Introduction

Politicians love the border. Some use it to get elected, to get campaign money, and to get voters all riled up. They demand more border walls and more boots on the ground to stop illegal immigration and protect American citizens from cross-border violence. They portray the border, especially the South Texas border, as a wild and dangerous place where US citizens cower in the shadows as Mexican cartels carry out kidnap- pings, murders, and open violence. And it is not just US politicians getting in on the act. In the United Kingdom, a 2015 conservative British newspaper ran a headline that proclaims, “Revealed, America’s Most Fearful City Where Texans Live Next to a ‘War Zone.’” The article is about the border city of Mc Allen, Texas, and claims that it is “a 10-minute drive from Reynosa,” Mex- ico, and that McAllen residents “can hear gunshots all hours of the day and spot drug smugglers in their streets.”1 In 2014, Governor Rick Perry called for “a show of force” on the Texas border to deter the violence and stop the illegal border crossings. At one point he donned a fl ak jacket and wraparound sunglasses to join state police on a river patrol. Soon after that, Perry ordered the Texas National Guard and a large contingent of Highway Patrol offi cers to South Texas.2 A few years earlier, Governor Perry and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (2009–2015) warned the citizens of their respective states about beheadings and bombings in the border zones of each state. In both cases, the violence they reported happened not in their states but across the border in Mexico. Nevertheless, these politicians chose to portray their own border communities as lawless and violent.3 The portrayals of Texas border cities as dangerous are not supported by the FBI’s 2014 ranking of most dangerous cities as measured by vi-

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olent crime per 100,000 inhabitants. Of twenty-one Texas metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) on the list, Brownsville-Harlingen (less than sixty miles downriver from McAllen and just across the river from Matamoros, Mexico) was ranked as the least dangerous. McAllen- Edinburg-Mission was also far down the list (16th), as were the other two border MSAs, El Paso (12th) and Laredo (9th). At the top of the FBI list were metropolitan areas that are not on the border: Lubbock (1st), Dallas-Fort Worth (3rd), and Houston (5th). Indeed, all of the Texas border metropolitan areas had violent crime rates below the Texas state average.4 Other data fl y in the face of the characterization of border cities as dangerous places to live. A Gallup-Healthways annual report ranks the largest 190 American cities or communities in terms of how their citizens feel about and experience their daily lives. This survey measures how residents from each community evaluate their sense of purpose, social relationships, fi nancial security, connection to their communities, and physical health. In the 2016 Gallup-Healthways poll, apparently citizens of the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission MSA, counted as one community, were not really bothered by hearing those gunshots all day long or stumbling over drug smugglers in their streets. Indeed, the community of McAllen-Edinburg-Mission scored close to the top (11th best out of 190) in the nation and beat out every other Texas community in the study in relation to community well-being scores. Other Texas cities (El Paso, on the border in West Texas, and Corpus Christi in South Texas had strong rankings as well, scoring 31st and 25th, respectively). A closer look at the fi ve categories that produced this ranking is even more revealing. The McAllen MSA was ranked 2nd nationally in relation to respondents’ sense of purpose (defi ned as liking what one does each day and being motivated to achieve one’s goals). Corpus Christi (also within the Nueces Strip) was ranked 1st in this category. McAllen came in 7th in the social category (having supportive relationships and love in one’s life). McAllen was 11th in its sense of community (defi ned as liking where one lives, feeling safe, and having pride in the community). McAllen was still near the top 10 percent, or 20th, in physical well-being (defi ned as believing one has generally good health and enough energy to get things done). Nevertheless, with regard to the fi fth variable (fi nancial), McAllen ranked 140th, much closer to the bottom. The aspect of fi nancial well- being was defi ned as being able to manage one’s economic life to reduce stress and increase stability. Since South Texas has some of the highest

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rates of poverty in the nation, this result is not particularly surprising. What is surprising to many is that a community with such a high degree of poverty can have residents ranking at the top in feeling good about their lives and their community. In addition to measuring the preceding fi ve aspects of community well-being, the researchers examined several measures of access to food, medicine, and basic health care services. Since these variables are closely related to a family’s fi nancial status, the McAllen community again scored at or near the bottom. It ranked dead last (190th), for example, in food insecurity (experiencing times in the preceding twelve months when respondents did not have enough money to buy food that their families needed). Also, it ranked last (190th) in the proportion of residents who reported having health insurance.5 Finally, this community, because of the very poor economic situation of its residents, again ranked last in the number of respondents reporting they had personal doctors.6 So how can these border residents rank so low with respect to fi nancial well-being,7 food security, health insurance, and access to personal doctors and yet score so highly in community well-being? The short an- swer represents the fi rst major aim of this volume—to show that South Texas residents are amazingly resilient in the face of intense diffi culties and are highly adept at leveraging their social relationships, con- nections to family and community, and even proximity to the United States-Mexico border to overcome these defi cits. A second and related aim is to explain how, despite the decline in extreme racism and exploitation that predominated throughout the region in earlier times, South Texas remains at the bottom in socioeconomic measures like those just mentioned. We will show that far less obvious forms of discrimination—structural and cultural bias—today perpetu- ate much of the inequality in this South Texas borderland. Our third aim is to let the people of South Texas tell their own stories through their own words—and by so doing, help outsiders understand their life situations and the innovative ways they fi nd to meet life’s diffi culties. One person interviewed, for example, relates, “If we have to leave our house, I usually inform one of my neighbors. We usually keep watch for one another. You will not see any policemen coming into our neighborhood to keep an eye on things. That is why we have to count on each other.” Another resident of a South Texas colonia (impoverished rural border neighborhood community) said, “People here take turns keeping an eye

