These Ragged Edges

Description

The U.S.-Mexico border has earned an enduring reputation as a site of violence. During the past twenty years in particular, the drug wars—fueled by the international movement of narcotics and vast sums of money—have burned an abiding image of the border as a place of endemic danger into the consciousness of both countries. By the media, popular culture, and politicians, mayhem and brutality are often portrayed as the unavoidable birthright of this transnational space. Through multiple perspectives from both sides of the border, the collected essays in These Ragged Edges directly challenge that idea, arguing that rapidly changing conditions along the U.S.-Mexico border through the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries have powerfully shaped the ebb and flow of conflict within the region.  By diving deeply into diverse types of violence, contributors dissect the roots and consequences of border violence across numerous eras, offering a transnational analysis of how and why violence has affected the lives of so many inhabitants on both sides of the border.

Contributors include Alberto Barrera-Enderle, Alice Baumgartner, Lance R. Blyth, Timothy Bowman, Elaine Carey, William D. Carrigan, Jose Carlos Cisneros Guzman, Alejandra Diaz de Leon, Miguel Angel Gonzalez-Quiroga, Santiago Ivan Guerra, Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle, Sonia Hernandez, Alan Knight, Jose Gabriel Martinez-Serna, Brandon Morgan, and Joaquin Rivaya-Martinez, Andrew J. Torget, and Clive Webb.

Sujets

• Histoire
• DRUGS
• Coyotes
• Comanche (etnia)
• Porfiriato
• Mexican?American War
• Gregorio Cortez
• Mexico ? United States border
• Juan Cortina
• Cattle raiding
• Southwest
• State
• Mexican Revolution
• Lynching
• Smuggling
• New Mexico
• United States
• History
• Local
• Comanche
• Cartel
• Violence
• Nouveau-Mexique
• Chihuahua

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 10 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469668406
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

