Borderlands Archives - Not Even Past

Memories of War: Reflections on Japanese Borderlands Experiences and Nikkei Incarceration

Introduction to Memories of War by Lucero Estrella, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Lawrence University

When developing my syllabus for ETST 110: Introduction to Ethnic Studies, I thought of ways to have students at Lawrence University engage with the themes of race, ethnicity, borders, gender, indigeneity, and migration beyond the United States. Each week, we discussed themes such as settler colonialism, racialization, criminalization, and resistance and how these appeared across various temporalities and global geographies.

For our week on resistance and exclusion during the mid-twentieth century, I decided to have my students read my NEP piece “Memories of War: Japanese Borderlands Experiences during WWII,” alongside Karen M. Inouye’s article “No Simple History: Nikkei Incarceration on Indigenous Lands.”[1] My goal was to have students engage with alternative histories of Japanese internment that they might not have encountered in the past. While my NEP piece approaches Japanese incarceration and family separation through a hemispheric lens and discusses Japanese wartime experiences on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border, Inouye’s work centers Nikkei women’s narratives of incarceration on Indigenous land to highlight the interconnections between racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and wartime incarceration. Both works discuss the importance of memory in historical studies of the wartime period as a way of uncovering the continuing legacies of state violence.

*Japanese internment detainees, 1942. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

For my class, students were expected to write one weekly, in-class free writing exercise based on a few guiding questions. During the week we read both works, students were required to tackle one or more of the following questions: How do Estrella and/or Inouye use memory in their works? Who do these memories belong to? What new perspectives and possibilities emerge from the use of memory as a historical source?

The four reflections below are from four Lawrence University students who took my Fall 2024 term Introduction to Ethnic Studies course: Tahlia Moe, Niranjana Mittal, Nicholas Lubin, and Riya Jehangir Stebleton. Their short preces include reflections on some themes and methodologies that structured our class discussions for the term, such as relational race, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and incarceration.

Student Reflections

Tahlia Moe

Memory serves as the gateway to a hidden archive. Employing memory as a historical source unearths relations, stories, intimacies, and experiences that traditional historical methods often overlook. “Memories of War: Japanese Borderlands Experiences during WWII” by Estrella and “No Simple History: Nikkei Incarceration on Indigenous Lands” by Inouye explore the hidden archive as they prioritize memories as primary sources. Estrella highlights memories from Japanese families and activists in the U.S. and Mexico to display the legacies of violence and anti-Asian exclusion on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Meanwhile, Inouye writes about Nikkei incarceration on Indigenous lands in Arizona, featuring memories from Japanese women who were imprisoned as children in Poston. The memories of these women reveal legacies of racial capitalism and settler colonialism that are downplayed, erased, or otherwise not found in the archives. Their memories reveal interactions between the Japanese prisoners and the Indigenous people as they created their own economies and forms of resistance. A relational race approach becomes significant to understanding the interactions between the groups and the effects of state-sponsored violence and settler-colonialist ideologies and policies. Compiling these memories helps form a fuller, more empathetic picture that cares about and honors subjects of violent histories. Emerging perspectives from people involved thus introduce the personal perspective and intimate value, combatting traditional historical methods.

*Poston, Arizona, 1945. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

Niranjana Mittal

Estrella’s piece titled “Memories of War: Japanese Borderlands Experiences during WWII,” explores lived experiences from the Texas-Mexico borderlands through the lens of memory. By using oral histories and personal recollections, Estrella centers the humanity of these historical events, presenting an intimate narrative that contrasts with more traditional archival sources. Memory in her work becomes a vital tool for uncovering some overlooked aspects of history. Estrella’s use of memory is particularly powerful in reconstructing histories that lack extensive documentation or have been marginalized in mainstream narratives.

The memories she draws upon belong to individuals who lived through the upheaval of war. These are ordinary people whose voices are often absent from official records but whose experiences illuminate the complexities of war beyond its grand strategies and political machinations. For example, recollections of displacement and resource scarcity challenge the monolithic view of Japan as solely a wartime aggressor, adding nuance to our understanding of suffering in Japanese Mexican communities during the war. Estrella uncovers the brutality of imperial policies and how individuals navigated and survived these oppressive systems.

One of the most significant effects of Estrella incorporating these memories is how it opens up new perspectives on history. Memory, unlike official records, is subjective and malleable, shaped by individual experiences and the passage of time. This fluidity allows us to reveal dimensions of history that might otherwise remain hidden. For instance, memories often preserve emotional truths and everyday experiences that are absent in traditional state sources. They bring to light stories of resilience, survival, and moral ambiguity that challenge simplistic narratives of victimhood or villainy. Estrella shows how the memories of those at the margins, such as borderland communities, challenge nationalistic accounts that erase the interconnected and often contradictory realities of the war.

