deeply held, implicit cultural values and thus, become powerful indicators of everyday cultural practices. Commonly, diverse people share sets of competing cultural values and corresponding rhetorical patterns, forming what is known as cross-cultural contact. One of the largest zones of cross-cultural rhetorical contact is the U.S.–Mexico border. Three areas of border research are critical for an exploration of rhetoric: U.S. cultural and rhetorical traditions; Mexican cultural and rhetorical traditions; and the interactions of U.S. and Mexican rhetorical traditions along both sides of the border. Most U.S.–Mexico ‘‘border’’ research focuses on the border northward, a view so explicitly entrenched in the Mexican American or Latino experience in the United States that it fails to see the historical and contemporary influence of Mexico. Another predominant view of border research focuses on the marginalized poor of Mexico, failing to account for all of Mexico’s population, and generally comparing the poor in Mexico to the not so poor in the United States. This biased view of Mexico does not adequately account for the everyday dynamics of border rhetoric. The general rhetorical traditions from both countries and how these traditions mix on both sides of the border are examined here. Many key cultural values influence the U.S. rhetorical tradition. One major influence is the U.S. common law legal heritage. This heritage, along with accompanying institutions, legal processes, and education, encourages an inductive, precedence logic and purpose in written communications. Often, written communications become touchstones for regulating organizational, social, and economic behaviors. Fairness and equal application of law is a hallmark of communication approaches. Furthermore, the United States continues to exhibit strong values of self-reliance and individualism, an influence that does not seem to be waning despite more multicultural realities. These values tend to encourage somewhat dichotomous objective or expressive communications patterns. They also encourage a more consultative communication patterns, with superior and subordinate exchanging ideas in a more mutual constructive fashion. As an important connection to individualism and universalism, U.S. values of linear time and ‘‘reader-friendly’’ expectations encourage many U.S. communications to be structured explicitly and favor relatively simple terms and concepts to reach wide, universalist audiences. For example, the practice of templating U.S. university Web sites is common. Templating simply means a mandated uniformity and parallelism in structure, color, tone, and approach across all Web pages of a single Web site. Templating exemplifies this linear, reader-friendly, parallel, and overtly structured and universal approach to communications. Another important part of the individualistic, universalist, and reader-friendly pattern of U.S. communications is the long and developed history of using how-to manuals, both in original written form and now in electronic, online forms. The Mexican rhetorical tradition has deep roots in civil law hermeneutics and institutions, which correspond closely to holistic and deductive communication patterns of matching the general law to specific situations. Furthermore, Mexican collective and family orientations predispose a preference for more oral, interpersonal, and contextual communication patterns. This preference usually encourages a top-down
239
Rhetoric approach—that is, the superior talks and the subordinate listens, with little opportunity for feedback. In addition, instead of the universalist approach, exemplified in the U.S. preference for templating and parallelism, Mexican communication patterns show a strong tendency toward the unique, ever-changing, contextual, and personspecific audience approach. The strong values of humanism, inherited in the Latin traditions, also predispose Mexican communicators to prefer metaphoric and aesthetic communication styles, rather than literal. These typified communication patterns of the United States and Mexico are easily identified in many contexts, but what happens at the U.S.–Mexico border? The traditional thinking about border rhetoric is that it is simply a seamless mixing of traditions much like cuisine, architecture, and language. In other words, those living on the U.S. or Mexican side of the border probably include in their daily communications those patterns from the other side. However, border rhetoric is more complex than that. Most evidence suggests that the actual physical, geopolitical border makes a significant difference in many of the typified rhetorical patterns. Although there is some overt mixing of Mexican and U.S. rhetorical patterns, there is at least as much maintaining of traditional patterns despite the border’s proximity. First are the mixing variables of time and universal-particular tensions. Both U.S. and Mexican time frames on the border seem to be more U.S.–like, that is, linear, like an assembly line. This is in distinction to the multitime or polychronic orientation that is common throughout the rest of Mexico and Latin America. Interestingly, some recent studies show that more Americans are late to business meetings in Mexican border contexts than are Mexicans. The U.S. side of the border area certainly exhibits the practice of ma~ nana, a Spanish term that means tomorrow but most often signifies that something will get done in some indefinite future time. However, the ma~ nana time frame is not nearly as multidimensional along the border as in other parts of Mexico. Consequently, the written, oral, and electronic communication patterns on the Mexican side of the border area tend to exhibit much more linearity and time-based structures than in other parts of Mexico. And the U.S. side of the border continues to exhibit strong linear time frames with a small dose of ma~ nana. Current research suggests that this U.S. time frame in Mexican border areas might be due in large part to the influence of the maquiladoras, the 2,000-plus mostly U.S.–owned manufacturing plants on the Mexican side of the U.S. border. Another key cross-border influence is the universalist-particular tension, a value that seems to be hybrid in the border area, having crossed rather easily to both sides. On the U.S. side, many particular values from the Mexican rhetorical tradition are common, including strong interpersonal and collective orientations; ascribed authority in parents, bosses, and superiors; and family-like roles instantiated in nonfamily contexts. For example, it is common to hear in English conversations the terms mi hija or mi hijo, which literally means my son or my daughter. This is used by friends, teachers, and older people with younger people as a term of endearment and authority. In Mexican border areas, it is common to see more universalist communication strategies than is usual in the interior of Mexico. These strategies invoke more U.S.– like values of equal application of law, greater preference for templating, and less propensity for interpersonal influences. For example, most of the Web sites of public
240
Rhetoric Mexican universities in border areas have strongly templated designs—that is, the predominance of a branded color scheme, common Web layout, and common information architecture across the Web site. In other parts of Mexico, public university Web sites tend to favor uniqueness or lack of explicit parallelism. Despite this mixing, however, there still seems to be communication patterns that are deeply tied to legal, economic, and social values and institutions that do not cross the border easily. First is the value of collective and hierarchical versus individual and egalitarian. According to a variety of studies, one of the first values to be lost by recent Mexican immigrants in the United States is the power and authority of parents, bosses, and other superiors. In the more individualistic context, these authority figures have much less power than in Mexico. For example, in U.S. border areas, pregnant teenagers can rely much less on family support (thought they still do) than in Mexico, because the United States has set up a more individualistic health care structure. This greater independence is one of the first signs to older, first-generation Mexican Americans that their children or grandchildren are appropriating U.S. cultural values. The reverse, however, is not as true in Mexico. Indices of collectivism in Mexican border areas rival those in other parts of Mexico. Put simply, U.S. individualism, though widely influential in the United States, does not seem to be penetrating— significantly or even mildly—Mexican border areas. Another key, nonmixing tradition is the rhetorical patterns from the legal traditions. Mexican civil law traditions, including its humanism, deductive interpretive frameworks, and nonprecedence logic are critical rhetorical strategies in Mexican border areas, but they are not taking hold in U.S. border areas. In fact, perhaps tied to U.S. individualism, the universalist concept and practice of the level playing field is a value that takes hold quickly in recent Mexican immigrants in U.S. border areas. For example, much of the research and theory on the Latino experience in the United States draws on precedence types of argument. This line of argument situates the individual as the unit of analysis, focusing on the exceptional circumstances of the individual and generalizing from the treatment of one individual to the whole. Thus, as a sign of a strongly developing universalism, individualism, and precedence logic, Latinos in the United States frequently invoke the critique of being stereotyped, which is a reference made to one individual using a group lens. The reverse is not true, at least in the level of influence. On the Mexican side of the border area, the collective and particular approaches of civil law are as functional and forceful as in other parts of Mexico. For example, the noted border researcher Pablo Villa argues that a key difference between Mexican nationals in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Mexican Americans across the border in El Paso, Texas, is that the Mexicans use the group as a unit of reference for analyzing both individual and group interactions, while the Mexican Americans have quickly adopted the individual as unit. Although universalist approaches are common in U.S.–owned maquiladoras, most research has documented that the best universal practices in Mexican maquilas derive from ISO (International Standards Organization) certifications, rather than U.S. standards, an explicit resistance to U.S. universalism. In addition to the variables discussed, other variables such as language use, leadership, traffic patterns, education, medicine, environment, and religion similarly bring to life the complexity of border hybridity and of this mixing and entrenching. Further research will be needed to explore the reasons why some values seem to flow
241
Rio Grande differently between the borderland and to address a significant difference in immigration—almost all cross-border flow is from Mexico to the United States, not vice versa. In addition, those Mexicans who seek to immigrate to the United States might already embrace many U.S. cultural values before they even arrive, and thus, the attraction of moving there. However, the highly industrialized manufacturing sector in Mexican border cities is deeply influenced by not only U.S. practices but also worldwide business practices. The influence of the two different legal systems and infrastructures must be significant—once someone crosses the geopolitical line, that person is subject to a different legal process. The economic and infrastructure difference is also important. Salaries are still significantly lower (even when measured in cost of living) just 100 yards across the border in Mexico than in the United States. And despite the cultural and geographical proximity, the educational traditions and systems are significantly different. See also Anthropology of the Borderlands; Culture; Economy; Labor; Legal Issues. FURTHER READINGS: Abbott, D. P. Rhetoric in the New World: Rhetorical Theory and Practice in Colonial Spanish America. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996; Anzald ua, Gloria. Borderlands: La frontera. 3rd edition. San Francisco, CA: Ann Lute Books, 2007; Casta~ neda, Jorge. G. The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the U.S. New York: The New Press, 1995; Castillo, Debra A. and Cordoba, Marıa Socorro. Border Women: Writing from La Frontera. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002; Condon, John. Good Neighbors: Communicating with the Mexicans. 2nd edition. Intercultural Press, 2007; Garcıa-Canclini, Nestor Culturas Hıbridas: Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. [Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity.] Mexico, DF: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y Artes, 1990; Osland, J., de Franco, S., and Osland, A. ‘‘Organizational Implications of Latin American Culture: Lessons for the Expatriate Manager.’’ Journal of Management Inquiry 8, no. 2 (1999): 219–37; Rosenn, Keith. ‘‘A Comparison of Latin American and North American Legal Traditions.’’ In Lee Tavis, ed. Multinational Managers and Host Government Interactions, 127– 52. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988; Stewart, E., and Bennett, M. American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Revised edition. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1991; Thatcher, Barry. ‘‘Intercultural Rhetoric, Technology, and Writing in Mexican Maquilas.’’ Special Technology Transfer Edition of Technical Communication Quarterly 15, no. 3 (2006): 383–405; Thatcher, Barry. ‘‘La creaci on de una ret orica hıbrida de America Latina/EUA.’’ In El Registro del Primer Congreso Internacional de Retorica en Mexico. UNAM: Mexico City, 1999; Villa, Pablo. Identidades fronterizas. Narrativas de religion, genero y clase en la frontera Mexico-Estados Unidos. Translated by Sandra Laurıa, Marıa Cecilia Ferraudi Curto, and Julia Chindemi. Ciudad Juarez: El Colegio de Chihuahua, 2007.
Barry Thatcher Rio Grande. Dubbed either the Rio Grande from the U.S. perspective or, for Mexicans, the Rıo Bravo del norte, the river stretches 1,885 miles and originates in the San Juan Mountains in Saguache County in southern Colorado and extends south through the San Luis Valley, into New Mexico where it flows through Albuquerque and Las Cruces and onto El Paso, Texas. It meets up with the Rıo Conchos at Ojinaga. The river empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Not navigable and often low flowing, the Rio Grande has nonetheless since 1848 served as the boundary between the United States and Mexico from the twin cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez to the Gulf of Mexico.
242
Rivera, Tomas (1935–84)
Aerial view of the Rio Grande river flowing through Big Bend National Park, Texas, 1969. (AP Photo)
See also Colorado River; Coyotes; Environmentalism; Policy; Water Issues. FURTHER READING: Horgan, Paul. Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1991.
Andrew G. Wood Rivera, Tomas (1935–84). Tomas Rivera was a Chicano fiction writer, poet, and educator, best known for his 1971 novel . . . y no se lo trago la tierra. He was born on December 22, 1935, in Crystal City, a small town in the border region of South Texas, to a migrant Mexican American family. Despite facing the constant upheaval and repression of migrant life, Rivera completed high school and later received a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in education administration from Southwest Texas University. In 1969, he received a doctorate in romance languages from the University of Oklahoma. Rivera had a long and successful career in college administration. In 1979, he was appointed chancellor at the University of California, Riverside—the highest-ranking Chicano in higher education at the time. Despite his administrative commitments, he published extensively, including his groundbreaking novel . . . y no se lo trago la tierra published by Quinto Sol (1971). The novel reveals the harsh conditions faced by Mexican American migrant workers, not in a didactic way or with an overbearing narrator’s commentary, but rather through an innovative form and voice—a young boy’s recollections of migrant life and the changes undergone in the process of remembering. There have been numerous translations of the novel, the most well-known version by Evangelina Vigil-Pi~ non
243
Rivera, Tomas (1935–84) and Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. Rivera also published poetry in Always and Other Poems (1973). There have been a number of posthumous collections of Rivera’s work, including volumes dedicated specifically to his poetry and short stories. All of his works, including his essays, are now found in Tomas Rivera: The Complete Works, edited by Julian Olivares (1992). See also Literature. FURTHER READINGS: Hinojosa-Smith, Rolando. ‘‘Tomas Rivera: Remembrances of an Educator and Poet.’’ Revista Chicano-Rique~ na 13, no. 3-4 (1985): 19–23; ‘‘Tomas Rivera.’’ World Literature Today. September 15, 2006. http://www.ou.edu/worldlit/authors/rivera/rivera.html.
John Pluecker
244
D
Salton Sea. The Salton Sea is the largest body of water in California, covering an area of 376 square miles, a maximum depth of 51 feet, and a volume of 7.5 million acrefeet. Saline and landlocked, it is located in the desert in the southeastern end of the state and spans across Riverside and Imperial Counties. It occupies a large geologic depression named the Salton Basin that begins at the Gulf of California in Mexico and spans the Colorado River Delta, the Mexicali Valley, the U.S.–Mexico international border, the Imperial Valley, the Salton Sea, and finally the Coachella Valley. The Salton Sea is the second lowest place in the United States at 227 feet below sea level. Current salinity levels are at 45 parts per thousand (ppt), in comparison to the Pacific Ocean at around 35 ppt. About 500,000 years ago the saline waters of the Gulf of California filled the Salton Basin to form the northernmost reaches of the gulf. The Colorado River eventually deposited enough sediment to separate the Gulf, cutting off the Coachella and Imperial Valleys. The water still left behind the sedimentary dam, which evaporated, but fresh water from occasional Colorado River floods repeatedly filled the lower-lying depression, only to slowly evaporate again and again. The resultant bodies of water over the millennia are termed Ancient Lake Cahuilla and the bases of the Coachella Valley’s mountain foothills still bear the tidal marks indicating the water level some forty feet above the valley floor. Estimates of its size place it as six times the size of the present Salton Sea. The Native American Cahuilla incorporated the Sea and its shoreline into their subsistence, exploiting the resource for fish and mollusks, and the alluvial soils for seasonal plantings. Prior to the last inundation, and due to the high salinity content of the soil, salt mining was active on the floor of the Basin. From 1885 to 1905, the New Liverpool Salt Works extracted surface salt from the desiccated lake bed and shipped it out by rail on nearby sidings. Despite the salinity, the soils of the Coachella and Imperial Valleys are remarkably fertile and have been important contributors to the agricultural economy of California since the turn of the nineteenth century. The current body of water is the result of human error. In the spring of 1905, the Colorado River breached the head gates of the Imperial Valley Canal at the international border. Construction was under way to improve and enlarge the current canal system, which was directing Colorado River water into an irrigation system for the
245
S
Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de (1794–1876) Imperial Valley. The force of the Colorado River water under flood conditions rapidly eroded expansion cuts in the canal walls. As the Salton Basin lay below sea level and having no outflows, the flooding dangers became immediately evident. What started out as an almost manageable break quickly turned into an uncontrollable two-year inundation that destroyed homes, agricultural lands, and railroad lines, and created the Salton Sea by filling in the Salton Basin. The flow was eventually halted in 1907 by Southern Pacific Railroad after two years of constant emergency construction. The Salton Sea was thought to evaporate eventually as in the past, but agricultural drainage from Imperial, Coachella, and Mexicali Valleys has maintained the Sea to the present day. Agricultural runoff accounts for 90 percent of the inflows to the Sea, and the area has been designated as a sump for wastewater. With the water come massive amounts of chemical compounds such as phosphates, nitrates, pesticides, and fertilizers, as well as salts flushed from agricultural fields. The result is a highly eutrophic environment that is gradually increasing in salinity, yet one that continues to support fish, bird, and plant life. The Salton Sea was a popular recreation destination for water sports activities from the 1950s until the 1980s. Increasing salinity, sulfuric odors, recurring algae blooms, and massive fish and waterfowl deaths drove away residents and visitors. However, due to urban and suburban sprawl and the subsequent disappearance of wetlands habitats throughout the U.S. Southwest, the Salton Sea has become an important link in the Pacific Flyway and a wintering location for a multitude of North American bird species. Various solutions to the Salton Sea’s salinity problems have been devised, ranging from water transfers via pipelines to the Pacific Ocean or the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, to the draining and sacrifice of a portion of the Sea as a desalinization zone using solar evaporative ponds. In 2003 a historic water deal brokered by the state transferred a huge portion of Colorado River water from Imperial Valley farms to the city of San Diego. The transfer is estimated to cut inflows to the Salton Sea by 20 percent, which could threaten to physically reduce the Sea to a smaller body of water capable of sustaining little more than microbial life. See also Agribusiness; Environmentalism; Water Issues. FURTHER READINGS: de Buys, William, and Myers, Joan. Salt Dreams: Land and Water in Low-Down California. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999; de Stanley, Mildred. The Salton Sea: Yesterday and Today. Los Angeles: Triumph Press, 1966; Laflin, Pat. ‘‘The Salton Sea: California’s Overlooked Treasure.’’ The Periscope. Indio, CA: Coachella Valley Historical Society, 1995; Nordland, Ole J., ed. Coachella Valley’s Golden Years. Indio, CA: Desert Printing Co. Inc., 1978; Redlands Institute. Salton Sea Atlas. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002; Salton Sea Authority. 2006. http://www.saltonsea.ca.gov/; Stringfellow, Kim. Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905–2005. Staunton, VA: Center for American Places, 2005.
Travis Du Bry Santa Anna, Antonio L opez de (1794–1876). Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who led the Mexican Army during the U.S.–Mexican War, was born February 21, 1794, in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. Fascinated with the military from a young age, Santa Anna modeled himself on Napoleon by combing his hair back to front and preferring to ride white horses. On June 9, 1810, he entered the Permanent Infantry Regiment
246
Santa Fe Trail of Veracruz as a gentleman cadet. In 1812, he received promotion to lieutenant and won a medal for courage by fighting against rebels at Medina, Texas, in 1813. An exceptional field commander who steadily rose through the ranks, Santa Anna became a lieutenant colonel in 1821. In that same year, he declared his support for the Plan of Iguala, a royalist plan to establish a constitutional monarchy. Revolutionaries rewarded him by promoting him to colonel. A year later, he became a brigadier general. As a general of division, he received the surrender of Spanish invasion force at Tampico in 1829. Santa Anna now emerged as a caudillo, an individual who placed himself above the law and commanded a significant following because of his success on the battlefield and his ability to reward his followers. A measure of a caudillo’s power was his land holdings. During the 1820s, Santa Anna acquired his ranch, Manga de Clavo (Clove Spike). As his political power grew, so too did his ranch and at the expense of his neighbors. Angry Indians nearly cooked and ate him in 1844. By 1845, the ranch stretched for thirty-five miles from Jalapa to the port of Veracruz, encompassing 483,000 acres of land and 40,000 head of cattle. In 1833, Santa Anna was elected president of Mexico as a liberal but temporarily relinquished the presidency and retired to his ranch and his collection of Napoleonana. It was a pattern that Santa Anna would repeat numerous times. On March 6, 1836, Santa Anna defeated the Texan force at the Battle of the Alamo. The Texans subsequently captured the much-hated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. In February 1837, Santa Anna returned from captivity in the United States and promptly lost his lower left leg while attacking a French landing party at Veracruz. In 1839, the Mexican Congress chose Santa Anna to be president. He relinquished the post a few months later because of poor health and then returned to office in 1841, before retiring again in 1842 and then reclaiming office in 1843. The subsequent U.S.–Mexican War that began in 1846 did not go well for Mexico. Santa Anna lost one-third of Mexico’s territory (918,345 square miles) in wars. In 1853, Santa Anna became president of Mexico for the eleventh time. Later that year, he became dictator of Mexico. With the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, he sold 29,670 square miles of Mexican land to the United States for $7 million and apparently pocketed much of the money. Exiled to Cuba in 1855, Santa Anna returned to Mexico in 1864 after promising not to participate in politics. Violating this promise, he left Mexico for New York in 1866. After several years of exile, Santa Anna returned to Mexico City in 1874. He died on June 21, 1876. See also Texas Revolution. FURTHER READINGS: Santoni, Pedro. Mexicans at Arms-Puro Federalist and the Politics of War. Forth Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996; Scheina, Robert L. Santa Anna: A Curse upon Mexico. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002; Villalpando Cesar, Jose Manuel. Las balas del invasor. Mexico City: Porrua, 1998.
Caryn E. Neumann Santa Fe Trail. The Santa Fe Trail, a 900-mile path linking the Missouri territory with Santa Fe, was a major international trade corridor between the United States and Mexico from 1821 to 1880. In earlier years, New Mexicans used parts of the trail to trade with Plains Indians. Spanish policy forbid Anglo American expeditions into the region and violators were imprisoned when caught. Mexican independence,
247
Serra, Fray Junıpero (1713–84) however, brought a more welcoming trade policy toward Americans. William Becknell, often referred to as the ‘‘Father of the Sante Fe Trail,’’ learned of this change and set out for Santa Fe in late 1821. He returned with more than enough profit to inspire a second trip. The path he took back in the summer of 1822 forged the trail’s primary route. From the American trailhead in Franklin, Missouri, the path moved southwest through Independence, which subsequently replaced Franklin as the trail’s starting point. It then passed Council Grove and Pawnee Rock before fording the Arkansas River and crossing the Cimarron Desert. After fording the Cimarron and Canadian Rivers, the trail entered New Mexico near the village of San Miguel del Vado. It then followed the Glorietta Pass to Santa Fe. The Mountain Branch, a well-trodden alternative to Becknell’s Cimarron Branch, followed the Arkansas north into present-day Colorado before turning south again near Bent’s Fort. This route offered greater protection from Comanche and Kiowa raids but was longer and forced travelers over the dangerous Raton Pass, after which it rejoined Becknell’s route. Trade over the trail began to flourish immediately. Typical excursions, by firms or individuals, traveled in wagon or mule trains, taking approximately ten weeks to reach Santa Fe. Similar but far less studied trips spearheaded by New Mexican traders headed north to Missouri. Opened by Mexican businessmen looking for profit, the exchange of money, foodstuffs, slaves, and trade goods in Santa Fe reached not only into the United States but also south to Mexico City via the Camino Real. Mexican efforts to impose levies on these transactions foundered, as most traders managed to physically or legally skirt the laws. Texas’s independence and her short-lived ambition to annex New Mexico in 1841 resulted in additional laws, more draconian but just as ineffectual. The Mexican government’s concerns were validated in 1846, when Santa Fe was among the first cities seized in the U.S.–Mexican War. Trade along the trail continued to boom with American expansion. The California Gold Rush and Civil War both coincided with increased traffic. In 1866, the road supported a trade volume estimated at $40 million annually. But economic development also brought railroads that redirected commercial activity, causing wagon train traffic to cease by 1880. Despite its demise as a trade artery, the trail itself has remained vital in American culture since the publication of Josiah Gregg’s Commerce of the Prairies (1844). The Daughters of the American Revolution began preserving the trail’s history by installing markers in 1906. The National Park Service assumed and expanded their effort in 1987, when the U.S. Congress created the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. See also Economy; Ranching. FURTHER READINGS: Boyle, Susan C. Capitalistas: New Mexican Merchants and the Santa Fe Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997; Dary, David. The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore. New York: A. Knopf, 2000.
