Texas Border Research Articles

The Wild West, 9/11, and Mexicans in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men

Abstract Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men (2005) depicts a 1980s Texas border town as an Anglo-American community attacked by Mexicans, whose presence McCarthy indicates mainly through drug...

Disparities in Adolescent and Young Adult Sarcoma Survival: Analyses of the Texas Cancer Registry and the National SEER Data.

Examine disparities in survival for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) diagnosed with bone and soft tissue sarcomas in Texas compared with national estimates. AYAs with sarcomas diagnosed between 1995 and 2012 at ages 15-39 years were identified from the Texas Cancer Registry (TCR) and Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Patient demographic, treatment, and clinical characteristics were compared between TCR and SEER using chi-squared tests. Five-year survival was computed using the Kaplan-Meier method. Cox proportional hazards (CPH) models evaluated the factors associated with the risk of mortality between and within the two datasets. Sarcoma patients in TCR were more likely to be Hispanic, uninsured, diagnosed at late stage, and have lower rates of surgery as the first line of treatment than those in SEER. In Texas, 5-year survival was 68.7% versus 72.2% in SEER (p < 0.001). However, after including surgery in our fully adjusted CPH model, survival differences between the two datasets were no longer observed. In these models, males, and those living in nonmetropolitan areas were more likely to die than their counterparts in both datasets. In TCR, those who lived in the U.S. and Mexico border had higher mortality. In SEER, Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks had higher mortality. The adjusted AYA sarcoma survival in Texas was similar to that of SEER, but patients in Texas were more likely to be uninsured and have lower surgery rates. Those living in the U.S. and Mexico border in Texas faced lower survival. These results are important for delineating effective care for this high-risk patient group.

Toddlers and Tears on the Texas Border

Toddlers and Tears on the Texas Border

¡Nosotros corremos, nosotros jugamos! [we run, we play!]: Children’s perceptions of physical activity in Mexican-origin border communities

The US border between Texas and Mexico has a growing population of Mexican-origin children that are at high risk for obesity and have a lack of physical activity opportunities, resources, and environmental infrastructure. The purpose of this research was to explore children’s perspectives of their physical activity behaviors through in-depth interviews. Five children (ages: 7–11) were recruited to participate and describe facilitators, barriers, and current and desired physical activities. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, harmoniously coded, and analyzed for content. The most common physical activity type was football for boys, jump rope for girls, and general play activities for all. Having friends as social supporters and ability to be active at school were physical activity facilitators for all children; enjoyment was identified for boys and having general play activities for girls. Lack of equipment at home was a barrier identified by all children; homework was identified by boys and lack of social support from siblings for girls. All children desired to do more activities with friends. Girls wanted to visit the park more, where boys wanted more equipment to begin new activities. Gender differences are common and have previously been attributed to societal norms. Desired physical activity consisted of longing to participate in more of their current activities involving contact sports for boys and general play for girls. Interviews conducted in neutral settings can allow for natural, unrestricted responses from children. New activities should be introduced to expand desired activity and subsequently increase physical activity within these populations. Social, economic, and geographic risk factors combined with a lack of access to physical activity resources and opportunities predispose children within the colonias of the Texas border to have elevated risk for childhood obesity. Additionally, these children face many barriers to establishing and maintaining nationally recommended physical activity levels. Asking children their perspective regarding physical activity is useful in gaining insight into current and desired behavior. Children’s responses to questions regarding facilitators and barriers for physical activity behavior may be used to inform priority areas for health promotion initiatives.

