Texas-Mexico Border Archives

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

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Seeds of Empire, By Andrew Torget (2015)

By Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

Andrew Torget’s Seeds of Empire places the early history of nineteenth-century Texas squarely within the political economy of slavery, cotton, and geopolitics. Torget shows that Spanish Texas had become an utterly dysfunctional polity. A royalist bloody response to the creation of autonomous creole juntas almost led to the annihilation of the Tejano population. Tejas found itself unable to pay the Comanche tribute precisely at the time that the Mississippi River cotton boom required large imports of horses. Comanches raided the already weakened Tejanos.

Tejanos found in Anglo entrepreneurs like the Austin family a viable escape from a decades long crisis. The Austins brought Anglo, land-hungry colonists across the Sabine River into Eastern Texas in the early 1820s by offering legalized slavery. There were many Anglo land speculators around but none delivered what the Austin did, namely, cunning diplomatic work to keep republican, antislavery, federalist Mexicans and pro-slavery Anglo colonists moderately satisfied.

Stephen F. Austin (via Good Free Photos).

Torget describes the spatial partition of Texas that ensued. In the west, there were thin communities of Tejanos working as pro-slavery lobbyists in Coahuila and as importers of Anglo goods to satisfy the demands of La Bahia, Goliath, and San Antonio. In the east, there were swelling communities of Anglo settlers setting up plantations along the banks of the Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity, while churning out bales of cotton for New Orleans markets. Torget never explains why Tejanos did not themselves become cotton planters. There were Tejanos in Nacogdoches who monopolized the Comanche trade of horses and there were many well-off Tejano war-of-independence-refugees in New Orleans. Both could have used their political and commercial advantages to push Anglos out of the business of producing cotton with slaves, for Tejanos were not squeamish about slavery. For centuries Tejanos incorporated Apache criados (servants) into their household and drove thousands of Chichimeca captives into the silver mines of Parral and Zacatecas and into the cattle ranches of Nuevo Leon. Tejanos did not hesitate to feed the Caribbean royal galleys and fortifications with slaves. Be that as it may, a deep ethnic chasm did open between east and west Texas. This spatial and political balance, however, unraveled the moment the elites of Mexico City decided that they were losing control over the northern frontiers. Mexican conservatives, therefore, abolished slavery, terminated land contracts, and sent the army to remove the Anglo settlers.

Torget demonstrates that it was a small, fleeting tactical decision by Santa Ana that sealed the faith of Texas in 1835, as thousands of Anglo colonists were in fully disorganized retreat to the safety of the Louisiana border. At the Brazos, however, Santa Ana split his army into two fronts to block the retreating forces of Sam Houston from crossing the Sabine. Houston stopped fleeing and turned around to engage Santa Ana’s forces. This was the moment Texas became an independent republic nobody wanted, including the Anglo colonists. Tejanos were the ones who lost the most as useless lobbyists. They had to give up lands and the rights of citizenship.

William Henry Huddle’s painting, Surrender of Santa Anna, shows the Mexican general surrendering to a wounded Sam Houston after the battle of San Jacinto in 1836 (via Wikimedia Commons).

Torget shows that the Lone Star State remained an utterly nonviable state for a full decade (1835-45), trapped in the logic of much larger geopolitical balances that pitted Great Britain, the USA, and Mexico against one another. Five of these ten years, however, witnessed an unprecedented cotton boom in the Mississippi Cotton Kingdom. It brought tens of thousands of additional colonists and black slaves to the riverine banks of Eastern Texas and new merchant warehouses to the Galveston Bay. But the boom did not bring any changes in riverine infrastructure, a sovereign port, or a national merchant marine. There was no functioning state, no mechanism to collect taxes, and no diplomatic working corps.

Britain sought to convince Texans to gain diplomatic recognition by becoming a free-labor cotton republic. Texans responded by creating a constitution that banned any black person who had been manumitted from residing within the new nation. The United States had no interest in annexing Texas because it would upset the balance between northern and southern states.

Map of the United States, 1845 (via Wikimedia Commons).

The plight of Texas worsened as the cotton boom went bust in late 1839. The only thing that Texas did well was to organize militias to bleed the raiding Comanche. Torget explains how the geopolitical logjam was broken the moment France finally recognized Texas in 1844. To secure one of the most important sources of cotton for its economy, Britain had no choice but to also recognize Texas. It was only then that Anglo Texans got what they had always wanted: annexation into the United States. Incorporation delivered a functioning government, protection against international anti-slavery forces and Mexican invasions, and a windfall for land speculators as land prices rose to the equivalent of those in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Cotton, Slavery, and Empire are categories that explain rather well the origins of Texas as a white supremacist state, utterly dependent on the federal government from its very inception.