Robert Lee Serra, Fray Junıpero (1713–84). Fray Junıpero Serra, a Franciscan priest and missionary, was born in Mallorca, Spain. In 1749, despite a successful career at Lullian University, Serra decided to leave Spain to teach and engage in mission work in Mexico. Serra was in poor health on reaching Veracruz, yet walked more than 200 miles to Mexico City, establishing a life-long reputation for incredible will and stamina. His
248
Serra, Fray Junıpero (1713–84)
Illustration showing Junıpero Serra holding a crucifix in one hand and and a stone in the other, preaching to a crowd of natives. From Francisco Palou, Francisco Palou’s Life and Apostolic Labors of the Venerable Father Junıpero Serra, Founder of the Franciscan Missions of California. Pasadena, CA: G. W. James, 1930. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-132753.)
zealous faith was characterized by mortification and self-denial. Serra spent eight years in the Sierra Gorda region, after which time he spent a further decade at San Fernando College in Mexico City. In 1767, he left Mexico to continue his missionary work in California, hence he is now commonly referred to as the ‘‘Apostle of California.’’ Serra founded numerous missions, including San Diego and what was to be his headquarters at San Carlos Borromeo, Carmel. As well as promoting Christianity, his mission expanded colonization through Baja and Alta California, from New Mexico to San Francisco and Los Angeles. His missions were instrumental in maintaining Spain’s political interests in California, allowing Serra to wield significant power in Mexico City, securing continued military support. Serra’s interaction with Indian communities was typical of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. As well as
249
Seven Cities of Cıbola spreading disease, Serra’s missions often treated its Indians brutally, a legacy that critics were keen to highlight in 1988 when Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II. Serra remains a well-known historical figure, and exemplar of Californian colonization. See also Californios; Catholic Church. FURTHER READINGS: Couve de Murville, M. N. L. The Man Who Founded California: The Life of Blessed Junıpero Serra. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000; Morgado, Martin J. Junıpero Serra’s Legacy. Pacific Grove, CA: Mount Carmel, 1987.
Joseph Gelfer Seven Cities of Cıbola. A cıbolo is a kind of buffalo seen by sixteenth-century Spanish traveler Alvar Nu~ nez Cabeza de Vaca near the Rio Grande. He called the place ‘‘Corazones’’ because the Native Americans he encountered gave him the heart of one of these animals to eat. According to native peoples of the Southwest, the Seven Cities of Cıbola was a place of fabulous riches. Upon his arrival in Mexico City, Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca told the Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza of tales about riches to be found. However, he refused to lead an expedition and returned to Europe never to come back to New Spain. Nevertheless, the legend grew as Spanish explorer and conqueror Beltran Nu~ no de Guzman had also heard talk about a legendary region called Cıbola while Panfilo de Narvaez and his men eagerly listened to natives tell stories about it during their travels in 1536. Hearing of his desire to bring Christianity to the northern area of New Spain, Viceroy Mendoza sent for Fray Marcos de Niza. De Niza accepted a commission and departed with Estebanico, the Moorish boy who had been the companion of Cabeza de Vaca. Fray Marcos also took three more friars and several Indians. On March 7, 1539, the expedition left San Miguel de Culiacan on their way north. They arrived at a town that Fray Marcos named Cibola because of the many buffalos grazing nearby. However, they did not find any gold but houses made of stone. Fray Marcos was sure the fabulous cities could be found further north, but his companions refused to continue what already had been a very long journey. Exhausted, the expedition returned to Mexico City and Fray Marcos passed his information and maps to the viceroy. He, in turn, named Francisco Vazquez de Coronado to lead an expedition. All he found after miles of travel, however, were a series of small and insignificant towns. Nevertheless, the legend of the Seven Cities of Cıbola persisted for many years. See also War of the Gran Chichimeca. FURTHER READINGS: Chipman, Donald E. Spanish Texas, 1519–1821. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992; Clissold, Stephen. The Seven Cities of Cıbola. London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1961.
Angela Moyano Pahissa Sinarquismo. Sinarquismo means ‘‘with order’’ and ‘‘with government,’’ an indication of the movement’s opposition to what it perceived as a country’s state of anarchy. Founded in 1937, Mexico’s Uni on Nacional Sinarquista (UNS) was a right-wing utopian social movement based on Catholic ideals, created to put pressure on the leftleaning government of General Lazaro Cardenas, president of Mexico from 1936–40.
250
Sinarquismo Though established in the centrally located city of Leon, Guanajuato—the Sinarquistas called it Sinarcopolis—the UNS eventually set up several actual settlements or ‘‘colonies’’ in the border state of Sonora and the territory of southern Baja California in the 1940s. Although their experiment did not succeed, the Sinarquistas’ activities in northwestern Mexico provide evidence of the willingness of a major dissident group of Mexican peasants and middle-class leaders (there were almost half a million Sinarquistas by the late 1930s) to attempt a different approach to social equity than those advocated by the Cardenas government. The UNS grew out of two earlier pro-Catholic organizations: Las Legiones and La Base. Las Legiones was a secret society created in the state of Jalisco by former journalist Manuel Romo de Alba during the early 1930s. Their objective was no less than to the overthrow the Mexican government. By the mid-1930s, the Legiones organization had been taken over—under secret orders from Mexico’s bishops—by a handful of Jesuits. These Jesuits postponed a coup attempt indefinitely and transformed the secret society into La Base; a peaceful (but also secret) society whose goal was to create a visible organization that would pressure the government through nonviolent means. Ultimately, many of the more extremist legionarios left La Base, while the group of Jesuits and a handful of young La Base members founded the UNS. In fact, most of the UNS’s visible leaders at the local, regional, and national levels belonged to La Base, although there was also a secret directorate—or mando secreto—that installed and replaced national Sinarquista leaders at will and altered the basic policies of the national movement. At first, this dual command functioned simultaneously, with the mando secreto led by a politically moderate but unyielding chemical engineer from Mexico City named Antonio Santacruz, and the public Jefatura Nacional led by a group of young lawyers from the smaller towns of central Mexico. The UNS was intended to be an all-encompassing movement or umbrella organization, however, not meant to part or divide—as in ‘‘party’’—but to unite all Mexicans, particularly those who belonged to other Catholic opposition movements. Nonetheless, this goal encountered problems when Antonio Santacruz opposed the nomination of Salvador Abascal, a young lawyer, charismatic leader, and former legionario, as the UNS’s first national leader. Instead, Jose Trueba Olivares, who had helped found the UNS with Abascal and several others, became the organization’s first national leader. Abascal then set out for the ‘‘Godless state’’ of Tabasco in 1938, where he risked his life while stepping out of a church building he had ‘‘taken over’’ with a group of followers, in open defiance of the police of the anti-Catholic governor Tomas Garrido Canabal. In a bold action, Garrido Canabal shot at Abascal and his supporters, actually killing four and injuring three more. By doing this (and coming out unscathed), Abascal strove to attract Catholics to the UNS and managed to get churches reopened in the state. By August 1940, Santacruz relented and allowed the more popular Abascal to replace Manuel Zerme~ no as the third national leader of the UNS. It was also in 1940, during a trip he made to the north, that Abascal decided to ‘‘colonize’’ parts of northwestern Mexico, particularly southern Baja California. Until that point, the Sinarquistas had ignored the Northwest. Yet when Abascal made his exploratory trip in 1940, he realized that latent support existed for the UNS. Before then, Abascal and the other national leaders had thought residents of the Northwest were uninterested in such a movement because of the particular
251
Sinarquismo characteristics of northern life, including scantly populated cattle ranches or fishing villages and a general political affinity for (and party affiliation with) former Mexican presidents Alvaro Obreg on and Plutarco Elıas Calles (both known to be serious antiCatholics). After making his trip, however, Abascal decided that the Sinarquistas might be able to attract people in the Northwest to the movement. When it became known that Abascal was intending to establish a Sinarquista colony in Baja California, Bishop Juan Navarrete of Sonora proposed that he found an additional colony in his own state. Navarrete offered Abascal 2,000 hectares of topquality land with abundant water (supplied by a well and a gas pump) and a high probability that the settlers would be able to harvest their first crops in a few months. Abascal and Navarrete then agreed to pursue a colonizing experiment in the Sonora desert in a location fifty-six miles southwest of Hermosillo (the state capital), eight miles inland from the Gulf of California, and eleven miles northeast of the Tastiota estuary, which was then a fishing spot sixty miles southwest of Hermosillo, the closest inhabited settlement. Both colonies became incubators for the Sinarquista leaders’ capacity to mobilize their followers: first as volunteers who would emigrate to the ‘‘promised lands,’’ and later as weekly donors who would enable the colonies to survive. Their inability to secure either type of support ultimately led to the collapse of the two colonizing experiments, silencing national and international critics who claimed the UNS was receiving financial assistance (and political orientation) from the Axis powers. Two explanations have been advanced as to why the two colonies were founded in the middle of dry areas of the Northwest, instead of several tropical regions (with plenty of moisture) that were available and underpopulated. First, if the Sinarquistas could bring the most worthless land—not previously owned by a local hacendado— into efficient agricultural production, this would enhance the movement’s prestige. Second, the Sinarquistas chose to settle in thinly populated areas near the U.S. border to prevent American colonists from filtering into these districts and establishing another Texas. Both the Sonora and Baja California colonies started with great hopes and enthusiasm. This was the Sinarquistas’s opportunity to show what kind of society they wanted to create. While the first national collection of funds for the colonies was relatively large (78,322.28 pesos by April 1941), donations shrank to increasingly meager proportions. However, upon arrival in Villa Kino, the twenty-five families (a total of eighty-four people) who had left Guanajuato and Michoacan to come north discovered that a house that was meant to lodge them had burned down. This was but the beginning of their tribulations. The existing well caved in after less than fifteen months, so the colonists—chosen more for their fervor regarding the cause than for their agricultural know-how—faced problems getting and storing water, not to mention harvesting the most elementary of foods. Their land was unsuited to agriculture, and the water they were able to draw sufficed only for drinking, livestock, and laundry purposes; it rained only once in fourteen months. The most they were able to irrigate during that time was a hectare of corn. As conditions grew steadily difficult for the main colony—Marıa Auxiliadora, in Baja California—Abascal urged Jose Trueba Olivares, the UNS’s first national leader who had since been placed in charge of Villa Kino, to transfer his colonists and join forces there, so that the funds provided by the UNS’s Secretarıa de Colonizacion (Ministry of Colonization) would not be split. Trueba refused to move but
252
Slavery eventually—perhaps to avoid further hardships—settled in Hermosillo and left the colonists to toil on their own. By August 1943, Jose Antonio de la Vega, from Guanajuato, replaced Jose Trueba as leader of the colony, and by February 1944, El Pueblo, a conservative Sonoran newspaper, informed readers of the creation of a second and ‘‘more progressive’’ Sinarquista colony in Opodepe, Sonora, with people from Michoacan. The new colonists did not suffer from lack of water, as Villa Kino settlers did, and they did receive help from their neighbors; however, little more is known of this colony. Eventually Bishop Navarrete built a group of houses in Hermosillo in a new quarter he called San Juan (after his own saint’s name), and he relocated many of the former Villa Kino settlers there. Their descendents still live in those houses. See also World War II. FURTHER READINGS: Abascal, Salvador. Mis recuerdos: sinarquismo y colonia Marıa Auxiliadora. Mexico: Editorial Tradicion, 1980; Aguilar V., Ruben, and Zerme~ no, Guillermo. Religion, polıtica y sociedad: el Sinarquismo y la Iglesia en Mexico (nueve ensayos). Mexico: Universidad Iberoamericana, 1992; Meyer, Jean. El Sinarquismo, el Cardenismo y la Iglesia Catolica: 1937– 1947. Mexico: Tusquets Editores Mexico, 2003; Newcomer, David. Reconciling Modernity: Urban State Formation in 1940s Leon, Mexico. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Servando Ortoll Slavery. The first people to practice slavery in the area that later became the U.S.– Mexico borderlands were the indigenous inhabitants, the Comanches, Navajos, Utes, Pueblos, Kiowas, and Apaches. Indigenous groups captured members of other groups, predominantly women and children, through raids and warfare. The captives performed a wide variety of services for their captors that were not simply limited to physical and reproductive labor, but also encompassed the role of negotiating between groups. Most indigenous societies integrated captives into their new communities by marriage or fictive kinship ties, but captives still faced the threat of violence, and economic incentives to trade captives could override kinship ties. Spain outlawed the enslavement of Indians, but exceptions allowed the practice to continue in the borderlands, most especially New Mexico. As Spain’s power in the borderlands grew along with the demand for Indian servants and laborers, the scope and meaning of indigenous practices of captivity were significantly altered. Captives became a central part of the evolving economy, and Native Americans increasingly launched raids for the explicit purpose of obtaining captives to exchange with Spaniards for material goods, especially food, guns, and horses. Spaniards who ransomed indigenous or mestizo captives from Native Americans expected the former prisoners to become servants as payment for their rescue. Rescued captives, originally referred to as genızaros, retained certain legal rights, but genızaros’ experiences ranged from total enslavement to complete assimilation into New Mexican society. While peonage was the dominant labor system in the borderlands, in 1850, enslaved Native Americans in New Mexico formed almost 5 percent of the population. While an enslaved African accompanied the first Spaniards who explored the borderlands in 1528, Spain’s importation of massive numbers of Africans did not begin until the early seventeenth century. Driven by a need for labor as disease decimated the indigenous population, Spain turned to African slavery. Although enslaved Africans cultivated sugar and cacao beans in Spanish North America, large-scale
253
Slavery plantation slavery did not develop in most areas. The majority of enslaved Africans lived in urban centers and worked in a wide variety of occupations. The small numbers located in the borderlands were likely to labor in mines, or small workshops in towns. By the early eighteenth century, the number of enslaved Africans in New Spain dramatically declined, in part due to natural population growth. By Mexican independence in 1821, there were fewer than 3,000 enslaved persons of African descent in New Spain, and less than one hundred lived in the borderlands. Some of the leaders in the movement for Mexican independence from Spain publicly linked that cause to the abolition of slavery in Mexican territory. However, while antislavery sentiment remained strong, Mexican liberals did not legally end slavery during the independence struggle. In 1821, the Mexican government allowed Anglo American inhabitants to settle in Mexican Texas in exchange for their loyalty and support against possible U.S., French, British, or Native American incursions. They attracted Anglo American settlers with generous land grants and permitted the labor system of racial slavery. Throughout the 1820s and early 1830s, the Mexican government simultaneously placed legal limitations on slavery and created exceptions that allowed it to continue in Texas. Therefore, Anglo Americans continued to import ever-greater numbers of enslaved persons, but free and enslaved African Americans throughout the U.S. South also increasingly associated Mexico with antislavery and freedom. The tension resulting from the federal Mexican government’s attempts to limit both Anglo American immigration and the practice of racial slavery was a major cause of the Texas Revolution. While some Tejanos viewed the Texas Revolution as a federative crisis, there is no doubt that the primary issue for most Anglo Americans was the protection and extension of slavery. The conflict presented an opportunity for flight that many enslaved persons took advantage of, but Texans successfully wrested their independence from Mexico and immediately moved to legalize and strengthen the system of racial slavery. Slavery was also legal in Indian Territory. The Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaws, and Seminoles all practiced forms of slavery before forced removal to Indian Territory in the 1830s and early 1840s. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the system of slavery that they employed resembled other indigenous patterns of slavery. By 1819, all of the groups (with the exception of the Seminoles) created a system of plantation agriculture and legal codes that resembled U.S. racial slavery. The similarities between Native American and U.S. social, legal, and economic forms did not prevent indigenous peoples’ forced removal west, and they carried racial slavery and their property in slaves with them to Indian Territory. While slaveholders were only a small portion of the indigenous population, they formed a powerful elite group, and the use of slave labor helped cement their social, political, and economic status when they settled in Indian Territory. By 1860, enslaved men and women formed between 10 and 29 percent of the total population of the various groups residing in Indian territory. Racial slavery in Texas and Indian Territory had much in common with the slave system in other areas of the U.S. South, but it did not simply replicate it. In Texas, enslaved persons were concentrated in three regions, where they eventually constituted a majority in thirteen counties. There, enslaved Africans and African Americans cultivated the major crops grown in other parts of the U.S. South—sugar, rice, and, most especially, cotton—on a familiar plantation system. In Indian Territory, enslaved persons also performed labor similar to that undertaken by their counterparts east of
254
Social Movements the Mississippi. However, enslaved Africans and African Americans performed some tasks that were unique in these locations. In Texas, some slaves worked as cowboys, while in Indian Territory, some enslaved persons acted as Spanish-language interpreters for their indigenous owners. Moreover, the enslaved persons who lived in sparsely settled frontier areas experienced unusually close contact with their owners and faced death or captivity and sale during Indian raids. Because of this threat, some slaves carried firearms. Conversely, enslaved African Americans sometimes allied themselves and found refuge with Native American groups that did not practice racial slavery. The greatest difference between slavery in other areas of the U.S. South and slavery in Texas and Indian Territory was caused by proximity to the Mexican border. After 1833, the Mexican government officially refused to extradite fugitive slaves, which cemented Mexico’s status as an asylum for fugitive slaves. Slave resistance, including both slave flight and group insurrection, was heightened in Texas and Indian Territory. Americans blamed local Mexicans for inciting slaves to flee or rebel, and attempted to limit communication between Mexicans and enslaved persons; three Texan counties expelled all Mexicans. Throughout the 1850s, Texans illegally crossed the Mexican border in an attempt to retrieve fugitive slaves. Slavery in Texas and Indian Territory continued until the U.S. Civil War destroyed the institution. The U.S. annexation of Texas as a slave state in 1845 was directly linked to the Civil War. Because Mexico never recognized the independence of Texas and disputed the border separating Texas from Mexico, the U.S.–Mexican War broke out soon after the U.S. annexation of Texas. When the victorious United States took half of Mexico’s territory, the Pandora’s box of whether western lands would be reserved for free or slave labor was opened. It was this conflict that culminated in the Civil War just over a decade later. Enslaved persons residing in Indian Territory were liberated by 1863, whereas the numbers of enslaved African Americans swelled in Texas as slave owners throughout the South sought to place their property in slaves beyond reach of Union armies and freedom. Until emancipation finally reached Texas, enslaved persons continued to flow across the border in search of freedom in Mexico. FURTHER READINGS: Brooks, James F. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002; Campbell, Randolph B. An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821– 1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989; Carrigan, William. ‘‘Slavery of the Frontier: The Peculiar Institution of Slavery in Central Texas.’’ Slavery and Abolition 20, no. 2 (August 1999): 63–86; Cornell, Sarah Elizabeth. ‘‘Americans in the U.S. South and Mexico: A Transnational History of Race, Slavery, and Freedom, 1810–1910.’’ PhD dissertation, New York University, 2007; Kelley, Sean. ‘‘‘Mexico in His Head’: Slavery and the Texas-Mexico Border, 1810–1860.’’ Journal of Social History 37, no. 3 (2004): 709–23; Krauthamer, Barbara. ‘‘Blacks on the Borders: African-Americans’ Transition From Slavery to Freedom In Texas and Indian Territory, 1836–1907.’’ PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2000; Mulroy, Kevin. Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila and Texas. Denning, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 1993; Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.
Sarah Elizabeth Cornell Social Movements. Social movements involve collective actions among people. They occur when groups of individuals or organizations focus upon specific political, social, and economic issues and attempt to bring about changes in those issues. Among the
255
Social Movements factors normally associated with the growth of social movements are urbanization, industrialization, technological development, and modernization. In explaining the birth, growth, and development of social movements, researchers identify and analyze conceptual occurrences such as ‘‘initiating events,’’ ‘‘collective identities,’’ ‘‘insurgency,’’ ‘‘political opportunity structure,’’ ‘‘resource mobilization,’’ and ‘‘life cycles.’’ An ‘‘initiating event’’ refers to the specific incident that or individual who is responsible for launching a chain of events resulting in the birth of a social movement. ‘‘Collective identities,’’ which are embedded in regular, ongoing everyday activities, are normally based on common family, friendship, neighborhood, or work group interrelations among the movement’s participants. ‘‘Insurgency’’ is a movement’s efforts to generate structural alterations within the society by forcing new interests into the sociopolitical decision-making process. ‘‘Political opportunity structure’’ recognizes that, at any given time, certain ‘‘opportunities,’’ or prospects, for meaningful, influential participation by movements are created by breaks in the normal decision-making structure. The likelihood of success or failure for a movement to achieve its goals is directly related to the movement’s ability to ‘‘mobilize’’ valuable and scarce resources that lead to the realization of its demands upon the sociopolitical system. Finally, the ‘‘life cycle’’ of a movement is directly affected by the system’s present conditions, as movements are much more likely to initiate and flourish during times and in systemic places friendly to movements, especially under conditions favorable to human or civil rights and liberties. Social movements along the border involve transnational elements. Interpersonal organizational networks and the mobilization of resources that cross the border, for example, are fundamental in determining the success or failure of border movements. These transnational networks require mutual trust among leaders and activists with ties that cross the border on a regular basis. They are also dependent on reciprocally interrelated domestic networks. Recent transnational networks have been developing along the U.S.–Mexico border, as movement leaders have learned that their goals of improved environmental, health, and economic conditions are effectuated through international associations based on long-term alliances and personal interactions. International subcontracting among economic entities, the maquiladora industry, and international social organizations have also aided in the growth of transnational networks. People working and living in proximity to the border also can facilitate the borrowing of resources among transnational social movements. Finally, border social movements can externalize their goals and actions by internationalizing them and creating new winning political coalitions among domestic and international actors and organizations. Since the initiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), grassroots efforts have been initiated to organize the international workforce of the border maquiladora industry along the U.S.–Mexico border. These collective efforts seek to affect both national and international labor laws in the workers’ interests and to internationalize the struggles of border labor. The border has also witnessed growth in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and in community-based organizations that are oriented toward the improvement of border conditions. These transnational entities have developed links of communication among their leaders and members and play an important role in the education of those leaders and members, thus facilitating common goals and actions on border issues among these transnational movements.
256
Social Movements More recently, border social movements have been closely linked to the Chicano Movement. The movement began in the early 1960s with the land grant demands of Reies Lopez Tijerina in New Mexico and was dramatized by Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzalez’s epic poem I am Joaquın. The Chicano Movement included the struggles of migrant agricultural labor and of urban youth, such as the ‘‘Brown Berets,’’ and culminated with the increased political awareness and participation of La Raza Unida Party (LRUP). Led by Jose Angel Gutıerrez, the Mexican American citizens of Crystal City, Texas, created LRUP, which elected candidates to most local offices in Crystal City and Zavala County, Texas. The essential significance of the Chicano Movement is that it resulted in new political awareness among migrant farm workers, increased labor union activism, and grew the visibility of the educational and community needs among Mexican Americans. During 1960s, under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) was launched in California. Chavez, a migrant farm worker, joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a self-help organization primarily for Mexicans and Mexican Americans. The CSO’s general director from 1958 to 1962, Chavez left the organization in 1962 to organize wine grape pickers and to form the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). The movement’s tactics included picketing, marches, fasts, and strikes and secured several union contracts with growers. In 1966, the NFWA merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO and formed the United Farm Workers Committee of the AFL-CIO. By mobilizing national support for its boycott efforts, the movement was extremely successful in securing favorable labor contract with table grape growers. In 1966–67, the UFW sponsored a field-workers strike in Starr County, Texas. The strike led to Texas state legislation implementing a $1.25 per hour minimum wage for farm workers, where before there was none, and for better working conditions in the fields. A permanent field office of the UFW was also established in San Juan, Texas. The UFW became a member union of AFL-CIO in 1972. Ultimately, the movement’s efforts resulted in expanding its membership to include all California vegetable pickers, Florida citrus workers, and the creation of the branch office in South Texas. Valley Interfaith was established in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas in 1978 by Ernesto Cortes, Jr. A coalition of community-based organizations, Valley Interfaith’s goals include revitalizing local governments so they can better aid poor and moderate-income communities. It also seeks to motivate its members to take action on educational, health care, job training, and economic development issues. In recent years, the electoral and lobbying actions of the movement have resulted in a combined investment of federal, state, and local funds in excess of $450 million for infrastructural improvements of South Texas colonias (unincorporated rural communities where the poorest reside). The Minuteman Project, Inc. (MPI) was found on October 1, 2004, in Aliso Viejo, California, by Jim Gilchrist. MPI views itself as a ‘‘citizens’ vigilance operation’’ with the goal of reducing the illegal immigration of Central and South Americans, especially Mexicans, into the United States by deterring illegal crossings and aiding U.S. authorities in apprehending ‘‘illegal aliens.’’ The movement employs a variety of methods, including monitoring the border and alerting the U.S. Border Patrol of illegal crossings, raising the awareness among the American public about the issues of illegal immigration, and constructing walls and fences along the border. The MPI also supports the deployment of U.S. military troops on the border.