NBIC Collaboration at Multiple Jurisdictional Levels During the Zika Epidemic

ObjectiveAn important part of the National Biosurveillance Integration Center’s (NBIC) mission is collaboration with federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments for the purpose of enhancing early warning, shared situational awareness, and related decision support for infectious disease events. Several such collaborations occurred at multiple jurisdictional levels during the recent Zika epidemic in the Americas and the associated microcephaly and other neurological disorders Public Health Event of International Concern (PHEIC). The collaborations and their known outcomes from this major infectious disease event are described below, and NBIC stands ready to support similar efforts for future events.IntroductionNBIC is charged with enhancing the capability of the Federal Government to enable early warning and shared situational awareness of acute biological events to support better decisions through rapid identification, characterization, localization, and tracking. A key aspect of this mission is the requirement to integrate and collaborate with federal and, state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) government agencies.NBIC develops and disseminates a variety of products to its stakeholders, including daily reports, ad-hoc reports, analytic collaborations, and leadership briefings upon request. Stakeholders interact with and utilize NBIC’s products in different ways, depending on the mission and jurisdiction involved.Specific collaborations with individual stakeholders are most frequent and evident during major infectious disease events, such as the recent Zika epidemic in the Americas and the associated microcephaly and other neurological disorders PHEIC. Collaborative efforts and known outcomes among varying levels of government are described in detail below in order to highlight NBIC’s integration focus and capabilities in this role.MethodsNBIC conducted a thorough review of data gathered, reports written, briefings delivered, and both direct and indirect collaborations completed during the Zika epidemic period from late April 2015 – March 2017. This review was completed with the intent to document collaborative efforts, feedback, and outcomes with multiple jurisdictions.ResultsBetween April 2015 and March 2017, NBIC worked both directly and indirectly with several of its stakeholders to describe and clarify the Zika event as it unfolded in the Americas. Within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), NBIC provided briefings for department leadership, including the DHS Secretary and Assistant Secretary of the Office of Health Affairs), and communicated with other DHS components, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Coast Guard, to ensure the DHS workforce received effective messaging about Zika infection risks and protections.For its federal partners, NBIC coordinated and responded to requests for information about Zika across several departments, including the Departments of Defense, State, and Health and Human Services (HHS). In addition, NBIC analysts collected, structured, and provided information about imported and locally-acquired cases described in open source reporting to the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) for inclusion as a layer on the GeoHealth Platform interactive map before Zika reporting was added to the National Notifiable Disease System. Inclusion of this map layer on ASPR’s website was NBIC’s first public facing collaboration effort. Finally, NBIC coordinated the incorporation of maps and diagrams from ASPR and DOD’s Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch in NBIC products to broaden the distribution of key information.Outside of the federal government, NBIC received feedback from the Texas Department of State Health Services that a September 2016 NBIC Daily Monitoring List with a map depicting Zika cases near the border of Mexico and Texas, as well as the locations of border crossings, filled a gap in its understanding of the number and distribution of cases in Mexico. State health officials used this information to help target public and clinician outreach activities in Texas. In addition to the regular reports disseminated to the SLTT community, NBIC supported monthly calls for the community to provide infectious disease event updates, including Zika updates, and responded to questions from the community regarding the event and federal government response efforts.ConclusionsMajor global or regional infectious disease events that have a direct or potential impact on the health of U.S. citizens require substantial collaboration efforts across multiple jurisdictions. These events foster communication and coordination between organizations toward the common goal of serving the American people and keeping them safe and healthy. The Zika epidemic in the Americas and the associated microcephaly/neurological disorders PHEIC is an example of such an event, and NBIC supported its partners and the multiple jurisdictions they serve, as evidenced by the results presented. NBIC continues to expand its network and support capabilities, and is available to serve as integrators for both major and lesser infectious disease events of concern to their stakeholders.

Translingual Play that Promotes Cultural Connections, Invention, and Regulation: A LatCrit Perspective

ABSTRACTUsing Latino critical race theory as a lens, this qualitative study explored ways in which young children’s translanguaging practices informed the design of culturally relevant sociodramatic spaces in a bilingual early childhood classroom located along the Texas/Mexico border in South Texas. The authors identified aspects of language development that were evident as children engaged in free play. The findings indicated that bilingual children from the Head Start center where this study took place creatively used language to invent and imagine characters, scenarios, and dialogues. Furthermore, their translingual talk facilitated regulation and control of their free play.

