Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados: Class and Culture on the South Texas Border

By Chad Richardson and Michael J. Pisani

This updated edition of the classic study examines life on the Texas-Mexico border, including the effects of NAFTA, drug violence, and immigration crises.

Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados offers an authoritative portrait of the people of the South Texas/Northern Mexico borderlands. First published in 1999, the book is now extensively revised and updated to cover developments since 2000, including undocumented immigration, the drug wars, race relations, growing social inequality, and the socioeconomic gap between Latinos and the rest of American society—issues of vital and continuing national importance.

An outgrowth of the Borderlife Research Project conducted at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados uses the voices of several hundred Valley residents, collected by embedded student researchers and backed by the findings of sociological surveys, to describe the lives of migrant farmworkers, colonia residents, undocumented domestic servants, maquiladora workers, and Mexican street children.

This wide-ranging study explores social, racial, and ethnic relations in South Texas among groups such as Latinos, Mexican immigrants, wealthy Mexican visitors, Anglo residents or tourists, and Asian and African American residents. With extensive firsthand material, the book addresses the future integration of Latinos into the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781477312711

Book preview

Number Forty-Five

Jack and Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture

Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados

Class and Culture on the South Texas Border Revised edition

CHAD RICHARDSON AND MICHAEL J. PISANI

University of Texas Press

Austin

Copyright © 1999, 2017 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved

Revised edition, 2017

First edition, 1999

Publication of this work was made possible in part by support from the J. E. Smothers, Sr., Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:

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University of Texas Press

P.O. Box 7819

Austin, TX 78713-7819

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Library of Congress Cataloging Data

Names: Richardson, Chad, 1943– author. | Pisani, Michael J., 1962– author.

Title: Batos, bolillos, pochos, and pelados : class and culture on the South Texas border / Chad Richardson and Michael J. Pisani.

Other titles: Jack and Doris Smothers series in Texas history, life, and culture ; no. 45.

Description: Revised edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2017. | Series: Jack and Doris Smothers series in Texas history, life, and culture ; number forty-five | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016050491| ISBN 978-1-4773-1272-8 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4773-1269-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4773-1270-4 (library e-book) | ISBN 978-1-4773-1271-1 (nonlibrary e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Social classes—Texas. | Social classes—Mexican-American Border Region. | Subculture—Texas. | Subculture—Mexican-American Border Region. | Texas—Race relations. | Mexican-American Border Region—Race relations. | Texas—Ethnic relations. | Mexican-American Border Region—Ethnic relations. | Mexicans—Texas—Social conditions. | Mexicans—Mexican-American Border Region—Social conditions.

Classification: LCC HN79.T43 R53 2017 | DDC 305.50972/1—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050491

doi:10.7560/312728

To the individuals along this great fault line we call the border who shared their lives. They illuminated ours in the process.

CR and MJP

For Elizabeth and our children, with love and gratitude for their unfailing support.

—CR

For Jana, William, Carina, and Geoffrey, with love.

—MJP

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I. Ranking and Class Inequality

1. Migrant Farmworkers

WITH JUANITA VALDEZ COX

2. The Colonias of South Texas

WITH DAVID ARIZMENDI

3. Only a Maid: Undocumented Domestic Workers in South Texas

4. Social Inequality on the Mexican Side of the Border

Conclusion to Part I: Social Class on the South Texas–Northern Mexico Border

PART II. Racial and Ethnic Inequality

5. The Pain of Gain: South Texas Schools Then and Now

WITH DANIEL P. KING

6. From Mexicanos to Mexican Americans to Americans?

WITH CHRYSTELL FLOTA

7. Ahí Viene el Bolillo!: Anglos in South Texas

WITH JENNY CHAMBERLAIN

8. Race and Ethnicity in South Texas

Conclusion to Part II: The Interaction of Race, Class, and Ethnicity

Epilogue: The Strength and Resilience of People of the South Texas Border

WITH JOHN SARGENT

Appendix A. Borderlife Survey Research Projects Utilized in This Volume

Appendix B. Students Who Contributed Ethnographic Accounts

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

One evening as I picked up the phone to call some relatives to ask them for an interview, my mom asked me why I needed to call them. I explained my sociology project and that I had chosen the subject of migrant farmworkers. She then asked me, "Why don’t you interview me? After all, nosotros fuimos migrantes [we were migrants]. Then she added, It is our turn to tell our story."