257
Sports A highly controversial movement, the Minutemen have been characterized as ‘‘vigilantes’’ by U.S. President George W. Bush, as ‘‘anti-Mexican racists’’ by numerous proMexican groups, as ‘‘white supremacists’’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and as ‘‘xenophobic’’ by Roman Catholic Bishop Renato Asacencio of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The Minutemen are strongly opposed by civic leaders along the full expanse of the Texas border from Brownsville to El Paso, by Texas Governor Rick Perry, and by several members of U.S. Congress representing Texas. Local governments in Texas have also passed resolutions in opposition to the planned activities of the Minutemen in Texas. As the border continues to industrialize, urbanize, and develop technologically, social movements representing a wide variety of orientations relating to border issues will continue to organize and develop. This dynamic of social interaction will have direct and important consequences leading to further modernization of the border and its people. FURTHER READING AND VIEWING: Acu~ na, Rodolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 5th edition. New York: Pearson Longman. 2004; Browning-Aiken, Anne, Allison Davis, and Denise Moreno. American Policy Report. New Survey Reveals Needs of U.S.–Mexico Border Groups. November 2006. http://americas.irc-online.org/reports/2005/0310survey_body.html; Carty, Victoria. ‘‘Organizing in the Maquila Industry in Mexico: Implications for New Social Movement Theory.’’ International Journal of Contemporary Sociology 41, no. 1 (2004): 59–78; Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Video. NLCC Educational Media, 1996; Flakus, Greg. ‘‘Mexicans Critical of Minuteman Border Fence Construction.’’ November 2006. http://voanews.com/english/arcive/2005-05/2006-05-03.voal.cfm; Griffin, Richard W. ‘‘The Significance of Political Opportunity Structure and Resource Mobilization in Shaping the Success of Social Movements among the Powerless.’’ Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southwestern Political Science Association, Little Rock, Arkansas, April 1989; Jenkins, J. Craig, and Perrow, Charles. ‘‘Insurgency of the Powerless: Farm Workers Movements (1946–1972).’’ American Sociological Review 42 (1977): 249–68; Seper, Jerry. ‘‘Minuteman Border Patrol Raises Opposition in Texas.’’ Washington Times. November 2006. http:// www.washington times.com/national/20050922-111327-8211r.htm; Tarrow, Sidney. ‘‘Beyond Globalization: Why Creating Transnational Social Movements is so Hard and When is it Most Likely to Happen.’’ December 2006. http://www.antenna.nl/waterman/tarrow.html.
Richard W. Griffin Sports. Modern border sports range from novelties like professional ice hockey in Hidalgo, Texas, to rodeo contests that have gone virtually unchanged since the Spanish colonial era. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sport was equestrian in nature. Horse racing, jineteo (bronco and bull riding), calf-roping, la corrida del gallo (a sort of tackle football on horseback), and other contests comprised the repertoire. These contests were a central part of festival days such as El Dıa de Santiago and El Dıa de San Juan, St. John’s Day, and St. James’s Days, respectively. Charrerıa, a ritualized derivative of these sports, became a Mexican icon when countless films featured singing charros and the pastoral life. Traditional jineteo remains important in rural areas and in its northern form—American rodeo. The border has been a hotspot for boxing since the late nineteenth century. A protracted U.S. military presence helped institutionalize the sport at places like Fort Brown, Fort Mcintosh, and Fort Duncan. The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, Tamaulipas, and Baja California are especially active.
258
Sports Boxing has always been a working-class sport, but its popularity is derived from its organizational structure. The wide range of weight divisions has allowed Mexican and Mexican American males, whose mean stature is lower than that of European and African Americans, to compete at the highest levels; in other professional sports, they are typically at a size disadvantage. Divisions start at the 105-pound straw-weight limit. The border’s porousness and large Mexican population have made it a logical stepping stone for Mexican prizefighters to gain valuable exposure to the American market. Today, Spanish-language television stations regularly broadcast boxing from locations in Laredo, Harlingen, McAllen, and El Paso. Orlando and Gaby Canizales, brothers from Laredo, Texas, are probably the most prominent boxers to emerge from the border region. Orlando Canizales, 50-5-1 (thirty-seven knockouts), reigned as International Boxing Federation (IBF) bantamweight titleholder from July 1988 to October 1994, defending the title a record seventeen times. Gaby Canizales, 48–8-1 (thirty-six knockouts), briefly held the World Boxing Association (WBA) bantamweight title in 1986 and the WBO bantamweight title in 1991. World champions Jose Luis Ramırez and Julio Cesar Chavez also have roots on the border, but their development occurred at multiple sites. The paucity of major professional and college sports together with the relative youth of the border population have made scholastic sports especially prominent. In the middle twentieth century the border fielded strong high school baseball teams. Basketball, track and field, and women’s softball have also been popular. Population surges in the 1990s and 2000s helped soccer make inroads. In the United States, American football draws the most resources and fans. This is especially true in Texas and the Lower Rio Grande Valley where a string of some thirty towns and cities cultivate intense rivalries. Games often draw well over 10,000 fans. It is not uncommon for Mexican students to matriculate in American schools; however, the majority of athletes and fans are Anglo and Mexican American. Border football is a hybrid cultural production. Most stadiums serve fresh-cooked ethnic cuisine like carne asada and street vendor fare along with more conventional snacks. Beginning in the 1970s, fans also began composing corridos, a heroic ballad form with origins in medieval Spain. Originally, fans performed corridos at postgame parties, but they also found their way onto sports radio programs. Fans might hawk homemade compact discs at games. Border marching band repertoires include Mexican popular music and patriotic marches. None other than Abner Doubleday served as general commander of Fort Brown (Brownsville, Texas) in the late nineteenth century. If not Doubleday himself, American soldiers certainly contributed to baseball’s growth. American workers in the northern Mexican mining industry also shared the game with Mexican coworkers. As in the United States, industrialists and managers saw baseball as an effective tool in the grooming of a modern workforce. The completion of the Tex-Mex Railroad in 1877, which connected Nuevo Laredo with Corpus Christi, marked another important milestone. For the first half of the twentieth century, minor league and adult amateur baseball flourished. Diamonds were typically modest, often nothing more than a clearing in the brush. Baseball’s success set the foundation for other modern team sport. In 1968, the San Diego Padres became the border’s first and only American major league team. Major leaguers passed through the border frequently during the 1940s
259
Sports and 1950s, however. Jorge Pasquel, a wealthy owner, signed many top athletes from the Cuban, Negro, and American leagues. Legal and salary issues broke Pasquel’s enterprise in 1953. In the United States, the advent of televised sports in the 1950s, on top of labor and gambling issues, brought on the decline, if not a total disappearance, of the American minor league game. The Broncos de Reynosa and the Tecolotes de Los Dos Laredos of the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol were, until their demise in the late twentieth century, the most notable border teams. These organizations eventually faltered, but new AAA teams began operations in the Texas cities of Laredo, Edinburg, and Harlingen, and in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Throughout the vicissitudes of the adult game, youth baseball has thrived. Little League teams have reached the highest levels. In 2005 Mexicali, Baja California, made it to Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Matamoros, Tamaulipas, appeared in 2001 and 2006, and Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon, won the title in 1997. In the United States, Little League feeds into a robust high school baseball, community college, and university network. Varying club, recreational, or lifestyle sports and recreations have grown out of the border’s geographic and social diversity. Dammed lakes along the Rio Grande and the mountain and desert preserves of southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas’s Big Bend region attract fishermen, hikers, mountain bikers, climbers, river rafters, and birders. For decades, the eastern and western border termini of Brownsville/Matamoros and San Diego/Tijuana have seen a vibrant bicultural surfing scene. More recently, South Padre Island, a barrier island just north of Brownsville, has become a premier destination for windsurfing and kiteboarding. The rapid growth of border cities, an influx of winter residents (‘‘snowbirds’’) and retirees to the Sunbelt, the sizeable managerial class spawned by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and Mexican American upward mobility in general have contributed to the growth of club sports such as tennis and golf. Tennis has been a fixture in American schools since the 1920s. Participation outside of schools has been modest, however. The sport received a boost in the early 2000s when the United States Tennis Association (USTA) initiated a directive to increase participation among minorities. The USTA’s Texas Section focused its efforts on the border. Brownsville, Harlingen, and McAllen now run tennis tournaments on the professional circuit. Golf did not realize a strong following until the 1960s. The rise of Lee Trevi~ no, a former caddie out of El Paso, attracted the emerging Mexican American middle class, especially males, to the game. The sport’s genteel origins helped mark their new identities as middle-class Americans, while also engendering the expression of old forms of camaraderie. Today, virtually every large high school has a team and every small city a municipal golf course. Population growth and newfound wealth in cities like San Diego, Nogales, Las Cruces, El Paso, Laredo, Monterrey, McAllen, Harlingen, and Brownsville have sprouted private courses, ‘‘golf communities,’’ and a brown version of American country club culture. Technologies like refrigeration have made interior recreations like aerobics, weightlifting, martial arts, and yoga common. Men’s and women’s basketball have been a part of the border life since the early twentieth century, when most public schools and colleges were founded. The University of Texas-Pan American, University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP), Texas A&M International in Laredo, New Mexico State in Las Cruces, University of Arizona, and the
260
Sports Universidad Aut onoma de Tamaulipas among others field teams. Of these, UTEP and Arizona have won national titles. Border basketball played a role in the dismantling of segregation in college sports. In the 1950s, Edinburg Junior College (the University of Texas-Pan American) teams played African Americans—one of the first schools in the southern states to do so. In a widely watched televised championship game in 1966, Texas Western College (University of Texas-El Paso) started, to great controversy, an all-black squad. Coached by Don Haskins, this team beat Kentucky for the national title. Though its history has been erratic, the Mexican professional game of basketball made strides both in recruiting talent and drawing fans in the early 2000s. The Liga Nacional de Baloncesto Profesional (LNPB) draws heavily from American talent, especially African Americans; these teams have a truly transnational face. Border teams include the Tijuana Galgos, Soles de Mexicali, and other teams in Tecate, Baja California, and Reynosa and Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Long established in the schools, track, field, and cross-country running have a long history. Among the most celebrated runners is the sprinter Bobby Morrow of San Benito, Texas. He won three gold medals at the Melbourne Olympics of 1956. Ana Guevara, a silver medalist sprinter from Nogales, Sonora, is another star. Going into the Rome 2004 Olympics, Guevara had a winning streak of twenty-eight major races. San Diego has produced gold medalists in Jackie Thompson (1972), Gail Devers (1992, 1996), and Monique Henderson (2000, 2004). Far from the vaunted Olympics stands Mexican free wrestling or lucha libre. A hybrid of Greco-Roman wrestling, comic book superheroics, and stunt acrobatics, lucha libre draws a devoted following of men and women. The iconic symbol of lucha libre is the snug, full-head mask, which, like the wrestler’s ego, is usually surrendered upon defeat. Wrestlers have long been exemplars of robust, Mexicano heterosexuality. To the delight of fans, women, gay, and transgendered wrestlers have recently entered the ring. Wrestlers figure prominently in Mexican cinema and popular culture. While lucha libre is uniquely Mexican, many Americans have been drawn to the sport’s campy theatrics and fanaticism. Performance and spectatorship on the border have a distinctly local inflection, while growing increasingly borderless and ‘‘virtual.’’ Sport is now increasingly tied to global sports networks, particularly those promulgated by mass media and the Internet. Fans still follow ‘‘home teams,’’ but there is an unprecedented affective investment in major team brands—be they Mexican club teams, American Division IA universities, or professional teams with large Mexican American and immigrant fan bases like the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Cowboys, or the Cruz Azul and Chivas de Guadalajara f utbol clubs. The ubiquity of access to the Internet and affordability of the personal computer have spawned online border-specific forums and ‘‘fantasy’’ sports leagues. In Texas, the fantasy sports phenomenon extends even into the high school football game. Even as border sport becomes marked by globalization and technological complexity, folk and equestrian sports maintain ground. Major Mexican border cities all have large and long-standing plazas de toros. Charrerıa, a blend of equestrian pageantry and rodeo, also thrives. Deep historical roots, vast institutionalization at the scholastic and amateur level, and high visibility in the media make baseball, soccer, and American football the most popular border sports. See also Culture; Education; Folklore; Low Riders.
261
Sports FURTHER READINGS: Burgos, Adrian. ‘‘Learning America’s Other Game.’’ In Michelle Habell-Pallan, ed. Latino/a Popular Culture, 225–39. New York: New York University Press. 2002; Huerta, Joel. Red, Brown, and Blue: A History and Cultural Poetics of High School Football in Mexican America. PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 2005; Klein, Alan M. Baseball on the Border: a Tale of Two Laredos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999; LeCompte, Mary Lou. ‘‘The Hispanic Influence on the History of Rodeo, 1823–1922,’’ Journal of Sport History 12 (1985): 23–30; Regalado, Samuel O. Viva Baseball!: Latin American Major Leaguers and their Special Hunger. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1998; Sands, Kathleen M. Charrerıa Mexicana: an Equestrian Folk Tradition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993.
Joel Huerta
262
D
El Teatro Campesino. After working briefly with the San Francisco Mime Troop, Luis Valdez founded El Teatro Campesino (‘‘the farm worker theater’’) in 1965. Affiliated closely with the United Farm Workers of America headquartered in Delano, California, Valdez used farm workers as his actors as he presented works about field workers’ lives and concerns on flatbed trucks. By the late 1960s, El Teatro Campesino had incorporated a variety of political and cultural topics into their performances. Valdez and the troop gained much acclaim during the 1970s. Valdez went on to gain Broadway fame for his play ‘‘Zoot Suit’’ and for directing the hit movie ‘‘La Bamba’’ (1987). In 1976, the U.S. State Department sponsored a Teatro Campesino European tour with their play ‘‘La Carpa.’’ Although the original members disbanded in 1980, El Teatro Campesino still performs traditional holiday productions of ‘‘La Virgen del Tepeyac’’ and ‘‘La Pastorela.’’ The Teatro currently is based in San Juan Bautista, California. See also Border Arts Workshop; Chicana/o Movement. FURTHER READINGS: Broyles-Gonzalez, Yolanda. Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994; Valdez, Luis, and El Teatro Campesino. Actos. San Juan Bautista, CA: Menyah Productions, 1971.
Andrew G. Wood Tejanos/as. Social, economic, and political histories are embedded in the popular term ‘‘Tejanos,’’ and the cultural identity carries potent, yet varying meanings for indigenous, the descendents of criollo Spanish hacendados, and for they who claim both heritages. Tejano is often used to signify, in general terms, the customs and traditions rooted in experiences specific to South Texas and West Texas border cultures. This includes the border cultures of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, and Chihuahua. On the ground, the term often applies to a large indigenous population with cultural histories and memories rooted in several waves of colonization. In the age of advanced globalization, enduring convergences of Native American, Spanish, Basque, African, and Anglo cultures and experiences sustain Tejano-ismo/ism. In current contexts, cyber-Tejan-ismo/ism mobilizes all that is Tejano from Tex-Mex cuisine, fashion, beer, automobiles, news, and ‘‘vibes’’ to grassroots social movements and
263
T
Tejanos/as political action. However, the Tejano culture’s most venerated cultural production, conjunto music, expresses tejanismo through a popular form that evolved from centuries of populist indigenous and mestizo/a voices in land-based struggles against colonization. Tejano music has grown as a powerful mechanism informing and educating local, regional, international, and global audiences. Through live, real-time performance, radio, television, and various cyber-streamed technologies, as well as via burgeoning literary and performing arts, Tejano culture and identity is a tool that differently situated groups used, and use, at different times to shape and mobilize experiences wrought from resistance to cultural domination by other groups. Tejano culture is dominantly represented in a foregrounded male presence. A highly diverse conjunto musical arts form bridges the cultural celebrations, histories, hopes, and resiliencies of South Texan indigenous mestiza/os and their place-based rural and urban experiences. The Tejano/a experience carries a large body of texts focusing on the social, economic and political claims of numerous groups competing for ethnic, religious, and political dominance in a vast area populated and settled first by Native American (indigenous) groups. ‘‘Tejas,’’ derived from taysha, a Caddoan-based word, signifies settlements of indigenous Hasinai groups in areas currently mapped as ‘‘east Texas.’’ According to public lore, Tejas, Spanish for taysha, means ‘‘friends’’ or ‘‘friendly.’’ Popular narratives that emerge from Euro-settler lore celebrating immigration, colonization, and state formation, often cite this first-contact lore as a trope legitimating Manifest Destiny and European settlement. This goes against evidence of the established and persistent indigenous resistance to European colonization throughout the region, where indigenous community lifeways were increasingly altered and radically threatened thereafter. Nonetheless, Tejas as a root, is a foundational idea of a settler identity with origins in Euro-descendent groups supplanting an indigenous landbased identity throughout the current state of Texas. Early in the Spanish colonial period, cartographers identified huge portions of current-day Tamaulipas and South and West Texas as ‘‘Apacheria,’’ and at one point, this identity solidified as a recognized province of Spain. Apacheria signified the unique Spanish conceptualization and coherent recognition of the formidable presence and sovereignty of indigenous nations in alliance with migrational bands of Apache groups defending their vast territories against encroachment. Tejanos developed settlements close to mission and presidio formations in places such as San Antonio de Bejar and La Bahia (Goliad), Los Adaes, and Nacogdoches (a place name for tribal groups who dominated the northeastern fringes of the Spanish province). The Seno Mexicano, or Lower Rio Grande Valley, was sparsely populated by colonists, in comparison, due to the entrenched presence of Apaches and many other indigenous groups with their own distinct land-based histories. Establishing stable communities, for Spanish criollo settlers and their Basque peones and African slaves depended upon strengthening relations with local indigenous networks of trade, procuring indigenous resources and labor, as well as increased systematized defense against indigenous resistance to European American settler expansion. To define Tejano is to surface the social, economic, and political foundations of the many competing lived realities of the Spanish borderlands, the economic and military conflicts of European empires, and the encroachment of settler societies on indigenous territories born out in the region. Groups and political actors
264
Tejanos/as adopted Tejas as a way to native-ize and define citizenship in the context of land tenure. Tejanos, and Texians, as distinct social groups emerged in a context of dispute and competition to control resources around 1821, in the period of the Mexican War of Independence. As the dominant land owners in the former Spanish province, Tejanos strove to secure their independence and control over their economic futures. Anglo encroachment in the Spanish-controlled, land grant region, and indigenous resistance to both groups forged unique alliances. A Tejano identity during this period came to be associated with Spanish owners with large land grant holdings who sought to maintain a way of life largely dependent upon maintaining the casta system, a hierarchical social system with origins in feudal Europe and imported to the Americas. Casta structured rules of behavior and laws on indigenous people, mestizos, and women bound up in land tenure. Texians were not of Spanish descent, but of mixed Anglo, Irish, Scot, and German descent, and were originally considered allies in the Tejano political movement for independence from Mexico and to establish the nation of Texas. By 1820–75, waves of multiethnic European American prospectors and colonists, loosely defined as Texian hacendados, or ranchers, had also utilized the Mexican land grant system, parallel to Spanish and Native American land grantees, as a mechanism to acquire land and resources and to open up territories to European settlement. South Texas Texian-Tejano social, economic, and political identities were frequently forged through strategic marriages between Anglo males and criollas of Spanish descent—Tejana women with vast holdings of land grant inheritances, which were sustained by a cheap labor source of indigenous and mestiza/o castas. Indigenous groups, such as the Apaches and Comanches, who resisted domination under the Spanish presidio-mission system, as well as emigrating indigenous peoples displaced from increasingly militarized settler regions to the south (current-day Mexico) and north (current-day U.S. Midwest and plains states), continued to resist the violent expansions of European-descent settler societies. Movement toward statehood, in a region with a significant Spanish, indigenous and mestizo presence to the south of San Antonio, and a large Anglo-settler presence to the north of Austin, carried underpinnings of a racial state that catalyzed deep chasms in the social and economic landscapes. Tejano took on less currency with the land-owning classes, and more with indigenous and mestizo groups—the swelling numbers of menial laborers. The region was dominantly populated by original inhabitants of indigenous and mestizo cultures, who continued to occupy spaces on both sides of the Rio Grande/Rıo Bravo, in contiguous routes of long-established cultural corridors. Tejano identity shifted as did the region’s politics, staking out the shades and contours of its state and nation borders. The Republic of Texas (1836), inclusion in the American Union (1845), and secession from the Union and subsequent membership with the Confederate States of America (1861) ruptured and uprooted both ancient and recent settlements of minoritized groups. Throughout the end of the nineteenth century and through the mid-twentieth, Tejano identity and culture fixed increasingly on the excluded and marginal existence of dispossessed groups. Mestizo and indigenous communities voiced resistance in their fusions of indigenous languages, oral traditions, spirituality, and musical forms often mobilized through indigenized Spanish and German musical instruments. These played out mappings of a violent history under the land grant, presidio-mission
265
Tejanos/as histories for those indentured and under these tenure systems. In sync with other indigenous border cultures throughout the Southwest and northern Mexico, indigenous-mestizo Tejanos voiced the violent history of colonization and their local experience emerged as a dominant theme in South Texas norte~ nos and corridos. A distinct Rio Grande Valley, or El Valle, Tejano identity drew upon lived realities of survival and scarce resources, always defined in racialized and gendered terms. Entrenched in anti–Jim Crow, anti–Southern Creed awarenesses, these narratives drew upon the violent confrontations and armed conflicts, lynchings, poverty, malnutrition, and disease of exploited groups. Tejano identity and culture became a social and political tool for the subjugated and oppressed to voice and to stage community cohesion, resistance, survival strategies, and rejection of forced assimilations. Significantly, the convergences of multiply oppressed communities resulted in spaces of heterogeneity, whereby indigenous and mixed-blood mestizo social communities emerged. Communities born from the violence of colonization, genocide, and cultural dominance, the ‘‘mixed-blood’’ mestizo castas strengthened their social ties in struggle. This reaffirmed an enduring indigenous-mestizo identity in social movements related to workers’ rights, healthcare, ghettoization, state violence, and discrimination in public sectors. Tejana—the engendered Tejana—is a site where cultural productions and experiences often illuminate different expressions of indigenous-mestiza women that contrast the dominant representations. Themes in the current of Tejana-isma foreground gendered experiences of race, sexuality, environment, borders, citizenship, and nation. Tejana is a space where many voices challenge homogenous representations of any one aspect of a Tejano experience. Chicana, Native American, and indigenous scholars challenge centuries of structural underrepresentation of Tejana perspectives on colonization and social struggles. Across social, economic, and political sectors, through a gendered framework, these scholars scrutinize the impacts of colonization on indigenous and mestiza people in education, health, labor, and community sectors. Tejana oral histories based in literacies of the land and indigenous sciences, methods, and practices provide valuable insights to long-repressed communities within Tejano culture. Cultural archives such as Tejana memoirs, traditional plant knowledge, healing practices, mid-wifery, agriculture, organization, and social network literacies surface the centrality of women core to the foundations of current-day indigenous struggles. By foregrounding the role of indigenous women and mestizas in resistance to domination and assimilation, the accomplishments and ongoing struggles for voice, presence, and community, as well as land-based decision making in Texas become visible. A site for key insights and potent understandings of the formations of an engendered Texas, Tejanas open up important possibilities for rewriting and reclaiming multiple social, cultural, and political positions of citizenship, belonging, and land-based identities. Tejanas make visible nuanced understandings of the ongoing struggles for equity in Texas, a binational state integral to international and global structures of economics, trade, transportation, manufacturing, and militarism. From indigenous testimonios, emerge survivor communities in self-determination movements as Native American and binational indigenous border communities retribalize and petition Texas, Mexico, the United States, and the United Nations for state recognition and reparations. The distinct Tejana/o-Mejicana/o-Chicana/o identities fuse the complex social movements on transnational migration, border health, environmental justice, and gender violence issues informing regional and
266
Terrazas Family international higher education and public policy. A large and growing transnational and transborder popular culture of Tejana/o conjunto musical dominance, rooted in the oral traditions of populist corridos, is mobilized through cyber pathways in a Web-dominated presence driven by youth culture, yet fused by the enduring social, economic, and cultural links of the U.S.–Mexico border region. In all, Tejana repositions the Tejano experience from the oral literatures of the land and the chronicles of excluded and dispossessed gendered histories. Foregrounding perspectives from descendents of colonial castas—indigenous, mestizos, and slaves—important fusions, distinct rhythms, and knowledges arise comprising the Tejana’s cultural contributions to the project of finding ways to speak the experiences against violent encroachment and forced assimilation. Tejanas make visible the often overlooked gendered and queered literary and artistic resurgencies of Chicana/o, Tejana/o, and Native American storytellers, writers, actors, musicians, artists, and scholars. Tejanas—from the margin to the center—utilize gender, race, class, sexuality, and nation to elevate and foreground ongoing resistance to oppression, and honor the role and cultural production of women’s knowledge and traditions in community-focused struggles. FURTHER READINGS: Alonzo, Armando. Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1998; Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005; Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Press. 1987; Berkland, C. ‘‘¡Hola! Where are the Tejanos in Texas History? Where are the Hispanics in U.S. History?’’ In G. Richards, ed. Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2005, 2546–551. Chesapeake, VA: AACE; Casta~ neda, Antonia. ‘‘Introduction: Gender on the Borderlands.’’ Frontiers—A Journal of Women’s Studies 24 (2003). July 28, 2007. http://www.questia. com/googleScholar.qst?docId¼5002582909; Casta~ neda, Antonia. ‘‘Que Se Pudieran Defender (So You Could Defend Yourselves)’’: Chicanas, Regional History, and National Discourses.’’ Frontiers—A Journal of Women’s Studies 22 (2001). July 28, 2007. http://www.questia.com/ googleScholar.qst?docId¼5002436184; Gonzales, Alberto, and Willis, Jennifer. ‘‘Reconceptualizing Gender through Dialogue: The Case of the Tex-Mex Madonna.’’ Women and Language 20 (1997); Hernandez-Avila, Ines. ‘‘In Praise of Insubordination, or What Makes a Good Woman Go Bad?’’ In Angie Chabram-Dernersesian, ed. The Chicana/O Cultural Studies Reader, 191–202. London: (Routledge) Taylor & Francis, 2005; Matovina, Timothy M. The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995; Reyna, Jose E. ‘‘Tejano Notes.’’ Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 13, no. 1–2: 81–94; de la Teja, Jesus. ‘‘Rebellion on the Frontier.’’ In Gerald E. Poyo, ed. Tejano Journey 1770–1850, 15–32. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996; Tijerina, Adres. ‘‘Tejano Origins.’’ July 28, 2007. http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/tejanoorigins.htm; Trevi~ no, Robert R. ‘‘Prensa y patria: The Spanish-Language Press and the Biculturation of the Tejano Middle-Class, 1920–1940.’’ The Western Historical Quarterly 22, no. 4 (November 1991): 451–72; Winegarten, Ruthie, and Palomo Acosta, Teresa. Las Tejanas: 300 Years of History. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.
