Abstract
In this thoroughly researched and conceptually innovative book, Miguel Antonio Levario describes twin processes of militarization and racialization on the U.S.-Mexico border around El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, against a backdrop of modernization from 1893 to 1933. Borders are shaped by states, of course, as much as states are defined by borders. Levario, however, shows us that while state formation and border construction were promoted by national and regional government authorities, they were carried out unevenly in daily life by everyday people: ranch hands, businessmen, doctors, prisoners, and, of course, those working in the lower echelons of government institutions. The author utilizes a case study approach that directs attention to the protagonists and events of particularly violent and well-known moments in this history—the 1917 Brite Ranch raid and Porvenir massacre (1918); the 1916 Santa Ysabel massacre and El Paso race riot; the fire at the El Paso jailhouse in 1916; Pancho Villa's 1916 cross-border raid on Columbus, New Mexico—and deploys theoretical concepts from the social sciences to evoke new meanings in them. He also deals with social actors who have been discussed quite extensively—the Texas Rangers and Villa, for example. But while these cases have been studied before, by bringing them together in this conceptual framework Levario enables readers to see the deeper and longer cultural and social processes that emerged during these five moments. Militarization, in particular, remains an extremely important issue in the borderlands today, and the epilogue situates the present fortification of the border in that long-term process.
Published Version
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