War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880

Abstract

Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga's War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880 is an important work of synthesis and original research concerning Anglo-American, European immigrant, and Mexican relationships on the US-Mexico borderlands. African Americans and Native Americans are also included in the study; however, the former receives limited attention and the latter are depicted as villains in the way of economic progress.González-Quiroga inserts his work within the historiographical debate over whether the Anglo-American and Mexican relationship was mainly one of conflict or cooperation. David Montejano's Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (1987) is the standard for grappling with this question. Montejano used an economic paradigm to understand shifting race relations over time and geography. Ranching economies led to more harmonious relationships and farming led to harsher ones. Eventually, a merchant and consumer economy helped end Juan Crow segregation. For González-Quiroga, binational trade and unity in subduing Native Americans through “cooperative violence” led to pragmatic relations that were ruptured at times by Anglo-American racist violence against Mexicans. Cooperative violence also occurred during rebellions and foreign invasions. Eventually, by 1880, both nation-states gained further control over the border regions, which allowed for binational economic integration and led to greater harmony between both groups.Gonzáles-Quiroga untangles the socioeconomic, political, and racial history of the borderlands through nine chapters using both a chronological and thematic approach. He follows a standard Texas history chronology, following the Texas Secession Movement, the Republic of Texas Era and War of North American Aggression of 1846–48, 1850s statehood, the US Civil War and French Intervention, and the defeat of Native Americans by 1880.Chapters 1 and 2 examine the tumultuous period of 1830–48, with the related conflicts of the Texas rebellion and the United States invasion of Mexico. Through diligent investigation, Gonzáles-Quiroga finds many examples of political and economic cooperation between Anglos and Mexicans that contrast with studies that solely focus on conflict. Chapters 2 and 3 examine strengthening ties between both groups during the 1850s, and chapters 4 and 5 look at how both the Civil War and the French Intervention led to cooperative violence in both conflicts as well as the cross-border economic opportunities that arose from the conflicts.The last three thematic chapters focus on the period of 1868–80. In “A Most Violent Decade,” González-Quiroga examines both state-sanctioned and extralegal violence to describe the period of the 1870s. He centers his description as an economic competition for land and cattle between Anglos, Mexicans, and Native Americans. He rightly notes labeling Mexicans as cattle thieves was a trope to justify violence and theft against them as noted by the Comisión Pesquisidora. González-Quiroga's use of the commission's research and findings is an important corrective to the historiographical distortion of the Cattle War / Skinning War trope that discursively hides the state-sanctioned violence against Mexicans in the Nueces Strip. As Armando Alonzo's Tejano Legacy (1998) has shown, statistical data concerning Mexican economic dominance bears out that most of the wealth in the late nineteenth century was held by Mexicans. Despite the violence, migration to the border region increased as González-Quiroga describes in “Between Hate and Harmony,” with population growth of US citizens in Mexico and Mexicans nationals in Texas. The final chapter, “Pacification and Economic Integration,” describes Porfirio Díaz's recognition of the United States after the Revolution of Tuxtepec (1876), a military defeat of Native Americans that led to the development of a transnational railroad network connecting both nations’ expanding economies.As noted in the introduction, the main weakness of González-Quiroga's work is his depiction of Native Americans as obstacles to economic progress because they are never afforded the same complex analysis given to Anglo-Americans, European immigrants, and Mexicans. Nonetheless, this book provides a nuanced examination of conflict and cooperation between Anglo-Americans and Mexicans that is often missing in other works.