In her book, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border, Rachel St. John provides a dynamic argument that focuses not just on the physical border itself or merely how border policy came to be, but looks at the borderlands as an entire region and how Mexico too played a part in creating both the border and border enforcement. St. John describes in her various chapters the development of border towns and how both the U.S. and Mexico created not just a physical barrier, but also a symbolic barrier that resulted in the division of races and cultures. The creation of national identities, argues St. John, is just as much a result of border policy as is the actual physical border. Additionally, St. John discusses the varied …show more content…
John follows the formation of the borderline throughout the 1850s, highlighting the struggles between the two governments that arose during its creation, such as with the Gadsden Treaty which re-drew the boundaries set just years before. Here, St. John not only relates the involvement of various actors in the formation of the border, but relates how the Gadsden Treaty “had done very little to reshape the landscape of power along the border,” (St. John 37). This supports her claim that although both change throughout time, the physical border and the symbolic border are not the same thing and hold their own meanings. In the second chapter, “Holding the Line,” St. John looks at the permeability of the border in its early years, discussing the effects of Apache raiders and filibusters on the region of the borderlands. On both sides, border defenses were left to local governments and a variety of people were brought into the battle for border control. St. John discusses the development and role of national identity in places like Sonora in these early years and how the conflict and confusion in the region challenged the newly formed line of the border as power shifted between groups in the area. The third chapter, “Landscape of Profits,” looks at the effects of new industry in the borderlands in the late 1800s with the arrival of the railroad and more capitalist ideals. In this era, real changes took place as more people began to
1. Describe the conditions of the western "borderlands" of the 1830s as well as the factors attracting American settlers.
Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. By David G Gutiérrez. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
In this paper, I will be summarizing the following chapters: Chapter 3: "A Legacy of Hate: The Conquest of Mexico’s Northwest”; Chapter 4: “Remember the Alamo: The Colonization of Texas”; and Chapter 5: “Freedom in a Cage: The Colonization of New Mexico. All three chapters are from the book, “Occupied America, A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo F. Acuna. In chapter three, Acuna explains the causes of the war between Mexico and North America. In chapter four, Acuna explains the colonization of Texas and how Mexicans migrated from Mexico to Texas. In chapter five, Acuna explains the colonization of New Mexico and the economic changes that the people had to go through.
The logos used in this book are through politics. Urrea makes clear that it’s Mexico's blame for putting people on the "devil's highway" through corruption and dense politics. But he also shows how misguided the United States policy has been. The author describes the conditions and historic events that lead to the beginning of the illegal immigration into the United States and draws a clear parallelism with our times, when there are several tasks in the United States that Americans are
In his essay Bajadas, Francisco Cantu explores the physical and emotional landscapes that shift during his time as a United States border control agent. He candidly writes about his experiences, using imagery to describe the physical landscape of New Mexico in a way that mirrors his own emotional landscape and answers the question that he grapples with most. Cantu writes, “There are days when I feel I am becoming good at what I do. And then I wonder, what does it mean to be good at this? I wonder sometimes how I might explain certain things…” (7). This important question is what drives Bajadas; it is what compels Cantu to write so vulnerably. Through a journal-like structure, Cantu details what his job requires of him and the way he treats
“The Navajo reservation begins over there”. He pointed to the east. “The Pueblo boundaries are over there”. He looked below us to the south, where the narrow trail seemed to come from. “The Texans have their ranches over there, starting with that valley, the Concho Valley. The Mexicans run some cattle over there too” (Silko 765).
The author of Mexican Lives, Judith Adler Hellman, grapples with the United States’ economic relationship with their neighbors to the south, Mexico. It also considers, through many interviews, the affairs of one nation. It is a work held to high esteem by many critics, who view this work as an essential part in truly understanding and capturing Mexico’s history. In Mexican Lives, Hellman presents us with a cast from all walks of life. This enables a reader to get more than one perspective, which tends to be bias. It also gives a more inclusive view of the nation of Mexico as a whole. Dealing with rebel activity, free trade, assassinations and their transition into the modern age, it justly
Another important section of this chapter was simply called “Texas”. The author provides the context of the Great Plains in 1720 including the French-Spanish rivalry and the corresponding rivalry between the Pawnee and Wichita Indians and the Apache and Pueblo Indians. The Spanish colonies were populated mostly with unarmed missionaries, while the French-controlled regions
The United States border with Mexico is a controversial topic that has been the subject of debate recently. It is without question a problem that needs to be fixed. Currently most policies are focused on the manpower, infrastructure, and security of the border itself. However the border security is changed there will always be a demand for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers to cross the border into America. That why we should try to disrupt that demand by legalizing marijuana in the United States, put more resources into fighting cartels, and invest into the Mexican economy. These are the first steps to regaining border security to both countries.