A dentist's office at the Granada Relocation Center, Amache, Colorado, 1942. — *A dentist’s office at the Granada Relocation Center, Amache, Colorado, 1942. Source: Wikimedia Commons*

Moreover, memory as a historical source opens up possibilities for reconciliation and healing. By including voices that have been silenced or ignored, Estrella’s work fosters a more inclusive understanding of history that acknowledges shared pain and loss across national and cultural boundaries. This approach humanizes history and highlights how memory itself is contested and politicized as individuals and communities negotiate their relationship with the past.

Ultimately, Estrella demonstrates that memory is not just a supplement to traditional historical sources but a vital means of understanding the complexities of human experiences. By foregrounding memory, she shifts the focus from the macro-level forces of war to the lived experiences of individuals – offering a richer, more empathetic perspective on the past.

Nicholas Lubin

In both Estrella’s and Inouye’s works, memory functions as a significant tool for recovery from the deterioration of Native American and immigrant narratives. Due to the United States’ history of isolation and displacement, many families are left with gaps in their history. However, memory functions to fill this gap. Although instances of displacement and isolation are not always documented, memory and oral histories help fill this gap. Memory in Inouye’s piece serves as a connector for the experiences of Japanese Americans who were subjected to incarceration following Executive Order 9066 and those of Native Americans who were displaced from their lands.

Inouye illustrates this overlap through the locations of campsites on Indigenous reservations mirroring the state-imposed limits and borders for the “allowed” spaces for Native peoples. Despite the differing circumstances of the two groups, the process of isolation and extermination is one and the same. Both works feature minority groups that were forcibly relocated because of the unsettling habits that hegemonic powers hold onto, such as settler colonialism and xenophobia. In Estrella’s work, she details this, showing the reader the widespread cross-border relocation of Japanese nationals following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Families across the Americas were torn apart, and many never returned to their homes, causing this impactful moment to fall under the radar. Estrella’s inclusion of oral history and memories of a Japanese Mexican family illustrates how the attempt to silence these voices with equivocation can be combated by preserving the narratives and memories of those who experienced violence and displacement during the wartime period.

Riya Jehangir Stebleton

The erasure of immigrant and Indigenous stories in the United States is a constant theme within hegemonic white narratives. Many families are unable to retrace the steps of their ancestors due to the history of exclusion, internment, and forced separation of ethnic groups. In the works of Estrella’s “Memories of War” & Inouye’s “No Simple History,” memory and empathy are used as powerful mechanisms to bridge historical gaps in the lives of both Japanese and Indigenous communities in the Americas. Although these communities endured different forms of injustice, an overarching system of racism in incarceration and exclusion can be seen through a relational race lens.

Civilian exclusion order #5, posted at First and Front streets, directing removal by April 7 1942 of persons of Japanese ancestry, from the first San Francisco section to be affected by evacuation.
Source: Library of Congress, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-34565.

Estrella discusses the mass displacement of Japanese immigrants after WWII, as well as the obscured and unknown history of Japanese Mexicans. In addition to the criminalization of Japanese migrants following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, working-class migrants in Mexican states such as Coahuila encountered discrimination through forced relocation. Similarly, Inouye highlights the misconstrued narrative of the Nikkei community in the U.S., which is made up of Japanese descendants who have permanently settled abroad. These communities were placed in incarceration camps under the War Relocation Authorities on land where native tribes’ reservations were located. Wartime systems of relocation and incarceration draw direct comparisons to the processes of settler colonialism. Due to the consistent reinforcement of white power, the stories of Japanese migrants and the entanglement of injustices are left unheard of in social spheres, education, and sometimes within families. So, how can these narratives be retold and amplified? For many, the answer lies in the ability to convey memory and empathy in a historical context.

Fragments of memory, combined with empathy, can be utilized to translate and preserve the overlooked histories of both immigrant and Indigenous communities. The usage of memory as a historical source allows for these stories to be retold, drawing connections between systems of incarceration, racialization, and dispossession that affected numerous non-white populations in the United States. For example, there are major gaps in the poorly documented history of Japanese Mexican families, and the usage of empathetic agency can bridge connections across the divide. Narrating history through a first-hand perspective also allows for the descendants of those affected to share the intergenerational impacts of settler colonialism and exclusion, demonstrating the long-term impacts. The preservation of these hidden narratives offers new perspectives on the underrepresented history of Japanese migrants while also integrating emotional analogy, remembrance, and personal influence. Incarceration rooted in white dominance continues to be a relevant issue in the United States. Consequently, it is crucial to remember and extend the narratives of Japanese migrants through mechanisms of memory, empathy, and knowledge, to break the cycle of ethnic erasure and carceral systems of injustice.