Men of Mexican Origin Who Abuse Women: A Qualitative Study.

Current literature indicates that intimate partner violence is a complex phenomenon that exists worldwide. However, little is known about why some men of Mexican origin abuse women. This descriptive study was conducted to understand the experiences of men of Mexican origin who abuse their intimate partners. A qualitative research design was used to conduct this study in a south Texas border community adjacent to the United States-Mexico border. This study builds on existing research and furthers the knowledge related to the factors contributing to intimate partner violence, including cultural factors. The results also reinforce the negative impacts of intimate partner violence on children and the family structure. Further research is needed to support the development of a culturally appropriate prevention and intervention program for men of Mexican origin who abuse women and their families.

Comments: Mexico Moves Forward

Editor's column Later this month, Mexico will auction off 35 shallow-water blocks in the Gulf of Mexico, as its attempt to revive its oil and gas industry moves forward. It will be the ninth auction held under a reform program that began 4 years ago, and will follow the most successful auction to date. The 31 January deepwater auction surpassed expectations, drawing participation from supermajors and national oil companies (see page 42). Along with Argentina, Mexico has emerged as one of the upstream bright spots in Latin America. At the January auction, Mexican regulatory officials expected only 7–10 blocks to be awarded. But the event attracted bids from 11 different firms as 19 blocks were awarded, nine of those to Shell. Although the deepwater auction is thought to have the most valuable acreage, future tenders may also attract heavy interest. Last year, a consortium led by Talos Energy discovered as much as 2 billion bbl in place at its shallow-water Zama-1 well in the Sureste Basin. And Eni found as much as 1 billion bbl at the shallow-water Amoca field; startup is expected early next year, which would make Eni the first foreign company to produce hydrocarbons in Mexico in 80 years. Mexico’s decision to open its oil and gas sector to foreign investment could not have come at a worse time, months before oil prices abruptly declined and operators sharply cut spending. But, after weathering the early bid rounds, which attracted only light participation, Mexico appears on a roll. In addition to the March shallow-water bidding, 37 onshore blocks will be tendered in July, and there are plans of auctioning the first unconventional acreage, located near the Texas border, before the end of this year. The July blocks are located in northeastern and southeastern Mexico, covering 3,668 sq. miles and prospects of reserves for 260 million BOE of light crude and gas. The unconventional blocks are concentrated in the Tampico-Misantla and Burgos basins, south of the prolific Eagle Ford acreage in south Texas. The Mexican government previously announced auctions for unconventional acreage twice, but the first two events were canceled because of questions surrounding the potential regulation of hydraulic fracturing. The money from the bidding and the prospects of increased production are welcome news for Mexico. State oil company Pemex has been heavily strapped for cash, deterring advancement in deepwater and unconventional plays. Mexico’s oil production peaked in 2004 at 3.38 million B/D and has since fallen to less than 2 million B/D. The oil sector’s chief concern now is an upcoming presidential election. Leftist candidate Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador has a sizable lead in public opinion polls ahead of the July election, and has been a critic of the energy reforms. He has vowed to review all contracts that have been awarded during the recent bid rounds. Many political analysts believe that he could indeed slow the pace of reform but would have a difficult time turning back the clock to the days when only Pemex was allowed to invest in the upstream.

Implication of Nilgai Antelope (Artiodactyla: Bovidae) in Reinfestations of Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus (Acari: Ixodidae) in South Texas: A Review and Update

