Cotton, crucial to the economy of the American South, has also
played a vital role in the making of the Mexican north. The Lower
Río Bravo (Rio Grande) Valley irrigation zone on the border with
Texas in northern Tamaulipas, Mexico, was the centerpiece of the
Cárdenas government's effort to make cotton the basis of the national
economy.
This irrigation district, built and settled by Mexican Americans
repatriated from Texas, was a central feature of Mexico's effort to
control and use the waters of the international river for irrigated
agriculture.
Drawing on previously unexplored archival sources, Casey Walsh
discusses the relations among various groups comprising the "social
field" of cotton production in the borderlands. By describing the
complex relationships among these groups, Walsh contributes to a
clearer understanding of capitalism and the state, of transnational
economic forces, of agricultural and water issues in the U.S.-Mexican
borderlands, and of the environmental impacts of economic
development.
Building the Borderlands crosses a number of disciplinary,
thematic, and regional frontiers, integrating perspectives and
literature from the United States and Mexico, from anthropology
and history, and from political, economic, and cultural studies.
Walsh's important transnational study will enjoy a wide audience
among scholars of Latin American and Western U.S. history, the
borderlands, and environmental and agricultural history, as well as
anthropologists and others interested in the environment and water
rights.
_________________________________________________________
CASEY WALSH holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the New
School for Social Research in New York and is an assistant professor
of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Number Twenty-two: Environmental History Series
Of Related Interest
