Question

What role does the Borderlands have in defining Mexican-Americans to themselves and to the nation as a whole?

Answer 1

From the forbidden ballads of the Scottish-English frontier to the valiant "corridos" of southern Texas, borderlands have also been the location of significant folk cultural achievements. Borderlands continues to inspire frontier lawlessness, national pride, revolt against oppression, and a collective hero's stand against all odds, inspired by the lives of heroes and others.

The 1942-64 Bracero Program, first negotiated during World War II by the United States and Mexico as an emergency measure, encouraged large-scale migration of Mexican workers into the United States. American agricultural enterprises could legally bring in Mexican contract workers for seasonal work under the terms of the program. Many did not return home in the off-season, and settled on the border, often choosing a place where people were already living from their home state.

Today, the rag dolls dressed in archetypal peasant garb with no strong regional identity are among the most popular tourist items sold throughout Mexico. Vendors of mixteco women sell them in Tijuana. They used to make the dolls but now buy them from other Tijuana migrants, who come from the western Mexican states of Jalisco and Guanajuato as well as from Guatemala, along with other traditional crafts. The traditional and tourist crafts displayed on the cart of a Mixteco vendor represent the work of many cultural groups at the border and the entrepreneurial skill of Mixtecos who make a living in this market created by short distance tourism.

Mexican immigrants continue searching for economic opportunities. The Mexican National Border Economic Development Program 1961-65 followed in 1965 by the Border Industrialization Program, which introduced the maquiladora assembly plants into the region, attracted workers to the border area.

The San Felipe spring feeds a network of canals in Del Rio, creating a lushness that is not otherwise seen in South Texas, and inviting Italian vineyards to be created. Agriculture, cattle ranching, and mining form regional cultural patterns here as much as the early conflicts between the Mexican land-grant settlements and the northern land-grabbers. Labor unions of Mexican farmers, service workers and oil workers are now organizing maquila employees at assembly plants to replace those older Mexican industries

Local economies that develop on the Mexican side capitalize not only on the skills available but also on materials available, usually discarded. Small businesses trade in secondhand clothing purchased from the United States by pound and cardboard. Some products are transformed into distinctive goods that help local economies and establish a border design, such as the used tires found everywhere along the border.