As the subtitle states, the purpose of this study is to examine the development of towns on the northern frontier of colonial Mexico. Cruz divides the book into two sections. The first contains chapters that comprise a series of case studies of frontier towns including Santa Fe and El Paso (New Mexico); San Antonio (Texas); Laredo (Nuevo Santander); and San José, Los Angeles, and the Villa de Branciforte-Santa Cruz (California). These chapters present brief discussions of the establishments of the towns and town governments, as well as very limited information on their development and population size. The second group of chapters focus on civilian settlers, the cabildos (town councils), and the structure of town government.
Cruz relies heavily on secondary sources supplemented by selected primary sources. This gives his discussion an anecdotal quality, particularly in the thematic chapters that make up the book’s second section. Moreover, many of the secondary sources are older publications, and there are some glaring gaps in the literature not cited. For example, Cruz does not cite articles on Spanish towns in California written by Daniel Garr, or Gilberto Hinojosa’s monographic study of Laredo. The author also cites few studies of Iberian municipalities, particularly works from the 1970s and 1980s on such diverse topics as the development and management of irrigation systems. Let There Be Towns was originally published in 1988, and the author has not updated the bibliography. Missing are important recent studies such as Jesús de la Teja’s masterful book on San Antonio.
Cruz brings an uninspired institutional and structural approach to the study of frontier towns and misses much of the texture of town life. I was left with important questions, such as how the towns really worked below the façade of the formal institutions. A number of important issues receive little or no attention—such as political factionalism, patterns of economic development, and the towns’ socioracial structure and demographic patterns—other than the presentation of population graphs and of issues related to the management of municipal land and water resources. Questions of land and water rights could and did cause dissent within communities, as occurred in San Antonio. One comment on the population figures Cruz publishes. Population counts need to be treated carefully, and the categories listed in the censuses must be clearly defined. For example, Cruz cites the 1731 count of Canary Island settlers recently arrived at San Antonio as the population of this town, but does not consider the military nor older settlers who had been at the site since 1718. Several towns studied existed alongside military garrisons, and the soldiers and their families may or may not have been included in the censuses.
In conclusion, I wonder why Texas A&M University Press republished this volume, particularly at a time when deserving projects can’t get published because of cut-backs at university presses. It may have been useful as an introductory synthesis in 1988, but the historiographic and conceptual gaps today are too great. Cruz initially ignored important secondary sources, and the author and press did not update content or bibliography for republication. Students and specialists alike will learn more about frontier towns from the monographic literature. We still will have to wait for a new synthetic history of frontier towns in northern colonial Mexico that incorporates recent historiography and a more sophisticated conceptual framework.