Mexican War Research Articles

The Unbearable Uncertainty of Being on the Front Street-level Military in the Mexican War on Drugs

Abstract Since the so-called war on drugs began in Mexico in 2006, the military has been the leading actor in charge of the government’s public security policy, undertaking tasks that should be carried out by the police. Analyses of this security strategy are based on quantitative methods and have focused on its results: e.g., an increase in the homicide rate or the committing of human rights violations. In contrast, based on in-depth interviews, this article explores the testimony of military personnel to understand what they experience in the field. Contrary to what the existing literature argues, which maintains that the military acts with a logic of war, this article shows that the situation is far more complex: they act in a scenario characterized by improvisation, facing the dilemma between acting and being accused of human rights or not acting and being accused of disobedience.

Fuelling Organised Crime: the Mexican War on Drugs and Oil Theft

Abstract We show that the Mexican war on drugs pushed drug cartels into large-scale oil theft. We propose a simple model in which government crackdowns on one criminal sector induce criminal organisations to invest in a new sector. When entering the new sector, challenger organisations with a residual share of the market in the traditional sector may leapfrog incumbent organisations. We bring the model to the data using detailed information on drug cartel presence, oil pipelines and illegal oil taps across Mexican municipalities. In line with the model predictions, municipalities with oil pipelines witnessed a greater increase in cartel presence than municipalities without pipelines after the crackdown on drugs, and the effect is driven by challenger criminal groups. Within the subset of municipalities with oil pipelines, we observe more illegal oil taps where the political party in favour of anti-drug trafficking policy won local elections by a small margin. Because of specialisation in different criminal sectors, municipalities with pipelines did not witness a surge in violence, but they did experience a decline in socioeconomic conditions.

Loyalty, Subjecthood, and Violence: Veracruz’s Afro-descendants in the Early Mexican War of Independence, 1812–1813

Abstract: This article is centered around the experiences of Afro-descendant men in the 1812–1813 period of the Mexican War of Independence as it occurred in the port-city of Veracruz and it Sotavento (Leeward) hinterland. It argues that Black men had complex, active, and essential roles in providing the backbone of regional royalist and insurgent armies. It pieces together the fragmented military and political agency of Veracruz’s Afro-descendant men as reflected in published and unknown archival sources of the colonial and national archive, such as military reports and correspondence, constitutions, decrees, 19th Century published accounts, and a lengthy court case. This article sheds light on how Afro-descendant men were pushed to participate by their individual and collective needs, reacting to localized, and transatlantic, conditions that promised, or excluded them from, social, economic, and political advancement. By centering Veracruz’s Afro-descendant men as instrumental players of the war, even in leadership roles, this article seeks to problematize traditional narratives of the struggle that negate and erase Black History in the Mexican struggle for liberation. This article also places their experiences within the backdrops of Atlantic World politics during the Age of Revolutions. It examines the ways by which they reacted to limiting frameworks of citizenship influenced by localized, and transatlantic, Anti-Black stereotypes and fears, along with the adoption of the 1812 Cádiz Charter. This article argues that these men found themselves amidst the paradox of being militarily wanted but politically rejected by nineteenth century Spanish colonialism. This led Afro-descendant men to seek new opportunities of belonging and empowerment, joining the insurgency to improve their sociopolitical status. This article seeks to humanize voiceless Afro-descendant historical actors placing them as essential players of Veracruz’s, and the Greater Caribbean’s, early-nineteenth century regional dynamics.

Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico by Corinna Zeltsman

Reviewed by: Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico by Corinna Zeltsman Christopher Conway KEYWORDS Print Culture, Printing, Mexico, Mexican Newspapers, Authorship, Public Sphere, Broadsides corinna zeltsman. Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico. U of California P, 2021, 327 pp. The increasing availability of digitized nineteenth-century Mexican journalism and print has encouraged a boom in keyword research that allows scholars to recover, collect, and curate collections of articles from that period. These keyword archives can be illuminating, but their promise is limited by how search engines shape the visuality and experience of access. For example, while digital platforms allow quick and satisfying keyword searches, broader page-by-page views can be unwieldy and awkward. Under these conditions, our ability to absorb the form, variety, and evolution of newspapers or broadsides becomes more difficult, as does our ability to explain their history and uniqueness. These challenges are a reminder of the importance of combining digital resources with traditional archives and of being more probing and ambitious in how we interact with primary sources of all kinds. In other words, the scholar, and not the digital platform, should be the research algorithm. Corinna Zeltsman's Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico is a fantastic example of what is possible when a scholar puts their sights beyond keywords toward the bigger story of the political, discursive, and symbolic meanings of print culture. Zeltsman sketches vivid portraits of the most important printers of the century as well as their disputes with state and religious authorities over freedom of speech. Unlike narrower, thematic studies, Ink under the Fingernails delivers a wide-ranging history and framework for studying Mexican print culture and nineteenth-century intellectual life writ large. The latter point is important because virtually all nineteenth-century Mexican writers were newspaper writers who frequently found themselves in print skirmishes. Zeltsman tells the story of the print ecosystem that published these writers and provides invaluable information about newspapers and their editors, the material and technological practices of printing, and changing definitions of authorship and editorship. The book elegantly stores its literature reviews and secondary sources in notes, producing a readable narrative that will appeal to scholars in different disciplines. Chapter 1, "The Politics of Loyalty," explores the political and bureaucratic hierarchies of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century state-s ponsored newspaper printing, particularly Manuel Antonio Valdés (1742–1814), the editor of the Gazeta de México. Official printed material required viceregal licensing and was assessed by representatives from the Mexican Inquisition and other Catholic dignitaries. This network of power and patronage defined print through negotiation with power brokers whose authority was, in turn, reinforced by the publication of censors' reports and official licenses. Zeltsman also underlines competing definitions of what an official newspaper should be and identifies the kinds of political, technical, and financial barriers that troubled the printing of the Gazeta de México. The cultural politics of printing during the Mexican War of Independence is at the center of chapter 2, "Negotiating Freedom." This chapter considers competing definitions of freedom of speech and how royalists and insurgents deployed print to argue their respective causes. Zeltsman tracks the uneven and inconsistent application of freedom of speech and how editors and authors like José Joaquín [End Page 110] Fernández de Lizardi (1776–1827) tried to support and expand the role of print. She also examines the controversy surrounding Felipe Merino's broadside El liberal a los bajos escritores (1820), which attacked the timidity of writers and the reluctance of Viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca (1754–1835) and other military officials in implementing parts of the Constitution of Cadiz. This cause célèbre, like other case studies contained in the book, is a kind of laboratory that allows Zeltsman to delineate actors, interests, trends, and shifts in political and cultural debates about print. Chapter 3, "Responsibility on Trial," explores two topics: the management and understanding of legal responsibility regarding print, and how one of the most notable printers of the century, Ignacio Cumplido (1811–1887), theorized the role of the printer in a republic. These two issues are linked because...

Mercury Rising: US–Mexican Conflict in Alexander Edouart's Blessing of the Enrequita Mine

Alexander Edouart's Blessing of the Enrequita Mine of 1860 commemorates the discovery of a mercury vein in New Almaden, California. It pictures the mine's Anglo‐American administrators, its primarily Mexican miners, and industry's impact upon the landscape. Despite the seemingly idyllic nature of the genre scene, the Enrequita Mine and its painted portrayal mark a contentious turning point in the economic and political relationship between the United States and Mexico in the mid‐nineteenth century, one whose effects still reverberate today. Two moments of tension between the two nations frame this artwork: the US–Mexican War of 1846–48; and the United States v. Castillero court case and appeals (1857–63). Using an ecocritical approach situating the painting in the geopolitics of extraction, this essay contends that the artwork participated in these territorial disputes by constructing ethnic hierarchy, bolstering legal battles, and not only representing but engendering further capitalist exploitation of the land.

Mexican War of Reform - The Grammar of Civil War: A Mexican Case Study, 1857–61. By Will Fowler. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. 313. $65.00 cloth; $65.00 e-book.

