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The U.S.-Mexico Border: Recent Publications and the State of Current Research
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THE UNITED STATES-MEXICO BORDER: A POLITICO-ECONOMIC PROFILE. By FERNANDEZRAUL. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977. Pp. 182. $10.95.)
BORDER BOOM TOWN: CIUDAD JUÁREZ SINCE 1848. By MARTINEZOSCAR. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. Pp. 230. $12.95.)
THE BORDER INDUSTRIALIZATION PROGRAM OF MEXICO. By BAERRESENDONALD. (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Co., 1971. Pp. 133. $12.50.)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
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- Copyright © 1981 by the University of Texas Press
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1. This growing concern is evidenced by the extensive bibliographies offered by the authors and editors of the works discussed in these pages. There are also numerous current research projects focused on this subject. Ellwyn R. Stoddard, Oscar Martinez, and Miguel Angel Martinez Lasso have recently completed El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Relations and the ‘Tortilla Curtain’: A Study of Local Adaptation to Federal Border Policies (El Paso: University of Texas Council on the Arts and Humanities, 1979). Martin Pronk, University of Texas at El Paso, is currently studying economic linkages between the U.S. and Mexico as part of a master's research project in geography. Patrick Horton, department of anthropology, University of California at Santa Barbara, is researching squatter settlements in Ciudad Juárez. Stephanie Foster, University of Texas at El Paso, is studying urban planning on the border. Susan Christopherson, department of geography, University of California at Berkeley, has initiated research on the industrialization of the U.S.-Mexico border and population movements between twin border cities. Devon G. Peña is researching “Maquiladoras: Mexican Women in the U.S.-Mexico Border Industry Program” as part of the Migration Studies Project at the University at Austin. Rosalía Solorzano, University of Texas at El Paso, is completing a master's thesis on “Attitudes and Migration Patterns: A Comparative Study of ”Marías“ from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico.” Marion Houstoun, Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, is surveying the literature on the impact of illegal Mexican aliens on job opportunities along the border. Richard Craig, Kent State University, has done extensive research on drug problems and eradication efforts along the border. Marshall Carter, Ohio University, has studied legal and human rights in the borderlands. Three papers on environmental problems along the border have been published in the Border-State University Consortium for Latin America, Occasional Paper No. 7 (Summer 1979): “Ecology and the Border, the Case of the Tijuana Flood Control Channel,” by Will Kennedy; “A 3-D Perspective of Water Gate Rip-Offs along the Rio Grande,” by E. R. Stoddard; “A Survey of Environmental Problems along the Border,” by Howard Applegate. Norris Clement, director of the California Border Area Resource Center, San Diego State University, is conducting a major effort to compile and make available information on the U.S.-Mexico border. Thomas Weaver and Theodore Downing, Bureau of Ethnic Research, University of Arizona, have undertaken an anthropological research project on the town of Douglas, Arizona. Michael Miller, department of sociology, Texas A&M University, and Robert Maril, department of sociology, Texas Southmost College, are studying poverty-stricken communities. Robert C. Trotter, department of anthropology, Pan American University, has surveyed problems of health and pathology among Mexican Americans in the Lower Valley, Texas. Michael Van Waas, department of political science, Stanford University, has conducted extensive research on multinational corporations and labor unions along the border. Arthur Young, Organization of U.S. Border Cities, has finished “An Economic and Demographic Study of U.S. Border Cities.” Ed Williams and William Seligson, University of Arizona, Tucson, have done research on immigration and the Border Industrialization Program. E. R. Stoddard, department of sociology, University of Texas at El Paso, has coordinated a compendium of borderland studies in history, geography, political science, sociology, anthropology, and economics (see “The Status of U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Studies: A Multi-Disciplinary Symposium” Social Science Journal 12/13 [Oct. 1975–Jan. 1976]:1–112). Monica Claire Gambrill, Centro de Estudios Económicos y Sociales del Tercer Mundo, has concluded a research project on women and labor unions in Tijuana maquiladoras. Jorge Carrillo and Alberto Hernández, sociology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, are engaged in a study of the characteristics of the female labor force in border assembly plants. M. P Fernández Kelly, department of sociology, University of California, Berkeley, conducted an anthropological research project on the composition of the female labor force in Ciudad Juárez maquiladoras between 1978 and 1979.
2. Representative of this concern, for example, is the current nationwide survey on migration to the U.S. being directed by Jorge Bustamante, Centro de Estudios Sociológicos, El Colegio de México. See also Wayne Cornelius, ed., Immigration and U.S.-Mexican Relations. Working Paper No. 1 (Center for United States-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1979). For a comprehensive bibliography on the subject of Mexican migration to the U.S., see Cornelius, Mexican Migration to the United States (With Comparative Reference to Caribbean-Basin Migration): The State of Current Knowledge and Recommendations for Future Research. Working Paper No. 2 (Center for United States-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1979).
3. See C. Cumberland, “The United States-Mexico Border: A Selective Guide to the Literature of the Region,” Rural Sociology 25, no. 2 (June 1960). See also N. Glenn, “Some Reflections on a Landmark Publication and the Literature on Mexican Americans,” Social Science Quarterly 52 (1971):8–10.
4. See J. Bustamante, “Maquiladoras: A New Face of International Capitalism on Mexico's Northern Frontier.” Revised version of a paper presented at the VI National Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia.
5. See also Martinez, Border Boom Town, chap. 2.
6. R. Stavenhagen, Social Classes in Agrarian Societies (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), pp. 97–115.
7. For clarification of this point see A. Portes, “Dual Labor Markets and Immigration, A Test of Competing Theories of Income Inequality,” Paper prepared for the Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Houston, Texas, 1979.
8. Ibid.
9. See A. G. Frank, “Economic Dependence, Class Structure and Underdevelopment Policy,” in J. D. Cockroft, A. G. Frank, and D. L. Johnson, eds., Dependence and Underdevelopment (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday).
10. See E. Sodi Alvarez, Frontera (México, D.F.: PRONAF, 1970) and J. Evans, “Mexican Border Development and Its Impact upon the United States,” South Eastern Latin Americanist 16 (June) 1972: 4–10.
11. See “U.S. Runaway Shops on the Mexican Border,” NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report 9, no. 7 (July 1975).
12. See M. P. Fernández Kelly, “Women in Mexican Border Industries: The Search for ‘Cheap Labor‘” Paper prepared for the 78th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1979.
13. A similar argument has been advanced by Briggs and others with respect to the effect of undocumented aliens vis-à-vis black and Chicano workers in the highly competitive U.S. labor market. There is an element of common sense in these assessments. However, the manner in which they have been manipulated by some U.S. labor unions, mass media, and some scholars reveals an unfortunate theoretical and political confusion. Working women in the case of BIP and illegal aliens in general are held responsible for the plights of some of the most vulnerable sectors of the U.S. working class with total disregard for any global determinants that account for international class structure and fragmentation.
14. Bustamante, “Maquiladoras,” p. 11.
15. NACLA, “U.S. Runaway Shops.”
16. See H. Safa, The Urban Poor of Puerto Rico (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston). See also C. Stack, All Our Kin (New York: Harper and Row).
17. J. Friedman, “Marxism, Structuralism, and Vulgar Materialism,” Man 9:444–69.
18. See for example the articles contained in E. B. Leacock, ed., The Culture of Poverty–A Critique (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971).
19. See J. Bustamante, “Espaldas mojadas: materia prima para la expansión del capital norteamericano” (Centro de Estudios Sociológicos, El Colegio de México, 1975) and “Structural and Ideological Conditions of Undocumented Mexican Immigration to the United States,” in Current Issues in Social Policy.
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