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The following essay is drawn from my dissertation research, which covers road building and motor travel in Mexico from 1920-1952. 

The celebrations that commemorated highway openings in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands reveal the optimism and ambitions that local communities had for greater binational engagement. In September 1941, for example, thousands of people gathered in Monterrey from across the region to inaugurate the new road to Reynosa, Tamaulipas. It was a great spectacle. The city police’s mariachi band and a travelling orchestra from Laredo, Texas played open-air concerts, while vendors lined the streets selling food and trinkets to visitors. Political speeches filled the day. Even the transit authority joined in the festivities, organizing a park for children to play-act driving with miniature automobiles and learn about motor safety.[1] These events evoked a sense of community, reflecting a passage from President Manuel Ávila Camacho’s first state of the union address: “It is not possible to truly integrate a sense of the nation without an ample road network that facilitates economic exchange [and] connects human groups.”[2] Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

The Mexican American Archival Enterprise at the Benson Latin American Collection: An Historical Appraisal

Free and Open to the General Public
Evening Reception Followed by One-Day Symposium
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From H-LatAm:

Dear colleagues,

As you may know, Oxford University has decided to ‘freeze’ the Chair
in the History of Latin America when Alan Knight retires at the end of
2013, which means that it will not be advertised and the post will in
effect remain vacant for the foreseeable future and possibly be
eliminated. I have drafted a letter of protest, copied below. If you
would like to support this protest, please email me with your name and
affiliation, and I will add them to the letter. I hope to forward the
letter, with as many signatures as possible, in a couple of weeks time
to the Oxford VC, the head of the Humanities Division, and the head of
History Faculty. Possibly also to the THES and Guardian. Continue reading →

When speaking about the impact of U.S. labor on early twentieth-century Latinos, one must consider how labor affected Latinos differently depending on the location, time and purpose of creating a labor capital. I would like to speak about various unique locales where U.S. labor transformed, or perhaps, imposed, notions of modernity onto Latinos – Mexicans in the Southwest and Puerto Ricans on the island. These locations are special in their proximity to  two separate countries (PR and U.S./Mexico and Arizona) as well as how U.S. imperial influence transformed the family. Continue reading →

Hippies and Indians: The New Mexico Story

January 30, 2013 at 12 noon to 1p.m. at the Texana Room, DeGolyer Library, 6404 Hyer (formerly Hilltop) Lane & McFarlin Blvd.

A lecture by Sherry L. Smith,  Southern Methodist University Distinguished Professor of History and Associate Director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies.

Part of the Brown Bag Lecture Series.

Professor Smith will speak about how the Indian and “hippie” counterculture alliance  of the 1960s played out in northern New Mexico. This lecture focuses on only one part of her newly published monograph, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight  for Red Power (Oxford, 2012) which examines the role of Indians and non-Indians in  important political events of the Red Power movement, such as the Pacific Northwest Fish-ins and the Occupation of Wounded Knee, and features pop culture icons such as Marlon Brando and Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Pack a brown bag lunch (not required) and join us for what promises to be a fascinating lecture by celebrated Western historian Sherry Lynn Smith!

For more information: swcenter@smu.edu, 214-768-3684