Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (The Lamar Series in Western History) - Hardcover

Truett, Samuel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 030011091X ISBN 13: 9780300110913

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest StudiesIn the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mexicans and Americans joined together to transform the U.S. Mexico borderlands into a crossroads of modern economic development. This book reveals the forgotten story of their ambitious dreams and their ultimate failure to control this fugitive terrain.
Focusing on a mining region that spilled across the Arizona Sonora border, this book shows how entrepreneurs, corporations, and statesmen tried to domesticate nature and society within a transnational context. Efforts to tame a wild” frontier were stymied by labor struggles, social conflict, and revolution. Fugitive Landscapes explores the making and unmaking of the U.S. Mexico border, telling how ordinary people resisted the domination of empires, nations, and corporations to shape transnational history on their own terms.  By moving beyond traditional national narratives, it offers new lessons for our own border-crossing age.

About this title

About the Author:

Samuel Truett is associate professor, Department of History, University of New Mexico.

Review:

"Samuel Truett not only recovers the hidden history of the Arizona-Sonora borderlands and their often-shadowy residents but also reinterprets familiar events in a new light. He makes an original and major contribution to borderlands history."—Benjamin Johnson, Southern Methodist University
(Benjamin Johnson)

“Samuel Truett provides a concrete example of what transnational history looks like and what it can reveal.  Fugitive Landscapes puts into practice what many American historians urge, but rarely do themselves.”—Richard White, Stanford University
(Richard White)

“When Mexico’s far northern frontera collided with the U.S. Western frontier in the mid nineteenth century, the resulting merged space is both shared and contested—culturally, socially, ideologically, politically.  In remapping this distinct borderland to highlight transnational relationships between ethnic groups (Yaquis, Apaches, Chinese, Mexicans and Americans), individuals (Sonoran strongman Rafael Izábal, American copper industrialist William C. Greene, immigrant statesman cum military commander Emilio Kosterlitzky are just three colorful figures from this binational history’s near-forgotten central casting), and state agencies, Truett demonstrates convincingly how Mexican and U.S. histories intersect and intermingle just as the space they share clash and merge.  This intriguing study also suggests how differently national histories would look and feel when re-centered and viewed from a transnational vantage point.” —Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University
(Evelyn Hu-DeHart)

"Truett has written one of the most compelling borderlands narratives to date. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice (Choice 2007-08-15)

"Fugitive Landscapes may be one of the best pieces of research and writing about the historical geography of any part of the Mexican borderlands. . . [It] is a vibrant example . . . of inspired historical regional geographic scholarship."—Daniel Arreola, Journal of Cultural Geography  (Daniel Arreola Journal of Cultural Georgraphy 2007-09-01)

"This is prophetic history at its best. . . [It] serves as a grim warning to the neoliberal architects of NAFTA that market reforms and industrial development 'have rarely turned out as planned'."—Elliott Young, The Americas (Elliott Young The Americas 2007-07-01)

"Truett's vignettes are pearls, making the work enjoyable reading."—Rodolfo F. Acuña, Journal of American History (Rodolfo F. Acuña Journal of American History 2007-09-24)

"This is a book that I admire: drawing on a deep well of research in U.S. and Mexican archives Truett tells a compelling story."—Don Mitchell, Western Historical Quarterly (Don Mitchell, Western Historical Quarterly 2007-12-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 030011091X
• ISBN 13: 9780300110913
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272