STUDENT INTERVIEWER

When we published Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados in 1999, people like this student’s mom were able, many for the first time, to tell their own stories. Such individuals and their stories of life in South Texas are amazing. Though they, like population groups everywhere, are a mix of saints and scoundrels, we have found far more of them at the saints end of the continuum. While we admit to some bias in this conclusion, it is a bias borne of extensive research and some very poignant personal experiences over a period of almost forty years. We have found them to be amazingly resilient, many in the face of grinding poverty, race- and ethnicity-based discrimination, and outright exploitation.

Our challenge has always been to let the people of South Texas tell their own story. The setting for their accounts is the southernmost tip of Texas, bordering Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. This is a land of seeming contradictions with a rich history, a unique racial/ethnic mix, and a people full of life and hope. Their amazing stories need to be heard.

Since we published the first edition of Batos, in 1999, many students, having read the accounts therein, have chosen to conduct their interviews on the same topics covered in that volume. As a result, over the ensuing years, the file of ethnographic accounts has grown, more than doubling the accounts we had to work with for the first edition.

The present book, however, is more than an updating of the first edition. Much has changed since 1999; some of it is encouraging, though change has also brought added challenges. When we published Batos, we neither envisioned the magnitude of the changes nor the quantity and quality of the student research that would follow. Together, these developments do justify a new volume. We continue our focus on class and culture in South Texas with special attention given to migrant farmworkers, life in colonias, maids, social inequality, education, the process of acculturation, ethnic minorities (Anglos, African Americans, and Asian Americans), and race in the South Texas borderlands. Yet, this book must be much more than a simple update or a minor revision.

When we published the first edition, we wanted a title that could represent the Valley’s uniqueness and diversity. Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados seemed to fit. Bato, to young Mexican Americans, means man, such as Oye, bato (Hey, man). It expresses in-group solidarity and epitomizes the sense of identity found among many young South Texas Mexican Americans. Bolillo (white bread roll) and pocho (faded, off-color), in contrast, are terms used to designate members of out-groups. The first indicates an Anglo (a non-Hispanic white), and the second a Mexican American who is regarded as overly Americanized in speech and culture. In Mexico, a pelado is someone suspected of criminal activity, the term possibly related to the practice of cutting very short the hair of Mexican prisoners. Along the border, however, it means someone disreputable, whether involved in criminal activity or not. For this edition, the term best fits those individuals or groups who engage in exploitation and abuse of the unique groups described in this volume. Though these terms are not normally used around members of these groups except in gentle kidding, they are part of local culture. Since this book emphasizes local culture and intergroup relations in South Texas, we felt the use of these colloquial terms, each closely related to the border, was appropriate.

In the chapters that follow, we specify more clearly what changes and challenges have emerged since 1999. Still, there are three changes that seem to affect all or most of the population groups we examine. One is the way immigration from Mexico and Central America has changed. Since 1999, the McAllen sector in South Texas has become the primary route of entry for undocumented immigrants across the US-Mexico border. It has also received the largest number of unaccompanied minors trying to escape drug-related violence in Central America.

The cartel wars and drug violence in Mexico and Central America constitute another impact on the South Texas border region. Though they have had a profound effect on life on both sides of the border, a spillover of violence into South Texas border cities has not really materialized as predicted by many politicians and journalists.

A third important development is the host of demographic changes in South Texas and northern Mexico. The border population is growing at a rapid rate, with Mexican-origin people becoming an even larger proportion of the population. Anglos are now only 7 percent of the population of the Lower Rio Grande Valley (the four southernmost counties of South Texas). The growth of colonias (impoverished rural border neighborhoods) has virtually ceased, and the size of the migrant farmworker population has been in fairly rapid decline, with undocumented workers moving to other occupations and other states.

