The Undocumented: A New Independent Film on PBS

As both a college professor and a humanitarian aid worker, I am always searching for new films on immigration for my classroom. On April 29, 2013, the PBS series [I]NDEPENDENT LENS aired the documentary The Undocumented  by filmmaker Marco Williams. The latest in a series of productions addressing the influx of border crossings in Arizona’s Sonora Desert, the film is, on the surface, the story of Marcos Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant living in Chicago and searching for his father Francisco, who was abandoned in the desert in 1998 while crossing to find work in the United States. Viewers follow Marcos eleven years later as he desperately reaches out to organizations such as Derechos Humanos, the Mexican Consulate, and the Pima County Medical Examiner in order to find his father and bring him home.

The Undocumented is more than the story of Marcos Hernandez’ s search, however. It is the story of the hundreds of desconocido(a)s discovered  in the Arizona desert each year unable to speak for themselves and of the men and women who work tirelessly to help them regain their identity.

Teaching Borderlands History to Undergraduates: Part Three – The U.S.-Mexico Border as a Subject of Historical Inquiry

I began this semester thinking that I wanted my undergraduate borderlands course to be continental in scope. What I envisioned, essentially, was a course that spent roughly equal time addressing imperial borderlands in North America, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the U.S.-Canada border. Having now finished my U.S.-Mexico borderlands course, I’ve completely changed my mind.

The two major lessons that I’ve learned in teaching this class (aside from the many minors ones) are: one, for a junior-level borderlands course I now prefer to focus primarily on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands; and, two, I’ve also learned to never again naively think that I know exactly how I want to teach a course before actually having tested my pre-conceived notions in the classroom.

History is at its most effective when narrative structure is respected and remains intact. A continental borderlands course, I now believe, would require sacrificing too much important content that really should be taught to college undergraduates. The lived experiences of borderlanders must be remembered and respected. Hardship, toil, and sacrifice have marked the people whose lives have been most significantly and directly affected (or, in many cases, bisected) by the border itself.

We began the semester focusing on the Spanish period. Sacrificing historical content from the colonial period in the Southwest would be a travesty; the content itself, in my opinion, is far too important to risk losing by over-contextualizing or casting one’s net over continental imperial borderlands history too widely (as is the trend in some of the literature). Our class discussed a number of important phenomena from the colonial period, including cultural conflict, syncretism, and the ramifications of Spanish colonialism for Native Americans.

But there was some room at this point for larger, comparative questions. For example, how did the experience of living on the Spanish frontier compare to life in New England, or, New France? Those regions are, of course, important in their own right, but a brief foray into comparative history helped us as a group learn even more about life in our primary area of concern. We concluded this early section of the course with a discussion of Pekka Hämäläinen’s The Comanche Empire, which provided for excellent discussions of not only the nature of power relationships in a borderlands setting but also the erroneous assumptions that previous scholars of the North American Southwest have made.

The richness of the material only continued as we explored the nineteenth century and the founding of the modern borderline. Again, this period explored conflict and syncretism as Mexicans, Native Americans and Americans came together and interacted. Moving from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo into the process of land-loss, white American colonization and the systematizing of Jim Crow in places like South Texas (a particular area of interest of mine) and southern Arizona, I was really impressed with my students’ abilities at honing a deep understanding of the complexities of social and cultural collision. Cross-cultural interaction and cooperation between whites and ethnic Mexicans in South Texas was not lost under the larger and more visible phenomenon of Anglo-Mexican conflict and the predatory nature of white American dominance of this once Mexican space. The border’s relative “openness” in the nineteenth century came to be challenged when Chinese immigration became (for the most part) illegal in 1882; still, establishing the open nature of the nineteenth-century U.S.-Mexico border is essential in understanding how the nature of life in the borderlands changed in the twentieth century.

Again, by the time one gets to the end of the nineteenth century in U.S.-Mexico borderlands history it is useful to take a diversion into some comparative analysis. We spent some time discussing the experiences of ethnic Mexicans in the nineteenth century borderlands and Native Americans throughout the U.S. West. How were their experiences similar? How did they differ? The answers don’t necessarily matter here, but, when placed together, the experiences of ethnic Mexicans and Native Americans in the nineteenth-century borderlands and U.S. West are quite revealing and tell us as historians much about the nature of life and race in the nineteenth-century United States on a much more general level.

