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Author: W. H. Chatfield
Publisher:
Published: 1893
Total Pages: 56
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor's purpose is to present reliable information regarding the historical, geographical, climatological, etc. aspects of the Brownsville, TX/Matamoros, MX border region.
Author: W. Eugene George
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2016-11-01
Total Pages: 191
ISBN-13: 1623494532
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 1865, Heinrich Portscheller emigrated to Mexico from his native Germany, perhaps motivated by a desire to avoid compulsory military service in the Austro-Prussian War. The scion of a well-known family of masons and master builders, he had the misfortune to disembark at Veracruz during the Franco-Mexican War. Portscheller and his traveling companion were impressed into the imperialist forces and sent to northern Mexico. Sometime following the Battle of Santa Gertrudis in1866, Portscheller deserted the army and eventually made a place for himself in Roma, a small town in Starr County, Texas. Over the next decades, Portscheller acquired a reputation as a master builder and architect. He brought to the Lower Rio Grande Valley his long heritage of Old World building knowledge and skills and integrated them with the practices of local Mexican construction and vernacular architecture. However, despite his many contributions to the distinctive architecture of Roma and surrounding places, by the mid-twentieth century he was largely forgotten. During nearly fifty years of historical sleuthing in South Texas and Germany, W. Eugene George reconstructed many of the details of the life and career of this important South Texas craftsman. Containing editorial contributions by Mary Carolyn Hollers George and featuring a foreword by Mariá Eugenia Guerra and a concluding assessment by noted architectural historian Stephen Fox, Master Builder of the Lower Rio Grande: Heinrich Portscheller at last permits a long-overdue appreciation of the legacy of this influential architect and builder of the Texas-Mexico borderlands.
Author: Kyle B. Carpenter
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Published: 2024-10-15
Total Pages: 257
ISBN-13: 1574419552
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOften obscured in the history of the nineteenth-century US-Mexico borderlands, European-born entrepreneurs played a definitive role in pushing the Rio Grande borderlands into Atlantic markets. These borderlands entrepreneurs tried to transform the Lower Rio Grande and its surroundings from a regional crossroads of trade to a hub of the Atlantic economy. Though they were often stymied by mismanagement, notions of ethnic and cultural superiority, and eruptions of violence, these entrepreneurs persistently attempted to remake the region into a modern commercial utopia. Their actions challenged United States imperial expansion into the Rio Grande borderlands as they tried to modernize the region according to European cultural precepts through constructing colonies populated with Europeans, building strong networks of local and global significance, and striving to dominate trade in the region. Globalizing the Lower Rio Grande reframes the narrative of the borderlands through the perspectives of Europeans who actively shaped the historical trajectory of the region. It highlights the actions of folks like English-born John C. Beales, who convinced a party of Europeans to trek overseas and overland to the isolated Las Moras Creek to build a colony from scratch; Alexander Bourgeois d’Orvanne, former mayor of Clichy-la-Garenne in France, who manipulated powerful French and German leaders to support a settlement scheme on the Rio Grande; Spanish-born José San Román and the way he constructed massive transatlantic networks of credit and exchange; and Joseph Kleiber from Strasbourg, who facilitated the construction of a European-owned railroad line along the Rio Grande. Though ultimately undermined and outmaneuvered by their American rivals, European-born borderlands entrepreneurs like these collectively globalized the Lower Rio Grande.
Author: Ekaterina Mikhailova
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-29
Total Pages: 381
ISBN-13: 1000479110
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis international collection provides a comprehensive overview of twin cities in different circumstances – from the emergent to the recently amalgamated, on 'soft' and 'hard' borders, with post-colonial heritage, in post-conflict environments and under strain. With examples from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America, North America and the Caribbean, the volume sees twin cities as intense thermometers for developments in the wider urban world globally. It offers interdisciplinary perspectives that bridge history, politics, culture, economy, geography and other fields, applying these lenses to examples of twin cities in remote places. Providing a comparative approach and drawing on a range of methodologies, the book explores where and how twin cities arise; what twin cities can tell us about international borders; and the way in which some twin cities bear the spatial marks of their colonial past. The chapters explore the impact on twin-city relations of contemporary pressures, such as mass migration, the rise of populism, East-West tensions, international crime, surveillance, rebordering trends and epidemiological risks triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With case studies across the continents, this volume for the first time extends twin-city debates to fictional imaginings of twin cities. Twin Cities across Five Continents is a valuable resource for researchers in the fields of anthropology, history, geography, urban studies, border studies, international relations and global development as well as for students in these disciplines.
