Published by EH.NET (June 2009)

Casey Walsh, Building the Borderlands: A Transnational History of Irrigated Cotton along the Mexico-Texas Border. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2008. ix + 234 pp. $47.50 (cloth), ISBN: 978-1-60344-013-4.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Paul Ganster, Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias, San Diego State University.

This book, by Casey Walsh, assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the story of development in northeastern Mexico in the area of the lower Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) Valley and delta area. The author employs historical research methodology along with anthropological ethnographic techniques within the context of Marxian theory and concepts. Investigations by the author in a number of Mexican archives as well as consulting documentary sources in the United States produced a strong historical foundation for the book’s approach and analysis. For example, excellent historical overviews of land tenure in the principal area of study provide necessary and useful background to later efforts by the Mexican government to reform land tenure. The ethnographic approach facilitates the inclusion of important material from individuals who participated in the events that are the central core of the book. The Marxian approach adds concepts such as “social fields,” which are useful for understanding the power relations of the actors involved in the lower Rio Bravo. The author’s theoretical perspectives also lead to an emphasis on how cotton fits into the global political economy.

Much of the study is devoted to a background of cotton cultivation and the cotton industry in Mexico and how the government of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940) attempted through hydraulic and social engineering to create a regional cotton industry and new society in the lower Rio Grande. This model of regional development had emerged under the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-1928), but was vigorously applied by Cárdenas who sought to develop the Matamoros region through planned settlement and introduction of the cultivation of cotton. Walsh argues for the centrality of cotton cultivation in the national development priorities of the time and points out that construction of irrigation works on the lower Río Bravo also served a strategic purpose in the competition with the United States for the shared waters of the international river. The author also describes how the cotton cultivation project enabled Mexico to provide employment and homes for Mexicans who were leaving the depression-era United States. Interestingly, these former residents of the United States were viewed as more desirable colonists than Mexicans from the south. Famed Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio — who advised the government on its colonization scheme — and many government officials viewed northern Mexicans as more progressive and enterprising than people from the Indian south. Moreover, many of the repatriated Mexicans had experience in cotton cultivation in the United States and had acquired other useful skills there.

The study reveals basic weaknesses of the state in Mexico, even during the Cárdenas years. Time and again, the bureaucracy was unable to deliver infrastructure and services such as land titles in a timely manner, which forced ongoing adaptation to centralized social and economic development plans. The government was also unable to control the flow of people in and out of the region and to deal with issues such as squatting on unoccupied land. While this experiment failed to create a rural middle class of prosperous small cotton farmers, the Matamoros region was developed, contributing to regional prosperity and national economic growth

A valuable feature of the book is the discussion and analysis of development of both sides of the lower Rio Grande. The development and boom of the Brownsville area and South Texas is treated in order to understand transborder economic linkages and the unfolding story of the Mexican lower Rio Bravo delta and Matamoros area. For example, Walsh shows how U.S. depression era federal price supports for cotton and other products had negative consequences for Mexican cotton producers as well as those elsewhere in the world.

Walsh tells the fascinating story of the U.S. agro-industrial company, Anderson Clayton, and its cooperation with the Cárdenas government and the national development schemes of Mexico. In an unlikely alliance, Anderson Clayton provided badly needed capital to finance the cotton cultivation and marketing in the lower Rio Bravo delta on the eastern part of the border. This was done in return for the Mexican government’s protection of its assets and interests in the Mexicali region on the western end of the border as well as elsewhere. The company astutely avoided directly financing colonization projects such as irrigation and this avoided direct conflict with the local settlers, the colonos. The Anderson Clayton example represents one of the many compromises to the social engineering plans of the Cárdenas government. A recurrent theme of the book and the Matamoros cotton development scheme is how the government refined, responded, and redirected its development plans in the face of economic and social realities.

Several aspects of the book detract from its usefulness. Occasional use of jargon and unexplained theoretical concepts reduce the accessibility of the work. The editing of text is inconsistent, with some problems of repetition, use of diacriticals, and other copyediting issues. A map that clearly identifies locations discussed in the text — such as Valle Hermoso and El Mezquital — would have been a useful addition. Finally, inclusion of historical statistical material would have strengthened the author’s argument regarding primacy of cotton in the borderlands and in Mexican national development.

These points are very minor issues. Overall, Building the Borderlands is a valuable work for anyone interested in the development of the U.S.-Mexican border region and Mexico’s national and regional development in the first six decades of the twentieth century.

Paul Ganster is professor of history and director of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University. He is author, with David E. Lorey, of The U.S.-Mexican Border into the Twenty-First Century (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).