Margo Tamez Terrazas Family. The Terrazas clan has been prominent in Chihuahuan politics since 1851, when its most important member, Luis Terrazas Fuentes (July 20, 1829–June 15, 1923), first began to work in the state treasury under governor Juan N. Urquidi. Terrazas Fuentes sided with the liberals during Mexico’s Reforma War and the French Intervention, becoming a general—and benefiting from the sale of seized conservative and Church properties. He occupied the governorship from 1860–73,
267
Texas Rangers 1879–84, and 1903–04, and favored the streamlining of government, strict application of the Reform laws, and the funding of education. His close allies included Mariano Samaniego and Inocente Ochoa of Paso del Norte (Ciudad Juarez), and Enrique M€ uller. Terrazas Fuentes’s influence was curtailed by other powerful families, such as the Trıas, Casavantes, Gonzalez, Herrera, and Maceyra, who allied themselves to General Porfirio Dıaz. Despite the cool relations between Dıaz and the Terrazas family, by 1911, the family controlled a vast empire totaling some 7 million acres of northern Mexico’s best agricultural land, as well as diversified holdings in banking, insurance, light manufactures, communications, transportation, and numerous other interests. From his marriage to Carolina Cuilty Bustamante (1833–1919), Terrazas Fuentes fathered thirteen children. Their strategic marriage alliances strengthened the family just as Mrs. Terrazas’s sisters (Marıa Elena, Paz, and Luz) also made good matches. Son Alberto Terrazas Cuilty (1869–1926) was governor of Chihuahua from 1910 to 1911. Nephew and son-in-law Enrique Creel Cuilty (1854–1931) governed Chihuahua (1904–06 and 1907–10) and was minister of foreign affairs (1910–11). Most family members exiled themselves in El Paso, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, during the Mexican Revolution. Although the Revolution severely damaged the family’s interests, the Mexican government paid a hefty compensation, allowing the family to rebuild its power. Numerous descendents are prominent in artistic, business, and political circles in northern Mexico, and at least three have risen to important posts: Francisco J. Barrio Terrazas, PAN party leader, ex-governor, ex-senator, and comptroller general of Mexico; Jose Reyes Baeza Terrazas, governor of Chihuahua (2004–10); and Santiago Creel Miranda, minister of the interior and senator (2006–12). Other family members of importance in the nineteenth century included Indian fighter Colonel Joaquın Terrazas (1829–1901) and journalist Silvestre Terrazas (1873–1944), publisher of La Lira Chihuahuense (1896–1901), El Correo de Chihuahua (1899–1913), and La Patria (1919–1925). See also Mining; Ranching; Tomochic Rebellion. FURTHER READINGS: Fuentes Mares, Jose. Y Mexico se refugio en el Desierto. Luis Terrazas: Historia y Destino. Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1954; Wassermann, Mark. Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution: The Native Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854–1911. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984; Wassermann, Mark. Persistent Oligarchs Elites and Politics in Chihuahua, Mexico. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.
Vıctor M. Macıas-Gonzalez Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers Division, officially constituted on November 24, 1835, during the Texas War of Independence, is a law enforcement agency, a quasimilitary force, and a bureau of investigation based in Austin, Texas, with more than a hundred rangers. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, U.S. settlers chose as their home the coastline along the Gulf of Mexico and then pushed onto the Texas plains. Because the U.S. Army could not protect them, these settlers formed self-defense militias to launch punitive expeditions against the Indians. This would eventually lead to the creation of the Texas Rangers Division. Initially, the Rangers, with a complement of fifty-six men organized in three companies, were mostly employed as scouts and couriers. As a young man, Sam Houston,
268
Texas Rangers
Print of a wood engraving of a Texas Ranger, 1848. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-124160.)
president of the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1838, had been adopted by the Cherokee Nation with the Indian name of Colleneh (‘‘the Raven’’) and was determined to pursue a policy of peaceful coexistence with the Indians, which all but quenched the fighting spirit of the first 300-odd rangers. This constructive approach to multiculturalism in Texas was to radically change with the appointment of the new president, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, in December 1838, fiercely hostile to all Native Americans and more than willing to employ the Texas Rangers to drive the Cherokee and Comanche out of Texas. Then, in 1842, during the Mexican invasion of Texas and, four years later, the U.S.–Mexican War, the Rangers, armed with state-of-the art weaponry, became true frontier and guerrilla fighters. They took part in numerous pitched battles and proved their valor and skills, as well as their ruthlessness and greed, the consequence of the inadequate selection criteria of new recruits. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of their patrolling and law enforcement and their thorough knowledge of the territory was such that it persuaded politicians that the Texas Rangers should not be disbanded, while future enlistments should be carried out with greater diligence.
269
Texas Revolution (1835) After the U.S. Civil War, which had seen many Rangers individually fighting on the Confederate side, the protection of frontier settlements from the assaults of Indians and Mexican bandits became the priority once again. During this period, the Rangers gained nationwide popularity but also stained their reputation through the gratuitous brutality of their methods and their insubordination. The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, only aggravated the already tense situation, and border skirmishes along the Rio Grande escalated. As a result, thousands of Tejanos and Mexicans were killed by the Rangers. Following the public outcry, the Ranger Division was purged and reformed and citizens were told how to file complaints against possible abuses on the part of the Rangers. Following another major reform initiative in 1935, which was also intended to break with the extreme conservatism of this organization, the Rangers could regain their credibility and the respect of the citizens and have been ever since quite effective in both crime prevention and order maintenance, especially thanks to their advanced equipment and investigative procedures. See also The Alamo; The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez; Cortina War; Catarino Erasmo Garza; Migration; Militarization. FURTHER READINGS: Procter, Ben H. ‘‘Texas Rangers.’’ Handbook of Texas Online. May 31, 2007. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/TT/met4.html; Samora, Julian, Bernal, Joe, and Pe~ na, Albert. Gunpowder Justice: A Reassessment of the Texas Rangers. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979; Utley, Robert M. Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers. New York: Berkeley Books, 2003; Webb, Walter Prescott. The Texas Rangers; A Century of Frontier Defense. Austin, University of Texas Press 1965.
Stefano Fait and Stefano Sosi Texas Revolution (1835). The opening salvos of the Texas Revolution began on October 2, 1835, at the small settlement of Gonzales, when Anglo settlers repelled a Mexican force sent from San Antonio de Bexar to seize a cannon. What followed would be six months of intense conflict between the Texas settlers and Mexican federal troops, the latter led by Mexican President Antonio L opez de Santa Anna. Tensions between the Anglo population of Texas and the government of Mexico had, however, been simmering for quite some time. No one event can be said to have caused the Revolution; distrust between the settlers and the Mexican government had been growing since the empresario Stephen F. Austin began bringing American-born settlers into the region in 1821. Unable to populate the state with ethnic Mexicans, the Mexican government sought Anglo settlement of Texas as a means to buffer Mexico proper against U.S. westward expansion. Many Mexicans feared that the United States would someday use the Anglo presence as justification for either purchasing the state from the Mexican Government or seizing it with military force. Many Anglo Texans also felt they had just cause in their distrust of the Mexican federal government. Grievances, expressed during the colonial conventions of 1832 and 1833, were many. Under Mexico’s Federalist Constitution of 1824—in which the Mexican states enjoyed expanded political power at the expense of the federal government—Texas had been united with the Mexican state of Coahuila as a single state (Coahuila y Tejas) but would be granted statehood once Texas was sufficiently populated. However, in his quest to transform his Federalist presidency into a
270
Texas Revolution (1835) centralized dictatorship, Santa Anna threatened to overturn the Constitution of 1824 and consolidate power in Mexico City. To establish increased federal control over Texas—which the Mexican government saw slipping away due to a number of localized rebellions in the late 1820s and early 1830s—Santa Anna also threatened military occupation by strengthening federal garrisons. Increasingly fearful of American designs to seize Texas, Congress halted Anglo immigration with the Law of April 6, 1830. Austin journeyed to Mexico City in July 1833 to officially present the colonists’ grievances but was successful only in gaining repeal of the Law of April 6, 1830. Expressing frustration with the inertia of the Mexican government in a letter to the colonists, officials arrested Austin for treason, holding him in Mexico City until July 1835. By the time of his release, peaceful settlement of the differences between the Texans and the federal government were increasingly unlikely. After William Barrett Travis expelled a Mexican garrison at Anahuac on the Gulf Coast in January 1835, Santa Anna sent General Martın Perfecto de Cos with 500 men to occupy San Antonio. After arriving in San Antonio on October 9, the next day Texan volunteers seized Goliad, cutting off Perfecto de Cos’s supply line to the sea. Taken with the Gonzales incident that had occurred just eight days before, the Revolution had clearly begun. Although the Texans had still not declared independence (they were still a Mexican state fighting against the centralization of federal power in Mexico City), what followed was a series of memorable and oftentimes bloody battles. On October 28, while on their way to oust Perfecto de Cos at San Antonio, Texan forces led by James Bowie won a stunning victory over Mexican federal troops at the Concepcion Mission on the San Antonio River. This victory led to the siege of Bexar by Texan forces. Participating in the siege with the Texans were some Tejanos and disgruntled Mexican federalists, the latter encouraged by the San Felipe de Austin delegation that declared conditional loyalty to the Mexican Federalist Constitution of 1824 in early November. The siege would last until December 5, when Texan forces led by Ben Milam stormed the city and, after brutal house-to-house fighting, took San Antonio for the Texans. For a while after the siege, fighting in Texas subsided. During the winter, U.S. volunteers began crossing into Texas to fight against the Mexican government. Eventually, American volunteers in the army would outnumber Texas-born volunteers. Then, after the New Year, word came that Santa Anna had crossed the Rio Grande with about 6,000 troops, intent on crushing the rebellion. As it became clear that San Antonio would be his first target, a contingent of the Texan army, including James Bowie, William Barrett Travis, and the famous American politician David Crockett, arrived at the Alamo. Santa Anna lay siege to the mission on February 23 and, intending to make an example of the few hundred defenders, stormed the mission on March 6, wiping out the Texan forces and summarily executing those taken prisoner (likely including Crockett himself). On March 2, during the siege of the Alamo, Texan delegates met at Washingtonon-the-Brazos and declared the Republic of Texas independent of Mexico. Later that month, General Jose de Urrea overwhelmed and captured Colonel James Walker Fannin, who had been massing his forces at Goliad to attack Matamoros (against Houston’s orders). Hoping to make another example of the rebels, Santa Anna had Walker and more than 400 of his men executed on March 27, in what would become known as ‘‘The Goliad Massacre.’’
271
Tomochic Rebellion (1891–92) Instead of frightening the Texans into submission, however, the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad may have had the opposite effect. On April 21, near Lynch’s Ferry on the San Jacinto River, Sam Houston, in his first major engagement, led a surprise attack on Santa Anna and his force of around 1,300 troops. The Battle of San Jacinto would last eighteen minutes, with all of Santa Anna’s troops either mercilessly slaughtered or scattered in various directions. Santa Anna would be captured the following day, and the rest of his troops, under command of General Vincente Filisola, fled south in an agonizing and difficult retreat to Matamoros. The Republic of Texas was thus born. Geographically, had Texas not been a ‘‘border state’’ that lay in between the western-moving United States and Mexico proper, the events that gave birth to the Texas Revolution would not have transpired. Indeed, the subsequent history of Texas—as a Republic and as a part of the United States— would be shaped by its status as border region, one not only between Texas and Mexico, but also between the eastern United States and the western frontier. The borderline itself would also be a matter of dispute between the U.S. and Mexican governments. In the end, Texas would serve as a crossroads between American, Mexican, and Tejano cultures, for many years to come. FURTHER READINGS: Davis, William C. Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic. New York: The Free Press, 2004; Hardin, Stephen L. Texian Iliad. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994; Nofi, Albert A. The Alamo and The Texas War for Independence, New York, Da Capo Press, 1992.
Tim Bowman Tomochic Rebellion (1891–92). Tomochic, a small pueblo in Chihuahua’s sierra, was in 1891–92 the scene of a tumultuous struggle between its religiously inspired citizenry and the federal army. The locals, defending their right to worship as they saw fit, were after heroic resistance finally exterminated, but since have become symbols of the struggle against oppression everywhere. When the conflict began, Tomochic was a picturesque town of 300 nestled in the lower ranges of the great Sierra Madre. Most inhabitants were small-time farmers who raised cows, pigs, and chickens along with corn and a few vegetables. Petty merchants in the village provided durable goods, which they sold to miners traveling the main road through town to gold, silver, and copper mines higher up in the mountains. Like many such pueblos in the region, Tomochic had a primary school, a Catholic church, and a village band. It also had its long-time residents and newcomers, strict Catholics and others more loosely minded about religion, those who embraced the changes in a modernizing world and others who feared, or at least were skeptical about, them. These pressures, new and long-standing, caused family feuds, reservations about government encroachment, and differences over the way the village was and ought to be. In short, Tomochic society was badly fissured. An itinerant priest made his annual visit to the pueblo in December 1891, and at Mass told parishioners they could not longer worship a popular saint, a young woman named Teresita, who was ministering to thousands in the neighboring state of Sonora. That did it. A group of villagers, representing about half the town, stormed to the office of the presidente municipal and shouted, ‘‘We will obey no one but God!’’ In response, the frightened presidente asked the state governor to send troops to quell an insurrection.
272
Tourism A fierce shootout between the outraged, steadfast townspeople and state troops followed, individuals on both sides of the conflict died, but overcome by numbers the Tomochitecos fled over the mountains to consult with their santa, Teresa. They could not find her where expected, and with soldiers dogging their every step along the way, they skulked their way back to Tomochic and occupied the village to await their fate, determined to die, if necessary, to protect their rights. Those villagers who had not joined the crusade left town, leaving it to the believers, who praised the Lord at joyful, open-air gatherings, while government spies watched their daily movements from the surrounding mountains. The national dictator, Porfirio Dıaz, did not countenance such opposition to official authority and sent troops to quell the uprising. The locals ferociously defended their pueblo and beat back the army, killing many soldiers and nearly capturing their commander. The president was furious and ordered a much larger federal force to annihilate the recalcitrants. After a seven-day siege, the military finally accomplished its horrid mission. All of the religiously inspired Tomochitecos, save some women and children, were dead. A national outcry against the inhumane massacre of villagers who only insisted on fulfilling their faith as they wished engulfed the dictatorship and weakened its stature. The dictatorship wobbled but righted itself. Nevertheless, evidence against its arbitrary harshness was beginning to pile up. Since the tragedy, the heroic martyrs of Tomochic have been celebrated in books and films, on radio and television. They are a symbol of injustices leveled by an uncaring government on ordinary people everywhere. See also Mexican Revolution; Popular Saints and Martyrs; Terrazas Family; Teresa Urrea. FURTHER READING: Vanderwood, Paul. The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Translated into Spanish as Del P ulpito a la Trinchera: El levantamiento religioso de Tomochic. Mexico: Taurus, 2003.
Paul J. Vanderwood Tourism. Tourism along the U.S.–Mexico border has thrived since the late nineteenth century. The most popular destinations are located in urban centers just below the border, such as Tijuana, Mexicali, Nogales, and Ciudad Juarez. Historically, these border towns have proffered liberal laws concerning gambling, drinking, and prostitution that attracted pleasure-seekers from the United States. Cities that straddle the borderline are also relatively accessible destinations where American and Mexican visitors can obtain a range of consumer goods and services at a lower cost or with a better variety. In addition, the very act of crossing the border can be fascinating in and of itself. Many travelers traverse the political boundary to encounter the unique fronterizo culture and escape established routines and practices of everyday life. During the Porfiriato, the sparsely populated frontera developed into several railroad, mining, or agricultural centers. Industrialization and agricultural development in the U.S. Southwest also resulted in population movements to the border region both within and between Mexico and the United States. Moreover, San Diego emerged as a prosperous commercial seaport and significant naval base. Subsequently, entertainment districts emerged within the larger Mexican border towns catering to Anglo American day-trippers in search of curio shopping and diversion. Tourism
273
Tourism expanded during the Progressive era when state and local governments in the U.S. Southwest passed antiliquor and sumptuary laws. American entrepreneurs moved their gambling, prostitution, and drinking businesses south of the border. Much of the border tourist infrastructure thus was built with foreign capital. For example, a trio of Bakersfield business owners formed a consortium in 1913 called the ABW Corporation, which established a near-monopoly over leisure enterprises in Mexicali and Tijuana. Tourism in Baja California also prospered under the governorship of Colonel Esteban Cant u (1915–20) who segregated vice districts, regulated prostitution, and imposed punitive taxes. Moreover, Cant u collaborated with such American investors as ‘‘Sunny Jim’’ Coffroth, who in 1916 established the popular hipodromo (a thoroughbred racetrack) in Tijuana. By World War I, it was clear that vice-based tourism would figure as the major growth industry in the Mexican border region. The ongoing violence of the Mexican Revolution and deteriorating relations between the United States and Mexico, however, temporarily curtailed the burgeoning industry. In the winter of 1917–18, tourism to Mexico all but ceased when American authorities imposed travel restrictions. Following the end of World War I, the conclusion of the military phase of the Mexican Revolution, and the growth of mass tourism in North America, the cross-border tourism industry exploded. The 1920s and early 1930s were boom years along the Mexican border due to the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, importation, or transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States. The Mexican border region’s comparatively permissive laws made it a desirable destination for ‘‘thirsty’’ Americans. Tijuana alone boasted 75 drinking establishments, including La Ballena, advertised as the longest bar in the world. Ciudad Juarez offered visitors from Texas and New Mexico an array of venues for illicit entertainment, while Mexicali’s Chinatown, principally its opium dens, was popular with residents and transient workers of California’s Imperial Valley. Although revenues generated from the tourist boom contributed to public improvements in northern Mexico, urban centers along the border became known as ‘‘wide-open towns’’ teetering on the edge of social and moral responsibility. American moral crusaders decried the vice-ridden Mexican border, particularly after the highly publicized Peteet ‘‘Shame Suicides’’ of February 1926 when Tijuana’s chief of police and several other men allegedly drugged, kidnapped, and raped two American sisters vacationing in Tijuana. Upon returning to their home in San Diego, the sisters and their parents committed suicide. Following a wave of public outrage, the U.S. Treasury Department ordered that the border at San Ysidro closed between 6 P.M. and 8 A.M., and President Plutarco Elıas Calles instructed Tijuana’s mayor to shut down all dive bars pending an investigation. All four men accused in the statutory rape of the sisters eventually were acquitted and cross-border tourism thrived once again. Beyond ‘‘slumming’’ in the tawdry downtown districts, Anglo American tourists vacationed at luxurious border resorts, such as Agua Caliente located three miles south of Tijuana’s Avenida Revolucion. In 1928, a group of U.S. financiers, in concert with General Abelardo L. Rodrıguez (1923–29), Governor of Baja California North, opened the resort on the site of the defunct Tijuana Hot Springs Hotel. The sumptuous Agua Caliente complex blended art deco and mission revival aesthetics. It featured a health spa, casino, cabaret-restaurant, as well as a first-class hotel, and would later include a racetrack, Olympic-size swimming pool, eighteen-hole golf course, luxury bungalows, and tropical gardens. Agua Caliente instantly became a popular
274
Tourism getaway for the Hollywood and southern Californian elite, and its success paved the way for the Hotel Playa, a grand resort built in Ensenada by an American company that was equally fashionable with wealthy U.S. tourists and celebrities. Although the Great Depression decelerated cross-border tourism, the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 and the reinstatement of racetrack betting in California brought the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of Mexican border tourism an end. With Americans choosing to imbibe closer to home, hundreds of businesses shuttered their doors and thousands of employees in Mexico’s border towns lost their jobs. Authorities in Tijuana pressed for the relaxation of customs duties on such consumer items as food and clothing. To stimulate the local economy and help the ailing tourist industry, in 1933 the Mexican Government passed legislation turning Tijuana and Ensenada into perımetros libres experimentales (Provisional Free Trade Zones). In 1937, Baja California Norte became a duty-free zone, which was extended into Baja California Sur and parts of Sonora in 1939. Likewise, a shift in Mexico’s moral climate negatively affected vice-based border tourism. In 1935, President Lazaro Cardenas outlawed casino gambling, and Agua Caliente and other high-stakes gambling venues closed down. Furthermore, recognizing that Mexico’s northern frontier region had become too dependent on foreign capital, Cardenas nationalized foreign-owned properties, thus driving out remaining American ‘‘border barons.’’ Tourism had become part of the broader nation-building project of postrevolutionary government. Mexico, in concert with the private tourism industry, actively solicited U.S. tourist dollars believing that the expanding international tourist industry would create jobs, promote regional development, and earn foreign exchange. Hence, in its official tourist promotion, Mexico no longer promoted border-town debauchery but rather emphasized mexicanidad and indigenismo. By the early 1940s, both sides of the border experienced unprecedented industrial and demographic growth due to rising federal expenditures, defense-related production, an expanding manufacturing sector, and the Bracero Program. Cross-border tourism rebounded in the process. When the United States rationed goods during wartime, many Americans purchased such restricted commodities as gasoline, meat, and dairy products across the border. Moreover, military personnel on furlough from the military base in San Diego frequently crossed the line to visit Tijuana’s red-light district. In the postwar period, the Mexican border town’s status as a mecca for pornography, prostitution, and narcotics intensified. To improve its image, in 1961 President Adolfo Lopez Mateos ordered the creation of the Programa Nacional Fronterizo (PRONAF), which provided for public beautification projects, improvements in the tourist infrastructure, and the construction of cultural and shopping centers. Following the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) agreement, cross-border tourism and shopping continued to grow. By the mid-1990s, the tourism industry as a whole generated nearly 12 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product, while visitors from Mexico significantly contributed to the U.S. tourism economy in the border states. Although the tourism industry provides employment opportunities and revenue, it nevertheless has added to decentralized development in Mexico. Moreover, despite increased economic integration, the U.S. government has steadily militarized the borderline to stem unauthorized border crossings from Mexico and control the drug trade. Stepped-up security after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has posed an even greater obstacle to tourism development along the U.S.–Mexico border. See also Chinatowns; Cities and Towns; Drug Trafficking; Sports; World War II.
275
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) FURTHER READINGS: Alarcon, Daniel Cooper. The Aztec Palimpsest: Mexico in the Modern Imagination. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997; Bonifaz de Novelo, Marıa Eugenia. ‘‘The Hotel Riviera del Pacifico: Social, Civic and Cultural Center of Ensenada.’’ Journal of San Diego History 29, no. 2 (Spring 1983). http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/83spring/riviera.htm; Curtis, James R., and Arreola, Daniel D. ‘‘Through Gringo Eyes: Tourist Districts in the Mexican Cities as Other-directed Places.’’ North American Culture 7 (1989): 19–32; Dallen, Timothy J. Tourism and Political Boundaries. London: Routledge, 2001; Herzog, Lawrence. Where North Meets South: Cities, Space, and Politics on the U.S.–Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990; Martınez, Oscar J. Border Boom Town: Ciudad Juarez since 1848. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978; Saragoza, Alex. ‘‘The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929–1952.’’ In Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, eds. Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940, 91–115. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001; Schantz, Eric Michael. ‘‘All Night at the Owl: The Social and Political Relations of Mexicali’s Red-Light District, 1913–1925.’’ Journal of the Southwest 43, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 449–602; Taylor, Lawrence D. ‘‘The Wild Frontier Moves South: U.S. Entrepreneurs and the Growth of Tijuana’s Vice Industry.’’ Journal of San Diego History 48, no. 3 (Summer 2002). http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/2002-3/frontier.htm.