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Community Violence and the Stability of Marriages and Cohabitations in Mexico

AbstractThis study evaluates the link between local violence and the stability of women’s first co-residential unions in Mexico by exploiting the drastic increase in homicide rates caused by the Mexican War on Drugs in December 2006. We use event history analysis and individual union histories collected by a national survey in 2009 to assess whether increasing homicide rates in the previous 2 years relates to the dissolution of marital and cohabiting unions, and to transitions to marriage among cohabitors. Cox models show that a recent spike in violence is associated with a higher risk of dissolution for first coresidential unions among less educated women. Competing-risks Cox models further show that for first cohabiting unions among the less educated, exposure to increasing violence is not only associated with a higher risk of dissolution, but also with a higher risk of transitioning to marriage. In contrast, recent spikes in violence were not significantly associated with union transitions for more educated women. This suggests that increasing local violence may be pushing disadvantaged women in coresidential unions to accelerate significant transitions in their family trajectories, by either dissolving their relationships, or getting married to their cohabiting partner, which plausibly reflects underlying differences in union quality. By evaluating the link between local criminal violence and union stability, our findings contribute to understanding how disadvantaged families cope with disruptions to their social environments.

“In Honorable Remembrance to All Generations”: Commemoration and the Making of Mormon Battalion Memory, 1921–2021

“In Honorable Remembrance to All Generations”: Commemoration and the Making of Mormon Battalion Memory, 1921–2021

The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848–1948 by José F. Aranda Jr

Reviewed by: The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848–1948 by José F. Aranda Jr Sandra Dahlberg José F. Aranda Jr., The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848–1948. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2022. 269 pp. Hardcover, $99; paper, $30; e-book, $30. In The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848– 1948, José F. Aranda investigates the “fusions of two historically competing colonialisms” when, in 1848, the Spanish/Mexican “colonial matrix gave way to a yet more powerful” Anglo American one (25, 24). He analyzes the portrayal of Mexican Americans’ dual positionality as colonizers and colonized in texts produced in the century following the US–Mexican War. The focus of Aranda’s methodology is a concept he calls “modernities of subtraction” through which he articulates “a peculiar mode of modernity whose darker side, coloniality, operates at a greater distance from the rationalizations and promises of Enlightenment ideology” (2). His approach draws on Walter Mignolo’s interrogation of settler colonialism in addition to Aníbal Quijano’s examination of how modernity’s promise was “obstructed by Anglo-American ideologies of racial superiority” (12). He also borrows from theories of critical regionalism advanced by Krista Comer and Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán to explore the nexus of identity and place. According to Aranda, “to read modernity through place, through geography, invariably disrupts and questions the naturalizing effect of timelessness that each colonializing institution . . . has had over space” (231). Aranda’s study of subtractive modernity begins by analyzing three generations of works by the Vallejo family of California. From Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo’s Recuerdos históricos y personales to Francisca Vallejo’s “Padres, Gringos, and Gold” radio program in the 1930s, the Vallejos, including María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, worked [End Page 435] to disrupt Anglo-American narratives that Mexicanized Californios. They did so by employing a “coloniality of nostalgia” that expressed their loss of social capital after American annexation and, Aranda contends, projected a “Spanish fantasy heritage” that distanced elite Californios from associations with Mexico or Mexicanness. After 1848 Aranda demonstrates how the term “Mexican” became a “potent and particular instance of a modernity of subtraction,” functioning as a “sly marker for race, racism, and white nation-building” that enables the displacement and disenfranchisement of Mexican Americans (151–52). In another chapter Aranda mines José Villarreal’s novel Pocho to elucidate the “statelessness” of twentieth-century Mexican Americans who faced “racial discrimination in the United States and social discrimination in Mexico” (204). Through the work of writer/folklorist Jovita González, Aranda discusses the gendered qualities of these “racialized connotations” and asserts that “Shades of the Tenth Muse” is González’s “attempt to theorize her colonial, [gendered] condition in Texas . . . as related to but ultimately separate from the model of feminine creativity provided by the Tenth Muse of either New England or New Spain” (169). Unlike González, those tenth muses, Anne Bradford and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, occupied dominant positionalities in their colonial landscapes. Place, according to Aranda, shapes modernism’s “subtractive prerogatives” and the “interplay” of race, racism, and raced communities throughout the Southwest (112). This interplay is particularly evident, he argues, in Miguel Antonio Otero’s The Real Billy the Kid, which depicts a late-nineteenth-century geography where Nuevo Mexicano civic authority was predicated on a “collective denial of ever having shared an indigenous heritage” and immigrant Anglos like Billy the Kid often adopted a “settler hybridity” by becoming Hispanicized (133, 139). In The Places of Modernity in Early Mexican American Literature, 1848–1948, particularly with his theory of a “modernity of subtraction,” Aranda provides an important lens through which to wrestle with the competing Spanish/Mexican and Anglo-American settler colonialist ideologies in Mexican American cultural production. [End Page 436] Sandra Dahlberg University of Houston-Downtown Copyright © 2023 Western Literature Association ...

Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering

Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering

"Arnold the Traitor": George Lippard, the Mexican-American War, and the Search for an Antebellum George Washington, 1846–1852

Abstract: During the Mexican-American War (1848–1846), Pennsylvania native and literary giant George Lippard promoted the nation-changing conflict by invoking the heroes and villains of the revolutionary era—most notably Benedict Arnold. An active member of the urban Democratic movement Locofocoism, Lippard used Arnold's infamy to paint political opponents and Mexican War skeptics as traitors while actively seeking to recruit the conflict's hero, General Zachary Taylor, for the presidential election of 1848 as a non-party candidate and antebellum era George Washington. Disillusioned by Taylor's affiliation with the Whig Party, Lippard went on before his death to form a secret society to further his expansionist goals. Although previous historians have examined Lippard's political activities, scholars have overlooked his role in propagating Arnold's traitorous legacy during a contentious period in American history.

Hidden drivers of violence diffusion: Evidence from illegal oil siphoning in Mexico

This paper studies spatial violence diffusion when criminal organizations specializing in one illegal activity (e.g., drug trafficking) are attacked by security forces. Our theoretical framework suggests that violence diffusion will be linked to criminal diversification. Using the Mexican War on Drugs, we find evidence supporting this prediction. We document that the Mexican War on Drugs induced drug trafficking organizations to begin stealing hydrocarbon products from the Mexican oil pipeline network. In turn, this portfolio reallocation of illegal activities caused violence to escalate in oil pipeline network locations holding little strategic value for drug trafficking. Furthermore, within the pipeline network, branches located further away from the government’s eye were more susceptible to the establishment of criminal monopolies and thus experienced greater upticks in violence than other branches.

Warfare and Logistics along the US–Canadian Border during the War of 1812 by Christopher Dishman

Reviewed by: Warfare and Logistics along the US–Canadian Border during the War of 1812 by Christopher Dishman Don Hickey (bio) Keywords War of 1812, Canada, Maritime history Warfare and Logistics along the US–Canadian Border during the War of 1812. By Christopher Dishman. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2021. Pp. 352. Cloth, $39.95.) It is well-known that armies travel on their stomachs, but that doesn't mean that nations going to war are always prepared to adequately support their troops in the field. When the theaters of operation are numerous and remote, the problem of supply is magnified. In the War of 1812, there were arguably as many as ten theaters: Four in the Canadian–American borderlands (Lake Erie–Detroit River, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and the Richelieu River–Lake Champlain corridor); three on the Atlantic seaboard (Maine, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Georgia coast); another on the Gulf Coast (that included Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans); the St. Louis theater in the West; and, finally, the high seas. Although the British had to send men and materiel across the Atlantic, they had deep pockets and plenty of wartime experience and thus had a well-developed and well-financed system of supply. Even so, they had trouble supporting operations in the West, especially at Detroit and New Orleans. For the United States, the distances were more manageable, but without an established system of supply and the money to support it, their challenges were no less daunting. As a result, despite the successes of the British early in the war and of the Americans later on, the outcome on the battlefield was inconclusive. In his new book, Christopher Dishman, an independent scholar who cut his teeth on the Battle of Monterrey in the Mexican War, examines the war along the Canadian–American border. Not unreasonably, Dishman treats the four theaters as an integrated whole. Although the title, preface, and dust jacket promise that this work will take a deep dive into the logistics of the war, he offers little more on that important and underserved subject than one finds in any study of the battles and campaigns. There is some material on logistics in the opening chapter, but that is far from complete and serves as little more than a teaser for what should have followed. This work is instead a conventional narrative. Dishman is a newcomer to the field of 1812 studies, and he brings to the project a fresh set of eyes. This is often a plus because the author is unencumbered by the traditional narrative. For 1812 studies, Alan Taylor's The [End Page 627] Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (New York, 2010) is a good example of the freshness that a newcomer can bring to the table. The great strength of Dishman's work is that he offers readers a tight and coherent treatment of Canadian–American theaters in this conflict, and it was here, after all, that the war was going to be won or lost. Although the United States went to war to force the British to give up certain maritime practices—restricting and looting American trade under the authority of the Orders-in-Council and impressing American seamen from American merchant vessels—the only way the new nation could put any pressure on Britain to change these policies was by targeting Canada. In theory, this meant seizing Canada and holding it for ransom on the maritime issues, although in practice what the fate of Canada would have been had the United States actually conquered it is unknown. In any case, the young republic failed to take Canada, and in truth conquering it was probably beyond its means. If so, then this war was unwinnable and probably never should have been undertaken. Better, perhaps, to simply endure the insults and injuries until the end of the war in Europe eliminated them. The principal weakness of Dishman's work is that he is treading a well-worn path, and while he does a good job of drawing together material from a wide variety of sources, there isn't much here that most students of...

