With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) looming large and imminent, this book explores the socio-economic fabric of the U.S.-Mexico border region as a measure of NAFTA's future. It presents the social and economic history of the Lower Rio Grande Valley on the Texas-Mexico border. .

These proceedings are an outcome of a symposium and workshop held June 2-5, 1998 in Albuquerque, NM. Hosted by the USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Bosque Improvement Group, in collaboration with numerous partners from a variety of sectors, the symposium was designed to report on current research and development activities in the Middle Rio Grande Basin. The purpose of the meeting was to share information and develop ideas for sustaining and conserving Middle Rio Grande Basin ecosystems, especially those from Cochiti Dam to Elephant Butte Reservoir. Experts were invited to contribute oral presentations, posters, and papers that addressed five Basin themes. Theme one's session was designed to identify methods and opportunities to enhance communication and collaboration among researchers, managers, and communities. A second theme explored ideas and approaches for conserving water and riparian resources in relation to human needs and population growth. Theme three discussed how watershed processes form linkages and influence management of upland and river resources. A fourth session identified methods and strategies for restoring and monitoring basin ecosystems and discussed project successes and failures. Theme five reported on status of endangered and sensitive species, biological diversity, and opportunities for restoring and managing habitats to recover species. Management and understanding of the Middle Rio Grande Basin's natural resources and ecosystems require communication and cooperation of partners across cultural, landowner, and organizational boundaries. To produce a shared understanding of the current state and desired future state of the Middle Rio Grande Basin and to outline the steps needed to move toward the desired future, a facilitated workshop was held the last day of the conference. The results of this workshop are reported in the concluding section of this proceedings. The technical coordinators of the symposium and proceedings wish to acknowledge all the partners who have contributed to the research, restoration, technology development, educational outreach, and special events and activities designed to improve human and ecosystem conditions in the Basin. We hope this volume captures at least some of the excitement, ideas, and productivity generated by Basin projects over the past several years.

The Pulitzer Prize– and Bancroft Prize–winning epic history of the American Southwest from the acclaimed twentieth-century author of Lamy of Santa Fe. Great River was hailed as a literary masterpiece and enduring classic when it first appeared in 1954. It is an epic history of four civilizations—Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American—that people the Southwest through ten centuries. With the skill of a novelist, the veracity of a scholar, and the love of a long-time resident, Paul Horgan describes the Rio Grande, its role in human history, and the overlapping cultures that have grown up alongside it or entered into conflict over the land it traverses. Now in its fourth revised edition, Great River remains a monumental part of American historical writing. “Here is known and unknown history, emotion and color, sense and sensitivity, battles for land and the soul of man, cultures and moods, fused by a glowing pen and a scholarly mind into a cohesive and memorable whole.” —The Boston Sunday Herald “Transcends regional history and soars far above the river valley with which it deals . . . a survey, rich in color and fascinating in pictorial detail, of four civilizations: the aboriginal Indian, the Spanish, the Mexican, and the Anglo-American . . . It is, in the best sense of the word, literature. It has architectural plan, scholarly accuracy, stylistic distinction, and not infrequently real nobility of spirit.” —Allan Nevins, author of Ordeal of the Union “One of the major masterpieces of American historical writing.” —Carl Carmer, author of Stars Fell on Alabama

This study examines human interactions with the Rio Grande from prehistoric time to the present day and explores what possibilities remain for the desert river.

The Rio Grande was ancient long before the first humans reached its banks. These days, the highly regulated river looks nothing like it did to those early settlers. Alternately viewed as a valuable ecosystem and life-sustaining foundation of community welfare or a commodity to be engineered to yield maximum economic benefit, the Rio Grande has brought many advantages to those who live in its valley, but the benefits have come at a price. This study examines human interactions with the Rio Grande from prehistoric time to the present day and explores what possibilities remain for the desert river. From the perspectives of law, development, tradition, and geology, the authors weigh what has been gained and lost by reining in the Rio Grande.

From the boundary surveys of the 1850s to the ever-expanding fences and highway networks of the twenty-first century, Border Land, Border Water examines the history of the construction projects that have shaped the region where the United States and Mexico meet. Tracing the accretion of ports of entry, boundary markers, transportation networks, fences and barriers, surveillance infrastructure, and dams and other river engineering projects, C. J. Alvarez advances a broad chronological narrative that captures the full life cycle of border building. He explains how initial groundbreaking in the nineteenth century transitioned to unbridled faith in the capacity to control the movement of people, goods, and water through the use of physical structures. By the 1960s, however, the built environment of the border began to display increasingly obvious systemic flaws. More often than not, Alvarez shows, federal agencies in both countries responded with more construction—“compensatory building” designed to mitigate unsustainable policies relating to immigration, black markets, and the natural world. Border Land, Border Water reframes our understanding of how the border has come to look and function as it does and is essential to current debates about the future of the US-Mexico divide.