Dominique Bre gent-Heald Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848). The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48). It was signed in the village of Guadalupe, Hidalgo, outside of Mexico City on February 2, 1848. The treaty is most notable for stipulating that Mexico give up what is currently the U.S. Southwest—an area that amounted to nearly half of Mexico’s national territory. The U.S.–Mexican War began in 1846 as part of a dispute over Texas and its annexation by the United States. U.S. representatives attempted to negotiate a border dispute between Mexico and Texas. The Mexican government recognized the border at the Nueces River, while Texas and U.S. officials insisted the border lay further south at the Rio Grande. U.S. negotiators tried to purchase strategic ports along the coast of California, then in Mexican territory. Mexico refused to accede to U.S. conditions and soon after, a skirmish erupted between U.S. and Mexican troops at the Texas border and the war began. The war lasted two years, and during the last ten months, the U.S. army occupied the Mexican capital. In May of 1847, U.S. President James K. Polk sent Nicholas Trist to Mexico to negotiate a peace between the two countries. The initial proposal by the United States included Mexico’s ceding the New Mexico territory along with all of the California territory. It also called for Mexico to recognize the Rio Grande as the official border with Texas and to grant the United States right of passage between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. In exchange, Polk was willing to pay $20 million for the new territory and to cover $3 million in U.S. claims against the Mexican government. Trist arrived in Mexico in the summer of 1847 and in August he carefully approached the Mexican government under President Antonio L opez de Santa Anna, who had recently returned from exile to lead the nation during its crisis. Talks quickly stalled as Mexico’s representatives refused to acknowledge anything other than the Nueces River as the Texas border. They also rejected the other terms of the U.S. proposal. For his part, Polk refused to consider a treaty recognizing the Nueces River as the new boundary. He and others saw this as tantamount to admitting that the United States was at fault for starting the war.
276
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) President Polk, in fact, became so frustrated with lack of progress in the negotiations that he recalled Trist to Washington. In Mexico, however, the political climate changed rapidly as Mexico City and other major cities fell to U.S. forces by the end of September. Santa Anna once again was ousted from the presidency in disgrace and forced into exile. By the time Polk’s order reached Trist in December, the U.S. negotiator had decided to defy the president and remain in Mexico to reach a deal with the new regime under provisional president Manuel de la Pe~ na y Pe~ na. With Mexico’s military advantage severely compromised, Trist managed to secure a treaty whereby Mexico ceded all of what is today California, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. Mexico also agreed to recognize the U.S. annexation of Texas with the boundary at the Rio Grande. The United States agreed to abandon its demand for transit rights across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The treaty stipulated that the United States would provide a $15 million payment in addition to absorbing the $3 million in claims against Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified by the Mexican government on February 2, 1848. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on March 10, 1848, after omitting Article 10. That article would have provided protection for Mexican land grants in Texas and would have allowed Mexicans dispossessed of their lands after Texas independence to reclaim those properties. The treaty did provide a procedure for Mexican nationals living in the ceded territory to become U.S. citizens and it guaranteed protection of their rights and property. At the time, approximately 80,000 Mexicans lived in the territory in question and most opted to stay and become American citizens. Despite the protections guaranteed in the treaty, many in this new ethnic group of Mexican Americans had their lands seized through fraud or coercion in the coming decades. Up to 70 percent of land grant claims by former Mexican citizens in those regions were rejected under American law. The political instability in Mexico that led to its defeat in the U.S.–Mexican War continued even after the ratification of the treaty. Political infighting plagued the nation while local governorships and the presidency changed hands repeatedly over the next several years. In 1853, Santa Anna returned from exile a final time and found the treasury depleted. In what many consider a tragic sequel to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Santa Anna sold yet another portion of Mexico’s northern territory to the United States. Under the Gadsden Purchase, the United States acquired the Mesilla Valley (southern Arizona and New Mexico) in exchange for $10 million. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had important implications in the history of relations between the United States and Mexico. By redrawing the boundary between the two countries, the treaty created a new ethnic group of Mexican Americans virtually overnight. The ramifications in subsequent decades with the violation of property ownership and civil rights of Mexicans in the ceded territory mark an important precedent for later trends of ethnic discrimination. Furthermore, the U.S.–Mexican War and the treaty that ended it are widely viewed in Mexico today as the beginning of a long process of U.S. political, economic, and cultural hegemony over Mexico and Latin America. See also Texas Revolution. FURTHER READINGS: Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990; Santoni, Pedro. Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalists and the Politics of War, 1845–1848. Fort Worth: Texas Christian
277
Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861–1932) University Press, 1996; Smith, Justin H. The War with Mexico. 2 Vols. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1963; The U.S.–Mexican War. http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/index_flash.html.
Monica Rankin Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861–1932). Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian at the University of Wisconsin from 1889 to 1910 and at Harvard University from 1910 to 1924. His most notable contribution was his 1893 ‘‘Frontier Thesis,’’ in which he argued that the existence of a western frontier had defined American character as well as fundamental national institutions throughout the nation’s history. Turner was born in Portage, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1884. He received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1890, specializing in the history of Indian fur trading in Wisconsin. As a professional historian, Turner emphasized the role of the western frontier in America’s past. In the late decades of the nineteenth century, U.S. government policy opened millions of acres of western lands to settlement. By 1890, the U.S. Census proclaimed for the first time that the country no longer had a discernible western frontier. Three years later, Turner articulated his frontier thesis in his address, ‘‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History,’’ delivered at a gathering of the American Historical Association at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Turner argued that the frontier had provided Americans with a sense of opportunity, self-reliance, and individualism. Its existence meant that the United States could expand, but that expansion required Americans to be willing to take risks and overcome obstacles. Confronting the challenges of the frontier, according to Turner, created a high degree of self-confidence and national pride—the nature of which was uniquely American. Jackson’s frontier thesis also declared the frontier to be closed, implying that in the future Americans would confront an identity crisis as they adjusted to the geographic limitations that resulted from the disappearance of the frontier. Some American leaders argued that since there was no longer a frontier to the west, the United States should expand southward in an effort to continue American greatness. Although Turner’s thesis was discounted by many at the time, his underlying argument has since been debated among scholars and integrated into most conventional interpretations of American history. See also Louisiana Purchase; Manifest Destiny; Monroe Doctrine. FURTHER READINGS: Billington, Ray Allen. Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, and Teacher. New York: Oxford University Press. 1973; Bogue, Allan G. Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1998; Faragher, John Mack. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History, and Other Essays. New York: H. Holt. 1994; PBS New Perspectives on the West. ‘‘Frederick Jackson Turner.’’ http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/turner.htm.
Monica Rankin
278
D
United Farm Workers of America. Founded by Latino labor activist Cesar Chavez in 1962, the California based United Farm Workers (UFW) is a labor union dedicated to improving the working conditions and lives of agricultural laborers. Over the years, the union has scored victories in labor disputes involving grape, lettuce, strawberry, rose, mushroom, orange, wine, and other agricultural producers. The organization has successfully lobbied for a number of health and labor reforms, including a 2006 California regulation designed to prevent death from overexposure to heat. The union got its start in late September 1962, when hundreds of delegates attended the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in Fresno, California. On September 16, 1965, Chavez and his NFWA colleagues voted to join Filipino workers in a strike against Delano, California, grape growers. The walkout persisted for five years and would attract nationwide attention. Among those who supported the farm workers were United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther and Robert Kennedy. As part of their organizing strategy, the UFW called for a boycott of grape growing Schenley Industries during the winter of 1965–66. Later that spring, Chavez and a group of fellow strikers undertook a pilgrimage from Delano to the state capitol in Sacramento to draw attention to the condition of farm labor. In the process, the UFWA and Schenley Industries signed the union’s first contract. New challenges soon developed as farm workers called a strike and boycott of the DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation. When DiGiorgio asked Teamsters to combat Chavez and the NFWA, organizers combined forces with the Filipino-American Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). At the time, AWOC was affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The two organizations soon officially became the UFW. For the next few years, word of the grape boycott spread across the country and world. As the farm workers mission became known, supporters referred to the growing movement as ‘‘La Causa.’’ Further endorsing nonviolence as a movement strategy, Chavez went on a twenty-five-day fast in early 1968. Many, including Dr. Martin Luther King, sent messages of encouragement and solidarity. Following years of an often-bitter struggle Delano-area grape growers signed a historic agreement with the union on July 29, 1970. More challenges lay ahead along California’s central coast, however, as many Salinas Valley lettuce and vegetable growers signed sweetheart deals with the Teamsters to avoid dealing with the UFW.
279
U
Urrea, Teresa (1873–1906) A boycott was called and nearly 10,000 workers walked off the job. In December, Chavez disobeyed a court order to end the boycott. He was jailed in Salinas for two weeks. The following year, boycott and membership efforts continued. By early 1971, the official number of workers affiliated with the UFW stood at more than 70,000. The following year the organization became an independent affiliate of the AFL-CIO and took on the title of the UFW. Battles with the Gallo winery broke out in the spring of 1973 when the winemaker dealt with the Teamsters rather than with the farm worker’s union. Grape workers in Coachella and San Joaquin Valley went on strike and many were arrested for breaking specious antipicketing regulations. Violence, beatings, and two deaths characterized the bitter confrontation before Chavez eventually decided to stop the strike and replace it with a new nationwide grape, lettuce, and Gallo wine boycott. Soon, nearly 17 million consumers joined the effort. In June 1975, California farm workers gained further support for their cause as Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. This legislation guaranteed agricultural workers the right to organize, vote in monitored secret ballot elections, and bargain with growers. To publicize the new law, Chavez undertook a nearly two-month walk during July and August 1975. The journey began near the Mexican border in San Ysidro and then headed north to Salinas and then to Sacramento. Following this walk, the entourage headed back to the union’s headquarters in Keene (near Bakersfield) via California’s agriculturally rich Central Valley. The event proved a huge success with thousands showing up to support Chavez and the farm-worker cause. After continued tension with the UFW, the Teamsters Union decided to leave the fields in 1977. The following year, Chavez called for an end to the grape, lettuce, and Gallo wine boycott as the union continued to make significant gains with growers. Following this effort, the UFW continued to advocate for better wages and safer working conditions as well as a host of other education and community efforts. Important organizing efforts such as the launching of a third grape boycott in 1984 as well as ongoing violence and concerns about health and safety issues characterize the UFW’s history into the present era. Along the way, the union made important gains despite continued opposition from growers and politicians. See also Agribusiness; Bracero Program; Chicana/o Movement; Environmentalism; Dolores Huerta; Social Movements. FURTHER READINGS: Kushner, Sam. The Long Road to Delano. New York: International Publishers, 1975; United Farm Workers. http://www.ufw.org/.
Andrew G. Wood Urrea, Teresa (1873–1906). Teresa Urrea, ‘‘the Santa de Cabora,’’ was a folk saint and healer in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. She was born on October 15, 1873, on a ranch in Sinaloa, Mexico, the illegitimate daughter of a poor Tehueco indigenous woman named Cayetana Chavez and Don Tomas Urrea, a wealthy member of the local gentry. After the family moved north to Cabora in the Mexican state of Sonora, Teresa’s healing powers emerged. At her father’s ranch in Cabora, Teresa befriended and assisted an elderly woman who is variously remembered as Huila or Marıa Sonora. A skilled curandera (Mexican folk healer), Huila taught her healing craft to the young Teresa who showed an aptitude for the therapeutic modalities of curanderismo. Around the age of sixteen, an unknown
280
U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48) traumatic experience left Teresa in a coma. After lying in a deathlike state for nearly two weeks, Teresa awoke and announced that she had spoken with the Virgin Mary and had been commissioned to do her work. From that point on, Teresa’s touch reputedly could bring about miraculous cures. Multitudes of people from the surrounding area came to experience her healing ministrations; the majority of these were indigenous people who had long served as peons and servants on the surrounding ranches. She often accompanied her healing sessions with appeals for justice for the poor she served. Though she never accepted the title for herself, her faithful soon began to refer to as the ‘‘Santa de Cabora.’’ When tensions between local indigenous farmers and wealthy land interests ignited into skirmishes, the peasants rallied behind images of Teresa, crying ‘‘¡Viva la Santa de Cabora!’’ As a result of these tumults, Teresa and her father were exiled from Mexico to Arizona in 1892. After spending time in Nogales, El Paso, and other towns near the border, the family settled in Clifton, Arizona. Throughout this period, Teresa continued her healing mission, and for the first time began to heal non-Mexican people, including Anglo Americans. After a brief and unsuccessful marriage in Clifton, Teresa was invited to San Francisco in 1900 to cure a small boy infected with meningitis. After her treatments were successful, exciting a frenzy in the newspapers, a ‘‘healing consortium’’ hired Teresa to go on a healing tour of the world under her explicit condition that no patients would be charged for her services. She traveled to several U.S. cities with the consortium, including Los Angeles, St. Louis, and New York where she was always greeted by large crowds. However, when she discovered that patients had indeed been asked to pay to see ‘‘Santa Teresa,’’ she successfully sued the company for the remainder of her contract and returned to Arizona. Back in Clifton, her healing powers seemed to fade as did Teresa’s health until her death from tuberculosis at age thirty-three in 1906. There is no clear evidence that a popular devotion still exists around the figure of Teresa Urrea on either side of the border. However, interest in Teresa resurfaced with the Chicana/o Movement in the 1960s and 1970s; Chicana feminists reclaimed her as a prototypical example of the strong woman of the border region. She has been the subject of at least two historical novels. This amazing and mysterious woman continues to captivate. See also Popular Saints and Martyrs; Tomochic Rebellion. FURTHER READINGS: Holden, William Curry. Teresita. Owings Mills, MD: Stemmer House, 1978; Perales, Marian. ‘‘Teresa Urrea: Curandera and Folk Saint.’’ In Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sanchez Korrol, eds. Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community, 97–119. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Brett Hendrickson U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48). War between the United States and Mexico, also called the U.S.–Mexican War, began in 1846 with conflict arising over a boundary dispute. Two years later, Mexico had been defeated and subsequently lost approximately half her national territory to the United States. Trouble between the two nations had begun years earlier as empresarios such as Stephen F. Austin had led Anglo settlers into Texas only to eventually come to blows with Mexican officials. After a bloody struggle for independence, Texas became a republic in 1836 and would remain so until annexed by the United States in 1845. Annexation did not sit well, however, with Mexican authorities, and diplomatic
281
U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48) relations between the two countries soon deteriorated. In the meantime, President John Tyler had earlier sent troops to Fort Jessup, Louisiana to reassure Texans that they would be protected against any acts of aggression undertaken by Mexico upon annexation. After, James K. Polk succeeded Tyler in the election of 1844, he ordered Brigadier General Zachary Taylor to move forces stationed at Fort Jessup into east Texas in June 1845. Taylor and his 3,400-strong army established themselves close to the mouth of the Nueces River near the village of Corpus Christi and stayed there for six months. In November of that year, Polk sent emissary John Slidell to Mexico City to talk with Mexican president Jose Joaquın Herrera. Slidell had received instructions from Polk to negotiate an agreement that would change the boundary with Mexico from the Nueces River approximately 150 miles south to the Rio Grande—as had been claimed with much controversy by the Texans for more than a decade. This not only asserted claim to a significant amount of acreage in Texas but also to thousands of square miles of territory to the west in New Mexico and Colorado. Moreover, Slidell had been told by President Polk to wrest California and the remaining northern area of New Mexico from the Mexicans. He was prepared to pay some $5 million for New Mexico and another $25 million for California. Word somehow reached President Herrera and members of the Mexican press corps about Slidell’s mission. Hundreds of Mexicans objected to what they saw as outright Yankee expansionism and made their voices heard. Not surprisingly, Herrera dismissed Slidell who soon returned to Washington. With talks broken off, Polk wanted war. Yet, people such as Secretary of State James Buchanan and Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft objected. Only if Mexico attacked, they said, would they agree to armed conflict with their southern neighbor. As fate would have it, Polk got his way because Zachary Taylor had decamped and ordered his troops south into the territory between the two rivers. The very day a vote came up in Washington as to whether the United States should declare war on Mexico, Taylor clashed with Mexican forces under the command of Mariano Arista. In the scuffle, sixteen U.S. soldiers had been killed or wounded. Hearing the news in early May, Polk immediately went to Congress and urged them to approve his plan for war. In part of his address, he speciously claimed that Mexico had invaded the United States and shed American blood. From the Mexican point of view, it looked as if Polk had fabricated the entire scene to rationalize his desire for war and usurpation of Mexican territory. Their perceptions were not unreasonable. U.S. forces set out with three main armies. The Army of the West set out to capture California and New Mexico. The Army of the Center moved into northern Mexico, and Taylor’s Army of Occupation targeted Mexico City. General Stephen W. Kearny took Santa Fe easily. By the time he had made his way to California, naval commanders John D. Sloat and Colonel John C. Fremont had already gained control. Fighting in Chihuahua proved more difficult with Alexander Doniphan facing off in an artillery duel with forces under the command of General Jose A. Heredia. It was a battle that Doniphan won and American troops soon occupied Chihuahua City much to the dismay of Mexican residents. In the meantime, Taylor advanced on Monterrey and soon encountered fierce resistance from General Pedro de Ampudia and nearly 7,000 soldiers. Three days of fierce combat eventually caused the Mexicans to surrender. Soon thereafter, Taylor faced off against General Antonio L opez de Santa Anna in the battle of Buena Vista southwest of Monterrey. After a day of tough fighting, Santa Anna retreated to Mexico City, thus leaving most of northern Mexico to the invaders.
282
U.S.–Mexican War (1846–48) The crushing blow to Mexico, however, came from the east. On March 9, 1847, General Winfield Scott and 10,000 men landed to the south of the Port of Veracruz on Mexico’s Gulf Coast. Scott skirted the city’s traditional harbor-front defenses at the fortress San Juan de Ul ua and surrounded Veracruz. He then called for a heavy mortar attack on the city, which left hundreds dead and wounded. In cold-hearted fashion, he ignored all attempts by residents to negotiate the evacuation of innocent lives. Nearly destroyed as well as threatened by yellow fever, Veracruz finally surrendered on March 27, 1847. The American death toll amounted to approximately seventy dead or wounded Americans. Mexicans, on the other hand, suffered greatly with between 1,000 and 1,500 injured or dead. When Santa Anna heard of the devastation in Veracruz, he set out to meet Scott. They clashed in a mountain pass near the state capital of Jalapa called Cerro Gordo. The encounter proved humiliating for the Mexican general who retreated hastily. Scott advanced to Puebla where he and his troops rested and even did a bit of sightseeing. Still, Mexican resistance proved fierce at times as defenders turned to guerrilla-style warfare as a way to repel the invaders. Soon, however, the U.S. advance continued toward Mexico City. The battle for the Mexican capital proved to be the culminating point of the war as early combat on the city’s outskirts soon gave way to an all-out fight to the finish between Scott and Santa Anna. The battle of Molina del Rey on September 7, 1847, proved especially bloody for both sides. Eventually, Mexican forces retreated to Chapultepec Castle. With cadets from the Military Academy (later dubbed Los Ni~ nos Heroes) sacrificing their lives in patriotic duty until the very end, Scott’s forces advanced and took the castle on September 13 after a bitter struggle. In the wake of the defeat, Mexican authorities surrendered and subsequently negotiated a treaty in the village of Guadalupe Hidalgo outside Mexico City in early February 1848. The treaty provided the United States with title to Texas, California, and New Mexican territories. Contrary to the desires of Secretary of State James Buchanan who saw the 26th parallel as the postwar dividing line, the U.S.–Mexico border would be set at the Rio Grande. The United States paid $15 million and assumed $3.25 million in claims by U.S. citizens against the Mexican government. For their part, Mexicans saw themselves the victims of Yankee aggression with their national territory significantly reduced, their economy in shambles, and citizenry humiliated. In contrast, the war allowed the Untied States to realize, what for many, was a long-time dream to occupy the North American continent from the Atlantic to Pacific. See also Manifest Destiny; Texas Revolution; Frederick Jackson Turner. FURTHER READINGS: Descendants of Mexican War Veterans. http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/ mexwar1.htm; Granado, Luis Fernando. Sue~ nan las piedras: Alzamiento ocurrido en la ciudad de Mexico, 14, 15, y 16 de septiembre de 1847. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2003; Levinson, Irving W. Wars within War: Mexican Guerrillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846–1848. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2005; Meyer, Michael C., Sherman, William L., and Deeds, Susan M. The Course of Mexican History. 8th edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007; Resendez, Andres. Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; ‘‘The U.S.–Mexican War.’’ PBS Series. 1998. http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/index_ flash.html; Winders, Richard Bruce. Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas. Wilmington, DE: S. R. Books, 2002.
Andrew G. Wood
283
V
v
Villa, Francisco, ‘‘Pancho’’ (1878–1923). Mexican revolutionary Francisco ‘‘Pancho’’ Villa was born Doroteo Arango Arambula in the state of Durango, Mexico, to Agustın Arango and Micaela Arambula. Both his parents were sharecroppers. One of five children, Villa’s father died when Francisco was young. Legend has it that as a young man Villa somehow crossed the law. Some say he became enraged at his patron and shot him in the foot before setting out to live a life on the run. Others say that his rebel life began as he killed the hacienda owner for raping his twelve-year-old sister. Whatever the exact circumstances, Villa lived out his teenage years in the hardscrabble Durango countryside as a small-time outlaw. In early 1901, authorities arrested him and accused him of stealing two burros and their cargo. At the time, Villa was twenty-two years old. Finding insufficient evidence, a judge released Villa after two months. Shortly thereafter, officials apprehended him again for assault and
Pancho Villa and staff, n.d. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-29882.)
284
Villa, Francisco, ‘‘Pancho’’ (1878–1923) robbery. This time, officials inducted him into the federal army where he served for a year before deserting. He then made his way to Parral, Chihuahua. He lived there until he was forced to flee from army agents and Durango law enforcers who had discovered his whereabouts. At this time, Doroteo Arango also changed his name to Francisco Villa. Villa was the last name of his father’s father while Francisco Villa had been a well-known Northern Mexican bandit from the state of Coahuila. Contrary to popular legend, Villa does not seem to have pursued a life of crime before joining the Mexican Revolution. Instead, records show that he worked as a contractor for foreign railroad and mining companies. For a short time, he set up a butcher shop in the city of Chihuahua. The business failed, however, and Villa soon turned to cattle rustling. Operating in conjunction with a rancher based in Parral, Villa rounded up and sold cattle from lands recently privatized by the state’s large landowners—the Terrazas and Creel families. Many viewed this not as a crime, but as a restoration of moral authority. In June 1910, Villa murdered fellow rustler-turned-Creel-family-secret-police-agent Claro Reza in Chihuahua City. Motive for the killing is not known fully but most likely Villa wanted Reza silenced because he knew too much about Villa’s business. It was at about this same time that future Chihuahua governor Abraham Gonzalez invited Villa to join in the struggle against President Porfirio Dıaz. Much of his appeal came from the fact that Gonzalez encouraged the young man to honor ordinary working people in their defense against the sprawling estates of rich landowners and the politicians who supported them. When Francisco Madero sounded his call for revolution in November 1910, Villa soon joined in. Fighting against federal army forces, Villa and the other revolutionists defeated Dıaz in 1911. Following a period as interim president, Madero was elected as Mexico’s first revolutionary leader. In late May that same year, Villa married Marıa Luz Corral. Villa soon distinguished himself as a revolutionary by helping put down an insurrection against Madero led by Pascual Orozco in March 1912. Leading his cavalry troop, also known as Los dorados, Villa fought alongside General Victoriano Huerta who soon conspired against Madero and proclaimed himself president in February 1913. In response, Villa joined forces with Coahuila governor Venustiano Carranza, young Sonoran military talent Alvaro Obreg on, and others. Signatories of Carranza’s Plan de Guadalupe, the alliance became known as ‘‘the Constitutionalists’’ after their desire to restore constitutional order. Villa became provisional governor of Chihuahua as he and his troops (called the Northern Division) fought against Huerta. In one of the deadliest and most decisive battles of the conflict, Villa defeated Huerta’s army at Zacatecas. Huerta subsequently left office by mid-1914. Meanwhile, tension within the Constitutional alliance became more pronounced. Carranza had called for a national convention to be held in the town of Aguascalientes. With delegates representing the various revolutionary factions, debate soon revealed fundamental political differences; primarily between the supporters of Carranza and Obreg on, on the one hand, and Zapata and Villa, on the other. Before long, civil war again ravaged the country. In April 1915, Villa and approximately 25,000 men faced off against Obregon at the Battle of Celaya. Thousands of villistas died as Obregon made effective use of barbed wire, machine guns, artillery, and World War I–European fighting strategies. With the Constitutionalists gaining significant ground, U.S. President Wilson recognized Carranza in October 1915. For Villa, this felt like betrayal because he had long
285
Villa, Francisco, ‘‘Pancho’’ (1878–1923) supported the United States. In his most notorious act of revenge, he and his cavalry attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916. Burning and looting, the Mexicans killed eighteen people and wounded many more before being chased off by U.S. forces. The incident sparked a military intervention into northern Mexico in search of Villa. Led by General John J. ‘‘Blackjack’’ Pershing (earlier renown for his stalking Apache head Geronimo), a U.S. force of 6,000 failed to capture Villa. In the futile effort, known as ‘‘the Punitive Expedition,’’ $130 million dollars had been spent. Following this incident, Villa continued in his efforts against Carranza, but his power had been significantly diminished. His last attack took place in Ciudad Juarez in 1919. In the early 1920s, he negotiated a deal with interim president Adolfo de la Huerta and retired to his estate El Canutillo. In 1923, he was assassinated in the city of Parral after attending the baptism of a friend’s baby son. Despite being characterized as a ruthless bandit by some, today, Villa stands—alongside Francisco Madero, Emiliano Zapata, and 1930s President Lazaro Cardenas—as one of the true heroes of the Mexican Revolution. FURTHER READING: Katz, Frederick. The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Andrew G. Wood
286
D
War of the Gran Chichimeca (1540s–1590s). Decades after the fall of the Aztec Empire, the war of the Gran Chichimeca marked the first prolonged encounter of the indigenous nomadic societies of the western Mexican frontier with Spanish settlers in the mid-sixteenth century. This nomadic population, referred to by the Spaniards as Chichimecs, was composed of more than a dozen culturally and linguistically distinct groups that roamed the land between the Occidental and Oriental Sierra Madres of Northern Mexico. Beginning in 1546, this series of conflicts escalated for fifty years, involving an increasing number of nomadic groups, Spanish soldiers, and sedentary Indian allies. Zacatecos, Pames, Guamares, and Guachichiles were the four major Chichimec groups, though there were also smaller groups such as the Cazcanes, Tepeques, and Cocas. All the groups had long inhabited the territory and had successfully resisted previous invasion attempts made by the Aztec Empire. The Chichimec were notorious for being fierce warriors and extraordinarily skilled archers, who resiliently sustained their societies in a dry and harsh environment. The friction between the Spaniards and the nomads began with the establishment of ranches and encomiendas in Michoacan in the early 1540s where Spaniards were increasing their pastorage. Spaniards and nomadic groups occasionally fought in the 1530s but more intense conflict broke out under Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza (1535–50) during the Mixton War (1541–42). Further expansion of Spanish settlement occurred after Juan Fernandez de Hijar and Christobal de O~ nate discovered silver on an expedition near Guadalajara between 1542 and 1546, and also Juan de Tolosa was led to silver by natives in Zacatecas. The prospect of mining silver encouraged permanent Spanish settlement deeper into the Chichimec region. As a result, further conflict soon erupted. Throughout the 1550s, Spaniards began operating mines in Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Martın, Izmiquilpan, and Avino. Highway construction and restoration to connect these mines became a priority of the viceroyalty. It was on these highways that the Zacatecos made their first attacks that disconnected supply chains and threatened mine workers. Later, the Guachichiles southeast of Zacatecas began a series of raids. These highway raids were common features of the war, and towns, such as Cuautitlan, Tepeji, Jilotepec, San Felipe, and San Juan del Rıo, eventually became targets.