Lucero Estrella is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Lawrence University

[1] Karen Inouye, “No Simple History: Nikkei Incarceration on Indigenous Lands,” Journal of Transnational American Studies, 15(1), 2024.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

15 Minute History – History of the U.S.-Mexico Border Region

Guest: C.J. Alvarez, Assistant Professor in Department of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin

Host: Alina Scott, Ph.D. Student, Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin

In recent years, conversations about the US-Mexico border have centered around the border wall. However, according to today’s guest, C.J. Alvarez, the wall is one of many construction projects that have occurred in the border region in the last 30 years. “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.”

Episode 127: History of the U.S.-Mexico Border Region

Continue Listening

Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia, by Nancy P. Appelbaum (2016)

By Madeleine Olson

What occurs when elite driven narratives about national identity dramatically different differ from the realities people experienced? During the nineteenth century throughout Latin America, when national boundaries were just beginning to become coherent, the upper echelons of society constructed tales about their nations that often vastly differed from lived experiences.

Between 1850 and 1859, the Chorographic Commission traveled the territory of present day Colombia in an attempt to map the land and the people who lived there, using chorography, or detailed representations of a particular region. Sponsored by the government of New Granada (an older name for Colombia), the commission produced a wealth of maps, texts, illustrations, as well as travel journals and diaries, in order to construct the image of a unified nation. Implicit in the commission’s initial mandate was the assumption that it would justify the existing administrative order by making that order appear natural.

The visual culture it produced, however, depicted a nation that was far from cohesive, with regional individuality and diversity. Instead of portraying a unified nation, the commission presented the country as fragmented into different, and often opposing regions, inhabited by racially and culturally distinct races, that reinforced assumptions of Andean and white mestizo superiority. In this new book, Nancy Appelbaum expands our understanding of this central paradox, demonstrating that the commission’s materials reveal some of the ways that Colombian elites grappled with the challenges posed by varied topographies and diverse inhabitants.

The leaders of the Chorographic Commission included both foreign members and others who were born and bred in New Granada. Two of the key figures on the commission, whose writings play an important role throughout the book, were Agustín Codazzi and Manuel Ancízar. Born in Italy’s papal states and a Napoleonic war veteran, Codazzi was in fact first contracted to map the Venezuelan provinces, which had seceded from Gran Colombia, in 1830. The secession precipitated Gran Colombia’s dissolution into Venezuela, Ecuador, and New Granada. Manuel Ancízar, a Colombian lawyer, writer, and journalist, joined Codazzi on the Commission in 1850.

Gran Colombia and modern countries (via Wikimedia Commons).

Using personal correspondence between Codazzi and Ancízar, Appelbaum argues that although the creation of the commission reflected nationalist aspirations of the government, it was fundamentally shaped through its leaders’ own exposure to foreign culture. The geographic writings of Prussian Alexander von Humboldt, as well as Italian Adriano Balbi, strongly influenced Codazzi’s and Ancízar’s initial overviews, as they “draped themselves in the ‘mantle of Humboldtianism’ to emphasize their own scientific legitimacy.” Inspired by Humboldt, Codazzi divided the terrain of New Granada according to the differing altitudes, winds, and vegetables that he encountered. The ideological influence of Humboldt, together with Balbi’s schematic list methodology, helped the Commission create a novel and distinct approach to chorography that was more affordable than the fashionable trigonometric survey.

The detailed accounts produced by Codazzi and Ancízar on the commission’s initial expeditions to the highland region of Antioquia and the Pacific lowland, comprised not only field reports, but also included detailed watercolors created by the commission’s first illustrators in order to depict the populations they encountered. Through comparing the perceptions noted in the field reports with the pictorial representations, the tension comes out between the inclination to show these regions as homogenous when the commission clearly experienced great heterogeneity of the people and customs.

William Price, Typical Inhabitants of the Province of Medellín (via World Digital Library).

This visual culture reflected a literary and artistic current in nineteenth-century Latin America called costumbrismo, or using descriptive prose and dialogue to verbally paint a local scene, emphasizing the customs and particularities of that locale. Within these works, tipos “types” that organized the population into component parts defined by race, occupation, and place, were created to provide both a visual and discursive way to manage the heterogeneity that the commission encountered. In William Price’s Tipos de Medellin, the commission’s artists displayed idealized images of people one would encounter when visiting these places. These images of the racial types that the commission produced updated the eighteenth-century genre of casta paintings for the republican era.

As the commission moved into the tropical lowlands and the eastern plains, Appelbaum further elaborates how the illustrations were largely aimed at an external audience in order to attract immigrants and economic investment to the region. The commission’s efforts were not meant to simply represent the landscape, they were also to transform it in the service of economic advancement. Codazzi believed that these areas, rich in agriculture and livestock, could support many more people than their sparse, midcentury population. Elites defined the tropics, for instance, as being filled with disease, poverty, and backwardness, making it a desirable region for colonization and improved methods of production. The commission took on an ethnographic dimension, as studying the population became an integral part in determining the economic capabilities of the land. Reports, maps, and paintings that Codazzi, Ancízar, and others, produced provided abundant information aimed to facilitate the conquest of the regions they mapped and studied.