Many experiences can come from walking on foreign land. We can learn the language, enjoy the cuisine, take in the culture, etc.., but how can one get a sense for a country 's government or legal system at ground zero? Although my sense for Mexico’s government is in hindsight, today I’m able to draw a line between the dots that represent my experiences and the once reality of political life in Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. I have fond memories of my early teens which included going on family trips to my grandfather 's ranch in Puerto Penasco, a city at the northeastern part of the state of Sonora. I can remember the road trips from California through Arizona along the Mexican border to cover as much ground as possible on American soil to avoid the poor highway conditions crossing Baja California. Then once entering Sonora through the Mexico/US border in Sonoyta, we continue our route to Puerto Penasco. On the way to our destination we must pass a couple of military checkpoints with armed soldiers that are widely known as “watchos”. These checkpoints are there to ” make sure people on the highways aren’t carrying any contraband or drugs”, but most of these checkpoints are just there for a hand out to collect money for an easy pass. Many would approach these checkpoints knowing that paying a few dollars would stop the harassing searches, not because passengers were hiding anything, but because soldiers would hold you at these checkpoints till you get with the
Throughout hundreds of years, the U.S.-Mexican border has been changed numerous times due to many different events. The government and war are not always the cause of these changes between the United States of America and Mexico, however. Many times citizens become the base of the effects that happen along the border. Culture, class, and nationality are main causes as to how gender and ethnic identity shape transculturalization on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
Border Writing examines a newly emerging culture-space, the borderland between Mexico and the United States. This gives the geographic referent of the term border a centrality. As used by Hicks, though--and, one might say, as used by a score of writers in the field of cultural studies--that term points beyond its most obvious geographic referent to become a leading metaphor that organizes the conceptual field. What gives the term its privileged metaphoric value is the reality of displacement that is the central fact of life among people living in the
railroad corporations, and landowners/deveoplers promoted their ideologies to increase their profits, and to reinforce their ideologies upon the formation of a region. The ideologies that the landowners and capitalist promoted were of prosperity for the Anglo and segregation/degradation of the Hispanic. Throughout the article, B&N give readers different names of corporations and individuals, who had tremendous influence in the formation of the Valley, and how they promoted, reimagine, and define the Valley. Man of these corporations “maintained offices dedicated to producing promotional material,” in order to provide a constant flow of their ideologies. John Shary, who is a famous land developer, had “assets, estimated at $5 million in the early 1920s, derived from his sales of land, marketing of fruit, supplying of irrigation water supply, and control of banks and newspapers in the lrgv.”(133-34). This shows how corporations and landowners have mean to produce/reinforce the ideas that become embedded into our
This paper explores what the development of an accelerated border-crossing program refered to as NEXUS reveals about changing political geography of citizenship in contemporary North America. What makes it an especially worthwhile focus for analysis is the manner in which its development as a border management program has taken shape as a technological fix mediating two extremely significant and contradictory sets of contemporary social forces in North America. On one side are the economic forces that continue to generate pressures for liberalized cross-border business movement in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) while on the other side are the political and cultural forces that lead to heightened border surveillance
In his work about nested identities, David Knight proposed understanding the concept of identity from a territorial perspective, in terms of the relationship with the geography and space in which people acquire specific attributes in distinction to others. Territory, he said, is what solidifies identity as opposed to memory or feelings (Knight, 1999, p. 317). In this fashion, people produced in Tijuana, with the practice of cross-border consumption, a binational territory where the border did not exist, which nested a local identity with both strong nationalistic and hybrid components, very distinctive