Because of these and other changes and because of a greatly expanded archive of student interviews, this volume will not be simply an update of the first edition. Rather, it will cover the entire period of the Borderlife Project, including not just the years described in the first edition but also developments that have happened since. Accordingly, we will provide some of the original ethnographic accounts, about 20 percent, from this early period as well as some of the original surveys. Students who contributed ethnographic accounts in both editions are credited in appendix B. To update our earlier survey findings we also include the results of some surveys we conducted since 1999 and survey data from national samples that are relevant to the subjects at hand. Additionally, we have expanded our geographical reach from the four-county Rio Grande Valley (RGV, or just the Valley) to include Laredo (in Webb County) and much of the area historically referred to as the Nueces Strip in this present, revised edition.

The current volume, along with its three preceding companions, all published by the University of Texas Press, is possible because of an approach to teaching and research that began officially in 1982 with the Borderlife Project. This project encourages students to not just read about the life around them but get out in the field as locally embedded researchers, generating ethnographic field interviews of family, friends, and strangers.

Now, thirty-five years since we began, the ethnographic accounts reported by these students are housed in the Borderlife Archive at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). The collection contains student reports of more than ten thousand in-depth interviews and ethnographies plus more than six thousand survey responses generated through separate survey projects.

Perhaps even greater than the value of the Borderlife Project and its collection, however, is the impact the process has had on the lives of our student researchers. Their lives were touched by the personal accounts of the people they interviewed, the experience of making sense of what they had seen and heard as they wrote up their research reports, applying concepts learned in their coursework to contextualize what they had experienced, and the pleasure of seeing their work valued when their names appear as contributors in each of the three (and with this volume, four) books published by a renowned academic publishing house, the University of Texas Press.

One of our student interviewers explained the project’s impact on his own life.

I found this assignment to be very interesting. Being a migrant worker myself, I had never realized that maybe my feeling of inferiority had a cause outside of me. I recall growing up as a child, feeling shame for being a migrant farmworker. I had learned to accept the fact that my parents were poor. When my brother-in-law encouraged me to go to college, I couldn’t see the need—nor could I see myself being able to accomplish it. If my parents who did not have an education were able to survive, I thought, so could I. But when my siblings graduated from college one by one, I got motivated. Even though I started college at a later age, I hope my children will not only be motivated but confident of doing the same.

The accomplishments of the Borderlife Project help us address an important question in the social sciences: Can undergraduate students contribute meaningfully to conducting high-quality, publishable research? In 2004, the quality of work of the Borderlife Project was recognized in a book published by Harvard University Press entitled What the Best College Teachers Do. The author, Ken Bain, describes the project and the students who participated in the Borderlife Project as follows:

In fall 1977, Chad Richardson came to the Lower Rio Grande Valley in the southern tip of Texas and began teaching in the sociology program at Pan American University. Polishing off his own graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, he was eager to introduce others to the excitement of his discipline. At his new university, most of the students came from the local area; three quarters spoke Spanish and were of Mexican descent. They had a rich cultural heritage, but by most conventional measures they generally lacked the academic skills necessary to do well in college.

A few came from families that had prospered in the local agricultural economy that sprang up along the river. Most students, however, lived closer to the poverty line, and many came from the ranks of the one hundred thousand migrant farmworkers in Hidalgo County, people whose labor had created the wealth of the region but who enjoyed few of its benefits. But they were pioneers, often the first in their families to take a college course, and sometimes the first to read and write. The university, with its open admission policy, cut across a wide swath of SAT scores and high school ranks, but generally didn’t attract many students in higher registers.

In this border region, located on the fringes of two national civilizations and not quite comfortable with either, Hispanics valued tradition and culture, yet often found themselves the focus of mean-spirited caricatures that belittled their habits, language, and origins. The twenty percent of the local populations that didn’t come from Mexican roots—what locals called Anglos—sometimes felt isolated and alienated from the local cultures, even though, as a group, they had dominant economic and political power.¹

More recently, the anthropologist John P. Hawkins, writing in Current Anthropology in 2014, discussed how undergraduate students, especially those of lower incomes, could be involved in research efforts with publishable research.