The Cattle Fever Tick Eradication Program was the first parasite eradication program of veterinary importance in the United States and is considered to be one of the greatest disease eradication programs of all time. The program's utilization of pasture vacation and dipping of cattle in acaricide has been extremely successful for controlling Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus (Canestrini) and R. (B.) annulatus (Say), collectively known as cattle fever ticks, on cattle along the Texas border with Mexico for decades. However, the increase of white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus (Zimmermann), populations in South Texas over the last 50 yr has compromised the success of the program. R. (B.) microplus and R. (B.) annulatus infestation data have confirmed that O. virginianus can support the maintenance and movement of both species of cattle fever tick within the permanent quarantine or buffer zone in South Texas along the Rio Grande, and also in the cattle fever tick-free area north and east of the buffer zone. Over the last two decades, increasing populations of exotic nilgai antelope, Boselaphus tragocamelus (Pallas), in South Texas have further complicated cattle fever tick eradication efforts. Historical cattle fever tick infestation data, host source data, and geographical data support the continued role of O. virginianus in maintaining reinfestations of R. (B.) microplus and R. (B.) annulatus in South Texas as well as the increasing role of nilgai antelope in cattle fever tick maintenance and dispersal.

Quantifying the Impact of 20-Year Flood Frequency on Land Cover Change Type

Flooding is the most common and destructive natural disaster in the United States. Ninety percent of all disasters in the US involve flooding, with impacts that cascade across the entire landscape. The primary objective of this study is to understand the impact of flooding on the landscape. One way to determine this is to observe the number of times a unit area of land is flooded and intersect that information with quantified changes in the landscape. The information for this analysis is derived from a complex workflow with inputs from large amounts of Landsat satellite imagery (more than 300 images) and multiple dates of land cover data from the USGS NLCD. The acquired NLCD data were used to generate from-to bivariate land cover change classes. A bivariate dataset was created for 5 date pair epochs. These classes were then used as zonal boundaries within which statistical variables were generated based on the flood frequency layer. By analyzing this information, we characterized what classes changed to what other classes given different frequencies of flooding. The area of interest for this study consists of one path row or footprint of a Landsat image on the border of Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas near the city of Shreveport, Louisiana. This study area is known to have frequent flooding and a diverse landscape. During our analysis, we discovered that land cover changes in this study area more often occurred within areas that had flooded, rather than areas that had not flooded. Barren land cover change is clearly associated with flooding. Agricultural land changing to barren suggested that frequent flooding may cause arable land to not be as productive. When Barren land changes to vegetated cover and when Water changes to Barren, there is a strong likelihood that the change was due to flooding. Interestingly Urban land cover changes intersected with flood frequency regardless of the ratio. Over 2600 ha of Urban were built within the areas that have previously flooded. Some of the from-to change identified in this analysis was due to classification error, however this was minimized due to USGS’s approach to land cover classification update, whereby only areas of change are classified. The results of this analysis are very useful for identifying where land cover change areas exist, their extent, and the likelihood they are associated with flood activity. This has implications and applications to flood plain management and community land use planning. The results of this study showed there is a relationship between some land cover change types and areas that frequently flood.

Insights from Heritage Language Students for Online Spanish Classes

Spanish heritage language learners (SHLL) on the United States-Mexico border in Texas often select online classes for convenience. This qualitative investigation presents preliminary information on how these SHLLs view twenty online Spanish courses based on 391 course evaluations. The literature indicates a need to consider heritage languages learners (HLL) distinct from other language learners, yet no study exists on how these learners, as indicated through student course evaluations, perceive their needs. The study seeks to answer a two-part research question with the purpose of presenting strategies that SHLLs believe contribute to language learning online. The first part of the research question considers aspects of online language courses viewed positively or negatively; the second part considers these students' awareness of the five goal areas within the World Readiness Standards (WRS), used because Spanish programs at the time of data collection implemented the WRS to guide instruction. Results indicate four major observations, which can serve to guide instructors in preparing and implementing online Spanish language classes. Additionally, results suggest these SHLLs were not directly aware of the WRS in their online courses; however, their written suggestions indicate a desire for one or more of those capabilities. Future work comparing these SHLL preliminary results with non-HLLs is warranted.

