The Border and Beyond

Since Mexico became a republic, an array of U.S. actors and agencies, who have powerfully shaped Mexico’s destiny and fired Mexicans’ imaginations, alternately lament and celebrate the accident that placed their country in close proximity to the world’s wealthiest, most powerful country. The readings in part VIII illustrate a new conjuncture of interest in the border, as a site of increased militarization and control by the U.S. government but also as a land with a rich, creative cultural history. Despite efforts by the United States over the past decades to stem the flow of undocumented migrants and illegal drugs, participants in these efforts are daunted by the enormity and seeming impossibility of the task. In recent decades these cultural matters have become intertwined with social and political movements that seek to advance transborder migrants’ rights and combat the Mexican and U.S. states’ ineffectual response to narcoviolence and socioeconomic dislocation.