The Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo, which officially ended the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848, cost Mexico half its territory, while the United States gained land that became California, Nevada, Utah, Texas, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Because the new United States-Mexico border ran through territory that was still incompletely mapped, the treaty also called for government commissions from both nations to locate and mark the boundary on the ground. This book documents the accomplishments of both the U.S. and the Mexican Boundary Commissions that mapped the boundary between 1849 and 1857, as well as the fifty-four pairs of maps produced by their efforts and the ongoing importance of these historical maps in current boundary administration. Paula Rebert explores how, despite the efforts of both commissions to draw neutral, scientific maps, the actual maps that resulted from their efforts reflected the differing goals and outlooks of the two countries. She also traces how the differences between the U.S. and Mexican maps have had important consequences for the history of the boundary.

For many, a map is nothing more than a tool used to determine the location or distribution of something—a country, a city, or a natural resource. But maps reveal much more: to really read a map means to examine what it shows and what it doesn’t, and to ask who made it, why, and for whom. The contributors to this new volume ask these sorts of questions about maps of Latin America, and in doing so illuminate the ways cartography has helped to shape this region from the Rio Grande to Patagonia. In Mapping Latin America,Jordana Dym and Karl Offen bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine and interpret more than five centuries of Latin American maps.Individual chapters take on maps of every size and scale and from a wide variety of mapmakers—from the hand-drawn maps of Native Americans, to those by famed explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt, to those produced in today’s newspapers and magazines for the general public. The maps collected here, and the interpretations that accompany them, provide an excellent source to help readers better understand how Latin American countries, regions, provinces, and municipalities came to be defined, measured, organized, occupied, settled, disputed, and understood—that is, how they came to have specific meanings to specific people at specific moments in time. The first book to deal with the broad sweep of mapping activities across Latin America, this lavishly illustrated volume will be required reading for students and scholars of geography and Latin American history, and anyone interested in understanding the significance of maps in human cultures and societies.

In the first bilingual work on the reptiles and amphibians of the US–Mexico border, top herpetologists come together to describe the herpetofauna of the states of this region, which includes more than 600 species of toads, frogs, salamanders, turtles, sea turtles, alligators, lizards, snakes, and sea snakes that are found along the almost 2,000-mile border between the two countries. Each chapter is devoted to one state—four in the US (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) and six in Mexico (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas)—with text in both English and Spanish. The chapters contain an introduction to the area, a review of the research, a sketch of the state’s physiography, and a description of the species present as well as the pertinent conservation issues they face. A color photo gallery includes images of nearly all species. Almost 40 percent of the featured native species are shared between the US and Mexico, reminding us that animals depend on the integrity of natural landscapes and proving the need for a comprehensive, bilingual reference to help lead a shared effort in the management and conservation of the borderlands.