Kaposi sarcoma incidence in females is nearly four-fold higher in the Lower Rio Grande Valley compared to the Texas average

The Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) is located on U.S.-Mexican border with a population that is 90% Hispanic [1]. Comprised of Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr and Willacy counties, this region has the highest poverty rate and one of the highest incidences of Type 2 diabetes in the United States [2–4]. Previous studies demonstrated a high prevalence of Human Herpes Virus 8 (HHV8) in the LRGV [5–7]. HHV8 infection has been causally linked to Kaposi Sarcoma (KS) [8]. Here, we retrospectively examine the incidence of KS in the LRGV in a set of HIV-negative Hispanic patients. Strikingly, the incidence of KS was higher in LRGV women compared to the Texas state average (nearly four-fold higher in McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr Metro Statistical Area). This unique profile aligns with the increased HHV8 prevalence in the LRGV, suggesting that HHV8 contributes to a high incidence of HIV-negative KS on the U.S.–Mexican border in Texas.

Trammel's Trace: The First Road to Texas from the North by Gary L. Pinkerton

Reviewed by: Trammel's Trace: The First Road to Texas from the Northby Gary L. Pinkerton Carl Drexler Trammel's Trace: The First Road to Texas from the North. By Gary L. Pinkerton. Red River Valley Books. ( College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. Pp. xviii, 281. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-62349-468-1.) Gary L. Pinkerton undertakes two ambitious tasks with Trammel' s Trace: The First Road to Texas from the North: writing a history of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas frontier while developing a biography of the route's namesake, Nicholas Trammell. Both are very welcome additions to the historiography of the Old Southwest, and one hopes this book spurs more work on the region. Pinkerton begins by establishing his connections to Trammel's Trace, which are deep and personal, as he grew up with one of its beds running through his family's property. He and his fellow "'rut nuts'" spent years seeking out the remaining portions of the road (p. xii). Pinkerton's second chapter recounts where the road ran, the kinds of terrain it traversed, and where Trammel's Trace might still be seen. After this orientation, Pinkerton tracks back and forth between Nicholas Trammell and the region and communities through which his trace ran. Pinkerton shows us a land, largely bereft of law and order, where smugglers, brigands, and other American, French, and Spanish ne'er-do-wells thronged. Trammell and his family, by some accounts, would have been numbered among them. Pinkerton portrays the region as a forerunner to the Wild West of later generations, a period that ended as state power grew with the influx of farmers and other, more settled peoples. The account takes an American viewpoint, [End Page 435]which aids in melding the work with other research on the region, but the same context would be understood much differently from Spanish or Native perspectives. Trammell himself, of course, looms large in the account. Born and raised in Tennessee, Trammell appeared deeply committed to exercising the personal prerogative of one in charge of his surroundings. Though clearly not someone to be trifled with, Trammell may have been more complex than stereotypes of the antebellum white man would suggest. The author offers that Trammell was once brought into court in Texas after he broke an enslaved African American man from chained confinement and sheltered him at his ferry. Rather than acknowledge the incident as theft of property, Trammell surrendered his horse and gun, both items of great prestige for American frontiersmen. Far from being an abolitionist, Trammell does appear to have had what Pinkerton describes as a strong "sense of frontier fairness" that extended to the enslaved as well as the free (p. 125). Though Pinkerton never deals with the issue directly, it is striking how connected even the earliest European Americans in the Louisiana-Arkansas-Texas corridor were to capitalist market economies. Much of the depredation perpetrated by Trammell and his fellow smugglers focused on capturing mustangs from the Texas prairies and funneling them into eastern markets. These smuggling routes were also used to carry on clandestine trade between European-aligned economies across the Texas border, exchanges that the Spanish government tried but failed to curtail. Though far from the structures of the eastern seaboard, the region that Trammel's Trace cut through was never far from that economy. I recommend this book to historians interested in early-nineteenth-century Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, the Southwest, or frontier history. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists interested in frontier theory will also find it engaging. Though he covers a lot of ground, Pinkerton writes in a style that will maintain the interest of the nonspecialist. Carl Drexler Southern Arkansas University Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