The twentieth-century U.S.-Mexico borderlands are of special interest to many Americans. Again, our class engaged in some great discussions: when did Americans start thinking about ways to “close” what had historically been an “open” border? Why did Americans want to close it? How did Mexicans become the iconic illegal immigrants when in fact there were plenty of illegal immigrants in the twentieth century who were not from Mexico or Latin America at all? These questions are obviously important to contextualize in the larger context of “both borders.” Why didn’t Americans in the twentieth century have the same sorts of fears of the U.S.-Canada border as they did of the southern border? Why didn’t Americans clamor to “close” the northern border to the same degree as the southern one? These are simple questions that can really produce some great discussion.

We ended our course discussing the effects of 9/11 on the modern border. Discussing globalization and the modern border go hand-in-thumb. Still, as the public’s interest in the border after 9/11 erupted, so should scholars and students be paying attention. With the continuously massive numbers of deportations taking place across the country, it is imperative that Americans be educated on the history of the border and the lives of the countless millions of ethnic Mexicans who are challenged by the border in some way every single day. As such, to me, as an instructor, the history of the U.S.-Mexico border remains of the utmost importance.

It’s interesting to think how relatively different this class turned out from what I had initially expected. What ultimately made this class so enjoyable for me was having a great group of polite, fun, and engaging students. Comparative analysis or the occasional “continental turn” are important, but neither do I want to neglect to cover the myriad of crucial topics that relate specifically to the U.S.-Mexico border (such as, illegal immigration, deportation, the Bracero Program, Operation Wetback, the Chicano Movement, U.S. westward expansion, or, Chinese Exclusion, to name a few). U.S.-Mexico borderlands history is critically important and should be taught in every college history department. Context and comparative analysis are important, but, to me, they shouldn’t overshadow the primary subject at hand. It goes without saying that I will be teaching it in regular rotation at my institution.

The content and larger modes of analyses in U.S.-Mexico borderlands history are simply far too important to life in modern America for universities to ignore. It’s a pleasure and an honor to share my passion for this field with my students. It is beyond any shadow of a doubt that other practitioners in this exciting field feel the same way as I do, whether they teach the U.S.-Mexico border or one of the many other borders that are important in the world today.

Tim Bowman
West Texas A&M University

Borderlands History at the 2013 National Council on Public History Annual Meeting

From April 17 to April 20th the NCPH held its annual meeting. Four borderlands history PhD students at UT El Paso traveled to Ottowa this year to participate. Here is a brief summary of the panel, entitled:

The Contestation, Appropriation, and Production of Historical Memory in the Borderlands

Abstract

By using a fairly loose geographical and metaphorical definition of Borderlands—anything from California to Louisiana, Texas and the Caribbean, or from Baja California to Tamaulipas and Nuevo León, the panelists will explore the ways in which groups and/or individuals have presented their particular visions of history in language, public venues and media, including museums, monuments, festivals, reenactments, historic preservation, architecture, and promotion of tourism.

Session Description  

The panel explores the production of history and its influence on the construction of historical memory in the diverse borderlands of Louisiana, Texas, California and Puerto Rico. Certain visions designed to advance specific economic, political, linguistic, and cultural agendas, often privilege specific groups and silence others. Despite this, community members and local organizations have both influenced and participated in the creation of historical events, movements, and locales. By examining the ways in which groups and/or individuals have presented their particular visions of history, the panel also considers how surrounding communities reacted or interacted with the various public history projects.  Jessica DeJohn Bergen explores how Louisianans of lower Lafourche Parish remembered the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) during the mid to late twentieth century. Cynthia Renteria’s project considers the lasting influence of The Four Centuries ’81 Celebration on the constriction of the local historical narrative in the borderland of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.  Carolina Monsivais’s work set in Northern Baja California, examines the tourist/host relationship that developed between Mexico and the United States. Joanna Camacho’s

Cynthia Renteria, Jessica DeJohn Bergen,Joanna M Comacho Escobar, Carolina Monsivais
(left to right)

work explores Puerto Ricans’ historical memories in the context of the Quincentenary celebration of Columbus’ arrival to the “New World,” from the mid 1980’s to the early 1990s.