Andrew J. Torget. Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850. Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

More by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra on Not Even Past:
Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (2014).
Re-Reading John Winthrop’s “City upon the Hill.”
Magical Realism on Drugs: Colombian History in Netflix’s Narcos.
Prof. Cañizares-Esguerra discusses his own book, Puritan Conquistadors.

Dolores del Río: Beauty in Light and Shade, By Linda B. Hall (2013)

By Ann Twinam

Linda Hall provides a compelling biography of one of the most famous and beautiful women of the twentieth century: actress Dolores del Río. She traces critical stages from del Río’s sheltered life as a daughter of a Mexican elite family to her early marriage and transition to Hollywood starlet in the 1920s, where she figured in silent and then talking pictures; to her return south where she became a pivotal actress of the Mexican “Golden Age of Cinema” of the 1940s. In later decades, technology revived del Río’s celebrity, when a new generation viewed her film performances on the newly-invented television.

Hall concentrates on del Río’s professional and personal life through analysis of letters, interviews, film contracts and posters, movie reviews, and local newspapers. These track the ups and downs of her career, her multiple husbands, her real and possible lovers, and her famous friends. Woven throughout, are the pervasive themes of how gender, sexuality, race, transborder crossings, changing technologies and celebrity defined del Río’s career.

dolores_del_rio — Dolores del Río (via Wikimedia Commons)

Every camera loved Dolores del Río. Still, a persistent theme running throughout her career was the continuing mandate to negotiate even her astonishing beauty through the constraints of class, gender, race and Mexican-ness. After her 1925 arrival in Hollywood she, her directors and the studios emphasized her origins as an elite Mexican, her status as a lady playing ladylike parts. In later years, with her celebrity assured, she assumed roles that more emphasized her sexuality or challenged racial norms as she portrayed Native women. When Hollywood parts diminished, del Río returned to Mexico in 1942. She collaborated with director Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez and co-star Pedro Amendáriz to produce some of the classics of Mexican cinema including Maria Candelaria. She sporadically revisited Hollywood including a cameo in 1960 playing the Indian mother of “Elvis.”

Del Río was not only herself a celebrity, she moved in the circles of the famous. Hall traces Hollywood business and social friendships that included Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and William Randolph Hearst. Del Río also maintained her transborder contacts with Mexico, as she counted Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, Pablo Neruda, Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez, and co-star Pedro Armendáriz among her intimate friends.

orson_welles__dolores_del_rio_1941 — Dolores del Rio and Orson Welles in 1941 (via Wikimedia Commons).

If there is any flaw in this marvelous biography, it seems rooted in the very ambiguities and opaqueness of del Río’s life. She never wrote an autobiography. Hall deftly surmounts such challenges by writing “around” the business and personal life of del Río, although questions remain. How did she overcome the dominance of husbands, directors and studios to chart her own path? Were her first two husbands gay? Did she engage in affairs with Greta Garbo or Frida Kahlo? How much wealth did she eventually accumulate, given the fabulous sums paid to pre-depression stars?

edf8dd35e9b8af543baae12727303e47 — Dolores del Río mural by artist Alfredo de Batuc in Hollywood, California (via Picryl).

Linda Hall has offered an engaging look into what historians can likely uncover of this enigmatic star. She concludes that del Río “led a rich, fulfilling up-and-down life that was unusual largely because of her celebrity, her great wealth, her beauty and ultimately her power to shape her own destiny.” Hall’s book proves to be a fascinating resource for readers interested the history of women, gender, sexuality, transborder crossings, celebrity, and film.

Linda Hall. Dolores del Río: Beauty in Light and Shade. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013.

Also by Ann Twinam on Not Even Past:

Purchasing Whiteness: Race and Status in Colonial Latin America.
15 Minute History Episode 52: The Precolumbian Civilizations of Mesoamerica.
No Mere Shadows: Faces of Widowhood in Early Colonial Mexico, by Shirley Cushing Flint (2013).