Determining Pathways and Connections Between Access to Water and High School Noncompletion Rates for Communities Along the U.S.–Mexico Border

Lack of access to potable water through a conveyance system impacts all aspects of modern life. Many &lt;em&gt;colonias&lt;/em&gt;, communities in the Southwestern United States along the U.S.–Mexico border, continue to lack access to piped and treated water. This article discusses a model for the pathway from lack of access to water to lack of high school completion, including intermediary conditions impacting wellness, health, and quality of life for community members. A facilitated discussion with five environmental and public health experts who frequently work in the &lt;em&gt;colonias&lt;/em&gt; of El Paso County, Texas (border communities that resemble the developing world), established common themes found in these communities. This process mapped the pathway from lack of access to water to noncompletion of high school for residents of the &lt;em&gt;colonias&lt;/em&gt;. Further analysis of the pathway led to a model that describes these conditions in terms of built, cultural, human, and political capitals using the capital community framework (Emery &amp; Flora, 2008). The resulting model determines local community investments for advancing positive effects on the beginning, intermediary, and end conditions in the pathway, which have the capacity to positively impact education outcomes. The resulting model can be used to inform policy makers in making investment decisions for developing communities throughout the world including those that face devastation and are in the process of rebuilding sustainable infrastructure with limited financial capital.

Chasing the Phantom Ship: Revisiting Interpretations of the Boca Chica No. 2 Shipwreck on the Texas Coast

Boca Chica Beach spans the south Texas coast in Cameron County for a distance of roughly 12 kilometers between Brazos Santiago Pass and the mouth of the Rio Grande River at the Texas and Mexican border. More than 165 historic ships have been reported lost along the south Texas coast in this general area and at least four, or portions thereof, have been discovered so far. The most well-known of the shipwreck remains is archeological site 41CF184, nicknamed Boca Chica No. 2, which has gained almost mythological status in the region as it has long been circumstantially linked to the Mexican warship Moctezuma; not-so-coincidentally one of the most famous shipwrecks in the region. Is Boca Chica No. 2 the famous warship, once believed to be a “phantom” because it so often eluded the Texian patrols? Evidence suggests otherwise but the significance of both the historic ship and the archeological site invite reexamination of this unresolved mystery.

Rackstraw Downes: Drawings

Rackstraw Downes: Drawings Rackstraw Downes and Karen Wilkin Rackstraw Downes makes images of things most people ignore: the trestles that support highway overpasses and elevated subway lines, non-descript buildings, vast landscapes that appear, at least at first glance, to be featureless. He is fascinated by the complicated geometry of expedient, seemingly illogical urban structures that he encounters in New York, where he lives for about half of every year. But he is equally engaged by the flat, minimally inhabited landscape of the Texas border town, beside the Rio Grande, where he spends the rest of the year. He has made drawings and paintings of interiors whose space appears impossible to understand, as well as of outdoor constructions that defy rational analysis, so much so that it can seem as if the places he chose to study had been built according to the physical laws of an alternative universe, or at least, according to an alternative, non-Euclidian geometry. I’ve often thought of Downes’s virtuoso depictions of complex, utilitarian steel trestles and struts as the equivalents of Renaissance drawings of the basket-weave support for men’s headgear known as a mazzocchio. The geometry of these openwork rings was so complicated that rendering them was a demonstration of the artist’s skill. Downes often seems to be standing in the middle of a kind of giant metal mazzocchio and testing himself against its challenges. But one generalizes about Downes at one’s peril. Recently, as if by contrast to his images of exteriors, he has done a series works of the interior of the barebones, rectangular sky-lit space where he lives and works. None of these unlikely subjects is accorded more or less importance than any other. It’s as if anything that has been seen and that compelled the artist’s [End Page 571] attention, whether because of its complexity or because of its blankness, is deemed worthy subject matter for art. To say that Downes makes images that are faithful to his vision is both accurate and not quite the full story. He’s certainly not the only painter, even in recent years, who strives to discover or invent two-dimensional equivalents for his awareness of the space and mass of the world we inhabit. But Downes is extremely unusual—perhaps unique—in his determined fidelity to the immediacy of his perceptions. He is so dedicated to the specifics of how he sees his subject matter that he will work on a painting only at the time of day, at the time of year, and in the kind of weather that insures the continuity of the quality and angle of light that first captured his attention. Some works take years to complete because of the need to wait for the return of a particular type of light. Yet the apparently faithful, accurate realism of Downes’s drawings and paintings notwithstanding, they become both more absorbing and more disconcerting the longer we spend with them. I suspect this is because we begin, perhaps subliminally, to recapitulate Downes’s own slow, meticulous, essentially disjunctive process of looking and recording, looking and recording, and of what he calls “turning the head in empirical space.” His drawings and the paintings that derive from them are not organized according to any mathematical system, such as linear perspective, but are the result of pure empirical experience. Downes is so attached to each fragment of his motif that he focuses on, sequentially, as he turns his head to survey what is around him, that the horizon line of his Texas images often curves and the space of the urban infrastructure seems to wrap itself around us. We feel that we are seeing things we’ve never seen before. Structures and places that we would ordinarily ignore become uncanny, at once familiar and charged with new, previously unsuspected meaning. Downes is as fine and perceptive a writer as he is a painter and draftsman. In What Realism Means to Me, a talk delivered at a symposium [End Page 572] on realism at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1981, and later published, he noted the pleasure we feel when Shakespeare...

Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas–Mexico Borderlands, 1823–1891 by Jerry Thompson

Reviewed by: Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas–Mexico Borderlands, 1823–1891 by Jerry Thompson Raúl A. Ramos Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas–Mexico Borderlands, 1823–1891. By Jerry Thompson. (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2017. Pp. 412. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.) As a political and military leader from the Texas border town of Laredo, Santos Benavides maneuvered with equal ease in the halls of power on both sides of the Rio Grande. Benavides maintained those connections through conflict and cooperation between nations over a period spanning the Republic of Texas, the U.S.-Mexico War, the U.S. Civil War, the French intervention in Mexico, and finally Texas state politics in the late nineteenth century. Historian Jerry Thompson situates Benavides within this border landscape, weaving this biography among these significant events. Given his extensive research and writing on Tejanos in the Civil War, early politics in Laredo, and in his award-winning biography of Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, Thompson is the ideal author to situate Benavides within these narratives. The result is a clear-eyed treatment that provides yet more insight into the historical dynamics of the border. Given the direct confrontations between Benavides and Cortina as regional leaders on different sides of the U.S. Civil War and Mexican politics, Thompson presents Benavides as supporter of state (as opposed to federal) authority. A significant portion of the biography details Benavides' position as a colonel in the Confederate Army engaged in patrolling the Rio Grande between Brownsville and Eagle Pass. Operating under Colonel John "Rip" Ford, Benavides and his soldiers protected cotton shipments to Mexico meant to circumvent the Union blockade and held back attacks from Cortina that threatened Confederate control of the border. Thompson's extensive coverage of his activities reveals new understanding of the deep engagement and significant role played by Benavides during the Civil War. A corollary to Benavides's service to the Confederacy was his long-time friendship with Governor Santiago Vidaurri of Nuevo León, who also supported the Confederate cause. Benavides became a critical supporter of Vidaurri, lending military and political aid during Mexico's evolving conflicts around Benito Juárez during the French intervention. Thompson's examination of correspondence between Benavides and Vidaurri picks up on the sometimes contradictory positions Benavides took when his allies clashed, as Juárez and Vidaurri did. Following Reconstruction, Benavides entered state politics, serving three terms as a Texas state representative for Laredo and the surrounding area. Here again, Benavides used his astute political instincts to build support from the rural areas without a majority in Laredo. Thompson lays out the partisan divide within the Democratic Party in Laredo, between supporters of Benavides and of his rival Raymond Martin. As a legislator, Thompson describes Benavides by noting, "Despite flashes of enlightened [End Page 458] liberalism, Santos often backed legislation that was reactionary and repressive" (274). Santos Benavides continued to maintain close relations across the border in hopes of facilitating renewed alliances and material progress, and he became a de facto ambassador to Mexico through his connections to the government of Porfirio Díaz. By finally putting together the myriad influences Benavides had on both sides of the border and across historical eras, Thompson reveals the importance of the borderlands and the complex political landscape borderlanders had to confront. For readers interested in the history of Texas, the West and the American Civil War, this biography provides an important addition to those narratives. For Chicano/a historians, Thompson provides a new perspective on the duality inherent in being Tejano in the nineteenth century. Benavides's opposition to Cortina and Martin reveals a different path taken by someone who defined himself as equally American and Mexican for his entire life. Raúl A. Ramos University of Houston Copyright © 2018 The Texas State Historical Association