These Ragged Edges
The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History
Andrew R. Graybill and Benjamin H. Johnson, editors
EDITORIAL BOARD
Juliana Barr
Sarah Carter
Maurice Crandall
Kelly Lytle Hern á ndez
Cynthia Radding
Samuel Truett
The study of borderlands—places where different peoples meet and no one polity reigns supreme—is undergoing a renaissance. The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History publishes works from both established and emerging scholars that examine borderlands from the precontact era to the present. The series explores contested boundaries and the intercultural dynamics surrounding them and includes projects covering a wide range of time and space within North America and beyond, including both Atlantic and Pacific worlds.
Published with support provided by the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
These Ragged Edges
Histories of Violence along the U.S.-Mexico Border
Edited by
ANDREW J. TORGET
GERARDO GURZA-LAVALLE
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
© 2022 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Minion Pro by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2022007375 .
ISBN 978-1-4696-6838-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4696-6839-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4696-6840-6 (ebook)
Cover illustration: Carol M. Highsmith, Humble Cemetery in the Tiny Pima County, Arizona, Community of Quijotoa, near the Mexican Border (Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-49675).
For Andrew Graybill, Sherry Smith, Ruth Ann Elmore, and Chuck Grench, who made this possible
Contents Acknowledgments Introduction The Problem of Violence along the U.S.-Mexico Border ANDREW J. TORGET AND GERARDO GURZA-LAVALLE PART I Livestock, Markets, and Guns Chapter 1 Smuggling and Violence in the Northern Borderlands of New Spain, 1810–1821 ALBERTO BARRERA-ENDERLE AND ANDREW J. TORGET Chapter 2 Trespassers in the Land of Plenty Comanche Raiding across the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1846–1853 JOAQUÍN RIVAYA-MARTÍNEZ Chapter 3 Theft and Violence in the Lower Rio Grande Borderlands, 1866–1876 LANCE R. BLYTH PART II State Power in Transition Chapter 4 Cooperative Violence on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880 MIGUEL ÁNGEL GONZÁLEZ-QUIROGA Chapter 5 Citizenship, Violence, and the Cortina War ALICE L. BAUMGARTNER Chapter 6 Violence, Crime, and the Limitations of State Power in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1848–1875 TIMOTHY BOWMAN Chapter 7 State-Construction and Industrial Development in the Transformation of State Violence in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands during the Early Porfiriato J. GABRIEL MARTÍNEZ-SERNA PART III Violence at the Turn of the Century Chapter 8 Avenging Tom ó chic and Santo Tom á s Contested Narratives of Santana Pérez’s Insurgency along the Chihuahua–New Mexico Border BRANDON MORGAN Chapter 9 Por un compatriota Gregorio Cortez, State-Sanctioned Violence, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance SONIA HERNÁNDEZ Chapter 10 Cycles of Lynching The U.S.-Mexico Border and Mob Violence against Persons of Mexican Descent in the United States, 1848–1928 WILLIAM D. CARRIGAN AND CLIVE WEBB Chapter 11 Border Violence in Revolutionary Mexico, 1910–1920 ALAN KNIGHT PART IV Drugs and Migrants Chapter 12 Narcos and Narcs Violence and the Transformation of Drug Trafficking at the Texas-Mexico Border SANTIAGO IVAN GUERRA Chapter 13 Women, Family, Violence, and Trust Drugged Lives on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1950 to the Present ELAINE CAREY AND JOSÉ CARLOS CISNEROS GUZMÁN Chapter 14 Keep Them Out! Border Enforcement and Violence since 1986 ALEJANDRA DÍAZ DE LEÓN Contributors Index
Figures, Graphs, Map, and Tables
Figures
  0.1  Movie poster for Contrabando y Traición , xiv
  1.1  Map of the internal provinces of New Spain, 28
  3.1  Cattle raid on the Texas border, 74
  4.1  Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, 96
  5.1  “Proclama del ciudadano Nepomuceno Cortinas,” 120
  6.1  Mexican side, pontoon bridge over Rio Grande River, 140
  7.1  Corporaci ó n del contrarresguardo para los estados de N. Le ó n y Tamaulipas, 166
  8.1   Deming Headlight , 190
  9.1  Gregorio Cortez, 214
10.1 Mat í as Romero, 240
11.1 Clifford K. Berryman cartoon of an irate Uncle Sam pursuing Pancho Villa, 264
12.1 South Texas drug seizure by Border Patrol, aerial view, 296
13.1 Dessy, 320
14.1 Author conducting an interview, 340
Graphs
  5.1  The price of cattle in 1880 dollars, 1850–1880, 130
14.1 Apprehensions in the southwest border of the United States, 346
Map
  2.1  Comanche range, 1846–1853, 48
Tables
10.1 Confirmed lynching of persons of Mexican descent by period, 243
10.2 Increase of Mexican-born population in the United States, 1850–1930, 245
10.3 Confirmed lynching of persons of Mexican descent by state, 1852–1858, 246
10.4 Confirmed list of persons of Mexican descent lynched by state, 1873–1877, 250
10.5 Confirmed lynching of persons of Mexican descent by state, 1915–1919, 253
14.1 Southwest border-sector deaths, 361
Acknowledgments
The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University has been the foundational support for this project. A powerful incubator for scholarship on borders and borderlands, the Clements Center sponsors symposia every year on important topics in borderlands history. During the spring of 2012, the editors of this volume began a conversation with Andrew R. Graybill, the Center’s director, Sherry L. Smith, then the Center’s co-director, and Ruth Ann Elmore, the Center’s assistant director, about the possibility of putting together an international symposium focused on the history of violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Andrew, Sherry, and Ruth Ann immediately offered their deep support for the project and its vision of fostering a cross-border conversation between scholars in both the United States and Mexico. We could not know at the outset how enduring and steadfast that support would prove to be, which we needed throughout the intricate planning and execution of two international symposia and the long road that followed as we brought this volume to completion. We are grateful beyond words.
Within Mexico, we were lucky to have the ideal partner in the Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. Jos é Maria Luis Mora. The Instituto Mora hosted the initial paper workshops and a public event in Mexico City, allowing everyone involved in the project to begin our work in the midst of a truly transnational exchange. We are deeply indebted to Luis J á uregui, then the director of the Instituto, for his enthusiastic support of the symposium and project.
We are tremendously fortunate to have worked with the University of North Carolina Press from the very beginning. Our original editor, Chuck Grench, has been a steadfast champion of the project who came to our symposiums in both Mexico City and Dallas, listened to endless paper workshops, and offered sage advice on shaping the volume for which we are exceedingly grateful. When Chuck retired, we were fortunate to bring the volume to print with Debbie Gershenowitz, and we are indebted to the many talented people at UNC Press who helped transform the manuscript into this book. Andrew Graybill and Benjamin Johnson brought the volume into the David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History, and we could not have asked for better series editors.
Along the way, innumerable people have supported and strengthened this work. We are deeply grateful to Marcela Terrazas for her participation in both symposiums, for her invaluable input during the paper workshops, and for being a steadfast friend to the project from beginning to end. We benefited greatly from conversations with Luis Garc í a, David Romo, Alfredo Corchado, Ian Grillo, Dianne Sol í s, and Neil Foley. Insights provided by anonymous readers for UNC Press sharpened the collected essays throughout. More than anyone, the contributors to this volume have continually shaped and reshaped our understanding of the border and its tangled past. One of the singular joys of this project has been the opportunity to work closely with so many talented scholars who care deeply about the intersections between the peoples and histories of Mexico and the United States.
Our greatest debts are to our families for their unwavering support throughout the remarkably long journey this project required.
Andrew J. Torget and Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle
These Ragged Edges
Figure 0.1    Movie poster for Contrabando y Traición , 1977. Courtesy of Arturo Mart í nez.
Introduction
The Problem of Violence along the U.S.-Mexico Border
ANDREW J. TORGET AND GERARDO GURZA-LAVALLE
The long border between the United States and Mexico has earned an enduring reputation as a site of brutal violence. During the past twenty years in particular, the carnage of the Drug Wars—fueled by the international movement of narcotics and vast sums of money—has burned into the consciousness of both countries an abiding image of the U.S.-Mexico border as a place of endemic bloodshed. Stories of brutal killings, beheadings, mass graves, and the murder of innocent men and women became numbingly commonplace in newspapers and magazines as journalists documented the rapid escalation of violence among cartels competing for dominance in the growing border drug trade during the early 2000s. In 2010, during a spike in cross-cartel killings, CBS News dubbed Ciudad Ju á rez (sister city to El Paso across the Rio Grande) the “murder capital of the world.” 1 Journalists working on both sides of the border began publishing best-selling books—such as Charles Bowden’s Murder City , Ioan Grillo’s El Narco ,