Resonant Frames, but Failed Alliances

How did a local protest motivated by the murder of a poet’s son grow into a national social movement? In this article, I examine the role of framing in the upward scale shift of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), a contentious actor that brought together victims of the Mexican war on crime, activists, and organizations to protest against violence. Following recent work on frame analysis, I analyze the different and contrasting reasons that led several groups from across the country to align with the MPJD’s frames and find them as resonant. In addition, I discuss why, despite the existence of common goals, ideological incompatibilities caused multiple MPJD allies to withdraw their participation in the alliance shortly after the latter’s initial actions.

Violence-induced migration and peer effects in academic performance

We document that local violence generates spillover effects beyond areas where violence takes place, via out-migration from violence-affected areas and peer exposure to violence. In the context of the Mexican war on drugs, we use violence-induced student migration as an exogenous source of variation in peer exposure to violence to estimate its effects on the academic performance of non-moving students in areas not directly affected by violence. Our results show that municipalities that face more violence experience higher rates of student out-migration. In receiving schools in areas not directly affected by violence, adding a new peer who was exposed to local violence to a class of 20 students decreases incumbents’ academic performance by 2 percent of a standard deviation. Negative effects are more pronounced among girls and high-achieving students.

West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire by Kevin Waite

Reviewed by: West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire by Kevin Waite Karl Jacoby (bio) Transcontinental railroad, Slavery, Southern history, Western history West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire. By Kevin Waite. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. 372. Paper, $29.95.) It has long been axiomatic that the victory of the United States in the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846–48 catalyzed the Civil War less than a decade and a half later. As no other than Ulysses S. Grant remarked in 1885, "The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War." In West of Slavery, Kevin Waite offers a detailed account of what rendered the seizure of new territories from Mexico so inflammatory. His answer hinges on a multi-layered excavation of how white advocates of enslavement in the mid-nineteenth century imagined incorporating the new territories of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and California into a vast slave system that Waite dubs the "Continental South." Even though the traditional crops of the Slave South—cotton, sugar, and tobacco—were not well suited to the arid lands of the Far West, proslavery southerners, Waite shows, still imagined these new territories as integral to enslavement's future in the United States. One of the initial efforts to knit together the West and South was through the construction of what some white southerners took to calling "the great slavery road": a railroad linking the cotton-growing states of the South with the United States's newly acquired ports on the Pacific Coast [End Page 316] and, from there, to the burgeoning markets of Asia. Waite's well-crafted discussion of white southerners' advocacy for a southern route for the transcontinental railroad in turn illuminates the larger stakes of his project, especially in relation to current historiographical debates over slavery and capitalism. White southerners may have embraced the railroad, their era's leading symbol of modernity, enlisted the power of the federal government in an effort to make their vision a reality, and shown themselves susceptible to the same profit motive and market forces as capitalists elsewhere. But they did so in the service of a political economy that remained resolutely regional and defined in opposition to what white southerners imagined to be the prevailing conditions in the North. Western expansion, according to Waite, only exacerbated these tensions by providing new stakes over which to struggle. The transcontinental railroad, of course, would have to wait until the 1860s to become a reality. When it did, the exigencies of the Civil War ensured that the rail line bypassed the southern route favored by proslavery advocates. But throughout the antebellum period, transplanted white southerners proved remarkably adept at shaping local politics in the Far West. Although California was nominally a free state, white southerners succeeded in bringing about in 1852 the passage of a Fugitive Slave Act that stipulated that any enslaved African American brought to the West Coast before California statehood remained enslaved, so long as their enslavers ultimately planned to remove them out of the state at some later date. When African Americans challenged this law, the California Supreme Court ruled against them in a decision that, Waite notes, "prefigured the Dred Scott decision of 1857 by sustaining slaveholders' rights to carry their human property across free soil without risk" (99). In New Mexico, transplanted southern whites managed to pass laws protecting the enslavement of African Americans that were every bit the equal of slave codes in the states of the Deep South. Other white southerners readily transitioned to keeping Indigenous people in bondage, such as the Tennessee-born Cave Couts, who worked his extensive holdings in Southern California with a force of Indian debt peons, indentured apprentices, and convict laborers—all forms of unfree Native labor legal in California in the 1850s. Couts and other elite white southerners emerge as the primary actors of Waite's narrative. One gets occasional glimpses of enslaved African Americans in California sending back money to their family members still in bondage in the South or of Black Californians hosting "Colored [End Page 317] Conventions." But the "Continental South" discussed in West of...

