Border Citizens: The Making of Indians Mexicans and Anglos in Arizona

About this book

In Border Citizens historian Eric V. Meeks explores how the racial classification and identities of the diverse indigenous mestizo and Euro-American residents of Arizonas borderlands evolved as the region was politically and economically incorporated into the United States. First published in 2007 the book examines the complex relationship between racial subordination and resistance over the course of a century. On the one hand Meeks links the construction of multiple racial categories to the process of nation-state building and capitalist integration. On the other he explores how the regions diverse communities altered the blueprint drawn up by government officials and members of the Anglo majority for their assimilation or exclusion while redefining citizenship and national belonging. The revised edition of this highly praised and influential study features dozens of new images an introductory essay by historian Patricia Nelson Limerick and a chapter-length afterword by the author. In his afterword Meeks details and contextualizes Arizonas aggressive response to undocumented immigration and ethnic studies in the decade after Border Citizens was first published demonstrating that the broad-based movement against these measures had ramifications well beyond Arizona. He also revisits the Yaqui and Tohono Oodham nations on both sides of the Sonora-Arizona border focusing on their efforts to retain extend and enrich their connections to one another in the face of increasingly stringent border enforcement.