Manuel María Paz, Provincia del Chocó: Aspecto esterior de las casas de Nóvita (via World Digital Library).

Applebaum goes on to discuss the methods that mid-nineteenth-century intellectuals living in the highlands around Bogotá employed to rationalize their claim over the local populations. By emphasizing the glorious origins and civilization of the Andean region around Bogotá, at the expense of lower “savage” climates, intellectuals reinforced Bogotá’s claim over this topographically disparate territory. Codazzi projected national history into the ancient past by weaving geology, archeology, and history together and referencing the past as “history” rather than prehistory. They placed themselves, not the local indigenous populations, who ultimately were the Commission’s guides, at the top of the intellectual scale to read the cataclysmic past.

Carmelo Fernández, Piedra grabada de Gámesa. Provincia de Tundama (via World Digital Library).

After Codazzi died in 1859, elites left behind tried to make sense of his project and battled each other over meanings and representations of the nation. Although members of the commission had high hopes for the mass reproduction and circulation of the materials they produced, that did not occur. Chorography and the work of the Chorographic Commission died with Codazzi, supplanted later in the nineteenth century by newer forms of mapping which are still common today, such as topography.

Although the work that the Chorographic Commission created between 1850 and 1859 was not as widely received as hoped, the spatialized and racialized regional hierarchy inherent in its visual materials would be reproduced and refined within Colombian scholarly and popular discourse. By no means the originator of this fragmented discourse, the Commission’s cartographic project formed the basis for most maps of Colombia into the early twentieth century.

Gracefully written, integrating over thirty images and maps, Mapping the Country of Regions offers a fascinating window into both the visual culture produced during the nineteenth century in Colombia, and the ways that territories, boundaries, and state-lines are constructed. Appelbaum’s contextualization of her source base that she makes explicit within her analysis heightens her claims about the use of geographic, ethnographic, and visual methods to secure territory. This theme of racialization of geographic hierarchy is not solely limited to Colombia, as ideas about how race and region have historically informed each other throughout Latin America. The blending of analysis with visual representation enables this book to be of use for those interested in not only Latin American nation-state building, but this methodology of combining visual and textual analysis would be of value for anyone incorporating visual culture into their own work.

Nancy P. Appelbaum, Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

Also by Madeleine Olson on Not Even Past:
A Texas Historian’s Perspective on Mexican State Anticlericalism.

You may also like:
Antonio de Ulloa’s Relación Histórica del Viage a la America Meridional, by Haley Schroer.
Casta Paintings, by Susan Deans-Smith.

The Illegal Slave Trade in Texas, 1808-1865

By Maria Esther Hammack

At the turn of last century Eugene C. Barker, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin, conducted research on the illegal slave trade in Texas. Barker sought to unveil the obscure history of slave smuggling in Texas and he set out to collect information pertaining to that subject. Interested in the nineteenth century, particularly in the period from 1808 to the 1865 when the international slave trade was officially abolished and slavery ended in the United States, Barker wrote numerous letters to elderly residents of Texas asking for their recollections on anything related to the illegal slave trade in Texas during that period.

In March 1902, 80-year-old Sion R. Bostick, from San Saba County, replied to Barker with a letter containing a wealth of information. He remembered slave smuggling endeavors that occurred in the 1830s and added provocative and very specific information about two groups of African slaves who were illegally brought into the United States through Texas at that time. Bostick’s letter arrived as a one-page hand-written letter on fine-lined letterhead paper depicting the official star of Texas on the upper left-hand corner circled by an intricate drawing of olive wreaths adorned by flowers on the uppermost part of the page.

Letter from Sion R. Bostick to Eugene C. Barker discussing the illegal slave trade in Texas in the 1830s

Sion R. Bostick was a decorated soldier who had fought in the Texas army during the Texas Revolution and later was an active community leader in the Texas Veteran’s Association. In 1902 he vividly penned what he remembered about groups of African slaves illegally landing at Velasco and about others smuggled through Matagorda Bay. He wrote that in 1837 he “saw a cargo of negroes that had landed at Velasco” and that he, himself, had given them a “60 pound 9 ounce fish” to cook and eat. Bostick eloquently remembered that the slaves looked dirty and emaciated, that they wore no shoes and seldom any clothes.

The letter from Sion Bostick revealed more than a recollection. It showed that the smuggling of slaves into and through Texas was not such an uncommon practice, as perhaps is often believed; certainly slave smuggling was not thought of as uncommon. Bostick’s language showed that he was not at all surprised that slave smuggling occurred in Texas during a time when it was clearly illegal. For instance, he described at great length his acquaintance with two prominent slave traders, James Bowie and Monroe Edwards. Bostick’s depiction of the slave traders displayed his own lack of apprehension, regret, disgust, or concern about the slave traders’ character and their roles in the illegal slave trade in Texas.