In one style, a professor may coordinate a research project and synthesize the research materials brought to the professor by locally rooted, well-guided undergraduate student ethnographers. Richardson . . . epitomizes this approach and published the result in a sole-authored book that recognizes by name the contributions of 309 student ethnographers that provided case material while exploring (and living) South Texas border life.

So, how do scholarly reviews evaluate the products of these partnerships with undergraduates? Rodriguez . . . finds Richardson’s collaboration a significant contribution to the scant social scientific literature on the country’s Mexican American population that clarifies in important ways the operations of class in South Texas communities. I draw attention to the fact that Richardson accomplished this task in a setting where many of his students were substantially disadvantaged economically and educationally. Disadvantaged status is no impediment to participation in research and collaborative writing; indeed, it probably makes the outcome and even the process sweeter.

Richardson succinctly advances a sustainable local area variation. His work demonstrates my contention that for maximum benefit a field school needs a legitimate research orientation and collaborative writing engagement. Richardson mounts a fully legitimate alternative to an away-based field school that seems well integrated in the department’s curriculum.²

Though most students who have participated in the Borderlife Project were enrolled as undergraduates, usually in upper-division classes, we also involved graduate students. Of the chapter coauthors in this book, only Jenny Chamberlain and John Sargent were not involved in the Borderlife Project as students. The chapter coauthors’ professional affiliations at this writing are as follows:

Chapter 1: Juanita Valdez Cox, executive director of the Texas farmworkers union La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE). Juanita was a student in Chad Richardson’s classes (and a sociology major) in the early 1980s. She grew up as a migrant farmworker and eventually became a leader of the United Farm Workers (UFW). She contributed to the chapter by adding extensive comments from her own professional and personal experiences to what we had written.

Chapter 2: David Arizmendi, instructor, South Texas College. In the 1990s David was an undergraduate sociology major and master’s program graduate at the University of Texas–Pan American (UTPA). David contributed comments and background information based on his publications and presentations about colonias.

Chapter 5: Daniel P. King, PhD, superintendent, Pharr–San Juan–Alamo (PSJA) Independent School District. Daniel took a graduate Sociology of Education seminar from Chad Richardson while working on his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. He contributed to the chapter by fact checking and commenting based on his experiences in the very successful college-prep program at PSJA high schools.

Chapter 6: Chrystell Flota, PhD, independent scholar. Chrystell took a graduate seminar from Chad Richardson in 2000 while working on her doctorate in business administration. Her seminar paper on the relation between Mexicans and Mexican Americans was incorporated, with her modifications, into the chapter.

Chapter 7: Jenny Chamberlain, instructor, South Texas College. Jenny was a lecturer in sociology at UTPA and assisted in the Borderlife Project from 2006 through 2008. She provided comments and observations for the chapter.

Epilogue: John Sargent, PhD, professor, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

One other former Borderlife student made an important contribution to this edition as well as to the 1999 edition. Noel Palmenez contributed the drawings in both editions.

As coauthors, we share the common ground of having lived and worked not only on the border but in Mexico and Central America as well. We have personal experience working with migrant farmworkers in the United States, teaching at the community college and university levels, and a deep affection for South Texas. These points of commonality have made this joint effort rewarding, collaborative, and easygoing. We believe our different academic approaches and disciplines—sociology and international business—enrich this volume.

We also hope that this work will appeal to individuals from diverse backgrounds and be interesting and informative to people like those who are the subject matter of our work. We believe the book should hold compelling interest for students in social science disciplines and be useful to them in understanding key social science concepts. Additionally, we hope it will enrich the academic literature on the people and situations of the US-Mexico borderlands. Finally, we hope our work informs local, regional, and national policy makers in the United States and Mexico to make better decisions, decisions that improve the quality of life in the South Texas borderlands and beyond.

In relation to these audiences, our goals for the book are not much different from those we maintained for the Borderlife Project. For example, with Borderlife we wanted to help students experience a greater awareness of the rich cultural heritage of the region and gain a greater appreciation for and acceptance of the rich ethnic and racial diversity of the South Texas–northern Mexico borderlands. That remains our primary reason for making this volume available to our readers in South Texas and beyond.

