In Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts, Alejandro Lugo examines the continuing oppression of subaltern people in Ciudad Juárez and its historical precedents, beginning with the Spanish conquest of the region in 1598. He argues that working-class life has not improved for people of color along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, for women (and many men) it has become harsher and more deadly. Overall, the book has a fairly narrow audience — mainly cultural anthropologists theorizing class, race, and gender — and is filled with a lot of technical jargon. Nonetheless, historians, both cultural historians and others, will find much of interest in it.
Most importantly for borderlands historians, Lugo advances a theory of border inspections that I hope others will use. Lugo notes that ethnographers and historians have made extensive use of the concept of “border crossings” but have failed to recognize that not all people can cross borders and...