Portrait of Jim Bowie, by George Peter Alexander Healy. a copy of this portrait, painted in 1894, hangs in the Texas State Capitol building. Via Wikipedia.

Bostick’s letter also stands as evidence that an interest in unveiling such hidden histories began at the turn of the century, prompted by Eugene C. Barker. Such primary documents survived unscathed because Barker collected and preserved them. He realized the significance of collecting the memories from elderly Texans, in order preserve aspects of history that would have died if not written down. This particular letter stands in its original form, written in English and in very lucid cursive, as it was received and read by Eugene Barker in 1902. It has been well preserved, despite it having been written in pencil and remains part of the large collection of letters received by Eugene Barker from many sources.

As a source of research, this particular letter raises many questions, as it can be viewed in different ways as oral history, as a memoir, and as a primary record, among other things. For instance, a few of the questions it raised for me were: how did Eugene Barker understand and use the letter? Did he take it at face value? How did he, or how do we, assess its value and authenticity? How was he able to evaluate it as a legitimate recollection when memories are often thought as fragile and inaccurate? Also, how many letters did Eugene Barker write in total? How did he choose the individuals he decided to write letters to? How many of those individuals responded? Did Barker write only to individuals who were elderly men in the 1830s, or did he also write to elderly women? Did he write to white men and women, or men and women who had been formerly enslaved in the 1830s as well? It is impossible to know the answers to all these questions without doing further research on Eugene Barker, his collection, and the circumstances surrounding his academic agenda on the subject of slave smuggling through Texas in the early nineteenth century.

Historians could use this and other letters in the Barker collection to construct a history exposing the illegal slave trade that happened in and through Texas. Some historians could focus on constructing the history about the hardships, the setbacks and the economic profits the smuggling endeavors created. Others could choose to highlight where the slaves were brought in from, how the enslaved fared, and perhaps how they survived and how they perished. Perhaps some historians could study the enslaved who were smuggled, those described by Sion Bostick, where they were taken, what slave owner bought them, if there were any who ran away, and if there were any who perished. In that way historians and students of history can begin to reconstruct the individual narratives of these little known enslaved people.

Letter from Sion R. Bostick to Eugene C. Barker, in Correspondence: Classified, “African Slave Trade in Texas,” 1902, found in Eugene Campbell Barker Papers, 1785, 1812-1959, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

Information on Sion R. Bostick and his role in the Texas revolution, including personal notes, and obituary, can be found in “Reminiscences of Sion R. Bostick,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 5 Vol. 2, (October 1901): 85–96.

A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico jointly created the Mexican Drug War, by Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace (2015)

By Christina Villareal

The “war on drugs” originated in the late nineteenth century when the United States and Mexico began to combat the narcotics industry. By 1914, the Harrison Act criminalized non-medicinal use of opiates and cocaine in the United States. Likewise, with the ratification of the 1917 Constitution, Mexico tried to terminate the distribution of drugs with strict bans on the production and importation of opiates, cocaine, and marijuana. Before 1920, both countries had declared war on drugs. In A Narco History, Boullosa and Wallace explain how the battle against drugs has enriched narcos, escalated violence, and increased the demand for illegal substances.

Boullosa and Wallace begin by recounting the events of 2014 that led to the horrific murder of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero. Although the truth about this case remains obscure today, the authors suggest foul play rooted in collaboration between the federal government, local politicians, and drug-related gangs. The remainder of the book details the convergence of federal and local politicians with drug dealers since the late nineteenth century. Spanning from Mexico’s Porfiriato to Obama’s administration, the twelve chapters explore how the actions of one government, typically those of the United States, resulted in the expansion of the drug trade. For instance, Boullosa and Wallace argue that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which favored U.S. agribusiness, forced thousands of Mexican farmers to turn to marijuana and cocaine production. This deepened the local dependence on the drug market and provided a greater supply for the insatiable demand in the US. Similar instances of cause and effect, which typically benefited the United States to the detriment of Mexicans, occurred throughout the century.

Cempasuchil petals form human-shaped outlines on the ground beside lit candles and a placard during an event held in remembrances of the 43 missing student teachers from the Ayotzinapa. Via REUTERS/Henry Romero

A Nacro History will get any interested reader up-to-speed on the history of this oft discussed “war on drugs.” Beyond a simple timeline, Wallace and Boullosa spell out the implications of political corruption, neoliberalism, the arms trade, and American exceptionalism. U.S. drug policies and pressures on Mexico to squelch the trade ensured the proliferation of “cartels” and the movement of narcotics. The elimination of one “drug lord” inevitably led to the fissuring of cartels and the increase in “collateral criminality,” like kidnapping, rape, extortion, and murder. The authors end the history with a few suggestions for both countries on how to ameliorate the situations for the victims of the drug war violence. Considering the attention given to US-Mexico border issues in the upcoming presidential elections, readers will find their propositions useful.