Reflections on the Past: The Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the Civil War Era

Reflections on the Past:The Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the Civil War Era Robert Wooster (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution The first page of Guy M. Bryan's "Address to the People of the State of Texas," published in the January 1954 issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. University of North Texas Libraries, the Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu. [End Page 464] From its inception, the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) and its quarterly publication, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly (titled The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association from 1897 to 1912), have had close links with the American Civil War. The Association's first president, O. M. Roberts, had presided over the Texas secession convention, and among the first vice presidents was Guy M. Bryan, a planter and politician who had served during the war as de facto chief of staff to General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. The first Executive Council also included Francis R. Lubbock, the state's wartime governor until 1863. Other former Confederates closely involved in the Association's formation were John S. (Rip) Ford, the renowned Texas Ranger who led Confederate forces in the last battle of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch, Texas; John H. Reagan, postmaster general of the Confederacy; and Battle of San Jacinto veteran William P. Zuber, who fought with the Twenty-first Texas Cavalry Regiment from 1862 to 1864.1 This historical connection was quickly evidenced in accord with the TSHA constitution, which identified its goals as including "the discovery, collection, preservation, and publication of historical material, especially such as relates to Texas." The Quarterly would soon publish biographical [End Page 465] sketches of Bryan, Reagan, and John Marshall, commander of the Fourth Texas Infantry Regiment killed in the fighting at Gaines' Mill, Virginia (June 27, 1862). More significant were the direct contributions on Civil War-era subjects by these early leaders. Lubbock penned a short biography of Confederate general Hamilton P. Bee, a long-time Texan who had served in South Texas during his administration. In a similar vein, the Quarterly's second issue featured Ford's description of a July 1865 skirmish with Kickapoo Indians along the Frio River. Reagan also recalled his conversation on the eve of secession with then-Governor Sam Houston, and Roberts described his unsuccessful efforts as an ex-Confederate to take a seat in the postwar United States Senate.2 Publication of primary source materials became a vital element of the Quarterly's early contribution to scholarship on the Civil War era. Especially notable was Guy Bryan's correspondence with his old Kenyon College friend, Rutherford B. Hayes, published in twenty issues of the Quarterly between 1921 and 1926. These letters, mostly written after 1865 by a Confederate Democrat and a Federal Republican, offer extraordinary insights into the nation's efforts to reform itself in the wake of its bloodiest conflict. Bryan's formal call for secession, written following Abraham Lincoln's election as president, would also be published three decades later.3 During these early years, primary materials related to the Civil War usually featured the letters and reminiscences of soldiers who either fought against the Union or joined frontier companies to protect the interests of non-Indians in the state's western borderlands. They often described their Civil War experiences in the context of their broader lives in Texas. Especially illustrative were the letters of William P. Rogers, a Mexican War veteran and ardent secessionist who commanded the Second Texas Infantry Regiment. Writing to his wife, Rogers admitted that "we lost many of our best and noblest" in the bloody defeat at Shiloh, Tennessee (April 6–7, 1862), and revealed a misconception shared by many Southerners: "Two to one we can whip them but if we contend with greater odds the result will be doubtful." The Quarterly also secured J. K. P. Blackburn's lengthy [End Page 466] reminiscences of his service with one of the state's most famous Confederate units in the war's Western Theater, Terry's Texas Rangers (officially the Eighth Texas Cavalry Regiment).4 Early secondary works appearing in...