With Borderlife, we wanted students of all ethnic groups and different socioeconomic situations to develop an empathetic understanding of this diverse cultural and socioeconomic environment to develop a greater sense of their own historical place in it. Similarly, we hope, through the student interviewers and the people who shared their stories, to make an understanding of this rich cultural environment available to readers everywhere.

When we began Borderlife, we wanted to create a community in which professors and students could engage in rich intellectual conversations in a collegial environment. With the current volume, we want not only to include the people of South Texas in these conversations but also to greatly expand the discussion’s reach to the South Texas community and the world beyond.

Since its inception, we have used the interview experience and the ethnographic material it generated to challenge students to rethink their assumptions and examine their mental models of reality. We hope to accomplish a similar outcome among lay and other readers of this volume, allowing them to see and understand sociological forces that shape their lives and understand how society, along with personal and biological influences within each of us, affect our behavior and our outlook on life.

From the storyteller to the student, from the interviewer to the researcher, the Borderlife Project provides highly authentic and compelling ethnographic accounts. Storyteller, student, faculty researcher, and reader can reflect together on the importance and personal rewards of documenting these experiences. Readers living in and beyond South Texas have marveled at the intimacy of context bounded by empiricism that the three initial publications have provided.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the many thousands of people of the South Texas and northern Mexico borderlands who have shared their life stories with us since the initiation of the Borderlife Project at the University of Texas–Pan American in 1982. This book would not have been possible without our students. Embedded in the local environment, our students through ethnographic interviews and semistructured surveys artfully collected and shared the life experiences and stories of residents in the region. We also thank the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Library archives for access to the Borderlife Collection that now houses the Border life Project.

With regard to the University of Texas Press, we are indebted to its past editor-in-chief, Theresa May, who green-lighted this revised book project, and for the ongoing support of Kerry Webb, senior acquisitions editor, who gave us valuable encouragement for the project from the early stages of rewriting through the reviewing and editing processes. Her suggestions were always timely and valuable. Also invaluable was the assistance of Angie Lopez-Torres, editorial assistant at the press, in moving this project to fruition.

We are thankful for the outstanding artwork provided by Noel Palmenez that graces this volume. We are grateful to Richard Coronado, an instructor at South Texas College, and his students for coordinating the use of the photographs that document many of the themes found throughout this book.

We also wish to thank the academic reviewers of this edition for their critical insights; they challenged us to improve the text and found worth in our effort. Any remaining errors are ours alone.

Chad Richardson’s Acknowledgments

Many individuals have contributed greatly to the success of the Borderlife Project and to this current volume. At the risk of omitting many whose contributions have been invaluable, certain individuals cannot remain unsung. It was Mike Pisani’s idea to do a revised edition of Batos. He has been an outstanding coauthor on this volume and on our earlier one, The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border. Our chapter coauthors are also outstanding contributors and continue to do impressive work in the communities described in this volume. One individual who has given long, thoughtful, and dedicated service to the project is Jesse Medina, still serving as administrative assistant in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at UTRGV. Along the way, numerous graduate assistants also provided highly constructive assistance in the collection and analysis of all the material herein. Principal among them are Amelia Flores, Carlos Sepulveda, and Omar Camarillo. Various colleagues have provided invaluable feedback and support over many years; they include Joe Feagin at Texas A&M, Ell-wyn Stoddard at UT El Paso, and Rogelio Saenz at UT San Antonio. Finally, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my wife, Elizabeth, and our children (Mark, Aaron, Daniel, Benjamin, Stephen, Shayla, Janae, and Amy), who not only sacrificed time with Dad but contributed with helpful suggestions, critiques, and assistance.

Mike Pisani’s Acknowledgments

Chad Richardson has been instrumental in my development as a scholar in his roles as teacher, mentor, friend, and collaborator. I was introduced to the Borderlife Project in an elective sociology seminar that I took while working on my PhD in international business at UTPA. I was fortunate to have served in several roles related to the project, first as a student of Professor Richardson, then as a reader of his books, next as a researcher employing a version of the Borderlife methodology for a time at Texas A&M International in Laredo (and utilizing the Borderlife archive at UTPA), and finally as a colleague and coauthor on this and one prior book and several journal articles. I have appreciated Chad’s genuine passion for serving others—students, South Texans, the academy, family, and his faith community. I deeply appreciated the opportunity to collaborate once again with Chad, one of the hardest-working and most thoughtful people one could know.

