A Brief History of the U.S./Mexico Border

The U.S./Mexico border is one of the longest borders between any two countries in the world. Millions of people live and interact along this 2,000 mile boundary between these neighbors that are so close and yet so different. A 19th-century politician in Mexico said, "Pity the poor Mexican; so close to the United States, yet so far from God." His comment illustrates both the proximity of our two nations and the great distance that we live from each other at our borders. To understand the borderlands region, we need to go back thousands of years to begin the story.

The borderlands have been a place of cultural encounter for several thousand years. Long before Europeans entered the region, dozens of tribes numbering in the hundreds of thousands made their homelands where none would ever have dreamed of a borderline existing between them. Many trade routes existed north and south between the areas of what are now Mexico and the United States. North American Indians moved freely about this region living up their lives in agriculture, trade, and conflicts.

Spaniards came looking for gold, new territory and converts in the 16th century. Lost, wandering Spaniards “discovered” the pass that became known as “Paso del Norte,” where El Paso/Juarez are now located. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions survived shipwreck on the Gulf coast and wandered westward across the region into what is now the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, surprising Spanish traders. Talk of rich treasures convinced explorers like Córdoba and Oñate to head northward into what became New Mexico and even Kansas. Though no treasures were ever found, they did find silver and the Spanish began settling in the region the latter part of the 16th century. Priests, agriculturalists, traders, and settlers followed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

As the Spanish established their colonial towns, they converted, displaced, exploited, and even killed Indians. Many died victims of the microbes introduced into their area and to which they had no resistance. Some tribes revolted, chasing Spanish settlers south to what we now know as Mexico. But Spain’s dominion extended in the 1700’s from Florida to Oregon, and Native Americans were basically under their power. International struggles for power, in which original residents became embroiled, changed the region into a “borderland” and little by little, treaty by treaty, reduced the territory of the Spanish to what are now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, and parts of Colorado, Utah and Oregon.
Entering the 19th-century, after Spain conceded that the Louisiana Purchase would go to the United States, the Empire was having her own problems internally. Tensions grew in Mexico between "peninsular" (the Spanish) and those born in the New World (the creoles) over who should be governing this people. At the same time Spain was embroiled in a war with the French on their own land. Leaders and thinkers like Jose Maria Morelos and Miguel Hidalgo, a priest, took advantage of the opportunity and started a struggle for independence in 1810. The war lasted 10 years, and in 1821 the nation of Mexico was born. Because the border with the United States had been settled finally with Spain in 1819 to include essentially Texas, New Mexico, part of Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California, all that region then became Mexico. But the United States was not to be content with just Louisiana Purchase.

The border was a place of continuing struggle in the 1830’s and ‘40’s. In spite of clearly documented maps, the United States insisted that the border of their territory was to the Rio Grande. But Mexico resisted any attempts to sell or negotiate a change in territory. Because of the need to settle more people in the area of Texas, Mexico granted permission to Americans, under the leadership of Moses and Stephen Austin, to settle in the northern province, requiring them to become Catholic and to submit to the laws of Mexico. As the population of Texas grew, so did discontent with Mexico's government located over 1000 miles away and seemingly uncaring about the needs of Texans. Sam Houston began forming an army, and General Santa Ana marched on San Antonio in 1836. A small group of Americans and Mexicans resisting in the Alamo lost to the overwhelming Mexican forces, but shortly thereafter Houston defeated Santa Ana's army at San Jacinto. Texas seceded from Mexico.
Pressures to expand America's boundaries from certain sectors, a force often called "manifest destiny" because someone used that term to describe the drive to move westward, essentially led to a war with Mexico in 1846-1848. The United States annexed Texas in 1845, an act for Mexico tantamount to declaring war. Disputing began over the border of Texas and Mexico again and shooting started in the spring of 1846. American troops invaded Mexico from three directions, marching as far as Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City. In the ensuing Treaty Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848, the United States "purchased" about a third of Mexico's territory. With yet another purchase in 1853, as well as the annexation of Texas, Mexico lost nearly one-half of its territory to the U.S. The treaty established a new border which was then drawn by an international surveying team. That border is today essentially the same.

The impact on the border was visible immediately. From one day to the next tens of thousands of Mexicans became Americans, or Mexican Americans. Very quickly the border became a place of intense trans-national interaction. Through the 19th-century and into the 20th century there were many conflicts that erupted along the border. The two countries disputed the treatment of Mexicans who remained in the new country. Many thousands of Mexicans moved south of the border when given the opportunity. Countless thousands of other Mexicans lost their lands to new American settlers and speculators. American industries of agriculture, railroads, and mines actively recruited Mexican laborers to work in these expanding industries. In the 1910’s, during the Mexican Revolution and World War I, many Mexicans moved to the United States. Industry and trade increased between the two countries. During the Depression, thousands of Mexicans were deported from the United States, including many who had become legal residents. As hundreds of thousands of American soldiers went to war during World War II, the U.S. government looked to Mexico for laborers. The two countries agreed on the “Bracero Program,” the working arrangement for Mexicans to come to the U.S. and work for set wages. As trade increased between the two countries, they would continue to need to negotiate agreements over immigration, trade, water, and many other issues. The most recent and well-known is that of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which created new parameters of trade amongst Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Historian Oscar J. Martinez says of our border "nowhere else do so many millions of people from two so dissimilar nations live in such close proximity and interact with each other so intensely." (Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, p. 27) With the continuing growth of international industries along the border, each year tens of millions cross back and forth. Companies build "maquiladoras," assembly plants which put together auto parts, TVs and satellite dishes, medical supplies, and autos, to name a few. The Mexican border cities as a result have experienced booming growth, and all the attendant pains, such as increased housing, roadways, traffic congestion, violence and drug trafficking. But the two cultures continue to interact with each other and create new culture, a borderlands culture, where people very distinct in their cultural characteristics share ideas, social concerns, literature, family life, music and art. The border has become a fascinating place to live and interact with people, as well as a strategic setting for the proclamation of the Gospel.

By Dan Young, BEAMM Team Member since 1993