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on the kids after they come home from school. They also know who is good at certain tasks. For example, Juana, the one that lives in number 3 makes excellent tortillas. Everyone comes to me when they need work done on their car. Carlos, the one in number 7, knows a little about elec- tricity. We don’t hesitate to help each other out. Our colonia is a little world on its own. We all help each other in any way we can.” One of our student interviewers was impressed with the pattern of unity she observed in low-income neighborhoods. “Six out of my seven interviewees,” she writes, “got along really well with their neighbors. When something was needed, all they needed to do was ask someone in the neighborhood. One of them told me, ‘Whenever we need something like an ingredient to make a meal or some building material, our neighbors help us out. We do the same for them when they are in need.’” Sometimes, getting assistance utilizes not only neighbors but informal and cross-border resources. One woman recalled,

One day, my husband got very sick and my neighbor offered me some medication she had purchased at the fl ea market.8 As time passed, my husband got worse until he was not able get out of the bed. I was so wor- ried that we decided to go to Mexico. The doctor there told me that the medication our neighbors had given us was causing an allergic reaction. I am glad I took him to Mexico, even though I put us both at risk by having to sneak across the river to get back.

Though some may condemn this woman for accepting prescription drugs from a neighbor and crossing the border to see a Mexican doctor, her decisions make sense in light of very limited income and regulations that put health insurance out of reach for people like her. Her story reveals a resilience that arises from a strong base of social capital (networks of family, friends, neighbors, and so forth) working together to fi nd solutions when societal institutions do not work well for them. The fact that this response is rather widely employed was revealed in 2008 when several colleagues and Chad Richardson undertook a survey of cross-border health care utilization by residents of Texas border counties to determine how many border residents cross the border to get four specifi c types of health care services in Mexico.9 The results are shown in table 0.1. Appendix A lists the surveys cited in this book. When border residents report not having a doctor or medical insurance, they may be crossing to Mexico to visit Mexican doctors who charge them much less and are reputed to spend more time with each

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Table 0.1. Use of health care services in Mexico by Texas border residents

Used the service within the previous Ever used the service twelve months

Standard Standard Service type Percent error Percent error

Pharmacy 35.0 1.3 26.3 1.2 Physician 24.8 1.2 21.9 1.1 Dentist 33.0 1.3 17.2 1.0 Inpatient facility 4.1 0.5 1.8 0.4 Any of the four types 51.7 1.3 34.0 1.3

Source: Cross-Border Utilization of Health Care Survey, 2008 (n = 1,405).

Figure 0.1. Examination room in a medical clinic in Río Bravo, Mexico. Photo by Xena Luna; © X. Luna, used by permission.

patient. Also, many South Texas residents purchase prescription med- ications at Mexican pharmacies, often informally without fi rst needing to get prescriptions.10 While they save money, they increase the risk of adverse reactions. Nevertheless, among the 356 respondents in the 2008 Cross-Border Utilization of Health Care Survey who reported doctor

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visits in Mexico, 96 percent mentioned that the services they received there met their expectations. The resilience and strength of South Texans in the face of great diffi - culties that many face are characteristic of most of the studies reported in the chapters of this book. Another important fi nding is that South Texas Hispanics manifest generally positive relations with and little resentment against Anglos despite a history of extreme racial and ethnic discrimination and violence that marked most of the preceding 150 years.

A Brief History of Racial, Ethnic, and Class Conﬂ ict in South Texas

In map 0.1, the area in extreme South Texas between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, called the Nueces Strip, was not part of Texas when Texans and their Mexican allies defeated Antonio López de Santa Anna to gain independence in 1836. But following Texas independence, Tex- ans attempted to claim the Nueces Strip, occasionally sending troops to support their claim. Mexicans bitter from defeat raided northward into San Antonio. Texans eager to expand their territory agitated to make the Rio Grande their southern border. In 1842, they retaliated for Mexi- can raids and sacked Laredo. Then they launched an attack against Ciu- dad Mier, fi fteen miles upriver from Roma. The Mexican army cap- tured and took two hundred of them to Salado, Mexico, forced them to draw from a jar of mixed-color beans, and then executed the seventeen who drew black beans. This added to a deep resentment of Mexicans by Anglos in South Texas. After the United States annexed Texas in 1845, President James Polk sent troops into the disputed Nueces Strip near Brownsville. When Mexican troops attacked them to defend their territory, politicians in Washington used the battle to justify a war with Mexico. Abraham Lin- coln, then a young congressman from Illinois, introduced a resolution in Congress in an unsuccessful attempt to force President Polk to admit that the battle had not occurred on American soil.11 When a full-fl edged war followed, Mexico lost not only the Nueces Strip but most of the territory of the American Southwest. After the defeat of Mexico by the United States, Mexican Americans living in the Nueces Strip lost most of their property to Anglo ranchers through theft, extortion, and trickery. Much of their land had been granted to their ancestors by the king of Spain centuries earlier. Juan Cortina, a veteran of the Mexican-American War, was one of these landowners, with property in Mexico and Cameron County. After wit-

RRichardson_6442-final.indbichardson_6442-final.indb 6 44/18/17/18/17 10:3510:35 AMAM Map 0.1. Map of South Texas. Map by Amy E. R. Freeman.

