Warm Weather Bad Whiskey

The violence between the two partidos gave rise to the all-powerful Independent Club, the Partido Viejo as it came to be known locally, which dominated Laredo politics for over eighty years and had a major influence on regional, state and even national politics. Jerry Thompson, a historian at Laredo State University known for his work in chronicling the Civil War of the Southwest, has researched the Bota-Guarache confrontation almost entirely from primary sources. He says, "The feud was not sheepmen against cattlemen, homesteaders against ranchers, the unscrupulous against the righteous, or the powerful against the weak. It was a feud between several closely related and powerful families with shifting and often confusing allegiances that cut across racial, religious and class lines.

Most histories of Civil War Texas—some starring the fabled Hood’s Brigade, Terry’s Texas Rangers, or one or another military figure—depict the Lone Star State as having joined the Confederacy as a matter of course and as having later emerged from the war relatively unscathed. Yet as the contributors to this volume amply demonstrate, the often neglected stories of Texas Unionists and dissenters paint a far more complicated picture. Ranging in time from the late 1850s to the end of Reconstruction, Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance restores a missing layer of complexity to the history of Civil War Texas. The authors—all noted scholars of Texas and Civil War history—show that slaves, freedmen and freedwomen, Tejanos, German immigrants, and white women all took part in the struggle, even though some never found themselves on a battlefield. Their stories depict the Civil War as a conflict not only between North and South but also between neighbors, friends, and family members. By framing their stories in the analytical context of the “long Civil War,” Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance reveals how friends and neighbors became enemies and how the resulting violence, often at the hands of secessionists, crossed racial and ethnic lines. The chapters also show how ex-Confederates and their descendants, as well as former slaves, sought to give historical meaning to their experiences and find their place as citizens of the newly re-formed nation. Concluding with an account of the origins of Juneteenth—the nationally celebrated holiday marking June 19, 1865, when emancipation was announced in Texas—Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance challenges the collective historical memory of Civil War Texas and its place in both the Confederacy and the United States. It provides material for a fresh narrative, one including people on the margins of history and dispelling the myth of a monolithically Confederate Texas.

In River of Hope, Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez examines state formation, cultural change, and the construction of identity in the lower Rio Grande region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He chronicles a history of violence resulting from multiple conquests, of resistance and accommodation to state power, and of changing ethnic and political identities. The redrawing of borders neither began nor ended the region's long history of unequal power relations. Nor did it lead residents to adopt singular colonial or national identities. Instead, their regionalism, transnational cultural practices, and kinship ties subverted state attempts to control and divide the population. Diverse influences transformed the borderlands as Spain, Mexico, and the United States competed for control of the region. Indian slaves joined Spanish society; Mexicans allied with Indians to defend river communities; Anglo Americans and Mexicans intermarried and collaborated; and women sued to confront spousal abuse and to secure divorces. Drawn into multiple conflicts along the border, Mexican nationals and Mexican Texans (tejanos) took advantage of their transnational social relations and ambiguous citizenship to escape criminal prosecution, secure political refuge, and obtain economic opportunities. To confront the racialization of their cultural practices and their increasing criminalization, tejanos claimed citizenship rights within the United States and, in the process, created a new identity. Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.

Winner, Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History, Webb County Heritage Foundation, 2015 Present-day smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border is a professional, often violent, criminal activity. However, it is only the latest chapter in a history of illicit business dealings that stretches back to 1848, when attempts by Mexico and the United States to tax commerce across the Rio Grande upset local trade and caused popular resentment. Rather than acquiesce to what they regarded as arbitrary trade regulations, borderlanders continued to cross goods and accepted many forms of smuggling as just. In Border Contraband, George T. Díaz provides the first history of the common, yet little studied, practice of smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border. In Part I, he examines the period between 1848 and 1910, when the United States' and Mexico's trade concerns focused on tariff collection and on borderlanders' attempts to avoid paying tariffs by smuggling. Part II begins with the onset of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, when national customs and other security forces on the border shifted their emphasis to the interdiction of prohibited items (particularly guns and drugs) that threatened the state. Díaz's pioneering research explains how greater restrictions have transformed smuggling from a low-level mundane activity, widely accepted and still routinely practiced, into a highly profitable professional criminal enterprise.

Some five hundred miles of superhighway run between the Rio Grande and the Red River-present-day Interstate 35. This towering achievement of modern transportation engineering links 7.7 million people, yet it all evolved from a series of humble little trails.

One of the best tie-down calf ropers ever to come out of South Texas, Juan Salinas grew up on a 15,000-acre ranch near Laredo, with the finest of horses to ride and hundreds of head of cattle to practice on. He roped in Texas rodeos large and small from the mid-1920s to 1935. From 1936 to 1946, he followed the national rodeo circuit, competing from Texas to New York's Madison Square Garden. At the time, few if any other Mexican Americans competed in rodeo, and Salinas drew a lot of attention. Salinas also operated his family's Texas ranch, where he ran cattle and raised prize roping quarter horses. In this account of his life and career, Salinas's nephew, Ricardo Palacios, recounts the many tales his uncle told him--tales of friendship with Gene Autry, going to Sally Rand's wedding reception, riding on the Rodeo Train, and sponsoring seven-time world champion tie-down calf roper Toots Mansfield. He also narrates life on the range, with his uncle riding across a pasture at full speed, gingerly holding the reins and a thirty-five foot coil of rope in his left hand while swinging the roping loop overhead with his right hand as he chased a three-hundred-pound calf for the throw. The story of Juan Salinas is also the story of the people of Mexican origin who live on the ranches of the South Texas brush country. Strong, rugged, independent, and hard-working, they knew social and economic success that has all too seldom been chronicled. Tio Juan was the family cowboy, the hero, the rodeo star, and Palacios tells his uncle's story with warmth and admiration. In 1991 Salinas was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. He was also named Rancher of the Year by Laredo's Borderfest and won the Ranching Heritage Award given by the King Ranch and Texas A&M-Kingsville. In 1993, he was inducted into the LULAC International Sports Hall of Fame. These were, Palacios writes, "fitting tributes to a champion and fine additions to his collection of trophy roping saddles, silver trophies, and champion's buckles."

Medina tells us that up to 2% of the urban population in developing countries survives by salvaging materials from waste for recycling, which represents up to 64 million scavengers in the world today. Despite these numbers, we know little about the impact of scavenging on global capitalism development. The author examines its historical evolution and its linkages with formal and informal sector productive activities in capitalist and non-capitalist societies, in case studies from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Egypt, the Philippines, and India. His new book radically alters popular perceptions on scavenging, demonstrating that many widely-held beliefs are wrong: scavenging is not primarily the activity of the poor nor is it a strictly marginal activity; the economic impact of scavenging is significant and can increase industrial competitiveness; and scavenging can be compatible with a sustainable waste management system. Scavenging represents an adaptive response to poverty, yet at the same time it can be a resource to cities, whose contributions should be recognized and understood.