Courtesy of The Denver Post

The clear writing style and the absence of intimidating footnotes makes A Narco History extremely accessible (even if it might raise questions for academic readers seeking its sources). The lively vignettes on individuals ranging from corrupt politicians and extravagant narcotraficantea to opportunistic agriculturalists and heroic victims, will prove especially interesting to undergraduates and nonacademic audiences. A Narco History will leave many readers eager to embark on research of their own, which they can begin with the book’s excellent bibliography.

Latinas and Latinos: A Growing Presence in the Texas State Historical Association

By Dr. Cynthia E. Orozco

Historians, both veterans and newcomers, recently gathered at the 2015 Texas State Historical Association conference in Corpus Christi. UT Austin, past and present, was well represented. Veteran Tejano historians Roberto Villarreal, Andres Tijerina, and Emilio Zamora attended, all of whom were part of the 1973 UT Austin MA Program in History, the first significant cadre of Tejano graduate students, following Carlos Castaneda and Jovita Gonzalez from decades before.

Dr. Benjamin Johnson; Dr. Monica Munoz Martinez; Dr. John Moran Gonzales; Dr. Trinidad Gonzales; and Dr. Sonia Hernandez

Historical presentations

At breakfast, Villarreal spoke of obstacles various historians placed before him to prevent his success. Today, Dr. Tijerina and Dr. Zamora are co-editing the forthcoming Tejano Handbook of Texas. Dr. Arnoldo De Leon, previous advisor to the Tejano entries of the Handbook’s 1996 edition, was also present as was Jesus F. de la Teja (UT PhD, 1988) who talked about his past role as a Texas State Historian. Dr. Carlos Blanton celebrated the recent publication of his book on UT’s Dr. George I. Sanchez, and Dr. Gabriela Gonzalez celebrated the publication of her essay on Jovita Idar in Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives.

Most encouraging was that for the first time a significant number of Latinas employed in history departments in Texas and elsewhere presented or attended. Present was Dr. Maritza de la Trinidad (UT Pan American); Dr. Laura Munoz (Texas A & M Corpus Christi); Dr. Gabriela Gonzalez (UTSA); Dr. Monica Munoz Martinez (Brown University); Dr. Sonia Hernandez (Texas A & M College Station); Dr. Cynthia E. Orozco (ENMU Ruidoso); and Dr. Caroline Castillo Crimm (retired, Sam Houston State University, UT PhD, 1994). English professor, Dr. Patricia Portales and doctoral candidate, Cecilia Venerable (UTEP) also presented.

Dr. Patricia Portales; PhD candidate Cecilia Venerable; Attorney Sharyll Teneyuca; Dr. Laura Munoz; Dr. Gabriela Gonzalez; Dr. Maritza de la Trinidad; Dr. Cynthia E. Orozco; Dr. Sonia Hernandez; and Dr. Carmen Tafolla

Other Tejanas conducting historical research also attended. Writer Dr. Carmen Tafolla and lawyer Sharyll Teneyuca spoke about labor activist and intellectual Emma Tenayuca. Archaeologist Dr. Mary Jo Galindo spoke about her grandmother, Mexicanist activist of San Antonio and Lytle, Texas, Maria L. Hernandez.

Several sessions were outstanding, including Grassroots Tejano History in Austin, San Antonio, and Laredo; Border Violence, 1915-1919; Tejana leaders; Dr. Hector P. Garcia; and Corpus Christi archives.

Grassroots Public and Community History

Latinas involved in Public History — historical preservation, public programming, and archival collections — were there too. These included Dr. Nancy Vera (Corpus Christi); Graciela Sanchez (San Antonio); Gloria Espitia (Austin); and Margarita Araiza (Laredo). All are key to grassroots Latino historical preservation, public programming, research, and archival preservation in their respective cities.

Tejano Grassroots History: Margarita Azaia; Gloria Espitia; and Graciela Sanchez

The Hispanic Heritage Center of Texas, a grass-roots institution, organized a session on South Texas’ role in Tejano-Mexicano culture. Founded in 2008, it focuses on the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

Efforts by Laredo, Austin, and San Antonio community activists to preserve and promote Tejano and Tejana history were addressed. Margarita Araiza of the Webb County Heritage Foundation noted that historical fallacies are still being promulgated: Texas Monthly reported that Stephen F. Austin was the father of Texas and that the US cattle ranching industry was born in the 19th century, facts negating Spanish and Mexican presence.

The Webb County Heritage Foundation in Laredo works to preserve historic architecture and maintains the Villa Antigua Border Heritage Museum and the Republic of the Rio Grande Museum. It also sponsors a young archivist program along with a Cine de la Epoca de Oro (Mexican Golden Age movies), tours, and has succeeded in getting Laredo local history into the common core at public schools. Its publications include a Laredo Legacies booklet, a Haunted Heritage book, and pamphlets on Leonor Magnon de Villegas and Jovita Idar. The foundation presented its ten minute professional video on Magnon de Villegas.