Individual Papers 

 From Tijuana to Ensenada: Red-Tile Roofs, Tourism, and the Making of Memory In Northern Baja California, Carolina Monsivais, University of Texas at El Paso

El Paso’s 400^th Birthday: The Four Centuries ’81 Celebration and Historical Memory,  Cynthia Teresa Renteria, University of Texas at El Paso

Down Da Bayou: Language and Historical Memory in Southern Lafourche Parish, Louisiana 1960-1989, Jessica DeJohn Bergen, University of Texas at El Paso

La Madre Patria: Reimagining the Spanish Heritage in Puerto Rican Culture during the Quincentenary Celebrations of 1992, Joanna M Comacho Escobar, University of Texas at El Paso

Newberry Seminar in Borderlands and Latino Studies CFP Reminder

I apologize for re-posting, but think this is worth publicizing a bit more.  I presented in this seminar series back in 2012 and have a very positive experience.  Great people, great feedback on my work.  You still have 2 days to submit a proposal.  Send something in!

Call for Proposals and Instructions HERE:

Due April 25th

The Newberry Library Seminar in BORDERLANDS AND LATINO STUDIES

Co-sponsored by Indiana University’s Latino Studies Program, Northwestern University’s Program in Latina and Latino Studies, the
Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s History Department, the Center
for Latino Research at DePaul University, and the Katz Center for Mexican Studies at the University of Chicago

This seminar provides a forum for works-in-progress that explore topics in Borderlands and Latino studies. We seek proposals for seminar papers that examine the interplay of Latino people, communities, and culture in the United States; transnational and comparative “borderlands” studies; civil rights and social movements; and other related topics. We welcome proposals from scholars working in a broad range of academic fields, and are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches.

The seminar is open to graduate students, faculty members and independent scholars. Graduate students and junior faculty in the early-writing stages who wish to present work are especially encouraged to apply. To maximize time for discussion, papers are circulated electronically in advance. Priority is given to individuals who are at a stage of their research at which they can best benefit from feedback. The seminar meets on selected Fridays during the academic year, from 3:00 PM-5:00 PM, and for one daylong conference on a Saturday in the spring, from 9:00AM-3:00PM. All meetings take place at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois.

To propose a paper, please send a one-page proposal, a statement explaining the relationship of the paper to your other work, and a brief c.v. to Carmen Jaramillo, Program Assistant, Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture, The Newberry Library. Please send all materials as a single PDF attachment via email to: scholl@newberry.org.

If you are interested in proposing a paper and have questions, please contact seminar coordinators, Geraldo Cadava (Northwestern University, g-cadava@northwestern.edu), Benjamin Johnson (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, johnsobh@uwm.edu), and Jason Ruiz (University of Notre Dame, jason.ruiz@nd.edu).

The Newberry Library is unable to provide funds for travel or lodging, but can assist in locating discounted accommodations. If you would like to be placed on the mailing list to receive announcements of upcoming presentations, or if you would like further information about Newberry Library seminars, send an e-mail to scholl@newberry.org. (Please include your e-mail address with all communications, and let us know if you would be willing to receive announcements by e-mail.)

Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture
The Newberry
60 W Walton St.
Chicago, IL 60610
scholl@newberry.org
http://www.newberry.org

Review of: Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries

Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries

Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, Duke University Press 2011

In Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries, Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández forcefully argues, “…violence forms the foundations of national histories and subjectivity….”  To demonstrate this, she examines four historical flashpoints: the 1851 lynching of a Mexican woman in a California mining town, the Camp Grant Indian Massacre of 1871, the erasures of racialized and sexualized violence in South Texas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the Yaqui Indian wars of 1880-1910. In the five chapters of the book (two are dedicated to the Yaquis) Guidotti-Hernández takes each of these historical flashpoints and interrogates them, showing first how they have been minimalized and erased from national histories. She then offers new analyses of these somewhat familiar incidents, illuminating how violence creates the nation-state – both Mexican and U.S. – in the context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

In Chapter One, “A Woman with No Names and Many Names: Lynching, Gender, Violence, and Subjectivity,” Guidotti-Hernández takes a fresh look at the story of the 1851 lynching of a U.S. Mexicana, Josefa/Juanita (she is referred to by both names), and the historiographical responses to it. She focuses on the gendered, classed, and racialized ways in which “disciplining bodies” through lynching was an accepted way to police behavior and determine who belonged and who did not in a ninetheenth century California mining town. In Chapter Two, “Webs of Violence: The Camp Grant Indian Massacre, Nation, and Genocidal Alliances,” Guidotti-Hernández examines how the alliance between Mexicans, Papago Indians, and Anglos against the Aravaipa and Pinal Apache demonstrated that Mexicans and Indians were not only resisting Anglos in this period, but that economics and internalized racism contributed to a variety of ethnic alliances involved in violent projects of nation-building in the borderlands. Guidotti-Hernández addresses the racism in the work of Jovita González (the first Mexican American woman to earn a master’s degree in anthropology at the University of Texas) in Chapter Three, “Spaces of Death: Border (Anthropological) Subjects and the Problem of Racialized and Gendered Violence in Jovita González’s Archive.” Guidotti-Hernández suggests that the erasure of the racism in the work of Jovita González shows the failure of gender analysis in the portrayals of some racialized subjects that are from a lower class.

In the last two chapters of Unspeakable Violence, “Transnational Histories of Violence during the Yaqui Indian Wars in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands: The Historiography, and  “Stripping the Body of Flesh and Memory: Toward a Theory of Yaqui Subjectivity,” Guidotti-Hernández focuses on the Yaqui Indians and the formation of the Mexican nation-state. In these chapters, Guidotti-Hernández shows how the Mexican government aligned with U.S. and Mexican capitalists in an attempt to annihilate the Yaquis because they disrupted progress and modernization. Her argument is most forceful and compelling in these chapters. She describes how the Yaqui fight for their land and sovereignty upset the Mexican government’s project of “orden y progresso” under Porfirio Díaz as well as U.S. and Mexican capitalists’ desire for mining and industry in the Mexican northwest.  The violent campaigns against the Yaquis included lynching, photographing the lynchings, and posting the photos as warnings to other Yaquis. Guidotti-Hernández shows how the photographs of lynched Yaquis demonstrated that “the state was invested in a project of annihilation of indigenous people as a means of making the state modern.”

Guidotti-Hernández states in the introduction that Unspeakable Violence is not a resistance narrative, nor is it a celebration of mestizaje, hybridity, and nationalism. Her intervention in U.S.-Mexico Borderlands historiography, but especially in Chicana/o historiography, is to illuminate the ways in which all types of violence, national and corporate as well as intra-ethnic violence, created national identity and sought to determine who was a national subject and who was not in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

The Newberry Library Seminar in Borderlands and Latino Studies, 2013-14 CFP

The Newberry Library Seminar in BORDERLANDS AND LATINO STUDIES

Co-sponsored by Indiana University’s Latino Studies Program, Northwestern University’s Program in Latina and Latino Studies, the
Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s History Department, the Center
for Latino Research at DePaul University, and the Katz Center for Mexican Studies at the University of Chicago

This seminar provides a forum for works-in-progress that explore topics in Borderlands and Latino studies. We seek proposals for seminar papers that examine the interplay of Latino people, communities, and culture in the United States; transnational and comparative “borderlands” studies; civil rights and social movements; and other related topics. We welcome proposals from scholars working in a broad range of academic fields, and are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches.