Many at Central Michigan University (CMU) have facilitated my ongoing research of the South Texas borderlands. First is Professor Van Miller, friend, colleague, and fellow borderlander. In the College of Business, I appreciate the financial support and encouragement of Dean Chuck Crespy. In addition, I thank my current and past chairs of the Management Department, Luis Perez-Batres and Mahmood Bahaee, for their support during this project. Similarly, I am indebted to CMU for a semester-long sabbatical in the spring of 2014 that facilitated the early stages of this book project as well as to the Office of Sponsored Research and Programs for financial support.

I wish to thank my wife and partner in life, Jana, not only for the time and space to complete this book but also for her patience, interest, and listening skills as this multiyear project unfolded. She has always been there for me, in more ways than she knows. Thanks also to our three children, William, Carina, and Geoffrey, and our three pets (Pixie, Puzzle, and Kit-Kat) for enduring my time away from them during this project.

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 kidnappings, 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 McAllen, Texas, and claims that it is a 10-minute drive from Reynosa, Mexico, 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 flak 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 officers 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 violent 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 fly 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, financial 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 five categories that produced this ranking is even more revealing. The McAllen MSA was ranked 2nd nationally in relation to respondents’ sense of purpose (defined 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 (defined 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 (defined as believing one has generally good health and enough energy to get things done).

Nevertheless, with regard to the fifth variable (financial), McAllen ranked 140th, much closer to the bottom. The aspect of financial wellbeing was defined as being able to manage one’s economic life to reduce stress and increase stability. Since South Texas has some of the highest 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 five 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 financial 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 financial well-being,⁷ food security, health insurance, and access to personal doctors and yet score so highly in community well-being? The short answer represents the first major aim of this volume—to show that South Texas residents are amazingly resilient in the face of intense difficulties and are highly adept at leveraging their social relationships, connections to family and community, and even proximity to the United States-Mexico border to overcome these deficits.

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 perpetuate 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 find to meet life’s difficulties. 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 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 electricity. 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 flea market.⁸ As time passed, my husband got worse until he was not able get out of the bed. I was so worried 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 find 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 specific 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 patient. Also, many South Texas residents purchase prescription medications at Mexican pharmacies, often informally without first 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 visits in Mexico, 96 percent mentioned that the services they received there met their expectations.

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

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.

The resilience and strength of South Texans in the face of great difficulties that many face are characteristic of most of the studies reported in the chapters of this book. Another important finding 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 Conflict 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, Texans 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 Mexican raids and sacked Laredo. Then they launched an attack against Ciudad Mier, fifteen miles upriver from Roma. The Mexican army captured 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 Lincoln, 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-fledged 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 witnessing a marshal in Brownsville pistol-whip a former employee, Cortina 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 first 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 five 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 Winfield 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 secure a promise from Mexican officials 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

Map 0.1. Map of South Texas. Map by Amy E. R. Freeman.

During the US Civil War, the Nueces Strip again became contested territory. The Confederacy used it to evade the Union blockade by shipping cotton into Mexico and importing arms through Mexico. During the Civil War, Cortina joined the Union forces, helping them capture Brownsville. Hostilities continued until May 13, 1865, when the last battle of the Civil War was fought at Palmito Ranch battlefield, 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 fighting to maintain their independence against these imperial 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 Gertrudis. 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 Texas cattle than any other individual. Texas Rangers retaliated by invading 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 imprisoned 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 Rangers began rounding up and often lynching many local Mexican Americans 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 Mexicans were rounded up, shot, hanged, or driven across the border into Mexico. Then Anglo settlers and public officials exploited the powerlessness of Mexican Americans by wresting large tracts of land by trickery and collusion between public officials 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 incident 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,

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 methods. 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 sheriff and the lawyers and since our people didn’t understand the language or their system, they stole the land under our house. Many