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nessing a marshal in Brownsville pistol-whip a former employee, Cor- tina shot the marshal and escaped into Mexico. On July 13, 1859, he launched a raid against Brownsville, capturing Fort Brown and the local jail. He then freed the Tejano (Hispanic Texan) prisoners and killed several Americans suspected of brutalizing the Tejanos.12 The governor of Texas sent two companies of Texas Rangers to put down the revolt. In their fi rst battle, Cortina’s men thoroughly defeated the Rangers. When the US Army arrived, Cortina moved his forces to Rio Grande City. Eventually, his army of fi ve hundred Tejanos and Mexicans was defeated by the larger force of soldiers and Rangers. Nevertheless, Cortina escaped unharmed amid a hail of bullets. On March 15, 1860, Robert E. Lee, who had served as General Winfi eld Scott’s chief of staff during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), left San Antonio to pursue Cortina. Although he was unable to trap Cortina, Lee managed to se- cure a promise from Mexican offi cials that they would make the arrest.13 During the winter of 1860–1861, Lee was stationed at Fort Ringgold (Rio Grande City), where he commanded the Second Cavalry. That was his last command in the US Army.14 During the US Civil War, the Nueces Strip again became contested territory. The Confederacy used it to evade the Union blockade by ship- ping cotton into Mexico and importing arms through Mexico. Dur- ing the Civil War, Cortina joined the Union forces, helping them cap- ture Brownsville. Hostilities continued until May 13, 1865, when the last battle of the Civil War was fought at Palmito Ranch battlefi eld, just east of Brownsville. Though the war had ended weeks earlier, the command to surrender had not yet reached troops on the distant US- Mexico border.15 As the hostilities came to a close on the north bank of the Rio Grande, a major war was under way on the Mexican side. The French under Napoléon III were trying to force Mexico to accept the Austrian Maximilian as its emperor. Mexican nationalists, under the leadership of Benito Juárez, had been driven to Mexico’s northern border and were desperately fi ghting to maintain their independence against these im- perial troops. In 1866, a small army under the leadership of General Mariano Escobedo attacked an imperialist army of 1,300 French and Austrian troops near Camargo, across the river from Rio Grande City. There they thoroughly defeated the French in the Battle of Santa Ger- trudis. This battle was a turning point in the war that led to the defeat of Maximilian in Mexico at Querétaro in 1867. At the close of these two wars, Cortina returned to his practice of stealing Texas cattle, gaining the reputation of having stolen more

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Texas cattle than any other individual. Texas Rangers retaliated by in- vading Mexico, burning villages, and indiscriminately hanging Mexican citizens. Eventually, under pressure from the US government, the president of Mexico, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, arrested Cortina and im- prisoned him in Mexico City in 1872. Reaction to Cortina’s raiders turned into deep suspicion of anyone thought to be Mexican along the border. From 1915 to 1919 Texas Rang- ers began rounding up and often lynching many local Mexican Ameri- cans in their effort to tame the area.16 Mexicans who were arrested were often shot “trying to escape.” Many vigilantes managed to get themselves appointed as Rangers and had themselves photographed next to piles of bodies of supposed bandits. Longtime residents remembered the raids and hangings decades later. By this time, Anglo dominance over Mexican-origin people in the Nueces Strip was characterized by extreme racism and outright exploitation. Largely due to racism, thousands of Hispanic citizens and Mex- icans were rounded up, shot, hanged, or driven across the border into Mexico. Then Anglo settlers and public offi cials exploited the powerlessness of Mexican Americans by wresting large tracts of land by trickery and collusion between public offi cials and Anglo settlers.17 Artemio,18 a lifelong resident of the Rio Grande Valley, was ninety- seven years old at the time of his interview in 1991. He described an in- cident that happened around 1917.

Some people from Mexico came over here and started trouble. They were telling us poor farmers that we could take back land that once was ours. They said we should get rid of the Anglos and be proud once again. That’s when the Anglos called the Texas Rangers. I remember the boxcars coming into town and those great big men on their horses with their hats and guns. Once the Rangers took charge, they didn’t really know who started it or who was involved, so they would just go out and round up some men. If they saw you walking down the street and one told you to come, you went. They would take a man outside of town and tell him to start running. They would shoot him in the back as he ran and report to the man in charge that they just shot another bandit. People were really afraid of them. They could do whatever they wanted and no one ever questioned them. I still don’t trust them.

Arturo, an older man from San Benito and a lifelong Valley resident, also remembered those times. His family lost thousands of acres originally granted to his ancestors by the king of Spain. He said,

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They slowly killed us. They would shoot our animals and force us off the land. My father lost much land this way, but they had other meth- ods. They would also fail to send us tax forms, so we never knew when to pay our taxes. Then one of them would claim default on the land, pay the taxes, and become owner of our land. Since they had the sher- iff and the lawyers and since our people didn’t understand the language or their system, they stole the land under our house. Many of us around here lost land to a wealthy man from Harlingen. People there still think of him as a hero.