Timothy Paul Bowman. Blood Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands.

The far southern border of Texas runs between the Nueces River to the north and the Rio Grande Valley. According to Timothy Paul Bowman in Blood Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands, this region became “an internal colony of the United States” in the years after the Mexican-American War, and was the “primary driving force” behind a “negotiated conquest of the region’s ethnic Mexican inhabitants” (2). Beginning in 1853, several major parcels in the eastern area on the U.S. side of the border were purchased by Anglos, who used them to put together the enormous King Ranch. They brought in hands from Mexico now south of the new border as well as other Mexicans who, during the war, had remained on the U.S. side of the border, or who had fled and then returned. While it might seem useful to consider a model of “internal colony” between 1848 and approximately 1900 during the loss of Mexican territory to the United States, that period is not the emphasis of this work. Rather, the book is concentrated on the area’s transformation from a cattle-based economy into a commercial agricultural area focused on the production of oranges and grapefruit. That change did not occur until the early twentieth century, making Bowman’s argument for an “internal colony” at that late date hard to sustain.

Bluetongue in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in Northeastern Mexico

Abstract Bluetongue (BT) and epizootic hemorrhagic disease of deer (EHD) are two distinct viral hemorrhagic diseases of domestic and wild ruminants caused by members of the family Reoviridae and transmitted by Culicoides midges. These conditions have been recognized in Canada and the United States for many years, but not in Mexico. Although in Mexico there is serologic evidence of EHD virus (EHDV) and bluetongue virus (BTV) in domestic and wild ruminants, to our knowledge, there have never been reports of clinical illness or fatalities attributed to either of these viruses. Two free ranging white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in two licensed hunting ranches in Northern Mexico near the Texas border died unexpectedly. Postmortem and microscopic examinations revealed hemorrhagic lesions compatible with viral hemorrhagic disease (Reoviridae: Orbivirus). Tissues from one animal tested positive by RT-PCR for BTV but negative for EHDV. To our knowledge, this is the first time in Mexico where deer dying with hemorrhagic lesions consistent with Bluetongue tested positive for BTV by PCR. Key words: hemorrhagic disease, white-tailed deer, Orbivirus, Mexico.

Latino Youth’s Out-of-School Math and Science Experiences: Impact on Teacher Candidates

This qualitative study examines the learning and interaction processes between Latino/a teacher candidates (TCs) and youth during a community service-learning program involving science and math. Knowing and affirming nondominant youth‟s strengths are essential from funds of knowledge and Third Space perspectives. Participants were 11 TCs and their tutees, 30 youth in first through tenth grades. The study took place in a Texas border colonia, or unincorporated settlement lacking basic services. Data sources were participant observations, youth‟s interviews and TCs‟ pre- and final reflections, rapport- building analyses, a focus group, and lesson plans. We found TCs incorporated the youth‟s funds to develop and implement authentic math and science lessons with them. Implications relate to how community service-learning projects can help TCs‟ future math and science teaching and can create a Third Space to explore math and science in culturally-relevant ways.