The Mexican war against drug cartels, traffickers’ collateral incentive to commit crimes against undocumented immigrants

This article aims to demonstrate that Mexico's 2006 war on drugs exacerbated violence against undocumented immigrants its territory. It compares drug-related violence and homicides from 2006 to 2013 and analyzes the fact that many Central American migrants never made it to Mexico's northern border, but were not detained or deported by Mexican authorities either. In order to conduct this research, information was obtained from government, autonomous and civilian agencies as well as the United Nations regional commissions. A formal data analysis was performed using the spss method. This manuscript shows that US immigrant detentions decreased in this period and increased again in the following presidential administration. Simultaneously, hundreds of migrants disappeared in Mexico, although exact data is not available due to the secrecy surrounding this type of criminality. Migrants were seen as targets against whom extortion or human trafficking could be committed. Despite this, Central Americans continue to immigrate in mass flows.

The Journal of James A. Brush: The Expedition and Military Operations of General Don Francisco Xavier Mina in Mexico, 1816–1817

It is good to see that academic presses continue to publish primary sources in elegant and useful formats, even if the prices are elevated. Such is the case with Karen Racine and Graham Lloyd's annotated edition of James A. Brush's “journal” of his time in Mexico with Francisco Xavier Mina. Brush, a Scottish veteran of the Peninsular War once held by the French as a prisoner of war, joined Mina in Liverpool, so he was part of the expedition from the beginning. He stayed with the Spanish war hero turned freedom fighter until the very end, a period of 18 months. Unlike many Spaniards and Mexicans captured in the course of the expedition's collapse, he was not executed but was allowed to leave Mexico in 1819.Francisco Xavier Mina was the quintessential idealist warrior of the Romantic era. Born in northern Spain on the eve of the French Revolution, he became an ardent nationalist and despite his youth and lack of formal military training quickly rose to become one of Spain's foremost military leaders in the early stages of the struggle for Spanish liberation from Napoleonic rule. Captured by the French, he spent years in France as a prisoner of war. After his release and disillusioned with Fernando VII's autocratic turn, he launched an unsuccessful rebellion and then fled to England, where he shifted his attention to freeing Spanish America. Charismatic as well as brave, he commanded the respect of the international group of followers who accompanied him, first to Baltimore and then to Galveston, from where he launched his quixotic campaign to liberate Mexico. Landing near Soto la Marina in what is now Tamaulipas, his division penetrated as far south as northern Michoacán before the expedition fell completely apart near Guanajuato, where he was captured and executed in November 1817.Although the original manuscript is titled a journal and the editors retain that wording, the work is more in the nature of a recollection or memoir, something that the editors acknowledge in thus referring to it in their concise and utilitarian introduction. The structure of the manuscript, which is located at the Huntington Library, clearly shows that it was composed after the Scot's departure from Mexico. Among the problems with the text, the editors point out that Brush's dating of events is inconsistent; this and the typical problems of spelling do not take away from the manuscript's importance as the only firsthand account of Mina's expedition, especially as Brush is concerned with describing the people and places that he visited, providing a distinctive perspective on events during that stage of Mexico's independence struggle.Various elements of Brush's narrative speak to the way that the insurrection had descended into rivalries and conflicting interests. Brush repeatedly refers to the antipathy of insurgent leaders José Antonio Torres and Diego Noboa for Mina. On the other hand, Brush asserts that among the royalists Mina was much admired, so much so that his execution took place with his face covered, lest the soldiery resist executing someone whom they considered a military hero. The account also makes clear that poor training and organization were problems for both sides, which led to frequent desertions and defections.Aside from Brush's narrative, the editors have included three valuable appendixes and an excellent bibliography focused on Mina-related works. The first appendix is a set of documents that provide context and substantiation for Brush's writings. Of particular interest are the texts of four of Mina's proclamations, the portion of the Inquisition's interrogation of Father Servando Teresa de Mier dealing with his relationship to Mina, and various documents illustrating the popular culture side of the pro- and anti-insurgency causes. The second appendix is a table of known expedition members indicating place of origin and available details, which are often minimal or completely missing. The third appendix is a chronology of Mina and of Brush through 1824.Racine and Lloyd have produced a very readable text, and I have only a few quibbles regarding both factual errors and documentation. For instance, in mentioning some of the leading figures whom Mina encountered, they state that Manuel Mier y Terán later rose to general and had “a prominent role in the Mexican-American War,” but Mier y Terán committed suicide in 1832 (p. 15). They erroneously place the town of Croix—birthplace of Juan Bautista de las Casas, who led the first revolt against royalist rule in Texas in January 1811 (not 1812, as they state)—in Jalisco, though it was a settlement in western Nuevo Santander (now Tamaulipas) (p. 245n85). The editors are also inconsistent in providing citations within their annotations. None of this detracts from the overall value of the work, which for scholars of the period sheds new light on one of the more dramatic episodes in the Mexican War of Independence.