Prior to 1900, the main industry in South Texas was ranching. Many Anglo ranchers had married prominent Hispanic women, and most discrimination tended to be class-based as opposed to racial or ethnic discrimination. Hidalgo County in 1914, for example, had only 700 Anglo farmers who paid the poll tax compared to 1,200 Hispanic voters whom political bosses like John Closner could mobilize, allowing them to run unopposed. They managed to get a railroad into the Valley and adver- tised throughout the Midwest for farmers to come develop the rich soil of the area. As a result, land that sold for 25 cents an acre in 1903 was selling for $300 an acre in 1919. This land rush resulted in a large number of Anglo farmers who ousted the political bosses, disenfranchised the Hispanics, and segregated the towns and cities along the railroad and Highway 83, which runs alongside it. The cities most rigidly segregated were Mission, McAllen, Weslaco, and Harlingen.19 María was seventy-fi ve years old and had lived in South Texas all her life. She still remembered what it was like in those years. Her parents died when she was a young girl, so she moved in with her uncle Eduardo and his family. He was a skilled carpenter who worked for a prominent Anglo farmer. María recalled how her uncle would get up before sunrise and get home well after dark.

He and his fellow workers always did what they were told. One day, his boss was angry about something and my uncle didn’t exactly agree with him, so they exchanged a few words. At the end of the day, when the workers started for home, the boss told him to stay and redo something he hadn’t done right. The others left. That night he didn’t return home. We stayed up all night worrying. The next day we asked our neighbors about him, but no one had seen him. My cousin went to talk to his boss, but he said that Eduardo had left after redoing his job. Days passed and no one could tell us anything. Then, Saturday morning, they found my uncle in a nearby wooded area. His body was riddled with bullets and

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Figure 0.2. Blatant racism was common for the Mexican- origin population in South Texas in the ﬁ rst half of the twentieth century. Drawing by Noel Palmenez.

covered with cactus. The older people took him to the river to clean him and pluck the thorns from his body so they could bury him. But we had to wait until night because we were afraid of the KKK.

Trinidad Peralez lived in South Texas during the same period. He recalled fi nding work with an Anglo family in Elsa.

In exchange for my labor, they gave me cornbread, beans, oatmeal, milk, and a small cot in the barn. They also paid me fi ve dollars a week for chores like fi xing the roof and shoveling cow manure. But the An- glos in town gave them a hard time for letting a Mexican live with them. They did not allow me in restaurants, stores, the church, or in the town theater. The only people who would speak to me were the cou- ple and their two sons. As time went by, little by little, the people began to nod their heads at me, but during the seven years I worked for them, I stayed pretty much in the barn or in the back of the house where my meals were served.

The earlier periods of exploitation and racism continued into the early twentieth century, though with decreasingly violent forms of racism and

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Figure 0.3. These girls are separated by hair color, culture, ethnicity, school, and living space. Drawing by Noel Palmenez.

exploitation. We call the four most recent periods the segregation era, the post–World War II era, the Chicano era, and the post-Chicano era.20

The Segregation Era (1900–World War II)

We refer to the direction of ethnic relations in South Texas between 1900 and World War II as “the segregation era,” or the effort by Anglos to keep Mexican-origin people in South Texas in subjugation. Initially during this period, Anglos made few efforts to anglicize Mexican Amer- icans and social institutions were set up to keep them separate and “in their place.” Most cities in South Texas had a so-called Mexican town and separate Mexican schools.21 Sara Hinojosa recalled what it was like.

We, the Mexican Americans, were the undesirables in town. We knew what they thought of us. Everyone called our school “la escuela de los burros” [the donkey school]. Our teachers were all Anglos except the principal’s helper. Some students who had been held back many times were eighteen years old. I was thirteen then and had many problems with those older boys. They had ideas about sex and things that I hadn’t even had time to think about.

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The Post–World War II Era (1945–Late 1960s)

Following World War II, things began to change. Though the goal of Anglo society remained largely segregation, schools and other institutions increasingly tried to force Anglo culture on Mexican Ameri- cans. More Mexican Americans began attending Anglo schools, though not as equals. Schools strongly enforced a no-Spanish policy through the 1950s, forcing many Mexican American children to avoid speaking Spanish, at least on school property. In addition, teachers often angli- cized the names of their Hispanic students. Frequently such practices caught students between their parents and the schools. Roberto Salinas used to wonder why he wasn’t allowed to speak Spanish at school. But instead of asking why, he did what they told him because he knew his parents would punish him even harder at home if he got in trouble at school. He said,

My father would always tell me to obey my teachers, but when I did, he became angry with me. One of my teachers told me to write my name “Robert” because we lived in the United States and not Mexico. When my father saw that I was writing “Robert” on my school papers, he got mad and made me put an “o” at the end of my name on every school paper.

The Chicano Era (Late 1960s–Early 1980s)

With the coming of the civil rights movement in the United States, Chi- cano activists rejected segregation and fought for socioeconomic equality, a form of structural assimilation. They saw cultural pluralism rather than cultural assimilation as the way to achieve it. One man who was interviewed, Juan Antonio Diaz, exemplifi es this position. He recalled,

I once had a friend who said, “In the eyes of an Anglo, you’ll always be Mexican. No matter how much money or education you have, you’ll still be Mexican.” I didn’t like it, but to a certain extent he was right. We might get accepted but only to a certain extent. But I can live with that. I’m glad my father came from Mexico to give his family a life here that he couldn’t even dream of in Mexico. Will I ever assimilate? Not me. My culture tells me who I am. I might have been born here, but I’m proud to have Mexican ancestors. Every time I hear my dad tell me about the toys he had to make for himself because he was poor, I get chills up and down my spine.

