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Latina suffragists Andrea and Teresa Villarreal.

Recovering Histories of Gendered State Violence

And how those with few resources at their disposal found ways to navigate and negotiate even the direst of situations.
by Sonia Hernandez via Process: A Blog for American History on December 19, 2023
A border sign

Borders Don’t Stop Violence—They Create It

The “border” is not a line on the ground, but a tool that enables violence and surveillance.
by Karl Jacoby, Monica Muñoz Martinez via Public Books on July 7, 2021
Illustration of a coastline with indications of industry and farming

Human History and the Hunger for Land

From Bronze Age farmers to New World colonialists, the stories of struggle to claim more ground have shaped where and how we live.
by Francisco Cantú via The New Yorker on January 11, 2021
A sign at a beach warning of sewage contaminated water.
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San Diego and Tijuana’s Shared Sewage Problem Has a Long History

U.S. imperialism and private enterprise in the region have created ecological peril.
by Kevan Q. Malone via Made By History on June 2, 2020

Trump's Border Wall Threatens an Arizona Oasis with a Long, Diverse History

Border wall construction is encroaching on a site where people from many cultures have interacted for thousands of years.
by Jared Orsi via The Conversation on December 4, 2019
Painting of cavalry with swords drawn heading into U.S.-Mexico War battle.

American Extremism Has Always Flowed from the Border

Donald Trump says there is “a crisis of the soul” at the border. He is right, though not in the way he thinks.
by Greg Grandin via Boston Review on January 9, 2019

Fracturing Landscapes: A History of Fences on the U.S.-Mexico Divide

History tells us that Trump's proposed wall will not work, and that it will do more damage than good.
by Mary Mendoza via OUPblog on September 4, 2018

The Raging Controversy at the Border Began With This Incident 100 Years Ago

In Nogales, Arizona, the United States and Mexico agreed to build walls separating their countries.
by Rachel St. John via Smithsonian on June 26, 2018

A Border Crosses

After a Rio Grande flood shifted a 437-acre strip of land from Mexico to Texas, the area was the site of a long border dispute.
by Paul A. Kramer via The New Yorker on September 20, 2014
The U.S.-Canada border, as seen in this satellite map, mostly runs along the 49th parallel — and wasn't chosen at random.

Trump Calls the U.S.-Canada Border an "Artificial Line." That's not Entirely True.

Just because it's man-made doesn't mean it's not legitimate.
by Rachel Treisman via NPR on May 9, 2025
John Quincy Adams
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Are You Not Large and Unwieldy Enough Already?

John Quincy Adams challenges the idea of an expanding American frontier. 
by Andrew C. Isenberg via HNN on April 23, 2025
US and Mexican immigrant rights activists march through the Arizona desert to draw attention to unjust immigration policies.

What the Birth of the Sanctuary Movement Teaches Us Today

The birth of the sanctuary movement some 45 years ago can teach us a lot about how to respond to today’s attacks on immigrants.
by Kyle Paoletta via The Nation on April 10, 2025

How the U.S. Gamed the Law of the Sea

It made itself bigger.
by Jack Truesdale via The Atlantic on January 25, 2025
William Hanson with Brigadier General Jacob Walters and Texas Rangers in Longview in 1919.

The Banality of Border Evil

What a long-dead, cartoonishly corrupt Texas bureaucrat can tell us about the nature of immigration enforcement and the U.S.-Mexico divide.
by Gus Bova via Texas Observer on July 23, 2024
An aerial view of the International Bridge over the in Rio Grande, Laredo, Texas.
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The Image of Control

Following the careers of a family of especially corrupt border control officials.
by John Weber via HNN on June 11, 2024
Street vendors at the border crossing in Tijuana, 2006.

Fortifying the U.S.-Mexico Boundary

The 1993 “Hold the Line” experiment.
by Justin I. Salgado via Origins on June 8, 2024
Paso del Norte International Bridge.

On the Edges of Fascism and Other Unsettling Possibilities

The legacy of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the launching of the Border Patrol, which inaugurated the most restrictive era of US immigration until our own.
by Gilberto Rosas via Public Books on June 3, 2024
San Diego U.S. Customs office.

San Diego’s South Bay Annexation Of 1957

Water insecurity, territorial expansion, and the making of a US-Mexico border city.
by Kevan Q. Malone via The Metropole on February 21, 2024
Map of the Mason-Dixon line.

Mason-Dixon Lines

The boundary lines preceding Mason and Dixon, everybody knows, were a sham. What’s to follow will be no better.
by Edward G. Gray via Commonplace on January 16, 2024
An electrified barbed-wire fence around Fort Bliss in El Paso, Tex., near the Mexican border, in 1915 or 1916.

The Long, Ugly History of Barbed Wire at the U.S.-Mexico Border

The first barbed wire border fences were proposed to keep out Chinese migrants. They’ve been debated for over a century.
by David Dorado Romo via Retropolis on December 9, 2023
original

Borderland Stories

What we remember when we remember the Alamo.
by Ed Ayers on November 13, 2023
Cormac McCarthy.

Cormac McCarthy’s Unforgiving Parables of American Empire

He demonstrated how the frontier wasn’t an incubator of democratic equality but a place of unrelenting pain, cruelty, and suffering.
by Greg Grandin via The Nation on June 21, 2023
A skeleton woman in a black dress floating in a cemetery.

The Elusive, Maddening Mystery of the Bell Witch

A classic ghost story has something to say about America—200 years ago, 100 years ago, and today.
by Colin Dickey via Atlas Obscura on May 2, 2023
Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón at the Los Angeles County Jail, circa 1916.

An American Story

Kelly Lytle Hernández’s new book chronicles the tumultuous period leading up to the Mexican Revolution, casting the border as ground zero for continental change.
by Francisco Cantú via New York Review of Books on March 9, 2023
A Foxconn factory in San Jeronimo, Chihuahua state, Mexico, as seen from Santa Teresa, N.M.
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History Shows Moving Manufacturing to North America Isn’t a Cure-all

The initial promise of Mexican factories in the 1960s gave way to impoverished communities and capital flight in search of higher profits.
by Sean Harvey via Made By History on March 6, 2023
An image of George Kennan with some of his letters superimposed over his face.

Kennan’s Warning on Ukraine

Ambition, insecurity, and the perils of independence.
by Frank Costigliola via Foreign Affairs on January 28, 2023
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake holds a news conference as she tours the U.S.-Mexico border on Nov. 4 in Sierra Vista, Ariz.
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Cochise County Didn’t Used To Be the Land Of Far Right Stunts

How the rural Arizona border county embodies the political shift in much of America.
by Katherine Benton-Cohen via Made By History on December 2, 2022
Black and white image of workmen standing on or outside of a train.

Riding with Du Bois

Railroads—in the Jim Crow South just as in today’s Ukraine—employ physical infrastructure to create racial divisions.
by Manu Karuka via Public Books on October 18, 2022
Ricardo Flores Magon's mugshot.

The Anarchist Who Authored the Mexican Revolution

A new history of the rebels led by Ricardo Flores Magón emphasizes the role of the United States in the effort to take them down.
by Geraldo Cadava via The New Yorker on October 5, 2022
Picture of Haitian migrants crossing the Rio Grande river.
partner

Enslaved Black Americans Crossed Borders to Find Freedom. Today’s Asylum Seekers Want the Same.

Restriction and deportation exist in opposition to the political traditions of the African American freedom struggle.
by Sean Gallagher via Made By History on February 14, 2022
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