An Officer of the Old Guard: Lewis Stephenson Craig, 1807–1852 by William Harris Bragg

Reviewed by: An Officer of the Old Guard: Lewis Stephenson Craig, 1807–1852 by William Harris Bragg Robert Wettemann An Officer of the Old Guard: Lewis Stephenson Craig, 1807–1852. By William Harris Bragg. ( Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2020. Pp. lvi, 295. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-88146-764-2.) Prominent antebellum U.S. Army leaders and commanders often left paper collections or memoirs readily digested and reexamined by historians and scholars, making new material on the antebellum U.S. Army fruitful for further exploration. Such is the case with William Harris Bragg's study of Lewis Stephenson Craig, which brings Craig's letters, journals, and a heretofore untouched family archive to the forefront. The result is a rich personal portrait of a Virginia gentleman and military officer, who had been denied his plantation by unscrupulous older siblings and guardians and was given an officer's commission when lengthy court battles cost him his inheritance. Abandoning hopes of a place among the Virginia gentry, Craig sought martial glory, gaining a commission as an officer in the Second Dragoons, which he led into the fray in the battle of the Loxahatchee River during the Second Seminole War. Having demonstrated his martial abilities at a time when non–West Point graduates faced prospects of resignation, Craig received a transfer to the Third Infantry regiment. While serving on the southwestern frontier, he not only met and [End Page 158] married Elizabeth Church but also continued to distinguish himself before being ordered to accompany the Third Infantry to the U.S.-Mexican border in anticipation of war. At this point, Bragg's narrative assumes a new form, a deft balance of historical contextualization with excerpts from Craig's journal of his service in the Mexican War. Bragg's efforts are workmanlike as he lets the officer speak: the reader follows Craig in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, shares in his promotion to captain, and marches into the battle of Monterrey, where the Third Infantry distinguished itself in seizing the city. Craig continues as the dominant narrator, describing his path into the enemy works at the battle of Cerro Gordo and thence down the National Road into central Mexico. Craig's wartime journal concluded with General Winfield Scott's capture of Mexico City and Craig's brevet promotions to major for gallantry in the battle of Monterrey and to lieutenant colonel for his efforts at Contreras and Churubusco. After the war, Craig received an appointment to the Joint United States and Mexico Boundary Commission, functioning as the military escort to those charting the boundary between the two nations. The author's narrative continues to balance Craig's extant journal (it is missing the October 26–November 16, 1851, period) with additional historical context tracing the surveying team's progress. Departing from San Antonio and proceeding to El Paso, Craig chronicled the challenges faced by the infantry company under his command, such as Native attacks and actions by U.S. Army deserters. This latter threat brought an ignominious end to Craig's career, as he was murdered while attempting to apprehend a deserter on June 5, 1852. Bragg is at his best when discussing Craig's experience, effectively describing the social and cultural context of life in the Old South and how a young man looked to military service as an alternative to plantation life. Bragg's deeper understanding of the antebellum U.S. Army is less nuanced. While he repeatedly speaks of military professionalism and national service, Bragg's treatment of those notions with respect to officers' possessing a recognized body of military expertise, their shared responsibilities regarding commitment and national service, and the larger corporate nature of officership is cursory at best, particularly considering Craig's uniqueness in receiving a commission direct from civilian life and otherwise lacking the shared West Point traditions that defined the army officer corps before the Mexican War. These shortcomings notwithstanding, Bragg is to be credited for making the life of Lewis Stephenson Craig available to future scholars of the antebellum U.S. Army. Robert Wettemann United States Air Force Academy Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association