287
W
Water Issues To protect these towns, the Viceroy organized the construction of presidios along the highway. Also, men from the towns sent raids called entradas into the region searching for the nomads. Spaniards made alliances with chieftains of local sedentary groups, namely the Otomies, to join in the protection of the towns and mines. By 1561, it is estimated that more than 200 Spaniards and 2,000 Indian allies had been killed. Throughout the 1560s, 1570s, and 1580s, the intensity and frequency of raid exchanges increased. Spaniards began taking captives for slave work in the mines. Former enemy nomadic nations organized themselves strategically, and were becoming more threatening with their mastery of horses. In the 1590s, Viceroy Velasco negotiated with leaders of a group of natives who had previously helped Cortes to overthrow the capital Aztec city of Tenotchtitlan, the Tlaxcalans. The leaders agreed to send 400 families to the region and establish eight settlements. This attempt to calm the fighting by resettling sedentary groups, and encouraging agriculture and Catholicism, began a new pattern of pacification strategy and slowly decreased the attacks in the region. This war exemplified the strength of the natives of the western frontier, costing the Spaniards many lives and more money than the conquest of the Aztec Empire. The war impelled both Spaniards and the Chichimecas to organize more strategically, and it began a long-lasting discussion in New and Old Spain about appropriate processes of colonialization and pacification. See also Native Americans. FURTHER READINGS: Bakewell, P.J. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico: Zacatecas, 1546–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971; Hrdlicka, Ales. ‘‘The Region of the Ancient ‘Chichimecs,’ with Notes on the Tepecanoes and the Ruin of La Quemada, Mexico.’’ American Antrhopologist New Series, 5, no. 3. (July-September 1903): 385–440; L opez Austin, Alfredo. The Rabbit on the Face of the Moon: Mythology in the Mesoamerican Tradition. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. 1996; Powell, Philip Wayne. Soldiers, Indians, and Silver: The Northward Advance of New Spain, 1550–1600. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952.
Carly Sheffield Water Issues. The U.S.–Mexico border was established after the signing of two treaties between the United States and Mexico in 1848 and 1853. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of February 2, 1848, and the Treaty of December 30, 1853, determined the exact location of the 1,952-mile-long border, which also included two major rivers, the Colorado River and the Rio Grande. Extensive development of the border region began in the 1880s with the establishment of railroads and the extensive spread of irrigation techniques for agriculture. An International Boundary Commission (IBC) was created after a convention in 1889. Later, with a signing of a treaty concerning water between the United States and Mexico in 1944, the IBC was renamed and reconstituted as the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). The Water Treaty of 1944 mandated that the IBWC should consist of both a U.S. and a Mexico section, each headed by a single engineer commissioner. The U.S. section was managed by the State Department, while the Mexican section of the IBWC was under the jurisdiction of the Secretariat of Foreign Relations of Mexico. The main goal of the Commission was to ensure that both countries remain committed to act jointly on all the issues concerning the
288
Water Issues boundaries, water treaties, and water infrastructure. It was charged with ensuring the social and economic welfare of the population inhabiting this particular region and also with improving relations between the United States and Mexico. Special joint action was to be taken specifically regarding the water boundaries, which included the Rio Grande from Fort Quitman to the Gulf of Mexico and the Colorado River. With the Chamizal Convention of August 29, 1963, the dispute of the boundary and water problems of the Rio Grande near El Paso was effectively resolved. Furthermore, the treaty of November 23, 1970, resolved all remaining differences regarding borderlines and confirmed that the Rio Grande and the Colorado River were part of the border between the two neighboring countries. Afterward, the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) was established in November 1993. The purpose of this commission was to work with local communities in developing and maintaining wastewater treatment plants, drinking water systems, and solid waste disposal facilities in the region of the U.S.–Mexico border. Currently, the border between the United States and Mexico extends approximately 2,000 miles from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Pacific Ocean, also including a total of 62.5 miles of no-man’s-land on both sides of the border. Some of the major water issues facing this vast border line, especially in a number of particular areas, are distinctive to this region. In the region of California and Baja California, for instance, there are some specific water-quality concerns with respect to the Salton Sea and the Colorado River Basin. Constant problems with the low level of water quality in these areas are generally attributed to the construction of new power plants and the continuous pollution of water sources with untreated sewage. Particular to the Arizona and Sonora areas is the lack of reservoirs, wastewater treatment infrastructure, and the continual water contamination from smelters. In the region bound by New Mexico, Texas, and Chihuahua, there is a widespread need for watersheds. In addition, water quality is a major concern in the Ciudad Juarez and El Paso areas, which is largely due to the steady overdraft of the Hueco Bolson aquifer. There is also a special need to improve the water supply and the development of water and wastewater treatment infrastructure in the area of Texas, Coahuila, Nuevo Le on, and Tamaulipas. According to the Mexican authorities, a reason for some of the emerging water issues is the fact that the Water Treaty from 1944 has been outdated for quite some time now. The population in the border region has grown from 1.4 million to 12 million since 1940, significantly changing the demographics of the region. Additionally, the Treaty of 1940 divided the Colorado River so that water would go to agriculture or urban needs. Currently, this plan fails to devote any portion of the river to the maintenance of the river itself. As a result of this negligence, six species of birds and fish in the Colorado River are now endangered. The Mexican authorities are expressing concern about the manmade waterway at San Luis Rıo Colorado, which provides crops with water for both the United States and Mexico. Further controversy is spurred by a California plan to conserve water by paving the canal. California’s proposal to line twenty-three miles of the canal would eliminate leaking and groundwater that some 2,500 Mexican farmers use for irrigation. Mexico fears that such a step could cause the devastation of much of the agriculture on the Mexican side of this border region and thus is strongly opposing the plan. California, however, argues that it needs this canal’s resources since it has exceeded its mandated 4.4-million-acre water share by using unused shares from Arizona and Nevada. This excess is no
289
Water Issues longer permissible, however, since the growing states of Arizona and Nevada are now demanding their water shares back. The Rio Grande and its six tributaries make up another border region that is causing some serious water issues and conflicts between the United States and Mexico. One-third of the river’s waters are attributed to Texas and other states bordering the Mexican side, but in reality, that amount is much lower and Mexico now owes more than 1.5 million acre-feet of water to southern Texas alone. Texas claims the lack of water has destroyed many of its crops and wants the treaty that constitutes water usage from the Rio Grande and its tributaries revised. Currently, due to the lack of sufficient water supply, Texas authorities pay El Paso homeowners up to $1,000 for replacing lawn plants requiring water with desert plants that survive without water. Despite many of the differences, authorities from both sides of the border agree that the water infrastructure of the region needs to be renewed to meet the demands of the ever-growing population in the area. Currently, 9 percent of the border is without public water supply, 23 percent without wastewater collection, and approximately 40 percent without treatment of wastewater. A U.S.–Mexico Border 2012 Framework has set a number of goals and objectives regarding water issues, which are to address some of the main problems regarding the water infrastructure of the border region. A series of measures were introduced to deal with specific water-related issues and to achieve an overall and sustained improvement of the water supply, water quality, and related infrastructure in the regions along the U.S.–Mexico border. The objectives that the Framework 2012 were aimed at include reversing certain trends from earlier findings, for example, highlighting that only 88 percent of border households in Mexico had potable water service, just 69 percent were connected to sewers, and only 34 percent had sewer systems connected to wastewater treatment facilities. The main objective of the U.S.–Mexico Border 2012 Framework, therefore, is to effectively reduce water contamination and to promote a 25 percent increase in the number of homes connected to a potable water supply, wastewater collection, and treatment systems, as well as to provide a monitoring system to evaluate water at border beaches. Further objectives set by this agreement, which are to be completed by 2012 as evidenced by the program’s title, include conducting an assessment of the status of the water infrastructure in 10 percent of the preexisting border cities, while aiming to achieve an overall improvement of the organization of the water distribution system. Further projects and agreements that govern the monitoring and improvement of the water issues in the regions of the U.S.–Mexico border are constituted by the respective governments’ environmental agencies on both sides of the border, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and its Mexican counterpart, the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT). While the overall regulation of water quantity, such as issues dealing with source development and allocation of supplies, is the responsibility of the IBWC, monitoring and regulation of water quality in the border regions is the responsibility of both the EPA and SEMARNAT. Accordingly, the EPA, along with its various partner agencies has financed and promoted a number of projects that deal with water-quality improvement and the construction of water and wastewater treatment facilities. Some of these major projects include the construction of the International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Diego and the San Antonio de los Buenos Plant in Tijuana, Mexico, both of which are located at the Pacific Coastal Basin. The EPA currently has ongoing projects at the New River
290
Women of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua Basin in Brawley, Heber, Mexicali, and Westmorland. The Naco project near the Colorado River Basin is almost completed, while the Nogales and Patagonia projects are currently in the developmental stage. As far as the Rio Grande Basin is concerned, water-quality and wastewater treatment projects have already been completed in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. In the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Basin, there are EPA projects in Brownsville and Matamoros, which have received more direct funding and assistance. Overall, these are some of the main projects, ongoing and already completed, that are directly dealing with the U.S.–Mexico border region and its water infrastructure issues. These projects, which are dedicated to meeting the water and wastewater needs of this region, obviously require substantial funding and commitment of resources. The EPA’s projected participation in near-term water needs is estimated to be around $691 million, while meeting long-term water needs is expected to cost $3.8 billion. Overall, the estimated total water and wastewater needs of the border region population through the year 2020 are predicted to reach $4.5 billion. See also Environmentalism. FURTHER READINGS: ‘‘About the IBWC.’’ The International Boundary and Water Commission, Its Mission, Organization, and Procedures for Solution of Boundary and Water Problems. Strategic Plan 2006–11. International Boundary and Water Commission, Dec. 2006. www.IBWC.state.Gov/Files/FYOG_Strategic_Plan.pdf; Bruhn, John G. Border Health: Challenges for the United States and Mexico. May 1997; Li, Yongmei, Arnold, Stephen D., Kozel, Charles, and Forster-Cox, Sue. ‘‘Water Availability and Usage on the New Mexico/Mexico Border.’’ Journal of Environmental Health 68, no. 3 (October 2005): 10–18; ‘‘Status Report on the Water-Wastewater Infrastructure Program for the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands.’’ Washington, DC: United States Environmental Agency, Office of Water. January, 2001; Tedford, Deborah. ‘‘Water Woes Plague U.S.–Mexico border.’’ PlanetArk. June 2006. http://www.planetark.org/ dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16464/story.htm; ‘‘U.S.–Mexico Border 2012 Framework.’’ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. June 2006. http://www.epa.gov/usmexicoborder/intro.htm; ‘‘U.S.–Mexico Border Water Infrastructure Assessment.’’ ExpectMore.gov/U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Federal Agencies. June 2006. http://www.epa.gov/usmexicoborder/ intro.htm; ‘‘U.S.–Mexico Workshop: Application of Innovative Technologies to Water Issues on the Border.’’ San Diego, California, September 25–27, 2002.
Arthur M. Holst Women of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. Since 1993, residents of Ciudad Juarez and neighboring Chihuahua, Mexico have been terrorized by a horrifying series of murders. As if this extraordinary string of killings were not enough, nearly all of the victims have been female. In fact, more than four hundred women have been kidnapped, tortured, raped, and left for dead in vacant lots on the outskirts of the city, and there are at least seventy people who have disappeared. A majority of the victims were young women predominantly employed in assembly plants (maquiladoras) who presumably fell prey to their killers either on their way to, or returning from, work. The response from local and national law enforcement officials has been inadequate. In fact, it was not until a number of journalists, academics, and international human rights advocates broke the story did officials begin to take the murders seriously. Still, the extent of the violence sadly remains contested as civic leaders seek to minimize the tragedy by claiming that the number of victims has been exaggerated. The seeming impunity with which the killers carry out their terror has led to what
291
Women Workers, Mexican and Mexican American many now see as femicide. As Colegio de Mexico professor Lucia Melgar Palacios has noted, Juarez today now stands as a tragic example of a twenty-first century city in the age of globalization where respect for the rule of law has been overtaken by fear, paralying indifference, and a near complete lack of social solidarity. Presently, a number of civic and international agencies (for example, Amnesty International) continue to investigate the killings while advocating for an end to violence against women and children worldwide. See also Cities and Towns; Maquiladoras; Women Workers. FURTHER READINGS: Agosin, Marjorie. Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Ciudad Juarez. trans. Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman. New York: White Pine Press, 2006; Amnesty International report. ‘‘Intolerable Killings: 10 Years of Abductions and Murders of Women in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. 2003; Amnesty International. ‘‘Mexico: Killings and Abductions of Women in Ciudad Juarez and the City of Chihuahua - The Struggle for Justice Goes On.’’ February 20, 2006. http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id¼engamr410122006; FernandezKelly, Marıa Patricıa. For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier. Albany: SUNY Press, 1983; Nathan, Debbie. ‘‘Work, Sex and Danger in Ciudad Juarez.’’ NACLA XXXIII (November December 1999): 24–30; Palacios, Lucıa Melgar. ‘‘Ciudad Juarez: paradigma de la impunidad El Mexico que ¿somos? El que no queremos ver/ser.’’ Paper presented at the 2007 Tepotzlan Summer Institute Seminar, Tepotzlan, Mexico; Pe~ na, Devon Gerardo. The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology of the U.S.–Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997.
Andrew G. Wood Women Workers, Mexican and Mexican American. Mexican women have performed a variety of jobs in the United States dating back to the founding of the present-day U.S. Southwest. Since the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which marked the end of the war between Mexico and the United States, Mexicanas who remained in the ceded territory became U.S. citizens and contributed to the development of the nation. Mexican American women and Mexicanas who immigrated to the United States in the post-1848 period took on public jobs as street vendors, laundresses, food preparers, and prostitutes; performed paid domestic work; made and sold clothes; took on boarders; and ran ranchos and businesses. Turn-of-the-twentieth-century developments, particularly widespread industrialization and commercial agriculture, led to new employment opportunities for ethnic Mexicans. As the steel horse crisscrossed the nation and as industrialization became widespread, creating a demand for labor, Mexicanas labored in factories and in foodprocessing plants, and performed other jobs as their male counterparts laid railroad tracks and cleaned locomotive engines. Capital investments in agriculture, particularly in southern California and Texas, created a demand for low-skilled labor and women helped to address this problem. As heads of households or supplementing incomes, women picked crops for substandard wages working up to fifteen hours per day. Deplorable labor conditions that contributed to birth defects and respiratory diseases coupled with social, political, and economic discrimination led workers to organize into effective labor unions such as the United Farm Workers of America of America (UFW); Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez led the movement. World War II and the years leading up to the social and political movements of the 1960s provided employment opportunities for Mexican women. The popular
292
Women Workers, Mexican and Mexican American image of ‘‘Rosie the Riveter,’’ as the strong white woman ready to perform a ‘‘man’s’’ job was Latin (or Mexican)-ized with ‘‘Rosita the Riveter.’’ Scores of Mexicanas labored in mechanic shops working on large locomotives, airplanes, or other warrelated jobs, particularly in the U.S. Southwest, as the men left for war. Others worked in the auto-making industry, only to be pushed home when service men arrived. Contrary to popular beliefs, not all Mexicanas who addressed the labor shortage during World War II were working for the first time. Many had earned wages as domestics, laundresses, cooks, or seamstresses. Mexicanas also worked in the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) and WAAC (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps) as female military ‘‘auxiliary’’ workers. Military centers in San Antonio, for example, employed significant numbers of Mexicanas. Mexican and Mexican American women also performed a wide variety of jobs in the garment sector, cannery business, agriculture, and privately owned businesses, and worked as educators in public schools. Large numbers of ethnic Mexican women have been and continue to work as bilingual educators, university professors, poets, community activists, and academic administrators. Beginning in the 1990s, the number of ethnic Mexican women in service occupations grew, including those employed in administrative and technical positions in the public and private sector. Despite the growing presence of Mexican women in paid work and the organization efforts of women in some occupations, as well as progressive legislation such as the Equal Pay Act (1963), labor conditions for many Mexican and Mexican American women have not improved. Mexicana domestic workers, for example, remain a highly vulnerable labor group due to the lack of a central workplace, fear of deportation, and availability of a large labor pool, particularly along the U.S.–Mexico border. Assembly plant workers or maquila workers have comprised a large labor force since the creation of the Border Industrialization Program (BIP) in 1965. Over the years, Mexicanas have faced extreme exploitation and have been subjected to rigid male supervision on a daily basis. Moreover, late night shifts, inadequate law enforcement, drug turf wars, and lack of financial resources has led to unsolved murders of more than 400 women in the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso border region (more than 450 women are still missing). The majority of maquila workers earn an average of $50 per week. Likewise, Mexican domestic workers allow affluent women and their families to enjoy comfortable lives that rarely pay women more than $2 an hour for work days that often exceed ten hours. While a large segment of Mexicanas who work for wages go unreported given their undocumented status, they can be found laboring in private homes, in poultry processing plants in the south, as garment workers, or as restaurant personnel. Steadily, the number of Mexican and Mexican American women in better-paid jobs that require specific skills and college degrees is increasing. The growing presence of ethnic Mexican women in the United States as wage earners will undoubtedly shape the development of the nation. See also Labor; Labor Unions; Maquiladoras. FURTHER READINGS: Murphy, Arthur D., Blanchard, Collen, and Hill, Jennifer A. Latinos in the Contemporary South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001; Orozco, Cynthia E. ‘‘Mexican American Women.’’ The Handbook of Texas. www.tsha.utexas.edu; Prieto, Norma Iglesias. Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997; Rivas-Rodrıguez, Maggie, ed. Mexican Americans and
293
World War II, Latino Military Service World War II. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005; Ruiz, Vicki L. From Out of the Shadows. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; de la Torre, Adela, and Pesquera, Beatriz M., eds. Building With Our Hands: New Directions in Chicana Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Sonia Hernandez World War II, Latino Military Service. It has been estimated that anywhere between 250,000 to 500,000 out of a total 2.7 million Latinos living in the United States served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. The exact number of soldiers of Latin American heritage can only be estimated because, other than those from Puerto Rico, Latino service men were not denoted in military records unless they were considered to be of African American descent. The participation of Latinos in the armed forces at its lowest estimated total represents an overall percentage of the population that ranks as high as any racially based analysis of those serving in World War II. This significant level of participation in the war effort led to many important developments in the Latino community in the United States such as better educational opportunities, increased visibility in the burgeoning civil rights struggle, and a newfound sense of inclusion into and importance within American society. The early 1940s saw a tremendous increase in the amount of Latino immigration to the United States. The increased build up of the military-industrial complex during World War II coupled with the deployment of the otherwise traditionally white male workforce allowed Latinos greater opportunities to find work within the United States. The increased demand for labor permeated throughout the United States, which afforded Latinos the ability to find work in areas outside of the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands—the region that up until that point had been one of the main areas of concentration for the Latino population in the United States. As immigration increased and the Latino population began to solidify its presence throughout the United States, the desire for better social opportunities became a priority. Many established and recent immigrants turned to the armed forces as a means to advance their desire for social advancement. The demand for troops and the willingness of Latinos to volunteer for military service led to a persistent recruitment by the U.S. Armed Forces within the Latino community. The U.S. Air Force did not limit its recruitment of Latinos to citizens or legal immigrants. Large portions of those who served were undocumented immigrants who had traveled to the United States in the early years of the war when demand for labor was high. The first predominantly Latino regiments were formed in 1940 before the onset of U.S. armed involvement in World War II. Based in New Mexico, these regiments were formed primarily of Spanish-speaking servicemen. Due to the proximity of most Latino-based units to the west coast of the United States, the early military contributions of Latino soldiers were somewhat limited to the Pacific Theater of combat. Their participation in the Pacific Theater meant that numerous Latino soldiers were subject to the horrors of the Bataan Death March in which the Japanese captured more than 75,000 U.S. and Filipino soldiers and forcibly marched the men to prisoner-of-war camps. After proving to be good soldiers in the Pacific Theater, many Latino units were dispatched to the European and African Theaters. Predominantly Latino units were present during the D-day landing and played an instrumental role in the liberation of Italy.
