The Regional Institutionalization of the Texas Rio Grande Valley

The Regional Institutionalization of the Texas Rio Grande Valley Baltazar Arispe y Acevedo, Jr. The University of Texas Pan American Resumen Abstract El propósito de este artículo es The purpose of this article is to identificar y examinar aquellos identify and examine the fenómenos que pudieran definir la phenomena that could define the institucionalización del Valle del Bajo institutionalization of the Lower Río Grande de Texas.Su localización en Rio Grande Valley. The location of la frontera de Estados Unidos con the LRGV along the U.S. border México constituye el contexto para el with Mexico provides a context for análisis de los eventos históricos y the analysis of historical, geográficos, nacionales e geographical, national, and internacionales, así como de sus international events which together protagonistas, que han tenido impacto with their actors have had an impact en el desarrollo y la identidad regional. on the development and regional El estudio de la institucionalización de identity of the LRGV. The analysis esta región proveerá un marco de of the institutionalization of this referencia para el entendimiento de los region will provide a framework for contextos histórico, social, cultural y the understanding of the social, político todavía evidentes en una región cultural, political, and historical cuya identidad se encuentra en contexts that continue to be evident permanente desarrollo. Un selecto in a region whose identity is in grupo de conceptos teóricos guiarán el perennial development. A select descubrimiento y definición de los group of theoretical concepts will procesos de institucionalización. guide the discovery and definition of institutionalization. Introduction The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas represents the easternmost geographic point of the border between the United States and Mexico that spans over two thousand miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. According to Richardson (1999), “international borders often create unusual situations. Few situations are more unusual that the one on the southern end of the Texas-Mexico border. This region, a frequently disputed territory in the past has emerged as neither fully American nor fully Mexican" (p. xiii). Miller (1989) shares a similar perspective when he observes that, The border has come to represent many things to many people, yet it remains the most misunderstood region of North America. Our southern frontier is not simply American on one side and Mexican on the other. It is a third country with its own identity. This third country is a strip two thousand miles long and no more than twenty miles wide. It obeys its own laws and has its own outlaws, its own police officers, and its own policy makers. Its food, its language, its music are its own. Even its economic development is unique. It is a colony unto itself, long and narrow and ruled by two faraway powers. (p. xiii-xiv) This region presents a useful case study as unique as that which Harvey (2006) used to analyze the various spatial scales of Canada's regions, their histories and their separate identities. While not as geographically expansive as Quebec, the Rio Grande Valley does share a common element with Harvey’s analysis of Quebec; that being the historical and present dispersion of its population. There is, however, one distinction between Harvey’s historical analysis of regions within Quebec and this analysis of the Rio Grande Valley; the regions that Harvey (2006) described are all within Canada and none abut an independent nation, as does the Rio Grande Valley. The theoretical construct of Finnish geographer Annasi Paasi (1986) were applied by Harvey (2006) to his study of the development of regional identity in Canada, specifically in the Province of Quebec. Paasi's theoretical framework also serves as the primary guide here for determining the essential elements that define the institutionalization of the Texas Lower Rio Grande Valley. The resulting analysis, of how the Texas Lower Rio Grande Valley, with the Rio Grande as its nexus, has become a critical link to the future development of the transborder region that separates Mexico and the United States of America, is a key component of this paper. Paasi’s (1986) theory consists of four stages: 1) The assumption of territorial shape; 2) the formation of conceptual (symbolic) shape; 3) the formation of institutional shape; and 4) the establishment of an entity in the regional system and social consciousness of the society. (p.105) According to Paasi (1986), the order of these stages can vary as they relate to concrete regions in a society. Paasi observes that institutionalization of a region “is a process during which some specific level of the spatial structure becomes an established entity which is defined in different spheres of social action and consciousness and which is continually reproduced in individual and institutional practices (e.g. economic, political, legal, educational, cultural, etc" (p.110). The institutionalization of regional spaces appears to Harvey (2006) “as a process in constant evolution over time involving different social actors"(p. 79). In his analysis of intra-provincial regions of Quebec, Harvey (2006) put forth five groups of actors that are present in the modeling and remodeling of the regional representation of the population. These actors are: 1) government, at all levels; 2) regional actors of civil society who intervene as leaders of associations, organizations, or regional movements; 3) national and regional media; 4) writers and artists; and finally, 5) academics (geographers, historians, sociologists, economists, and other regional specialists). Harvey (2006) emphasizes that the regional analysis approach is essential for the interpretation of a country's economic, political and cultural past as well as its future. This article is also a response to Harvey's recommendation that at, "the North American level, an analysis that compares the process of regional institutionalization on different scales and according to different historical, political and administrative modes appear necessary in the context of the increasing integration brought on by the NAFTA treaty. Following the example set by the regions of Europe, it is possible that certain regions of Canada, the United States and Mexico develop together direct economic or cultural relations without necessarily involving nation- states" (p. 91). Both Harvey (2006) and Paasi (1986) stress the importance of history as an essential element for understanding how regional identities evolve within a nation. Harvey also proposed that, "the size of institutionalized regions may also vary considerably; from a village and surrounding area to a county, to a province" (p. 79). The actors that Harvey identified in Quebec are also present, to a degree, in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. However, others have surfaced from the historical, economic, political and cultural relationships between communities on both sides of the Texas-Mexican border that is the Rio Grande. The analysis presented here will result in a context that identifies those actors that are key players in the development of this region’s institutionalization as envisioned by Paasi (1986). The Historical Implications of Geography, International Treaties, Violence, and Demographics on the Institutionalization of the Rio Grande Valley According to Connor (1971. p. 1-7), the Rio Grande was the result of over two hundred and fifty million years of geological development that created a water flow which begins at the peaks of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Connor’s describes the source of water because, “the entire surface of the state tilts slightly to the east and south, the major drainage systems spill from West Texas to the Gulf of Mexico. The Rio Grande, annually freshened by melting snow from the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico, flows restlessly along the boundary between Texas and Mexico...” (p. 6). This geological phenomenon has become the nexus for conquest, revolution, war, international treaties, violence, the source of a transnational culture, the baseline for international commerce and the source of identity for Mexican American citizens who share a river with their close relatives on the south side of the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo to Mexicans). Riley (1999) claims that, “the Rio Grande Valley, with its great potential irrigation agriculture and its rich bottomlands, was home in 1492 to a large number of towns, many of them quite sizable” (p. 49). These natural assets were to be a source of conflict later in this region’s history as competing economics and cultures met at a juncture in this region in the nineteenth century. After the Texas Revolution in the 1830’s, Texas became an independent nation. It was then annexed by the United States in 1845. This action by the United States aggravated the Mexican government and an additional point of contention was the claim by the United States that the Rio Grande, and not the Nueces River, as claimed by Mexico, was to be the new southern border (Montejano, 1987; Martinez, 1994; Saldívar, 2006; Arreola, 2002). Montejano (1987) refers to a map of the Texas Republic, which he claims, “emphasizes the Rio Grande in defining the shape of Texas, the map of cattle trails to Kansas points to the development of market connections for the Texas cattle industry…”(p. 9). This map was drawn fully a decade before the beginning of the Mexican American War. According to Montejano (1987) there were many factors: land-hungry frontiersmen, slave holding interests, the belief in Manifest Destiny as well as commercial interests (comerciantes) for the instigation of war by the United States against Mexico. He goes on to emphasize that, “the commercial importance of the Rio Grande did not lie simply with the distant Santa Fe trade. What is usually overlooked but which proved to be as critical and more directly related to the outbreak of hostilities, was the port trade of Matamoros on the lower end of the Rio Grande” (p.

Load more