Gloria Espitia, previously of the Austin History Center, reported that ordinary folks do not consider their materials “historical.” She spoke about exhibits she coordinated: Diez y seis; an Elderly Oral History Project (assisted by Professor Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez of UT); Quinceneras; Mexican American Firsts Trailblazers; Austin Brown Berets; and Latina Musicians. She also spearheaded an oral history project with Martin Middle school to document the thirty year effort to create the Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin.

Graciela Sanchez, of San Antonio’s Westside Preservation Alliance, spoke on efforts to save the La Gloria building and the KCOR Spanish-language radio station building, both unsuccessful efforts. The organization has published pamphlets about Mexican-descent women singers and has reproduced historic photos for outdoor public display.

Dr. Nancy Vera reported on her singular efforts to produce a Corpus Christi Mexican American virtual museum online. Interviews she conducted with local historical figures can be found there too.

Mexican Border Violence, 1910-1919

One of the most important sessions focused on a public history project by historians in collaboration with the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. In commemoration of the 1915-2015 anniversary of racial violence in South Texas by the Texas Rangers and others, a group of historians are working on a project to give attention to murders suffered by Mexican descent people. Dr. Monica Martinez informed the audience of their website “Refusing to Forget” which includes a map of Texas’ racial violence against Mexicans.

Dr. Trinidad Gonzales said his great grandfather was killed in the matanza. He discovered a report of his death in a 1929 edition of El Defensor, a Spanish language Edinburg newspaper published by Santiago Guzman.

The panel reported on attempts to obtain historical markers commemorating the conflict. County control has censored some Tejano markers. Edwards County denied a marker about Antonio Rodriguez’ lynching in Rocksprings in 1910. Likewise, the Presidio Historical Commission denied one about the Porvenir Massacre of 1918. County historical societies have had decision-making power and conservative European Americans would like to prevent historical discussion. In contrast, Cameron county approved the “Matanza, 1915” marker but changed it title to “Victims of an Undeclared War, 1915.” And markers approving Jovita Idar and the Primer Congresso of Laredo, the first major Mexicanist civil rights congress, were approved by Webb county.

They also informed the audience of the Texas Historical Commission’s Untold marker program which the state pays for and is not vetted by local county commissions

Twentieth Century Tejana Leaders

Another historical session focused on twentieth-century Tejana leaders. Carmen Tafolla and Sharyll Teneyuca reported on labor activist Emma Tenayuca. Intrigued by politics by age 15, she became active early. While her work with the pecan sheller strike of 1938 is well known, fewer know of her work as a teacher. She obtained her teaching certificate in 1952 and taught at Catholic schools and Harlendale in San Antonio. In 1974 she obtained a masters at Our Lady of the Lake but retired in 1982.

Mary Jo Galindo noted that her grandmother Maria L. Hernandez worked in conjunction with her husband all her life. In the mid-1920s she had a midwifery certificate and in 1936 helped form the Asociacion Protectora de Madres and the Clinica de la Beneficiencia Mexicana. In 1939 she was a goodwill ambassador to Mexico and, as a result, the Mexican government gave the clinic an x-ray machine. In the 70s she attended Raza Unida Mujeres events with her husband though men were not permitted.

Cynthia Orozco talked about Adela Sloss Vento, a LULAC ally (League of United Latin American Citizens) and one of the most significant Mexican American civil rights leaders and public intellectuals in the 20^th century. Based on Sloss Vento’s archives, Orozco and Dr. Arnoldo Carlos Vento are completing a book manuscript on her work from the 1920s through the 1980s. Sloss Vento wrote to US and Mexican presidents, Congressmen, and state legislators to seek racial desegregation and improved lives for immigrant workers.

Dr. Cynthia E. Orozco (UT BA, 1980) chairs the History, Humanities, and Social Sciences Department at Eastern New Mexico University, Ruidoso. She is the author of No Mexicans, Women or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (University of Texas Press, 2009) and a TSHA Fellow.

All photos courtesy of the author.

War Along the Border: The Mexican Revolution and the Tejano Communities edited by Arnoldo De León (2012)

By Lizeth Elizondo

The Mexican Revolution knew no borders. Mexicans migrated north seeking refuge from its tumult, Tejanos, (Mexican-American Texans) assisted the fight by supplying weapons and incorporating these new immigrants into their communities. Other Tejanos and African Americans from Texas even joined the Mexican revolutionary forces. Texans were then, both directly and indirectly, by choice or by circumstance, part of this historic period.

Prior to the publishing of War Along the Border: The Mexican Revolution and the Tejano Communities, the lived experiences on the Texas side of the border had never been told in a transnational historical perspective. Raul Ramos sums up the importance of this approach in writing that “people, families, ideas, capital, goods, and violence crossed back and forth across the border to the point that self-contained national narratives lose their power to explain and make sense of the past.”