294
World War II, Latino Military Service Unlike African American soldiers, Latinos were never segregated from white soldiers, commanders, or from other military institutions such as hospitals or rest and relaxation centers. Twelve men of Mexican descent received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their service during World War II. The Latino recipients of the Medal of Honor received their recognition during or immediately after World War II. This act set apart the Latino soldiers from other minorities; neither Asian American or African American soldiers, which were the two other heavily represented minorities, received commendations decades after the conclusion of World War II. While Latino soldiers were well respected for their efforts during World War II, trouble began to arise at home between the younger Latino population and the white population of urban areas. Increased demand for Latino labor during the war lead to the abnormally rapid integration of the Latino and white cultures in urban areas. The tensions between the younger Latino population and the urban white population came to a head in the Zoot Suit Riots of Los Angeles in 1943. While Latinos were courageously serving their country overseas, white citizens and soldiers tracked down and attacked groups of young Latinos throughout the city. The riots garnered national attention as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt became involved by describing the events as a race riot in 1944. That same year, the bulk of the violence associated with the riots faded. Despite the disappearance of violence tensions would remain high between the white and Latino population in Los Angeles for decades to come. Latino servicemen were not subjected to segregation during their stint in the armed forces. Nevertheless, they faced racist attitudes back home. There were cases of soldiers’ remains being refused by the government and civil cemeteries in which their white compatriots were buried. In addition, the reluctance of white society to accept the perceived ‘‘greaser’’ or Chicano culture in urban areas made it difficult for Latino servicemen to turn their experience from wartime into careers. Despite the many hardships that Latino servicemen faced stateside, many of the now former soldiers utilized the G.I. Bill to pursue education at technical schools and universities. Those who were able to overcome the hurdles placed in front of them in getting accepted to schools capitalized on their educational opportunities. Many Latino servicemen pursued careers as lawyers and would go on to become key figures in the struggle for equality and desegregation during the civil rights movement. The legacy of Latinas in World War II is one of tribulations and opportunities. The large amount of U.S. armed forces recruitment in the American Southwest altered the Latino family structure. Latina women went from a role of mother and caregiver to familial provider. The economic boom caused by the war in areas such as California and Texas afforded Latinas opportunities to find work at typically higher wages than they would have received prior to the war. Despite the increased resonsibility of providing for the family, which meant more time away from the home, most Latinas look to this period as the first step toward improving the quality of life of Latino families. In cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles many Latinas used the war as an opportunity to escape the barrios. They were recruited by the Women’s Army Corps and would go on to serve as secretaries, clerks, and nurses overseas. After the war, Latina women faced transitional hardships when husbands, brothers, and fathers returned from combat. The newfound independence of the Latina woman challenged the traditional patriarchal structure of the Latino family. The military and social contributions of Latino servicemen during World War II have gone largely unrecognized by both historians and popular media. The omission
295
World War II, Latino Military Service of Latino servicemen from World War II history ranges from the lack of Latino characters in Hollywood movies to a lack of recognition in academic works. In 2007, controversy arose over the omission of Latino servicemen from well-known documentarian Ken Burns’s chronicling of World War II for the Public Broadcasting Service. The Latino community went into action and within months of the initial complaints PBS and Ken Burns came to an agreement to edit the documentary to include the voices and stories of Latino servicemen. In addition, the University of Texas launched a massive oral history project in 1999 meant to give a forum in which the contributions of the Latino servicemen would not be forgotten. FURTHER READINGS: Department of Defense. Hispanics in America’s Defense. Washington, DC: U.S. Printing Office, 1990; Gonzales, Manuel. Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999; Jensen, Elizabeth. ‘‘Ken Burns and Hispanic Groups Reach Agreement.’’ New York Times, May 11, 2007, 5; Leonard, Kevin Allen. The Battle for Los Angeles: Racial Ideology and World War II. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006; ‘‘On the Battlefront.’’ Hispanic Magazine, 2002; RivasRodrıguez, Maggie, Juliana Torres, Melissa Dipiero-D’sa, and Lindsay Fitzpatrick (eds.). A Legacy Greater than Words: Stories of U.S. Latinos and Latinas of the World War II Generation. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006. Rochın, Refugio. Latino Patriots. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2005; Samora, Julian. A History of Mexican American People. Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania Legacies 2003.
Dustin DeVore
296
D
Zoot Suit Riots (1943). The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of civil disturbances in Los Angeles, California, in the summer of 1943 between U.S. servicemen and local Mexican American ‘‘Zoot Suiters.’’ Zoot Suiters were young Mexican American men (and sometimes women) who dressed in oversized suit jackets and baggy pants in bold, bright colors. They also referred to themselves as pachucos and evinced an identity that was purposefully distinct from both U.S. and Mexican culture. The significance of the Zoot Suit and the violence against those wearing it are widely interpreted as reflections of the overall racial and ethnic environment of southern California and the United States in the early 1940s.
Zoot Suiters lined up outside a Los Angeles jail en route to court after a feud with sailors, June 9, 1943. (Courtesy of Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-113319.)
297
Z
Zoot Suit Riots (1943) As the United States became increasingly involved in World War II, the social impact could be seen in shifting demographics, particularly in many of America’s big cities. As young men joined the military in growing numbers, women and minorities filled the ever-increasing demand for laborers in the workforce. In a society in which racial segregation and discrimination predominated, many struggled to adapt to and accept the more visible role minorities were playing. Zoot Suiters struck a nerve at a time when tensions were already mounting over racial norms. Mexican American youth proudly displayed the attire that boldly called attention to their ethnic identity. Instead of remaining quietly in the background—the behavior generally expected of minorities—Zoot Suit–clad pachucos walked, talked, dressed, and carried themselves in a manner that called explicit attention to their nonwhite, nonmainstream identity. Of great concern to much of mainstream America was the very pride in their distinctiveness that set the pachucos apart. During time of war, concerns mounted that anyone with foreign roots could and would betray the American cause. Persons and activities considered to be ‘‘un-American’’ quickly fell under suspicion as many feared that an intricate espionage network could infiltrate the American public. The most egregious manifestation of these fears was the forced internment of thousands of Japanese Americans along the west coast of the United States. But people of Japanese descent were not the only target of war-induced xenophobia. By their appearance, Zoot Suiters announced to mainstream America not only that they were different, but also that they took pride in those differences—and most important that they would not try to assimilate. Apart from war-related problems, racial tensions had been building in southern California throughout the early 1940s. Those tensions culminated in the aftermath of a tragedy that unfolded late in the evening of August 1, 1942, when a twenty-twoyear-old youth named Jose Dıaz was fatally attacked, beaten, and stabbed while walking home from a nearby party. Suspicion immediately fell to Hank Leyvas and his ‘‘38th Street boys’’—a group of Mexican American youth who had been involved in a brawl at the party earlier in the evening. Leyvas and his ‘‘gang’’ were arrested, pressured into confessing, and charged with Jose Dıaz’s murder. Media coverage emphasized the ‘‘Mexicanness’’ of the suspects and added to existing fears of the perceived lawlessness of people of color. Prosecutors proceeded to trial using questionable evidence and racially charged arguments, purporting that their Mexican heritage made the suspects prone to violence and crime. Despite the efforts of activists such as La Rue McCormick and Carey McWilliams, a jury convicted the 38th Street boys in January of 1943. The Sleepy Lagoon case is widely seen as an overreaction based on racial fears and a grave violation of the civil rights of the defendants. Although the case was overturned on appeal in October of 1944, it serves as a precursor of additional racial violence that would plague southern California in the coming year. Just a few months after the conviction of the Sleepy Lagoon suspects, Los Angeles erupted in a weeklong confrontation between Zoot Suiters and American military servicemen. During World War II, thousands of servicemen based in Los Angeles and those on leave from surrounding areas liked to frequent Los Angeles for weekend socializing. These servicemen often clashed with civilians—particularly Zoot Suiters who were not willing to stand for the drunken and disorderly behavior of the military personnel. Servicemen taunted Mexican American youth and harassed local women. Pachucos, for their part, were known to provoke military men in an effort to keep them out of Mexican American neighborhoods.
298
Zoot Suit Riots (1943) The Zoot Suit Riots began with one such confrontation. As a group of U.S. servicemen attempted to approach a gathering of Mexican American young women in downtown Los Angeles, they were confronted by several Mexican American men in Zoot Suits. A scuffle broke out between the two groups that left one sailor, Joe Dacy Coleman, unconscious. Over the next several days, rumors of the fight spread, becoming more and more exaggerated with each telling. On June 3, 1943, several dozen sailors set out to avenge the attack on Coleman and teach the pachucos a lesson. More than fifty servicemen armed with clubs entered Mexican American neighborhoods in search of Zoot Suiters. One of the first confrontations took place in the Carmen Theater where the sailors singled out men in Zoot Suit attire, beat them, tore off their clothes, and set the Zoot Suits on fire. For the next week, the example at the Carmen Theater became the modus operandi of servicemen retaliating against Mexican American youth. In numerous attacks, the Zoot Suit as a symbol of pachuco counterculture, was destroyed and its owner beaten. As the attacks continued on subsequent nights, servicemen encroached further into Mexican American neighborhoods in search of Zoot Suiters. As news of the riots spread, military personnel from surrounding areas descended on Los Angeles to join in the hostility. The violence quickly became indiscriminate as even Mexican American young not dressed in Zoot Suits and some African American young men were targeted. What started as a retaliatory movement to avenge the attack on Seaman Coleman quickly grew into an assault on people of color. Mexican American youth, for their part, did fight back in many instances. But law enforcement initially reacted with ambivalence. Police officers who did become involved only reluctantly arrested military men. Instead, officers jailed numerous Mexican American young men—many of whom were victims rather than perpetrators of the violence. It was only after military officials intervened and prohibited offduty servicemen from venturing into Los Angeles that the riots began to subside. The racial overtones of the Zoot Suit Riots are frequently cited today by activists in the Chicano Movement in the United States. See also La Raza Unida; Mexican Diaspora. FURTHER READINGS: Griswold del Castillo, Richard. ‘‘The Los Angeles ‘Zoot Suit Riots’ Revisited: Mexican and Latin America Perspectives.’’ Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 16, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 367–391; Leonard, Kevin Allen. The Battle for Los Angeles: Racial Ideology and World War II. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006; Maz on, Mauricio. The Zoot-Suit Riots: the Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995; Obregon Pagan, Eduardo. Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, & Riots in Wartime L.A. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003; PBS American Experience. ‘‘Zoot Suit Riots.’’ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/zoot/.
Monica Rankin
299
S ELECTED B IBLIOGRAPHY Abarca, Meredith E. Voices in the Kitchen: Views of Food and the World from WorkingClass Mexican and Mexican American Women. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. Acu~ na, Rodolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 5th edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. Akers Chac on, Justin, and Mike Davis. No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006. Alarc on, Daniel C. The Aztec Palimpsest: Mexico in the Modern Imagination. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997. Albro, Ward S. Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican Revolution. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1992. Ambrose, Stephen. Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863–1869. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Anaya, Rodolfo, and Francisco Lomelı, eds. Aztlan: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico [Academia/El Norte], 1989. Ansell, Martin R. Oil Baron of the Southwest: Edward L. Doheny and the Development of the Petroleum Industry in California and Mexico. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998. Anzald ua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute Book Company, 1986. Arreola, Daniel D., and James R. Curtis. The Mexican Border Cities: Landscape Anatomy and Place Personality. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993. Bacon, David. Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Bain, David Howard. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Penguin Press, 2000. Balderrama, Francisco, and Raymond Rodrıguez. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Barman, Richard, ed. Folklore and Culture on the Texas-Mexican Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993. Behar, R., and D. Gordon, eds. Women Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
301
Selected Bibliography Bertram, Eva, Morris Blachman, Kenneth Sharpe, and Peter Andreas. Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Boyle, Susan C. Capitalistas: New Mexican Merchants and the Santa Fe Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. Blaton, Carlos Kevin. The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. Briggs, Charles, and John Van Ness, eds. Land, Water, and Culture: New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. Bright, Brenda Jo. ‘‘Remappings: Los Angeles Low Riders.’’ In Brenda Jo Bright and Elizabeth Bakewell, eds. Looking High and Low: Art and Cultural Identity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Brooks, James F. Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship and Community in the Southwest Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Brown, Jonathan C., and Alan Knight. The Mexican Petroleum Industry in the Twentieth Century. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992. Brown, Peter G., and Henry Shue, eds. The Border That Joins: Mexican Migrants and US Responsibility. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983. Broyles-Gonzalez, Yolanda. Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Buhle, Paul, and Nicole Schulman, eds. Wobblies! A Graphic History of the IWW. New York: Verso, 2005. Calavita, Kitty. Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. New York: Routledge, 1992. Calder on, Roberto R. Mexican Coal Mining Labor in Texas and Coahuila, 1880–1930. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000. Canclini, Nestor Garcıa, and Patricia Safa. Tijuana: la casa de toda la gente. Mexico, D.F.: CONACULTA, Programa Cultural de las Fronteras, INAH, UAM-I, 1989. Cantu, Norma, and Olga Najera-Ramırez, eds. Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Cardoso, Lawrence. Mexican Emigration to the United States, 1897–1931. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980. Castillo, Edward D., and Robert H. Jackson. The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Castor, Peter J. The Great Acquisition: An Introduction to the Louisiana Purchase. Great Falls, MT: Lewis & Clark Interpretive Association, 2004. Chang, Iris. The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. New York: Viking, 2003. Chavez, Leo R. Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. Chavez-Garcıa, Miroslava. Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2004. Chipman, Donald E. Spanish Texas, 1519–1821. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992. Coatsworth, John. Growth Against Development: The Economic Impact of the Railroads in Porfirian Mexico. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 1981. Coerver, Don, and Linda B. Hall. Revolution on the Border: The United States and Mexico, 1910–1920. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. Cohen, Deborah. ‘‘Caught in the Middle: The Mexican State’s Relationship with the U.S. and Its Own Citizen-Workers, 1942–1958.’’ Journal of American Ethnic History 20, no. 3 (Spring 2001): 110–132.
302
Selected Bibliography Condon, John. Good Neighbors: Communicating with the Mexicans. 2nd edition. 2007. Conover, Ted. Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America’s Illegal Aliens. New York: Vintage Books, 1987. Costello, Julia G., ed., Documentary Evidence for the Spanish Missions of California. New York: Garland Press, 1991. Curtis, James R., and Daniel D. Arreola. ‘‘Through Gringo Eyes: Tourist Districts in the Mexican Cities as Other-directed Places.’’ North American Culture 7 (1989): 19–32. Daniels, Roger. Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. Dary, David. The Santa Fe Trail: Its History, Legends, and Lore. New York: A. Knopf, 2000. Davis, Thomas B. Aspects of Freemasonry in Modern Mexico. Vantage Press, 1976. de la Teja, Jes us F. San Antonio de Bexar: A Community on New Spain’s Northern Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. de Leon, Arnoldo. They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821–1900. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. de Stanley, Mildred. The Salton Sea: Yesterday and Today. Los Angeles: Triumph Press, 1966. Dunn, Timothy J. The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978–1992: LowIntensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin: CMAS Books, University of Texas at Austin, 1996. Dunne, J.G. Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike. New York: Farrar, 1976. Durand, Jorge, and D.S. Massey. Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Early, James. Presidio, Mission, and Pueblo: Spanish Architecture and Urbanism. Southwestern Studies No. 99. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1994. Faragher, John Mack. Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in American History, and Other Essays. New York: H. Holt, 1994. Fernandez-Kelly, Marıa Patricia. For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier. Albany: SUNY Press, 1983. Ferriss, Susan, and Ricardo Sandoval. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997. Flint, Richard, and Shirley Cushing Flint, eds. Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539–1542: ‘‘They Were Not Familiar with His Majesty, nor Did They Wish to Be His Subjects.’’ Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005. Forbes, Jack D. Aztecas del Norte: Chicanos of Aztlan. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1973. Fowler, Gene, and Bill Crawford. Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves. Revised edition. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Fox, Claire. The Fence and the River: Culture and Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Fregoso, Rosa Linda. The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Galarza, Ernesto. Barrio Boy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971. Galarza, Ernesto. Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story. Charlotte, CA: McNally and Loftin, 1964.
303
Selected Bibliography Gamio, Manuel. The Mexican Immigrant. Salem, NH: Ayer Co., 1989; orig. 1931. Garcıa Canclini, Nestor. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Garcıa, Alma M., ed. Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings. New York: Routledge, 1997. Garcıa, Ignacio M. United We Win: The Rise and Fall of La Raza Unida Party. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989. Garcıa, Marıa Cristina. Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Garcıa, Marıo T. Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880–1920. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Garcıa, Marıo T. Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. Gilbert, Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, eds. Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. G omez-Qui~ nones, Juan. Roots of Chicano Politics, 1600–1940. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. Gonzalez, Gilberto. Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation. Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1990. Gonzalez, Norma. I am My Language: Discourses of Women and Children in the Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001. Graig, Richard B. The Bracero Program, Interest Groups and Foreign Policy. Austin: London: University of Texas, 1971. Griffith, James S. Folksaints of the Borderlands: Victims, Bandits, and Healers. Tucson: Rio Nuevo, 2003. Graham, Joe S. Hecho en Tejas: Texas-Mexican Folk Arts and Crafts. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1997. Granado, Luis Fernando. Sue~ nan las piedras: Alzamiento ocurrido en la ciudad de Mexico, 14, 15, y 16 de septiembre de 1847. Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2003. Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990. Guerin-Gonzalez, Camille. Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation and California Farm Labor, 1900–1939. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Gutıerrez, Jose Angel. The Making of a Chicano Militant: Lessons from Cristal. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. Gutierrez, Ram on. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Gutierrez, Ram on A., and Richard J. Orsi, eds. Contested Eden. California before the Gold Rush. Berkeley: Los Angeles: London: University of California Press, 1998. Hackett, Charles W., ed. Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermın’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682. 2 Vols. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942. Haley, James L. Sam Houston. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Harris, Charles H., and Louis R. Sadler. The Border and the Revolution: Clandestine Activities, 1910–1920. Las Cruces: Center for Latin American Studies/Joint Border Research Institute, New Mexico State University, 1988.
304
Selected Bibliography Hart, John Mason. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War. Berkeley: University of California, 2002. Hayes, Sam W. James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse. 3rd edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Heer, David M. Undocumented Mexicans in the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Herzog, Lawrence. Where North Meets South: Cities, Space and Politics on the U.S.Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas, Austin, 1990. Heyman, Josiah McC. ‘‘Class and Classification on the U.S.-Mexico Border.’’ Human Organization 60 (2001): 128–140. Heyman, Josiah McC. Finding a Moral Heart for U.S. Immigration Policy: An Anthropological Perspective. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1998. Heyman, Josiah McC. Life and Labor on the Border: Working People of Northeastern Sonora, Mexico 1886–1986. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991. Heyman, Josiah McC. ‘‘The Mexico-United States Border in Anthropology: A Critique and Reformulation.’’ Journal of Political Ecology 1 (1994): 43–65. http:// www.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/volume_1/HEYMAN.PDF. Heyman, Josiah McC. ‘‘The Mexico-United States Border in Anthropology: A Critique and Reformulation.’’ Journal of Political Ecology 1, no. 1 (1995): 43–65. Heyman, Josiah McC. ‘‘On U.S.-Mexico Border Culture.’’ Journal of the West 40, no. 2 (2001): 50–59. Heyman, Josiah McC. ‘‘Putting Power into the Anthropology of Bureaucracy: The Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Mexico-United States Border.’’ Current Anthropology 36 (1995): 261–287. Heyman, Josiah McC. ‘‘Respect for Outsiders? Respect for the Law? The Moral Evaluation of High-Scale Issues by US Immigration Officers.’’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 6 (2000): 635–652. Heyman, Josiah McC. ‘‘U.S. Immigration Officers of Mexican Ancestry as Mexican Americans, Citizens, and Immigration Police.’’ Current Anthropology 43 (2002): 479–507. Hicks, Emily. Border Writing. The Multidimensional Text. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Hine, Robert V., and John Mack Faragher. Frontiers: A Short History of the American West. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. Gendered Transitions. Mexican Experiences of Immigration. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Horgan, Paul. Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1991. Iglesias Prieto, Norma. Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. Iglesias, Prieto, Norma. Entre yerba, polvo y plomo: Lo fronterizo visto por el cine mexicano. Mexico: Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 1991. Iverson, Peter. When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Jackson, Robert H. Missions and the Frontiers of Spanish America: A Comparative Study of the Impact of Environmental, Economic, Political, and Socio-Cultural Variations on the Missions in the Rio de la Plata Region and on the Northern Frontier of New Spain. Scottsdale: Pentacle Press, 2005.
305
Selected Bibliography Jaehn, Thomas. Germans in the Southwest, 1850–1920. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Jenkins, J Craig. The Politics of Insurgency: Farm Worker Movement of the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Jenkins, J. Craig, and Charles Perrow. ‘‘Insurgency of the Powerless: Farm Workers Movements (1946–1972).’’ American Sociological Review 42 (1977): 249–268. Johnson, Benjamin Heber. Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Jordan, Terry G. North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and Differentiation. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993. Jose Manuel Villalpando Cesar. Las balas del invasor. Mexico City: Porrua, 1998. Katz, Frederick. The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Katz, Friedrich. The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Kearney, Michael. ‘‘Borders and Boundaries of the State and Self at the End of an Empire.’’ Journal of Historical Sociology 4, no. 1 (1991): 52–74. Kessell, John L., and Rich Hendricks. The Spanish Missions of New Mexico. New York: Garland Publishing, 1991. Kirsten, Peter. Anglo over Bracero: A History of the Mexican Worker in the United States from Roosevelt to Nixon. San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1977. Klein, Alan M. Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Kushner, Sam. The Long Road to Delano. New York: International Publishers, 1975. La Botz, Dan. Masks of Democracy: Labor Suppression in Mexico Today. Boston: South End Press, 1992. LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860– 1898. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963. Langham, Thomas C. Border Trials: Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican Liberals. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1981. Laufer, Peter. Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican–American Border. Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2004. Le Espiritu, Yen. Homebound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003. Le May, Michael, and Elliott Robert Barken. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. Leonard, Kevin Allen. The Battle for Los Angeles: Racial Ideology and World War II. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Leonard, Thomas M. James K. Polk: A Clear and Unquestionable Destiny Wilmington, DE: S.R. Books, 2001. Lorey, David E. The U.S.-Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century: A History of Economic and Social Transformation. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999. Loustaunau, Martha Oehmke, and Mary Sanchez-Bane, eds. Life, Death, and In-Between on the U.S.-Mexico Border: ası es la vida. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999. MacLachlan, Colin M. Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores Magon in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
306
Selected Bibliography Maiz, Apaxu. Looking for Aztlan: Birthright or Right for Birth. Lansing, MI: Sun Dog, 2004. Mariscal, George. Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons from the Chicano Movement, 1965–1975. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Martin, Cheryl English. Governance and Society in Colonial Mexico: Chihuahua in the Eighteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Martınez, Oscar J. Border Boom Town: Ciudad Juarez since 1848. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. Martınez, Oscar J. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994. Martınez, Oscar J. Troublesome Border. Revised edition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006. Martınez, Oscar J., ed. U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Wilmington, DE: S.R. Books, 1996. Martınez, Ruben. Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001. Massey, Douglas, Jorge Durand, and Nolan Malone. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Integration in an era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2002. Mathes, Valerie S. Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. May, Ernest R. The Making of the Monroe Doctrine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. McWilliams, Carey. North from Mexico: The Spanish Speaking People of the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1948, 1990. Messina, Anthony, and Gallya Lahav, eds. The Migration Reader: Exploring Politics and Policies. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006. Meyer, Lorenzo. Mexico and the United States in the Oil Controversy, 1917–1942. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977. Miller, Tom. Writing on the Edge. A Borderlands Reader. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2003. Misrach, Richard. Desert Cantos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. Montejano, David. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. Montoya, Maria. Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict Over Land in the American Southwest, 1840–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Morgado, Martin J. Junıpero Serra’s Legacy. Pacific Grove, CA: Mount Carmel, 1987. Murphy, Arthur D., Collen Blanchard, and Jennifer A. Hill. Latinos in the Contemporary South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001. Murphy, Gretchen. Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of U.S. Empire. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Navarro, Armando. Mexican American Youth Organization: Avant-Garde of the Chicano Movement in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Navarro, Armando. La Raza Unida Party: A Chicano Challenge to the U.S. Two-Party Dictatorship. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.
307
Selected Bibliography Nevins, Joseph. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the ‘‘Illegal Alien’’ and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge, 2002. Ngae, Mai M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Noble, Andrea. Mexican National Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2005. Noriega, Chon A., Eric Avila, Karen Mary Davalos, and Carla Samovaz, eds. The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlan, 1971–2001. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2001. Noriega, Chon, and Ana L opez, eds. The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Obreg on Pagan, Eduardo. Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, & Riots in Wartime L.A. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. O’Connor, Carol A., and Martha A. Sandweiss, eds. The Oxford History of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Ono, Kent, and John M. Sloop. Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California’s Prop 187. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002. Owens, Kenneth N., ed. Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. Paraguana, Paulo A., ed. Mexican Cinema. London: BFI in association with IMCINE, 1995. Paredes, Americo. A Texas-Mexican Cancionero. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976. Parre~ nas, Rachel Salazar. Children of Global Migration. Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. Payan, Tony. Cops, Soldiers, and Diplomats: Explaining Agency Behavior in the War on Drugs. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. Payan, Tony. The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration, and Homeland Security. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006. Pe~ na, Devon Gerardo. The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology of the U.S.-Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. Pe~ na, Manuel. The Mexican-American Orquesta. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. Pe~ na, Manuel. The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: A History of a Working-Class Music. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985. Perez, Emma. ‘‘Queering the Borderlands: The Challenges of Excavating the Invisible and Unheard.’’ Frontiers Vol. 24, (2003): 122–131. Pilcher, Jeffrey M. ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Power, J. Gerard, and Theresa Byrd, eds. U.S.-Mexico Border Health: Issues for Regional and Migrant Populations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998. Ramos, Henry, A.J. The American GI Forum: In Pursuit of the Dream, 1948–1983. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1998. Ramos, Jorge. Dying to Cross: The Worst Immigrant Tragedy in American History. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. Reisler, Mark. By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States, 1900–1940. Westport, CT: Greenwood, Press, 1976. Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986.
