El Paso

Abstract

El Paso, Texas, sits on the northern bank of the Rio Grande along the international boundary between Mexico and the United States and the states of Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua. Its location makes El Paso a major urban center in the US Southwest and a key border city, and together with Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, the cities comprise the largest border metroplex in the western hemisphere. Occupying formerly Mansos and Suma lands, the collision between Spanish imperial design and native stewardship began in the mid-17th century as civil and religious authorities from New Mexico established a southern settlement along the river to provide a place of rest and security for the trade and travel making its way from the mineral-rich regions of New Spain to the far-flung colony. Initial settlement patterns in El Paso occurred on the southern bank of the river in what is early 21st-century Ciudad Juárez due to seasonal flooding, which provided a natural barrier from Apache raids. El Paso remained a crossroads into the national period of the 19th century as the settlements began to experience the expansion of state power and market relations in North America. The competing national designs of Mexico and the United States collided in war from 1846 to 1848, resulting in the redrawing of national borders that turned El Paso and Ciudad Juárez into border cities. In the 20th century, industrial capitalism, migration, and state power linked these peripheral cities to national and international markets, and El Paso–Ciudad Juárez became the largest binational, bicultural community along the US–Mexico border. In 2020, the decennial census of Mexico and the United States counted a combined 2.5 million residents in the region, with over eight hundred thousand of those residing in El Paso.