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Though the basic goal of Mexican Americans during the Chicano movement was social equality with Anglos, cultural pride and cultural pluralism were generally seen as primary means of achieving it. Bilin- gual education and the push for multiculturalism were manifestations of this combination. Mexican Americans also began a strong push for equal representation in the other institutions of society, in politics, government, and economic enterprises.

The Post-Chicano Era (1980s–Present)

As many Chicano activists began moving into the middle class, the push for cultural nationalism began to subside.22 Many among the up- wardly mobile began to minimize their insistence on cultural pluralism, though they continued strongly advocating structural assimilation. For Mexican Americans several generations removed from the initial immigration experience, both forms of assimilation became increasingly common. Still, many Mexican Americans resisted full assimilation. One of our student interviewers described confl icted feelings this way:

Being a Mexican American is like being pulled in a tug of war. Los- ing some of your cultural values is part of the package of being Mexi- can American. You can’t be all American because you sure aren’t white, and you can’t feel exploding pride when the Mexican national anthem is played because you’re not Mexican. It’s hard to decide which culture to be loyal to.

Often, the changes are gradual. Angélica Ortiz still clings to her Mex- ican culture. She frowns upon Mexican Americans who have adopted Anglo mannerisms and culture. Nevertheless, she now celebrates the US holiday of Thanksgiving, though with Mexican dishes, and her Christ- mas celebrations have lost many traditions she grew up with in Mexico. A similar change seems to take place in relation to the importance of maintaining Spanish. In our Cultural Practices Survey, 64 percent of Mexican respondents said it was very important to their parents that they spoke good Spanish, double the 32 percent of Mexican Americans with this response. In fact, a few Mexican American parents said their children should drop Spanish altogether. Being pulled both ways can be very painful in the South Texas border environment, as one of our student interviewers wrote.

RRichardson_6442-final.indbichardson_6442-final.indb 1414 44/18/17/18/17 10:3510:35 AMAM Figure 0.4. Blanketed on either side by the Mexican and US ﬂ ags, the three children represent what they have to forget and adopt to be accepted into another culture. Drawing by Noel Palmenez.

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I did this assignment to understand and illustrate the stigma of being Hispanic and not being able to speak Spanish. I too am a pocho [Amer- icanized Mexican]. Because of not being able to speak Spanish, my re- lationship with my grandparents is lost. My father will never ask me to drink a beer with him and my uncles, so I have become an outsider in my own family. In the Rio Grande Valley, being bilingual is a necessity. It has left me as well as those I have interviewed bitter and uncomfort- able in our own community.

Understanding Social Inequality and Racial and Ethnic Relations in South Texas Today

One intriguing aspect of this history of racial and ethnic relations in South Texas is that despite the repression and dispossession experienced during the nineteenth century, South Texas Hispanics today have not mounted any serious effort to declare an independent republic, to se- cede from the United States, or to extract some form of revenge against Anglos. Some scholars, politicians, and talk-show hosts, however, would have the public believe otherwise. The Harvard scholar Samuel Hun- tington in 2004 grossly overstated this sentiment: “Mexican-Americans . . . argue that the Southwest was taken from them by military aggres- sion in the 1840s, and that the time for la reconquista [reconquest] has arrived. . . . Conceivably this could lead to a move to reunite these terri- tories with Mexico.”23 Despite bitter maltreatment of Hispanics by Anglos in the past two centuries, South Texas Hispanic respondents in our surveys and ethnographic interviews appear to be remarkably loyal to the United States. Except for many fi rst-generation immigrants, they responded, when asked, that they identifi ed with and felt great allegiance to the United States. Indeed, in our Cultural Practices Survey, only 19 percent of Mexican-origin respondents said they liked the lifestyle of Mexico, 26 percent claimed to like Spanish-language television, and 18 percent identifi ed themselves as “Mexican,” even though 26 percent of respondents in this sample were born in Mexico.24 Throughout the book we will argue that structural bias has become the primary means by which South Texas, as a geographical and political entity, and South Texas Hispanics, as minority-group individuals, experience inequality of treatment. While Hispanics are a minority group within the United States, Hispanics in South Texas are a numer-

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Table 0.2. Types of discrimination most prevalent in society

Degree of intentionality

Harm is direct Harm is indirect and mainly and mainly Source of harm intentional unintentional

Cultural and personal attitudes Bigotry Cultural bias and beliefs Society-wide structural systems Exploitation Structural bias and arrangements

ical majority, but as we will explain more fully, because of their some- what subordinate socioeconomic position they would still be considered a minority group. We illustrate this point by describing what we see as four types of discrimination: bigotry, cultural bias, exploitation, and structural bias (table 0.2). Harsh bigotry and exploitation were very common in the times of Cortina and the Texas Rangers. Most nineteenth-century Anglos and Mexican elites then had no qualms about stating and enforcing their presumed superiority over low-income Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans of the area. Bigotry, racism, and exploitation not only were common but seemed morally justifi ed to those who perpe- trated them. Anglo Texans had no problem with stealing land and cattle from Mexicans but reacted with extreme hostility when Cortina dared do the same to them. We argue that today, however, the predominant forms of discrimination are more indirect and unintentional—in the forms of cultural bias and especially structural bias. Regulations get imposed that may unin- tentionally hurt the poor and powerless, but unlike their middle- or up- per-class contemporaries, the poor lack the power to block such rules or policies. In this regard, the lack of power is a quintessential feature of structural bias.