308
Selected Bibliography Rend on, Armando B. Chicano Manifesto: The History and Aspirations of the Second Largest Minority in America. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Resendez, Andres. Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Reyhner, Jon, and Jeanne Eder. American Indian Education: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. Richard, Alfred Charles. Contemporary Hollywood’s Negative Hispanic Image: An Interpretive Filmography, 1936–1955. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. Richard, Alfred Charles. The Hispanic Image on the Silver Screen: An Interpretive Filmography From Silents into Sound, 1898–1935. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Richardson, Chad. Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados: Class and Culture on the South Texas Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. Richardson, Peter. American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Rivas Rodrıguez, Maggie, ed. Mexican Americans and World War II. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Rochlin, Harriet and Fred. Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Romero, Mary. Maid in the U.S.A. 10th anniversary edition. New York: Routledge, 2002. Romney, Thomas Cottam. The Mormon Colonies in Mexico. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1938. Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon, 1989. Rosales, F. Arturo, Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1997. Ruiz, Ram on Eduardo. The People of Sonora and Yankee Capitalists. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988. Ruiz, Vicki L. From Out of the Shadows. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Ruiz, Vicki L., and Susan Tiano, eds., Women on the U.S./Mexico Border: Responses to Change. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. Rumbarger, John J. Profits, Power, and Prohibition: Alcohol Reform and the Industrializing of America, 1800–1930. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989. Salas, Miguel Tinker. In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border During the Porfiriato. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Sanchez Korrol, Virginia, ed. Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Sanchez, Rosaura. Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Sandos, James A. Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan de San Diego, 1904–1923. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Sandoval, Moıses. On the Move: A History of the Hispanic Church in the United States. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990. Sands, Kathleen M. Charrerıa Mexicana: An Equestrian Folk Tradition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993. Santoni, Pedro. Mexicans at Arms-Puro Federalist and the Politics of War. Forth Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996.
309
Selected Bibliography Schantz, Eric Michael. ‘‘All Night at the Owl: The Social and Political Relations of Mexicali’s Red-Light District, 1913–1925.’’ Journal of the Southwest 43, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 449–602. Scheina, Robert L. Santa Anna: A Curse upon Mexico. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2002. Sheridan, Thomas E. Arizona: A History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Silbey, Joel. Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Slatta, Richard W. Cowboys of the Americas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1860–1890. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985, 1994. Spener, David, and Kathleen Staudt, eds. U.S.-Mexico Border: Transcending Divisions, Contesting Identities. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998. Spicer, Edward H. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–1960. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962. Starr, Kevin, and Richard J. Orsi, eds. Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Stout, Joseph A. Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848–1921. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2002. Strachwitz, Chris, with James Nicolopulos. Lydia Mendoza: A Family Autobiography. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 1993. Stringfellow, Kim. Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905–2005. Staunton, VA: Center for American Places, 2005. Tarrow, Sidney. ‘‘Beyond Globalization: Why Creating Transnational Social Movements Is so Hard and When Is It Most Likely to Happen.’’ December 2006. http://www.antenna.nl/waterman/tarrow.html. Teague, David. The Southwest in American Literature and Art: The Rise of a Desert Aesthetic. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997. Thompson, F.T. The Alamo. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2005. Thompson, Jerry D., ed. Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier, 1859–1877. El Paso: Texas Western Press, University of Texas at El Paso, 1994. Thornton, Bruce. Searching for Joaquın: Myth, Murieta and History in California. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003. Tiano, Susan. Patriarchy on the Line: Labor, Gender, and Ideology in the Mexican Maquila Industry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Toplin, Robert Brent, ed. Hollywood as Mirror: Changing Views of ‘‘Outsiders’’ and ‘‘Enemies’’ in American Movies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. Toro, Marıa Celia. Mexico’s ‘‘War’’ on Drugs: Causes and Consequences. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995. Truett, Samuel, and Elliott Young, eds. Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Tullis, F. LaMond. Mormons in Mexico: The Dynamics of Faith and Culture. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1987. Utley, Robert Marshall. Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Valdez, Luis, and El Teatro Campesino. Actos. San Juan Bautista, CA: Menyah Productions, 1971.
310
Selected Bibliography Vanderwood, Paul J. Border Barons: Princes of Vice: America’s Joy Palaces Move South. Forthcoming. Vanderwood, Paul J. Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Vanderwood, Paul. The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Vanderwood, Paul J., and Frank N. Samponaro. Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico’s Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness, 1910–1917. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. Vargas, Zaragosa. Labor Rights are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Vasquez, Enriqueta. Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte. Houston: Arte P ublico Press, 2006. Velez-Iba~ nez, Carlos G., Anna Sampaio, and Manolo Gonzalez-Estay. Transnational Latino/a Communities: Politics, Processes and Cultures. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Velez-Iba~ nez, Carlos G. Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. Vila, Pablo. Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Vila, Pablo, ed. Ethnography at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Wald, Elija. Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Walker, William. The War in Nicaragua. Mobile, AL: S.H. Goetzel, 1860. Wassermann, Mark. Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution: The Native Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854–1911. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Plains. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1931. Webb, Walter Prescott. The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965. Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Wood, Andrew Grant, ed. On the Border: Society and Culture between the United States and Mexico. Lanham, MD: S.R. Books, 2004. Young, Elliott. Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Zolberg, Aristide. A Nation By Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press/Russell Sage Foundation, 2006.
311
I NDEX Page numbers in boldface refer to main entries. Adams, John, 119 Adams, John Quincy, 1 Adams Onı´s Treaty, 1–2 Agribusiness, 2–4 Agua Caliente Resort and Casino, 4–6 The Alamo, 6–8 Aleman, Lucas, 2 Aleman, Miguel, 55 Alinsky, Saul, 44 Almaraz, Carlos, 17 American G.I. Forum, 8–10 Anthropology of the Borderlands, 10–13 Anzald ua, Gloria, 13–14, 69, 71, 139, 222–23 Appaduri, Arjun, 11 Architecture, 14–16 Art, 16–18 Augustinians, 167 Austin, Stephen F., 18–19, 103, 270, 281 Aztlan, 19–21, 139, 177 The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, 22 Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 22–23 Barbed Wire, 23–24 Bataan Death March, 294 Bell, Glen, 68 Bhabha, Homi K., 11 Bierce, Ambrose, 148 Big Bend National Park, 24–25 Big Four, 25–26 Boas, Franz, 108 Border Arts Workshop, 26–27 Border Industrialization Program, 27–28 Border Barons, 5 Bowie, Jim, 7, 271 Bracero Program, 28–31 Bravo, Nicolas, 103
Brinkley, John, 225–26 Brown vs. Board of Education, 87 Buchanan, James, 106, 173 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 87 Bush, George H. W., 187 Bush, George W., 40, 121, 130, 137, 189, 206, 258 Bustamante, Cruz, 178 ~ez, 32, 74, 138, Cabeza de Vaca, Alvear N un 183, 250 Cabrillo, Juan, 35 CAFTA, 131 Califorinia Gold Rush, 25, 32–33, 91, 162, 178, 231, 235, 248 Californios, 34–36 Calles, Plutarco Elı´as, 48, 101, 152, 237, 274 Canclini, Nestor Garcı´a, 69 Cant u, Esteban, 274 Cardenas, Lazaro, 6, 30, 180, 250, 275, 286 Carlos III, 168 Carranza, Venustiano, 98, 101–2, 125, 151, 158, 202–4, 285 Carter, Jimmy, 9 Catholic Church, 37–39 Center for Disease Control (U.S.), 77 Central American Migration, 39–40 Charles IV, 7 Chavez, Cesar, 40–42, 44, 62, 118, 130, 133, 233, 257, 279–80, 292 Cheech and Chong (Richard ‘‘Cheech’’ Marin and Thomas Chong, 42–43 Chicana/o Movement, 43–46 Chief Standing Bear, 131 Chinatowns, 46–48 Chinese Exclusion Act, 120
313
Index Cinco de Mayo, 48–49 Cinema, 49–53 Cisneros, Henry, 54 Cities and towns, 54–57 Civil War (U.S.), 26, 103, 173, 231 Clinton, William ‘‘Bill,’’ 54, 121 Colonias, 57–58 Colorado River, 58–61 Communications, 61–62 Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos, 132 Corona, Bert, 62–63 Cortez, Koyokuikatl Carlos, 123–24 Cortina, Juan Nepomuceno, 63–64 Cortina War, 63–64 Coyotes, 64–67 Crockett, David (‘‘Davy’’), 7, 271 Cuisine, 67–69 Culture, 69–72 Dahoney, Edward L., 192 Davis, Gray, 34 Davis, Jefferson, 107, 228 de Anza, Juan Bautista, 73–74 de Coronado, Francisco Vazquez, 74 de la Rocha, Roberto, 17 de Mendoza, Antonio, 20, 74, 250 de Narvaez, Panfilo, 32, 183 de O~ nate, Don Juan, 37, 75, 230 del Rı´o, Dolores, 75–76 Dı´az, Porfirio, 51, 90, 97, 101, 104, 109–10, 151–52, 174, 184, 192, 229, 234, 237, 268, 273, 285 Dickenson, Emily, 127 Disease, 76–78 Dobbs, Lou, 165 Domestic workers, 78–80 Doubleday, Abner, 259 Drug Enforcement Agency, 81–82, 136 Drug trafficking, 80–82 Duran, Jorge, 12 Economy, 83–85 Education, 85–88 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 52, 130, 173 Environmentalism, 88–89 European Immigrants and Communities, 89–92 Federal Election Institute (IFE), 207 Fence–Cutters War, 24 Ferber, Edna, 9 Fernandez-Kelly, Marı´a Patricia, 71, 147 Filibusters, 93–95 Filipinos, 95–97 Flores, Patricio, 38 Flores Magon Brothers, 97–98
314
Folklore, 98–101 Foreigners expelled from Mexico, 101–3 Fourteenth Amendment, 9, 119 Fox, Vicente, 175, 189 Franciscans, 7, 35, 86, 167–70, 248 Freemasonry, 103–5 Gadsden Purchase, 106–7 Galarza, Ernesto, 107–8 Gamio, Manuel, 108 Garza, Catarino Erasmo, 108–10 Gilcrist, Jim, 164, 257 Glidden, Joseph, 23 Goldwater, Barry, 91 Gonzales, Rodolfo (‘‘Corky’’), 43, 176 Gonzalez, Abraham, 285 Gran Dieta Simb olica, 104 Great Depression, 111–12 Hagan, Jacqueline, 12 Haywood, ‘‘Big Bill,’’ 122 Health, 113–15 Herrera, Jose Joaquı´n, 282 Heyman, Josiah, 70–71 Hill, Joe, 123 HIV/AIDS, 77, 114–15, 223 Houston, Sam, 8, 103, 115–17 Huerta, Dolores, 44, 117–18, 133, 292 Huerta, Victoriano, 98, 129, 203, 285 Huitzilopochtli, 20 Hurricane Katrina, 165 Immigration Act of 1917, 154 Immigration Act of 1965, 96 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 136, 156, 195, 197–99, 205 Immigration legislation, 119–22 Immigration Reform Control Act (IRCA), 205 Indian Appropriations Act, 184 Indian Citizenship Act, 185 Indian Removal Act, 116 Industrial Worker, The, 123 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 122–24 Internment camps, 124–26 Jackson, Andrew, 116, 144 Jackson, Helen Hunt, 127–28 Jefferson, Thomas, 141 Jesuits, 167–60, 251 Johnson, Lyndon, 9, 121 Juarez, Benito, 48, 62, 103–4, 187, 237 Kahlo, Frida, 17 Kearney, Michael, 11 Kennedy, Robert, 279 King Ranch, 231
Index Kino, Eusebio, 37 Korean War, 29 Ku Klux Klan, 129, 178 Labor, 129–31 Labor unions, 132–34 Land grants, 134–35 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 135–36 Legal issues, 136–38 Lerdo de Tejada, Sebastian, 104 Lincoln, Abraham, 103 Literature, 138–41 Little, Frank, 123 L opez Mateos, Adolfo, 275 Los Lobos, 182 Louisiana Purchase, 141 Low riders, 141–43 lucha libre, 261 Lujan, Gilberto, 17 Madero, Francisco, 101, 124, 151–52 Madison, James, 1 Manifest Destiny, 144–45 Maquiladoras, 145–48 Marti, Jose, 110, Martı´nez, Oscar, 70–71, 99 Massey, Douglas, 12 Maximilian, 103, 187 McDonald, brothers, 68 McWilliams, Carey, 148–49 Media, 149–51 Mendoza, Lydia, 100, 180 Mexican Diaspora, 151 Mexican Revolution, 151–55 Migration, 155–58 Militarization, 158–61 Mining, 161–64 Minutemen, 164–67 Missions, 167–71 Mixton War, 287 Moctezuma, 75 Monroe, James, 172 Monroe Doctrine, 172–73 Mormon Colonies in Mexico, 173–76 Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), 176–78 Mulroney, Brian, 187 Murieta, Joaquı´n, 178–79 Music, 179–82 Napoleon, I, 246 Napoleon III, 172 Narvaez, Panfilo de, 183 Native Americans, 183–86 Nepomuceno Cortina, Juan, 186–87 Ni~ nos Heroes, Los, 283
Nixon, Richard, 81 North American Free Trad Agreement (NAFTA), 187–90 Novo, Salvador, 75 O’Daniel, Wilbert Lee (‘‘Pappy’’), 226 O’Keefe, Georgia, 17, 171 Obregon, Alvaro, 101, 152, 185, 237, 285 Oil companies, 191–94 Okies, 111 Olmos, James, 22 Operation Condor, 81 Operations, 194–97 Operation Wetback, 130, 156, 195, 205 Organizations and governmental agencies, 197–99 Orozco, Jose Clemente, 17 Ortiz Rubio, Pascual, 238 Pace, Dave, 68 Palmer Raids, 123 Paredes, Manzano, Americo, 100, 139, 200–201 Parsons, Lucy, 123 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), 132, 208–9 Patriot Act, 121 Pearson, Sir Weetman D., 192–93 Pershing, John J., 154, 158, 175, 203, 286 Peter Pan, 4 Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), 201 Pico de Jes us IV, Pı´o, 201–2 Pierce, Franklin, 106–7 Plan de San Diego, 202–4 Pointsett, Joel Roberts, 2 Policy, 204–7 Political Participation in the Mexican Border States, 207–9 Polk, James K., 103, 106, 144, 210, 276–77, 282 Popular saints and martyrs, 210–13 Portes Gil, Emilio, 153 Posse Comitatus Act, 159 Powell, John Wesley, 59 Presidios, 213–16 Prohibition, 216–17 Protected areas and parks, 217–19 Pueblo Revolt, 219–21 Puritans, 144 Queer perspectives, 222–24 Radio, 225–27 Railroads, 227–29 Ranching, 230–33 La Raza Unida, 233–34 Reagan, Ronald, 10, 173 Regeneracion, 97, 153
315
Index Remittances, 234–36 Repatriados, 236–38 Reuther, Walter, 279 Rhetoric, 238–42 Rio Grande, 242–43 Rivera, Diego, 17 Rivera, Tomas, 243–44 Rodrı´guez, Abelardo, 5, 153, 274 Romero, Frank, 17 Roosevelt, Theodore, 173 Rosaldo, Renato, 17 Rosita the Riveter, 293 Salinas de Gotari, Carlos, 187 Salton Sea, 245–46 San Andreas Accord, 186 Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 7, 19, 103, 105, 117, 246–47, 270–72, 276, 282 Santa Fe Trail, 247–48 Scott, Winfield, 283 Selena, 100 Serra, Fray Junı´pero, 73, 248–50 Seven Cities of Cibola, 250 Simcox, Chris, 164 Sinarquismo, 250–53 Siquieros, David Alfaro, 17 Slackers, 102 Slavery, 253–55 Social movements, 255–58 Social Science Research Council, 108 Sports, 258–62 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 128 Taft, William H., 51 Taino, Susan, 147 Taylor, Zachary, 187, 210, 282 El Teatro Campesino, 263 Tejanos/as, 263–67 Terrazas family, 267–68
316
Texas Rangers, 268–70 Texas Revolution, 270–72 Tomochic Revolution, 272–73 Tourism, 273–76 Travis, William B., 7, 271 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 276–78 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 278 Twain, Mark, 60 Tyler, John, 282 United Farm Workers of America, 279–80 Urrea, Teresa, 280–81 U.S.–Mexican War, 281–83 Valdez, Luis, 52, 263 Valens, Richie, 181 Vila, Pablo, 70, 241 Villa, Francisco, ‘‘Pancho,’’ 15, 50–51, 101–2, 137, 151–54, 158–59, 175, 203, 229–30, 284–86 Virgen de Guadalupe, 15, 38 Walter, William, 94 War of the Gran Chichimeca, 287–88 Water issues, 288–91 Wilson, Woodrow, 124–25, 154 Women of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, 291–92 Women Workers, Mexican and Mexican American, 292–94 World War II, Latino Military Service in, 294–96 Young, Brigham, 173 Zapata, Emiliano, 50, 98, 180, 285 Zoot Suit Riots, 297–99
A BOUT THE E DITOR AND C ONTRIBUTORS Jaime R. Aguila teaches history at Arizona State University, Polytechnic. He is a list editor for H-LatAm. Marıa Albelaez teaches history at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She is an editor for the Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies. Linda Allegro is visiting assistant professor in political science at the University of Tulsa. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Puerto Rican Studies and Ameriquests. Maribel Alvarez is an assistant research professor at the University of Arizona. Rogelio Aragon is a graduate student in history at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. He is author of Against Church and State: Freemasonry and the Inquisition in New Spain and The Myth of the Masonic Conspiracy. Daniel D. Arreola teaches geography at Arizona State University. His latest book is Settlement Geographies of Mexican Americans. Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America. Tim Bowman is a graduate student in history at Southern Methodist University. Sarah E.L. Bowskill is a graduate student in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester. Kevin M. Brady is a graduate student in history at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Dominique Bregent-Heald teaches history at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
317
About the Editor and Contributors Ernesto Casta~ neda-Tinoco is a graduate student in sociology at Columbia University. Deborah Cohen teaches in the Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and History at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. She is author of Bordering Modernities: Race, Masculinity, and the Cultural Politics of Mexico-US Migration. Justin Corfield teaches history and international studies at Geelong Grammar School, Australia. Sarah Elizabeth Cornell is a graduate student in history at New York University. James R. Curtis teaches geography at California State University Long Beach. He is coauthor of The Mexican Border Cities: Landscape Anatomy and Place Personality. Amanda Jane Davis is a graduate student in English at the University of Florida. Dustin DeVore is a graduate student in history at the Oklahoma State University. Gerrit Dirkmaat is a graduate student in history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is an assistant editor of Diplomatic History. Travis Du Bry teaches anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Immigrants, Settlers, and Laborers: The Socioeconomic Transformation of a Farming Community. James L. Erwin is an independent scholar living in Des Moines, Iowa. He is author of Declarations of Independence: Encyclopedia of American Autonomous and Secessionist Movements. Stefano Fait is an Italian political scientist and social anthropologist. Tamara L. Falicov teaches in the Department of Theater and Film at the University of Kansas. She is author of The Cinematic Tango: Contemporary Argentine Film. Joseph Gelfer is a graduate student in religious studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is managing editor of the Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality. Luke Goble teaches history at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon. Erin G. Graham is a graduate student in Latin American history at the University of Houston. Andrew R. Graybill teaches history at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Richard W. Griffin teaches political science at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan.
318
About the Editor and Contributors Vicki Gruzynski is a graduate student in history at Indiana University in Bloomington. Jean Shepherd Hamm teaches education at East Tennessee State University. Brett Hendrickson is a graduate student in the Religious Studies Department at Arizona State University. Sonia Hernandez teaches history at the University of Texas Pan American. Josiah Heyman teaches anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the author of Life and Labor on the Border and Finding a Moral Heart for U.S. Immigration Policy, among other publications. Kathleen Holscher teaches in the Department of Theology at Villanova University. Arthur M. Holst is government affairs manager for the City of Philadelphia and teaches in the Masters of Public Administration Program at Widener University. Joel Huerta has taught at University of Arizona, University of Texas-Austin, University of Houston-Clear Lake, and Rice University. He studies borderlands cultural history. Nicholas Katers is a freelance writer living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Michael K. Komancecky is an independent scholar in residence at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Joanne Kropp is the assistant director for academics of the Entering Student Program at the University of Texas at El Paso. Janne Lahti is a graduate student in history at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Robert Tice Lalka is a graduate student in English at the University of Washington. Robert Lee is a manuscript cataloger at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City. Robert W. Lever is an independent scholar in Greer, South Carolina. Vıctor M. Macıas-Gonzalez teaches history at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. Andrae M. Marak teaches in the Department of History and Political Science at the California University of Pennsylvania. Oscar J. Martınez teaches history at the University of Arizona. He is author of several books, including Border Boom Town: Ciudad Juarez Since 1848, Border People:
319
About the Editor and Contributors Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, and Troublesome Border and Mexican-Origin People in the United States: A Topical History. Lena McQuade is a graduate student in American studies at the University of New Mexico. Eloy Mendez Sainz teaches architecture and urban studies at the University of Sonora. He is author of several publications, including Arquitectura nacionalista. El proyecto de la Revolucion en el Noroestre, 1915-1962. Demond Shondell Miller teaches sociology at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, where he is director of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Institute for Research and Community Service. Dylan A.T. Miner teaches in the Residential College of Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. He is core faculty in Chicano Latino Studies and affiliated faculty in American Indian Studies. He is active in the Campesino, Just Seeds, and the Aboriginal Curatorial Collectives. William Morgan is a graduate student in history at the University of Texas. Caryn E. Neumann is visiting assistant professor of history and special assistant to the dean for community relations at Miami University of Ohio. James Nichols is a graduate student at Stony Brook University writing on the U.S.Mexico borderlands. ~ez teaches anthropology at the University of Texas, El Paso. Guillermina G. N un John Paul Nu~ no is a graduate student in history at the University of Texas at El Paso. Servando Ortoll is a visiting research professor at the Centro de Investigaciones Culturales-Museo of the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. He is the author of Vogel: las conquistas y desventuras de un consul y hacendado aleman en Colima and coeditor of Riots in the Cities: Popular Politics and the Urban Poor in Latin America, 1765–1910. Angela Moyano Pahissa teaches history at Universidad de Queretaro. She is author of Mexico y los Estados Unidos: historia de una relacion, 1819-1861 and Frontera: Ası se hizo la frontera norte. Anahı Parra is a photojournalist living in Mexico City. Jeffrey M. Pilcher teaches history at the University of Minnesota. He is author of Que Viva Tamales: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity, Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity, and The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890–1917. He is editor of The Human Tradition in Mexico.
320
About the Editor and Contributors John Pluecker is a graduate student in Spanish at the University of Houston. His writing has appeared in journals such as the Julie Mango and Blithe House Quarterly, Clamor Magazine, and El Diario de Tampico. Monica Rankin is a university fellow in arts and humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. Elissa J. Rashkin is an independent scholar. She is author of Women Filmmakers in Mexico: The Country of Which We Dream. Marisol Reyes teaches international relations at Universidad del Valle de Mexico, Queretaro, and specializes in Latin American politics and elections. Ra ul Rodrıguez Gonzalez is director of the Luis Fimbres Moreno Library, CETYS University, Tijuana Campus. Elizabeth Salas teaches in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is author of Soldaderas in the Mexican Military: Myth and History. Leah M. Sarat is a graduate student in religion at the University of Florida. Ronald Schultz teaches history at the University of Wyoming. He is author of The Republic of Labor and American Encounters: A Multiethnic History of America. Carly Sheffield is an independent scholar and researcher living in Venezuela. Stephanie J. Silverman is a graduate student in the Department of Politics at Oxford University. William E. Skuban teaches history at California State University, Fresno. He is author of Lines in the Sand: Nationalism and Identity on the Peruvian-Chilean Frontier. Stefano Sosi is an independent scholar in Italy. Sam Stalcup is a graduate student in history at the University of Oklahoma. Jamie Starling is a graduate student in history at the University of Texas, El Paso. Margo Tamez is a graduate student in the American Studies Program at Washington State University. Her publications include Raven Eye, Naked Wanting, and Alleys and Allies. Barry Thatcher teaches in the English Department at New Mexico State University. Paul J. Vanderwood is professor emeritus at San Diego State University. He is author of Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police, and Mexican Development; Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico’s Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness, 1910–1917;
321
About the Editor and Contributors The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century; Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint; and Border Barons: Princes of Vice: America’s Joy Palaces Move South. Garrit Voggesser is the senior manager of the Tribal Lands Conservation Program for the National Wildlife Federation. Emily Wakild teaches history at Wake Forest University. John Weber is a graduate student at the College of William and Mary. He studies labor history in the southwest. S. Harmon Wilson is associate dean of liberal arts at Tulsa Community College. He has written on various issues related to civil rights history. Andrew G. Wood teaches history at the University of Tulsa. He is author of Revolution in the Street: Women, Workers and Urban Protest in Veracruz, 1870–1927; Carnival in Mexico; and Agustın Lara and the Golden Age of Mexican Popular Song. He is editor of On the Border: Society and Culture Between the United States and Mexico and coeditor of and contributor to Holiday in Mexico: Essays on Tourism and Tourist Encounters. He has produced and directed independent films on the Carnival and Candelaria celebrations in Veracruz, Mexico. Charles Wood is an independent scholar living in Houston, Texas. Ian Wood is an independent scholar living in Houston, Texas. Pablo Yankelevich is a historian working for Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia e Historia in Mexico City. Elliott Young teaches history at Lewis and Clark College. He is author of Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border and coeditor of Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History.
322