Author: Ramon Eduardo Ruiz
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-02-19
Total Pages: 234
ISBN-13: 0429978200
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe vast stretch of mostly arid lands and deserts that makes up the border between Mexico and the United States is not only one of the longest international boundaries in the world, setting apart two entirely different countries for more than two thousand miles, it is the backdrop for a seemingly endless series of major binational news stories. Witness the headline-grabbing attention garnered by NAFTA and the global economy; the assembly plants labeled saviors of the Mexican poor; the accounts applauding the capture of Mexican drug lords; and the columns upon columns devoted to stories about illegal immigration. Nowhere else does a poor, Third World country, like Mexico, share a common border with a wealthy, powerful neighbor del otro lado (on the other side). Here, as one goes, so goes the other.On the Rim of Mexico: Encounters of the Rich and Poor addresses the ties and asymmetries across the Mexico-U.S. border, from Tijuana/San Diego to Matamoros/Brownsville. Based on author Ram-duardo Ruiz's extensive research, travels, remembrances, and first-hand interviews with the people on the Mexican side, the book probes the history, economics, and customs which have shaped this region today. While the author considers many timely issues (the impact of drug trafficking, legal and illegal immigration, assembly plants and the global economy, and the ecological disaster in the making), the book is also an examination of the borderlands themselves: what they are, how they came to be, and salient aspects of life in this region of the world. Moreover, it is an exploration of binational themes. For Mexicans who live and die next door to the almighty Uncle Sam, nearly everything has a binational ring?even personal identity. On the Rim of Mexico is a moving portrait of the people, places, and issues which make-up border life today.
Author: Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2013-01-16
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 0822395053
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 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.
Author:
Publisher:
Published: 1893
Total Pages: 48
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Jane Clements Monday
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2007-08-28
Total Pages: 464
ISBN-13: 9781585446148
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe matriarch of one of the most important families in Texas history, Petra Vela Kenedy has remained a shadowy presence in the annals of South Texas. In this biography of Petra Vela Kenedy, the authors not only tell her story but also relate the history of South Texas through a woman’s perspective. Utilizing previously unpublished letters, journals, photographs, and other primary materials, the authors reveal the intimate stories of the families who for years dominated governments, land acquisition, commerce, and border politics along the Rio Grande and across the Wild Horse Desert. From Petra’s early life in the landed ranchero society of northern Mexico, through her alliance with Luis Vidal—an officer in the Mexican army to whom she bore eight children—until her move to Brownsville after Vidal’s death, Petra lived in Mexico. When she moved to Texas, having taken Vidal’s name, she represented a link to the landed families of the region. Mifflin Kenedy, a steamboat captain who had first come to Texas during the Mexican War, married into her world, acquiring local respectability and stature when he took Petra as his wife. The story of their life together encompasses war, the taming of a frontier, the blending of cultures, the origin of a ranching empire, and the establishment of a foundation and trust that still endure today, giving millions to Texas through charitable gifts. An attractive woman of business acumen, strong religious convictions, and intense family loyalty, Petra Vela Kenedy’s influence through her husband and her children left a legacy whose exploration is long overdue.
Author: Don Yoder
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2014-11-06
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 1477303545
DOWNLOAD EBOOKKnowledge of folk custom and folk belief can help to explain ways of thought and behavior in modern America. American Folklife, a unique collection of essays dedicated to the presentation of American tradition, broadens our understanding of the regional differences and ethnic folkways that color American life. Folklife research examines the entire context of everyday life in past and present. It includes every aspect of traditional life, from regional architecture through the full range of material culture into spiritual culture, folk religion, witchcraft, and other forms of folk belief. This collection is especially useful in its application to American society, where countless influences from European, American Indian, and African cultural backgrounds merge. American Folklife relates folklife research to history, anthropology, cultural geography, architectural history, ethnographic film, folk technology, folk belief, and ethnic tensions in American society. It documents the folk-cultural background that is the root of our society.
Author: Barbara J. Rozek
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 266
ISBN-13: 1603447067
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Come to Texas" urged countless advertisements, newspaper articles, and private letters in the late nineteenth century. Expansive acres lay fallow, ready to be turned to agricultural uses. Entrepreneurial Texans knew that drawing immigrants to those lands meant greater prosperity for the state as a whole and for each little community in it. They turned their hands to directing the stream of spatial mobility in American society to Texas. They told the "Texas story" to whoever would read it. In this book, Barbara Rozek documents their efforts, shedding light on the importance of their words in peopling the Lone Star State and on the optimism and hopes of the people who sought to draw others.Rozek traces the efforts first of the state government (until 1876) and then of private organizations, agencies, businesses, and individuals to entice people to Texas. The appeals, in whatever form, were to hope?hope for lower infant mortality rates, business and farming opportunities, education, marriage?and they reflected the hopes of those writing. Rozek states clearly that the number of words cannot be proven to be linked directly to the number of immigrants (Texas experienced a population increase of 672 percent between 1860 and 1920), but she demonstrates that understanding the effort is itself important.Using printed materials and private communications held in numerous archives as well as pictures of promotional materials, she shows the energy and enthusiasm with which Texans promoted their native or adopted home as the perfect home for others.Texas is indeed an immigrant state?perhaps by destiny; certainly, Rozek demonstrates, by design.