Textbooks, Texas, and Discontent: The Fight against Inadequate Educational Resources

By Alejandra Garza and Maria Esther Hammack

Controversies surrounding textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas. For years, textbook selection in Texas has grabbed headlines and generated great discontent and debate. Textbooks adopted by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) are unusually important because they are also adopted for use in classrooms across the country. Whatever Texas adopts, students across the United States get. In 2014, a coalition of unpaid Texas citizens who called themselves “Truth In Texas Textbooks,” presented the SBOE with a report containing 469 pages of factual errors, “imbalanced presentation of materials, omission of information, and opinions disguised as facts,” found in three world history and geography textbooks that were being considered for adoption that November. And who can forget the 2015 textbook fiasco, when the Texas Board of Education refused to allow professors to review and fact-check textbooks that were to be implemented in Texas curricula that year. Historians and other academics protested because non-experts were writing and reviewing history textbooks.

Photograph of a 2015 Texas textbook caption that grossly mischaracterized the nature of slavery — A 2015 Texas textbook caption grossly mischaracterized the nature of slavery (Coby Burren via the San Antonio Current).

But that was not the only contentious issue surrounding textbooks in Texas last year. Mrs. Roni Dean-Burren split open a Pandora’s box of controversies when she posted a picture on Facebook of her teenage son’s textbook which explicitly portrayed slaves as immigrant workers. The Texas State Board of Education had adopted the textbook, published by McGraw Hill, a few years ago and sold about 140,000 in Texas and other states. McGraw Hill was quick to respond and quench the controversy. They immediately acknowledged that they had made “a mistake” and rapidly agreed to do their “utmost to fix it.”

This year’s controversy has had a different outcome. Unlike McGraw Hill, Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle, the authors of the Mexican American Heritage textbook and its publisher, Momentum Instruction, LLC, have yet to apologize for a widely criticized textbook. Beyond an unwillingness to acknowledge the large number of problems in their textbook, they have failed to respond to questions and comments from historians and experts challenging their work. The Mexican American Heritage textbook has more than 800 factual errors, errors of omission, and misleading representations of Mexican American history and culture.

Book cover of The Mexican American Heritage textbook by Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle — The Mexican American Heritage textbook (via authors).

In addition to factual errors, the book is riddled with what several historians have deemed “ethnic hostility” — clearly racist remarks, blatantly condescending portrayals of Mexican Americans and their historical roles, and a large number of specific instances where the authors’ opinions straightforwardly belittle Mexican-American history, heritage, and people of Mexican descent and their accomplishments and contributions. The authors and the publisher have refused to work with experts to fix the errors and have yet to demonstrate any intent to withdraw the book from consideration for adoption by the State Board of Education in hearings scheduled for November 15 and 18, 2016. The final decision pertaining to the adoption or rejection of the textbook is set to be made on November 18, 2016.

A textbook with an extensive number of errors, with clearly racist and condescending content does not belong in any classroom. Textbooks are meant to educate and empower our future generations through an emphasis on factual history and on understanding the heritage and identity of all the peoples of the country, but the Mexican American Heritage textbook is set to do just the opposite. Its content erases Mexican American history and culture and it presents historical information in manner that misinforms, rather than educates.

Black and white image of Moses Austin — Moses Austin, 1761-1821 (via Wikimedia Commons).

For instance, a passage in the book claims that “in 1822, Moses Austin obtained the first charter to start an American colony in Texas.” As most historians know, what Austin received was not a charter, but an offer for a land grant where up to 300 colonists could move and settle in Texas, then Mexican territory, with the stipulation that they swear allegiance to Mexico and become Mexican citizens. Also, expert historians made sure to note that Moses Austin died in 1821, so by 1822, the date provided in the textbook, Austin was in fact no longer alive and could not have obtained what the authors claimed was the first charter to colonize Texas.

Last month The Guardian reported that the passages in the textbook portray Mexican Americans as “anti-education and anti-English” and depict “true Mexican identity” as being inherently in rebellion against the establishment. They write that “High School and college youth may refuse to attend class, speak English or learn certain subjects because they perceive injustice in the school system,” and claiming Mexican American prosperity is hindered by their own identity. In addition to reports in the media, the Ad Hoc Committee, consisting of a group of scholars who took the initiative to read and review the textbook last spring, have highlighted some of the most disturbing errors. In chapter 3, for example, the authors wrote that “most Mexicans weren’t literate, they could not own land, and had been given the message that they should be subdued rather than lifted up. How would they invent a system from nothing that depended on participating in political and economic life?”[1] They portray Mexican Americans as having an all-encompassing cultural attitude of laziness that makes them put off important things for “mañana,” because, according to the textbook, they “have not been reared to put in a full day’s work so vigorously.”