A Demographic Proﬁ le of Our Geographical Focus

The Nueces Strip is the geographical identifi er for the area that is the subject of this book: the border region of South Texas. It is a land bor-

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dered by two rivers and the Gulf of Mexico but is also a distinct historical and cultural region. The geographer Daniel D. Arreola calls it the Tejano homeland and asserts that “Mexican South Texas is a distinctive borderland, unlike any other Mexican American subregion.”25 To u n- derscore its distinctiveness we will briefl y describe the South Texas border region that is the primary focus of this book, from Laredo in the west along the border to Brownsville near the Gulf Coast in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV). While most of the Spanish settlements along the lower Rio Grande were on the southern bank (Matamoros, Reynosa, Camargo, and Mier), Laredo was originally settled in 1755 mostly on the northern bank. In 1846, Zachary Taylor led US troops into Laredo and declared it part of the United States. When the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war with Mexico in 1848, the Rio Grande was fi nally established as the southern boundary of Texas. Residents of Laredo who did not want to be Americans moved across the river into Mexico and established Nuevo Laredo as a separate though connected city. As a result, the cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo not only border each other, as do Mata- moros and Brownsville and other South Texas–northern Mexico communities, but consist of many residents who share common family lines. One key distinguishing feature of Laredo is that it has remained pre- dominantly Latino, with an entrenched Hispanic elite. Though An- glos arrived after the Mexican-American War, they mainly intermar- ried with Hispanic families. Throughout the book, we use the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” interchangeably. We also distinguish between Mexicans and Mexican Americans and use the term “Mexican origin” to refer to all individuals of Mexican ancestry. McAllen and Brownsville in the LRGV, in contrast, were established by Anglo elites who marginalized the Mexican-origin residents. As a result, Latinos in LRGV communities struggled for many years, only gaining signifi cant political power in the last twenty-fi ve years of the twentieth century. The US-Mexico borderlands are among the most culturally rich areas of the world and the center of some of the most vibrant social and historical issues of our times. This particular stretch of the border, especially the Rio Grande Valley, widely known as just “the Valley,” has become one of the major entry points for legal and undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America.26 It is also a point of cultural contact between highly traditional cultures and those more assim-

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ilated into the wider Anglo society. In this and other respects, the Valley is a microcosm of the entire US-Mexico border and in some ways refl ects Hispanics, especially of Mexican origin, more broadly across the United States. This portion of the Texas-Mexico borderland is more than a back- water of industrialization, farming, and transit routes, just as border residents are more than victims of neglect and powerlessness. In actual- ity, South Texans are innovators and problem solvers on the forefront of change. This cutting-edge aspect of the border is refl ected in a second meaning of the Spanish term for the border. La frontera, besides meaning “border,” also means “frontier.” The border as a frontier symbol- izes the leading edge of changes that will eventually extend elsewhere. Vastly different cultures meet at the border to blend, adapt, adopt, and merge in a kaleidoscope of colors and combinations. In this sense, the border is on the forefront of massive social forces whose effects may be felt elsewhere long after border residents have found solutions and made necessary adjustments. According to US Census Bureau fi gures for 2011–2013, Hispanics were the largest ethnic group in South Texas. They comprised more than 91 percent of the population of the Rio Grande Valley.27 In the region, Anglos made up around 7 percent of the population, and Afri- can Americans and Asian Americans each comprised slightly less than 1 percent. South Texas is home to three of the fastest-growing metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the nation. Between 1999 and 2014 the population of the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission MSA grew 50 percent, from 555,875 to 831,073. The Laredo MSA population grew from 189,014 to 266,673 people, a 41 percent increase. Not too far behind these two was the Brownsville-Harlingen MSA, where the population grew 27 percent, from 330,277 to 420,392. The population of Texas as a whole during this fi fteen-year period grew 31 percent. This rapid population growth has been accompanied by concomitant employment growth in the border metropolitan areas. The McAllen-Edinburg-Mission MSA had 54 percent growth in nonfarm employment from 2000 to 2015. The Laredo MSA had 46 percent growth in nonfarm employment, and Brownsville-Harlingen MSA nonfarm employment grew 33 percent in this same period.28 Though such rapid population and job growth is generally associated with rapid economic development, these border areas have been plagued

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Chart 0.1. Educational attainment of South Texas adults twenty-ﬁ ve years of age and older, 2014 Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2011–2014.

historically with poor socioeconomic indicators. For instance, according to census fi gures, 37 percent of Latinos in the LRGV population lived below the national poverty level in 2014. The comparable rate for Hispanics in Texas as a whole was 17.7 percent and only 15.6 percent for the entire United States.29 Similarly, the Latino median household income for LRGV counties in 2014 was $33,293, though that was consid- erably below the median household incomes for Texas and the United States of $52,576 and $75,591, respectively.30 These dismal income fi gures are related to other characteristics of the South Texas border population. In the United States as a whole, 13.1 percent of the population in 2014 was foreign-born. In Texas, the comparable fi gure was 16.5 percent. Along the border, however, 27.4 percent of Webb County, 32.5 percent of Starr County, 28.9 percent of Hidalgo County, 24.7 percent of Cameron County, and 16.2 percent of Willacy County were estimated to be foreign-born by the 2010–2014 American Community Survey produced by the US Census Bureau.31 Having a large percentage of foreign-born residents does not, in itself, produce poverty. When a large foreign-born population arrives in the United States with minimal levels of education, however, the results are predictably dismal. Chart 0.1 shows the percentage of adults twenty-fi ve years of age and older in the fi ve border counties who in 2014 had com-