The seminar is open to graduate students, faculty members and independent scholars. Graduate students and junior faculty in the early-writing stages who wish to present work are especially encouraged to apply. To maximize time for discussion, papers are circulated electronically in advance. Priority is given to individuals who are at a stage of their research at which they can best benefit from feedback. The seminar meets on selected Fridays during the academic year, from 3:00 PM-5:00 PM, and for one daylong conference on a Saturday in the spring, from 9:00AM-3:00PM. All meetings take place at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois.

To propose a paper, please send a one-page proposal, a statement explaining the relationship of the paper to your other work, and a brief c.v. to Carmen Jaramillo, Program Assistant, Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture, The Newberry Library. Please send all materials as a single PDF attachment via email to: scholl@newberry.org.

If you are interested in proposing a paper and have questions, please contact seminar coordinators, Geraldo Cadava (Northwestern University, g-cadava@northwestern.edu), Benjamin Johnson (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, johnsobh@uwm.edu), and Jason Ruiz (University of Notre Dame, jason.ruiz@nd.edu).

The Newberry Library is unable to provide funds for travel or lodging, but can assist in locating discounted accommodations. If you would like to be placed on the mailing list to receive announcements of upcoming presentations, or if you would like further information about Newberry Library seminars, send an e-mail to scholl@newberry.org. (Please include your e-mail address with all communications, and let us know if you would be willing to receive announcements by e-mail.)

Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture
The Newberry
60 W Walton St.
Chicago, IL 60610
scholl@newberry.org
http://www.newberry.org

Gunfire and a Manhunt in my Supposedly Quiet Bordered-Backyard

In December, I wrote about my experience growing up on “The Other Border.”  I explained how the proximity of a seemingly porous and un-militarized U.S.-Canadian border (much of it rural or remote mountain wilderness) violated some of our popular conceptions of what U.S. borders are like.  Of course, I have always known that plenty of illicit things go on along my quaint Whatcom County border with British Columbia, but this headline in the Bellingham Herald really caught my eye.

“Gunfire near Sumas border sparks manhunt“

“Sumas?” I thought.  “That tiny little border crossing in my county’s backyard?”  Indeed, it was that very Sumas.  I followed the story throughout the day yesterday.   It even got picked up by national news outlets like the L.A. Times and USA Today.  Naturally, the Canadian Press picked up on the story too, offering some great helicopter footage of the area..

Two men were eventually apprehended and 58.2 lbs of Amphetamine were recovered.

The location of the altercation was just a couple miles from the road I mentioned in my December post, where as a kid I remember looking across a farmer’s field and being told that “the border” was just that small farmer’s barbed-wire fence.

View Larger Map

So, why is this interesting?  Well, it just goes to show that looks can be decieving.  Here I was going on and on about how remote and calm my local border seemed and I come to find out now that it is a hotbed of drug and arms trafficking specifically because it is so remote and calm!  This doesn’t come as a complete surprise.  For those who have watched the excellent CBC series Intelligence (available on Netflix, sadly cancelled after two seasons), there are storilines that feature characters running drugs across that very same terrain.  They even mention some local landmarks like the small town of Maple Falls, WA – though they didn’t film the scene there.

Moral of the Story?  Borders are deceiving.  We cannot let the peaceful rural terrain, remote mountain wilderness, or lack of border walls with machine gun turrets and visible guard towers belie the realities inherent in all borders.  They bisect landscapes and impose social, cultural, economic and political differentials upon those living on either side.  They transform illicit activity into transnational crime.  In some circumstances, they attract illicit activity.  In the case of Intelligence, the growing of marijuana is more easily undertaken in British Columbia but there is a market for the product in Washington.  The characters didn’t grow in BC because the climate was better.  They grew product in Canada because of differences in drug enforcement.  The remote border invited easy transport to the U.S. market where prices were better.

Art imitates life, I guess – because it sounds like this is precisely what happened yesterday near Sumas.  Growing up on the Canadian border, I never thought twice about its proximity presenting a risk to my personal safety.  Perhaps I should have.  I hiked in the woods and mountains not 3 miles from the very woods where two camouflage-wearing men shot at border patrol agents.  What is telling about my own assumptions is that questions of safety probably would have crossed my mind if I had been hiking along the U.S.-Mexican border.  As I have argued in my inaugural post a year ago, Dare to Compare: Attempting Comparative Transnational and Borderlands History, the U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Canadian borders have more to say to each other than we think.

