Twenty-two twin border towns from Brownsville to San Diego

The author focuses on one area of the U.S.-Mexico border in the late nineteenth century to reveal the roots of modern Mexican-American border issues, demonstrating that economic integration, policing borders, and migrant workers were all issues a century ago as well.

Arguing for immigration reform based on negotiation and cross-border accord, offers an historical analysis of border crossings, both Mexico to the United States and the United States to Mexico, revealing the symbiotic relationship between the two countries and their shared economic and cultural legacy.

On January 1, 1937, Manuel B. Bravo was sworn in as county judge of Zapata County, a post he would hold for twenty years. In Border Boss: Manuel B. Bravo and Zapata County, J. Gilberto Quezada delineates Bravo’s political career in the Democratic Party and examines his role in some of the important issues of his day, especially Falcon Dam. During Bravo’s years in office, he worked and corresponded with many Texas and national politicians, including James Allred, Lloyd Bentsen, Kika de la Garza, Ralph Yarborough, and, most prominently, Lyndon Johnson. The association between Bravo and Johnson began with the special Senate election of 1941 and is reflected in the more than fifty letters between the two in Bravo's personal papers. In Johnson's 1948 Senate runoff against Coke Stevenson, voting irregularities were alleged in Zapata County when the election returns from Precinct No. 3 were reported missing. Quezada analyzes the Bravo papers for any evidence that Bravo and Johnson had arranged the disappearance and offers possible alternative explanations. From the 1930s to the 1950s Zapata County was one of six South Texas counties where the Tejano majority dominated local politics and held most public offices. Bravo became known as one of the "Mexican bosses" of South Texas, but Quezada draws a more nuanced picture of bossism than has been presented previously, analyzing the role of influential leading families but looking as well at the degree of economic integration into the state and nation as factors in how bossism developed. Those interested in Mexican-American studies and politics and bossism in South Texas will appreciate the window onto South Texas politics and Tejano culture this biography gives.

Some 16.6 million people nationwide live in mixed-status families, containing a combination of U.S. citizens, residents, and undocumented immigrants. U.S. immigration governance has become an almost daily news headline. Yet even in the absence of federal immigration reform over the last twenty years, existing policies and practices have already been profoundly impacting these family units. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in San Diego over more than a decade, Border Brokers documents the continuing deleterious effects of U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices on a group of now young adults and their families. In the first book-length longitudinal study of mixed-status families, Christina M. Getrich provides an on-the-ground portrayal of these young adults’ lives from their own perspectives and in their own words. More importantly, Getrich identifies how these individuals have developed resiliency and agency beginning in their teens to improve circumstances for immigrant communities. Despite the significant constraints their families face, these children have emerged into adulthood as grounded and skilled brokers who effectively use their local knowledge bases, life skills honed in their families, and transborder competencies. Refuting the notion of their failure to assimilate, she highlights the mature, engaged citizenship they model as they transition to adulthood to be perhaps their most enduring contribution to creating a better U.S. society. An accessible ethnography rooted in the everyday, this book portrays the complexity of life in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It offers important insights for anthropologists, educators, policy-makers, and activists working on immigration and social justice issues.

This comprehensive survey systematically explores the dynamic historic and contemporary interface between Mexico and the United States along the shared 1,954-mile international land boundary. Now fully updated and revised, the book provides an overview of the history of the region and traces the economic cycles and social movements from the 1880s through the second decade of the twenty-first century. The border region shares characteristics of both nations while maintaining an internal social and economic coherence that transcends its divisive international boundary. The authors conclude with an in-depth analysis of key contemporary issues. These include industrial development and manufacturing, bilateral trade, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, rapid urbanization, border culture, population and migration issues, environmental crisis and climate change, Native Americans, cooperation and conflict at the border, drug trafficking and violence, the border wall and security, populist national leaders and the border, and the Covid-19 pandemic at the border. They also place the border in its global context, examining it as a region caught between the developed and developing world and highlighting the continued importance of borders in a rapidly globalizing world. Richly illustrated with photographs, maps, charts, and up-to-date statistical tables, this book is an invaluable resource for all those interested in borderlands and U.S.-Mexican relations.