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pleted high school or higher education. It also provides comparable data for Texas and the United States. While high school and college com- pletion rates for South Texas are lower than for Texas and the United States, the gap is largest within the ranks of the college-educated. The effects of this education gap are predictable. The three South Texas MSAs ranked at the bottom of MSAs in Texas in 2015 hourly wage levels. While the average hourly wage for the rest of Texas in 2015 was $24.40 and $25.26 for the United States, the 2015 average hourly wages in the Brownsville-Harlingen MSA were $15.29, in the Laredo MSA $18.03, and in the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission MSA $16.23. This amounts to a regional wage penalty of 26 percent or more compared to Texas and 29 percent or more compared to the United States.32

Research Projects and Methodology

Much of the ethnographic data reported in this introduction and the subsequent chapters are from the Borderlife Project, a research endeavor at the University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV, formerly UT– Pan American) and housed in the archives of the UTRGV library in Ed- inburg. From 1982 to 2010, faculty under the direction of Chad Rich- ardson trained embedded student interviewers to investigate social situations in the South Texas–northern Mexico borderlands. Borderlife Project participants have completed approximately 10,000 in-depth ethnographic interviews and more than 6,000 survey interviews from a va- riety of populations on both sides of the border. Students were taught in- terviewing skills and how to detect patterns in their fi ndings, then given help to write high-quality accounts worthy of publication. Most generally, individuals selected for their interviews were identifi ed by means of “snowball sampling”—using social networks to fi nd individuals willing to share their stories. This process is illustrated by the following account of a student who chose to interview undocumented maids and their employers:

The fi rst maid I interviewed works for a very good friend of mine. I asked her to help me fi nd other maids like herself who I could interview. She introduced me to her sister, Rosario, and to Rosario’s employer, Gracie. Gracie introduced me to her neighbor’s maid named Cruz. Later, I interviewed my cousin’s maid named Silvia and her sister Margot. Margot’s employer Sonia was my fi nal interview.

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Most research topics began as in-depth ethnographic descriptions. Throughout the project, students were allowed to choose their own topics from a list of suggestions or from their own initiative and interests. The patterns revealed in these anecdotal accounts suggest questions that were built into in-person survey interviews. The basic purpose of Borderlife was to help students develop an appreciation for their own culture and place. It was also designed to give voice to the distinct populations of South Texas, many of whom receive little notice or often harsh and stereotyped attention.33 In the current volume we have substantially increased the explanatory element related to our fi ndings. We also have utilized survey research to propose and test select hypotheses, leading to greater in-depth understanding of this borderlands environment. This methodological approach allows us to paint a broad picture of life on the South Texas border, focusing on many populations and topics, as opposed to a single issue or phenomenon. The Borderlife Proj- ect has been the foundation of this revised and greatly expanded edition of Chad Richardson, Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados: Class and Culture on the South Texas Border, fi rst published in 1999 by University of Texas Press. That fi rst edition was followed by two other volumes: Chad Rich- ardson and Rosalva Resendiz, On the Edge of the Law: Culture, Labor, and Deviance on the South Texas Border (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), highlighting traditional cultural practices, displaced and undocumented workers, drug and immigrant smuggling, cross-border property crimes, the Mexican criminal justice system, and school dropouts; and Chad Richardson and Michael J. Pisani, The Informal and Under- ground Economy of the South Texas Border (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012), with a focus on documented and undocumented participants, occupations, welfare recipients, informal housing communities (colonias), and cross-border interactions in the informal and underground economy. In part 1 of the present volume we continue to describe migrant farmworkers, colonia residents, undocumented domestic servants, ma- quiladora workers in Mexico, and Mexican street children. In part 2 we look also at racial and ethnic relations in South Texas schools and among such diverse South Texas groups as Latinos, Mexican immigrants, An- glo newcomers and winter visitors (“snowbirds” or, preferably, “winter Texans”), Asian Americans, and African Americans. The vast quantity of the ethnographic accounts in this volume come from the in-depth interviews derived from the Borderlife Project, fo-

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cusing not only on the years 1999 to 2010, but including some accounts from 1982 to 1999. Our surveys also cover the entire 1982–2010 period, as detailed in appendix A. These include our Cultural Practices Sur- vey of 2001–2002 with 433 respondents, Winter Texans Survey of 1995 with 326 respondents, Informal and Underground Survey of 2006–2009 with 526 respondents, 2000 Maids Survey of Laredo with 391 respondents, and Consumer Informality Survey of 2010 with 357 respondents. Secondary data sources include the Cross-Border Utilization of Health Care Survey by Dejun Su and colleagues, the Latino National Survey by Luis R. Fraga and colleagues, the US Department of Labor’s Na- tional Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS), and various reports from the Pew Research Center and the US Census Bureau.34 In the chapters that follow, survey and secondary data will provide a quantitative portrait, while the qualitative ethnographic accounts by students give contextually richer descriptions of these life situations. We are greatly indebted to the students and the people who opened their lives to them for the richness of detail that these stories provide. The names of the students whose accounts were used in this book are listed in appendix B.