Book cover of War Along the Border: The Mexican Revolution and Tejano Communities edited by Arnoldo De León

The porousness of the boundary between the United States and Mexico during the Mexican Revolution is eloquently captured in this edited volume. The histories told illuminate the lived realities of communities on both the Mexican and the U.S. side during this tumultuous period. One need not be an expert on the variety of revolutionary factions, alliances, and motivations. The opening essay by Paul Hart offers readers a concise historical background that contextualizes the larger ideals of the Mexican Revolution. From this point forward, the reader is guided through more intimate scenes of the period.

The emphasis on the lived experiences of Tejanos makes this a path-breaking endeavor. Rodolfo Treviño tells the intimate family history of his grandfather’s immigration. In sharing one family’s struggle to survive after migrating, Treviño elucidates the possible similarities between his family’s history and the history of many others, who like his grandfather, emigrated from Mexico into Texas during this period. As a cotton picker, Geronimo Treviño – and other Mexican immigrants both male and female—helped propel the agricultural industry in Texas. As Treviño explains, these are the forgotten histories of “ordinary people doing extraordinary things in American history.” The exceptional story of Felix Tijerina, proclaimed to have been the first Mexican-American millionaire in Houston, also serves as an example of an overlooked history of a remarkable American. The chapter details Thomas Kreneck’s quest for unearthing the truthful birthplace of Tijerina, a self-proclaimed American citizen. Kreneck’s pursuit takes him across the border, where he discovers the small villa where Tijerina so adamantly denied having been born. American citizenship during a period filled with racism and opposition to the influx of immigrants from Mexico, explains Kreneck, helps to contextualize Tijerina’s obstinate desire to be recognized as an American at all costs. In fact, Kreneck discovered Tijerina’s birthplace only after Tijerina’s death. Felix Tijerina died as a proud American.

Black and white photograph of Mexican rebels camped outside Juárex, Mexico, 1911

Mexican rebels camped outside Juárez, Mexico, 1911 (Image courtesy of Library of Congress)

Not all stories left untold revolve around successful rags-to-riches sagas. Violence, racism and death were also consequences of the Revolution on the American side of the border. Two chapters describe in detail the triangle of violence that resulted from the Plan de San Diego, the Revolución de Texas, and the Texas Rangers. Richard Ribb outlines the violent repercussions lived by Tejanos and Mexicans, after discovering that social revolutionaries called for the Mexican and Mexican-American community to join forces in an armed uprising against the United States, scheduled for February 20, 1915, that would seek to kill all Anglo Americans. The discovery of this plot initiated a period of Anglo violence toward the Mexican-American population regardless of their involvement or support of the plan. La Revolución de Texas as Trinidad Gonzales details, was different than the Plan de San Diego in ideology; however, the lived experiences of Tejanos at the wrath of the Texas Rangers and Anglo vigilantes, was the same. Supporters of La Revolución de Texas, clearly outlined their motives for their uprising as a response to the continual racism experienced in Texas. Ironically, this forthright challenge to prejudice served as a catalyst to massacre hundreds of Tejanos and Mexicanos. A year later, in 1916, El Paso experienced its own form of Revolutionary violence. Miguel Levario evaluates the influence of the El Paso Race Riot fueled by the slaughter of American engineers at Santa Ysabel, Chihuahua, in categorizing Tejanos as “un-American.” The race war and race-related violence in Texas during the period of the Mexican Revolution claimed the lives of Anglo Americans, Tejanos, and Mexicans.

The violence and death experienced on both the Mexican and the American sides of the U.S.-Mexico border also ironically created niches of opportunities for some women. The essays by Juanita Luna Lawhn and Sonia Hernández convey the ways in which women sought safe-haven in the United States from this revolutionary violence. Lawhn unearths the experiences of elite women in exile. She utilizes newspaper records to trace the lives of the wives of famous revolutionaries with surnames like Madero, Villa, and Carranza. Hernández on the other hand, relies on bi-national archival research to excavate the experiences of women in the labor industry, as well as their social and political activism during the revolutionary period.

Black and white photograph of members of the U.S. Army's Pancho Villa Expedition camped in San Jerónimo, Chihuahua, Mexico, 1916

Members of the U.S. Army’s Pancho Villa Expedition camped in San Jerónimo, Chihuahua, Mexico, 1916 (Image courtesy of the U.S. Federal Government)

The contributors to War Along the Border entangle the Mexican Revolution with transnational history and American history. By focusing on the experiences of Tejanos, by disregarding the political boundaries of the international border in their research, and by choosing to present this period as one of multinational influences, these scholars sketch a rich historical account of the Mexican Revolution as it affected Americans. War Along the Border is an invaluable contribution to the histories of Texas, the Mexican Revolution, Tejanos, Mexican-Americans, Mexicans, and the history of the United States in the early twentieth century.

Recent Posts