Lets get them talking.

“Straddling Boundaries” Conference

Registration is now OPEN for “Straddling Boundaries: Hemispherism, Cultural Identity and Indigeneity”, the inaugural international conference of the Culture and the Canada-US Border research network.

May 24-26 2013

Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

KEYNOTES: Margaret Noodin, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Guillermo Verdecchia

For more details and to register, go to: http://www.kent.ac.uk/ccusb/events/algoma.html

“Straddling Boundaries”

Where border studies in North America has hitherto focused primarily on US engagement with Mexico to the south, the CCUSB network seeks to shift border discussion North to the 49th parallel, and to investigate the representation of the border in both American and Canadian culture and cultural production.

As part of a series of CCUSB events, this conference will intervene in familiar border discourses, which have expanded out of the social and political contexts of the US-Mexico border, while the Canadian border with the USA has tended to be overlooked—prior to 9.11 at least—as ‘passive’. The conference will be an opportunity to develop further border-specific conversations within Hemispheric and Transnational Studies, drawing attention to the ways in which cultural production at/on the Canada-US border both corroborates and unsettles that narrative of ‘passivity’, and highlights the nuances and exigencies of US-Canadian relations, as well as Canada’s unique place in the cultural history of the Americas.

Algoma University is a small progressive university in Northern Ontario overlooking the Canada-US border, providing  an ideal location for the staging of this conference. The strategic location of the Twin Cities of Sault Canada and Sault  Michigan on the St. Mary’s River is the site of a rich international history linked to border issues, including those surrounding indigeneity and the border, the cross-fertilization of cultural identity, and the culture and ‘architecture’ of post-9/11 security and surveillance. The Algoma campus is located on the site of a former Indian residential school, and now includes Anishinaabe programs through Shingwauk Education Trust. For the 2013 CCUSB conference we will have the option of accommodation on site so that participants can enjoy the campus. For further details, visit: http://www.algomau.ca

Teaching Borderlands History to College Undergraduates: Part Two – What’s Worked and What Hasn’t

Any good teacher worth his or her salt will tell you that no class is perfect. Some things can seem like good ideas in advance, but when you finally try them out in class, they just don’t work. Conversely, however, one always experiences certain unexpected victories over the course of a long semester.

In this post, I’d like to look back on the first half of the spring semester. There are certain things that have worked well in my class on the U.S.-Mexico border, while others have left a little something to be desired. What follows is by no means a comprehensive report on how the class is going (although it is in truth one of the best classes I’ve ever taught), but more of a reflection on a few things that I think are worth mentioning.

The Comanche Empire

I must admit that I got a number of strange looks when I told friends and colleagues that I’d be assigning Pekka Hämäläinen’s The Comanche Empire, especially given that I put it on the syllabus relatively early in the semester (we discussed it during the third week of the semester, if memory serves). Some people questioned whether undergraduates would understand the book, as its arguments are complex; others thought that the book was simply too long to have undergraduates read. So, when I arrived in class for the first of our two discussions over the book, I was admittedly a little nervous.

I should preface this by saying that I always tell my students in upper-division courses to “memo read” books rather than read them like they’re novels (unless, of course, the book in question actually happens to be a novel). This, I’ve found, usually allays whatever fears students have in terms of handling the reading load. Also, knowing that I don’t expect them to read every single word on every single page relaxes them for class discussion (at least, I think it does); if they don’t feel guilty about NOT having absorbed every little thing from the book, then at least they’ll still be confident that they have something to contribute to class discussion. It also helps that this particular group that I have this semester is especially talkative. Class discussions have been quite fruitful.

Anyway, back to Hämäläinen. As I walked into class that first day we were to discuss the book, two of the students instantly told me they were frustrated. “Oh boy, here we go,” I thought. Much to my delight, however, they weren’t frustrated with the book itself; they were frustrated that they HAD TO “memo read” it to get the reading assignment done! In other words, these two particular students liked the book so much that they wished they could’ve spent even more time than they did on it. What a terrific complaint for me to get! We spent the following two days on the book, and the general consensus was (of course) that it’s fantastic. I’m quite certain that I’ll use The Comanche Empire again.