Explaining and Understanding the Patterns Reported

We consider our audience for this volume to include not only scholars and colleagues but also students, laypersons, policy makers, and those whose lives we have sought to document. Many of the last group may be unfamiliar with the intriguing explanatory concepts of sociology and other social science disciplines. In addition to the three aims previously discussed, we add, as a fourth aim in this volume, to show that what happens on one side of the border profoundly affects life on the other side. In this regard, we hope to provide scholars and policy makers, particularly those from outside the region, a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the uniqueness of this South Texas–northern Mexico borderland and its commonalities with and importance to the rest of the US-Mexico borderlands. We believe real and effective public policy comes from a clear understanding of people most affected by those policies. This book is written not only to demonstrate these concepts but to help readers understand the “why” questions raised in the book. Throughout the text, we hope to accomplish a fi fth aim: to help the reader become familiar with and understand what we call the sociolog-

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ical perspective, one that is shared by many of the other social sciences. The fi rst aspect of this perspective is the importance of the power of the social situation, or the idea that the way societies and groups struc- ture social situations can have powerful impacts on human behavior. A second aspect, the power of the defi nition of the situation, helps explain how collective defi nitions or interpretations of situations likewise powerfully affect human behavior. Although we do not ignore factors such as personality, moods, and biological impulses, we propose that even intrapsychic motivations are themselves affected by the nature of different social situations and the understandings we collectively share about them. Perhaps one rather famous example will illustrate. In 1961, Stanley Milgram began a series of experiments whose results surprised virtually everyone, including himself. He wanted to determine how much pain people would infl ict upon strangers if someone in authority told them to do so. Obviously, experiments in which dangerous pain is actually administered would be legally prohibited, so Milgram decided to make people think they were infl icting pain. He designed an apparatus that looked very much like an electrical shock control panel. He then told students at Yale University he would pay them to participate as teachers in a scientifi c experiment designed to measure the effects of punish- ment on learners. Each student was told that a person in another room was connected to the electrical apparatus. If this learner made an error in memory re- call, the teacher was to give that person a shock by fl ipping a switch on the control panel. Actually, the person in the other room was an actor who never received any real shocks, although he acted as if he did. As the actor kept on making errors, the teacher was told to keep increasing the voltage of the shocks up to a level marked “450 volts” on the fake control panel. As the shocks reached increasingly higher levels, the actor would act as if in great pain. If the student assistants protested, they were told to go on, that the experimenter would take responsibility. Most of these student assistants protested, but fully 65 percent of them went on to give what they believed was a 450 volt, potentially lethal shock, with the learner screaming or begging for them to stop. Even the one-third who refused to go to the supposed 450 volts administered what they thought was a shock that could cause considerable pain and suffering.35 Do these results mean that Yale University students have personalities inclined to torture others? Obviously not. Almost all of the subjects, including ordinary individuals in similar experiments off campus, tried

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to stop the experiment. But the participants were told to go on, that it was essential for them to continue, and that they would not be held ac- countable. Many became extremely agitated but continued when repeat- edly told to do so. We understand more about these results by examining the situation Milgram created as opposed to studying the personalities of his subjects. And what was the social situation that had such a powerful effect on them? A respected authority in a lab coat, at a respected university, told them he took responsibility. They had given their prior consent, as paid volunteers, to participate. Their role was that of a teacher helping a learner improve. They were made to believe that each new shock was only a little greater, 15 volts, than the previous one they had administered. Finally, the farther removed teachers were from seeing or hearing the learner’s suffering, the more willing they were to go on. Milgram learned, in other words, that certain conditions in the social situation of the experiment, more than personality variations of the student volunteers, could be set in place to get people to do things they found highly objectionable. Clearly, the sociological perspective does not encourage manipulat- ing social situations to get people to act against their will.36 It simply en- courages us to look for variations in our social situations that can help us understand why people behave as they do. As we will show in the chapters that follow, we fi nd some very interesting patterns of behavior on the South Texas border and some profoundly important social situations that help us understand the behavior of the individuals and groups involved. For a 2009 episode of the BBC science documentary series Horizon, the Milgram experiment was replicated.37 Of the twelve participants, only three refused to continue to the end of the experiment. Speak- ing during the episode, the social psychologist Clifford Stott proposed that many individuals go along with potentially harming others because Western culture puts a high value on science, with the belief that it will produce benefi cial fi ndings and knowledge that can be helpful for society, providing some social benefi ts. These examples help us make two important points about the sociological perspective that will be more thoroughly examined and illustrated in the chapters that follow. The fi rst is the importance of the power of the social situation. In the preceding example, Milgram struc- tured his experiment in a way that powerfully affected the behavior of the Yale students.

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The second point, which we have called “the power of the defi nition of the situation,” is also demonstrated in these experiments. In the BBC replication, it was observed that the importance modern culture puts on science is a collective defi nition of science and experimentation as collective values that strongly infl uenced the behavior of participants. We will use these two ideas as we attempt to explain the intriguing patterns we observe among residents of the South Texas border.

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