Contrary to those portrayals, Mexican Americans and Mexican American scholars, historians and other professionals have begun the rigorous undertaking of meticulously reviewing the textbook by tabulating historical inaccuracies, listing factual errors, and conducting extensive and in depth analysis of the historical content of the textbook. The Mexican American scholars and the community were quick to organize in Austin and across Texas, and have managed to coordinate with other scholars, and historians across the country to write a strong case against the Mexican American Heritage textbook, so that it is not adopted by the Texas State Board of Education in the November hearings. The Ad Hoc Committee presented its report this past summer to the Texas State Board of Education’s Representative, Ruben Cortez, Jr., to explain why the proposed textbook was inadequate, how it failed to meet basic standards and guiding principles in the history profession. They provided an extensive list of suggested revisions to the publisher, suggestions that today, at one week until the hearing, have gone vastly unheeded.

Close-up photograph of the six flags over Texas emblems under state capitol dome — The Texas State Capitol (via Wikimedia Commons).

Here at UT Austin, the University of Texas Textbook Review Committee has six members working under the guidance of Dr. Emilio Zamora, of the UT Austin History Department, to produce a complete annotated list of factual errors, omissions, and misrepresentations, and also a list of suggested revisions. The committee’s goal is to serve historians and experts such as Dr. Zamora to prepare a written response based on their findings and historical evidence, to present to the Texas State Board of Education on November 15, and for that response to help prevent the Mexican American Heritage textbook from being adopted.

Despite the documented factual errors and wide criticism of the textbook, the hearing is not going to be an easy one. Conservative politicians have been supporting adoption of the textbook. For example, David Bradley, the Republican state representative for Southeast Texas on the Texas Board of Education, said that he had originally voted against the call for textbooks because he considers Mexican-American studies to be discriminatory against Americans of other ethnic backgrounds. He now plans to vote to adopt the book, because he is “going to give them what they asked for.” Bradley added “they wanted a course, and they wanted special treatment, and we had publisher step up.” He is intent on casting his vote for the adoption of this textbook.

The Main Building at the University of Texas - Austin (via Wikimedia Commons). — The Main Building at the University of Texas – Austin (via Wikimedia Commons).

Criticism of the textbook has come from historians across the nation, professional organizations, and activists’ platforms, including American Historical Association. In September, the AHA wrote a letter of concern to the Texas State Board of Education regarding the textbook because, they wrote, “the textbook does not adequately reflect the scholarship of historians who have worked in the field of Mexican American history, or measure up to the broad standards of history as a discipline.” The American Historical Association urged the Texas Board of Education “reject the use of this textbook as an option for institutions within the purview of the board’s adoption policies.”

We hope that more allies come to our support, and that many scholars, historians, educators, and students show up at the William B. Travis Building at the State Capitol for the hearings on November 15. It is imperative that textbooks such as The Mexican American Heritage do not get adopted. A textbook on Mexican Americans or Mexican American history or any other history that is filled with errors and racist allegations should not be used to educate our children, not now, not ever.

[1]District 2 Ad Hoc Committee Report on Proposed Social Studies Special Topic Textbook: Mexican American Heritage, presented to Ruben Cortez, Jr., State Board of Education Representative, September 6, 2016.

Board of Education agendas and information for the November 15th-18th meetings can be found here.
A map indicating the building location can be found here.
You can find out who your SBOE representative is here, and can contact members of the SBOE here.

You may also like:
Chris Babits offers Another Perspective on the Texas Textbook Controversy.
Christopher Rose recounts his experience testifying before the SBOE in this blog post.
NEP contributors relate what happens When a Government Tells Historians How to Write and How to Teach.

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.

Making History: Christina Salinas

Interview by Aragorn Storm Miller

In the third installation of our series, “Making History,” Aragorn Storm Miller speaks with Christina Salinas about her experience as a graduate student in history at the University of Texas at Austin. In the interview, Christina tells us about her childhood spent living near the Texas-Mexico border, the long history of the Texas Border Patrol, and how her research interests have evolved over the course of her undergraduate and graduate career at the University of Texas.

Christina Salinas is a PhD candidate in the history department at UT Austin. Her dissertation explores social relations forged on the ground between agricultural growers, workers, and officials from the U.S. and Mexico, and their impact on shifting national approaches to border enforcement and Mexican migration during the 1940s. She argues that, although border control policies have rested within the bounds of federal authority, it was the interconnection between federal power and local geographies of culture and history that inhabited these policies and gave them meaning.

You may also like:

The inaugural episode of “Making History,” which features an interview with UT history graduate student – and author! – Christopher Heaney.

The second episode of “Making History,” featuring an interview with seventeenth-century Caribbean scholar Jessica Wolcott Luther.

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