Cortina

I assumed before the semester started that the students would absolutely love Jerry Thompson’s biography on Juan Cortina. And hey, what’s not to love? It’s a fantastic story, and Thompson is an incredibly elegant writer. I assigned Cortina mainly because of its content and readability. Juan Cortina’s story embodies some of the most important elements of nineteenth-century Texas-Mexico borderlands history, including Anglo racism against ethnic Mexicans, Tejano land loss, and the wanton cruelty of the Texas Rangers in the nineteenth century. Placing Juan Cortina’s story alongside a fine essay by Miguel González from Bridging National Borders (which argues that Anglo-Mexican cooperation in building the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the late nineteenth century needs to be highlighted above conflict – I didn’t actually assign the essay, but merely summarized for the class during our discussion of Thompson’s book) provided for some really nice discussion about the messiness of life along the border in Texas after 1848. Social conflict AND cooperation, we decided as a group, will together always coexist in modern borderlands settings.

But, I digress. As useful and important as Cortina’s story is, I’m now of the mind that spending two whole days on it was a bit of overkill. Also, much to my surprise, a number of the students said that they preferred The Comanche Empire over Cortina, because the former is more argument driven than the latter. There were a number of students, however, who preferred Thompson’s book because of its general readability.

I don’t think I’ll use Cortina the next time I teach this class, although that doesn’t mean that I’ll never use it again. I’ve probably cited the book a dozen times in my own work. But, I’d like to give the students something that focuses on a late-nineteenth century border region a bit more broadly and analytically. Elliot Young’s book on Catarino Garza comes to mind, as do several others that might fit geographically and temporally. The possibilities are numerous.

Adelman, Aron, and Borderlands Historiography

Probably the biggest disappointment so far this semester was our class discussion on Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron’s now-famous article on borderlands history in a 1999 edition of the American Historical Review. This article is somewhat of a classic in modern borderlands historiography, so I thought it would be a nice lead-in to some of the questions that modern borderlands historians tend to ask. Although I, personally, have never had a huge fondness for this article, I figured it was worth having the students read it and discuss it in class.

Boy was I wrong. The students hated it and found it incredibly unclear. One of the students very insightfully pointed out that Adelman and Aron’s model for understanding the creation of modern borders seemed to neglect the existence of Indian historical agency. When I informed the student that a prominent historian—none other than Pekka Hämäläinen!—had made the exact same argument in the AHR forum that followed the article (which I didn’t assign), he was understandably very pleased.

I wound up walking the students through the Adelman and Aron article rather than leading a discussion on it, which wasn’t terribly fruitful. Next time, instead of using A&A, what I plan do is assign Ben Johnson and Andy Graybill’s introduction to Bridging National Borders along with Elliott Young and Sam Truett’s introduction to Continental Crossroads. I didn’t assign either essay this time (I honestly don’t remember why), but I did utilize both for class during the first week in order to sketch the larger structure of borderlands historiography for the students. Both articles paired together provide a nice overview of how borderlands history has evolved and changed over the years.

In closing, I’d be fascinated to hear from other borderlands historians. What have you done in your classes that’s worked well? What hasn’t worked well? Have you had experiences that were similar to mine? What books have worked well, and which ones haven’t?

This is the second post in a three-part series on teaching borderlands history to college undergraduates. In the third and final post, I’ll compare and contrast the benefits of teaching North American borderlands history versus focusing solely on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tim Bowman
West Texas A&M University

Luis Alberto Urrea, “Universal Border: From Tijuana to the World” 7:30 p.m. March 6 at New Mexico State University

“Luis Alberto Urrea, an award-winning author, will present “Universal Border: From Tijuana to the World” at 7:30 p.m. March 6 at New Mexico State University’s Atkinson Recital Hall. The event is free and open to the public as part of NMSU’s University Speaker Series.”

See this article for more information.