Mexican American Colonization during the Nineteenth Century A History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

This study is a reinterpretation of nineteenth-century Mexican American history, examining Mexico's struggle to secure its northern border with repatriates from the United States, following a war that resulted in the loss of half Mexico's territory. Responding to past interpretations, Jose Angel Hernández suggests that these resettlement schemes centred on developments within the frontier region, the modernisation of the country with loyal Mexican American settlers, and blocking the tide of migrations to the United States to prevent the depopulation of its fractured northern border. Through an examination of Mexico's immigration and colonisation policies as they developed in the nineteenth century, this book focuses primarily on the population of Mexican citizens who were 'lost' after the end of the Mexican American War of 1846?8 until the end of the century.

Part I: Migration to Mexico in an Age of Global Immigrations: 1. From conquest to colonization: the making of Mexican colonization policy after independence; 2. Postwar expulsions and early repatriation policy; Part II: 3. Postwar repatriation and settling the frontiers of New Mexico; 4. Repatriations along the new international boundary: the cases of Texas and California; Part III: 5. The 1871 riot of La Mesilla, New Mexico; 6. Colonizing La Ascensión, Chihuahua: the prehistory of revolt; 7. Anatomy of 1892 revolt of La Ascensión, or the public lynching of Rafael Ancheta; Conclusion: 8. Repatriating modernity?

José Angel Hernández is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has published articles in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies and Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, as well as Landscapes of Violence: An Interdisciplinary Journal Devoted to the Study of Violence, Conflict, and Trauma. He has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Trustee Fellowship, the Fulbright–Hayes Dissertation Fellowship and the Center for Mexican American Studies Fellowship from the University of Houston. At Massachusetts, Professor Hernández has received a Lilly Teaching Fellowship and has also been a Center for Public Policy and Administration Workshop Fellow. He was Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latina/o Studies Faculty Fellow for the academic year 2011.