Transnational history has grown in recent years as historians are moving beyond confining themselves to national borders. One of these books is Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands by Samuel Truett, an excellent study of the United States-Mexico border (specifically the Arizona-Sonora border) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this period Mexican statesmen and American entrepreneurs joined together to control nature and society and turn the borderlands into a region of economic growth. However, efforts to tame this “fugitive” mining frontier were obstructed by labor struggles, social conflict, and revolution. Not only does this book explore how ordinary people resisted the domination of empires, nations, and corporations, it also invites comparisons on how individuals have challenged recent neoliberal economic policies, particularly the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). During the second half of the nineteenth century, American capital expanded into Sonora. Although the United States gained the entire modern Southwest from Mexico by force in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 ending the Mexican War, by 1864, as Secretary of State William Seward stated, Americans were beginning to “value dollars more, and dominion less.” Despite repeated attacks by Apache Indians, copper mining grew in Cananea, Sonora. The growing push to electrify America, especially after copper was introduced as an electrical conductor in the 1880s, increasing the need for refined copper. The growth of U.S. railroads expanded markets further. American entrepreneurs and corporations had support from Mexican president Porfirio Díaz, who after taking power in 1876 tried to attract foreign investment in the Mexican mining industry. The labor environment and unrest in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands seems to echo current debate over NAFTA’s effects. American mining corporations relied heavily on Mexican workers; according to Truett, over 80 percent of workers in the Santa Rita and Heintzelman mining camps in 1860 were Mexicans, and 94 percent of laborers at the Mowry mine in 1864 were from Mexico. Mexican workers tolerated lower wages than Americans. However, Mexican miners resisted corporate dominance, especially in the bloody Cananea strike of 1906. Within four years the Mexican Revolution erupted, toppling Díaz as opposition grew to his policies favoring foreign investment at the expense of labor unions. The use of Mexican labor at low wages brings to mind the maquiladora plants that have moved to Mexico from the United States after the passage of NAFTA in 1994. One of the strengths of Truett’s book is that it illustrates how the Arizona-Sonora borderlands were truly an international frontier. In addition to Anglo Americans, Mexicans, and Indians, the Chinese lived in the borderlands. Much of the Chinese population were railroad workers who moved to Sonora amid anti-Chinese sentiment in the American West during the 1870s and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Chinese took a prominent role as merchants and launderers in the towns of Cananea and Nazcozari. Fugitive Landscapes illustrates how industrial development often rarely turns out as planned and the power of ordinary people to resist corporations. Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006.
2 Comments
Scott Kuster
2/8/2016 07:44:57 pm
This sounds like both a fascinating read, & very good background for the new wave of (so-called) trade agreementa, such as the TPP. It is so helpful to have the historical perspective! Thank you for this review.
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Mickey White
3/9/2016 08:14:40 am
Very good review. Glad to know some work has been done on the Arizona/Mexico border during this time period. A fair amount has been written on the Texas border.
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CategoriesAuthorTom Schmidt lives in Prescott Valley, AZ. Archives
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