Border visions

by Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez

"The U.S.-Mexico border region is home to anthropologist Carlos Velez-Ibanez. Into these pages he pours nearly half a century of searching and finding answers to the Mexican experience in the southwestern United States. He describes and analyzes the process, as generation upon generation of Mexicans moved north and attempted to create an identity or "sense of cultural space and place." In today's border fences he also sees barriers to how Mexicans understand themselves and how they are fundamentally understood." "From prehistory to the present, Velez-Ibanez traces the intense "bumping" among Native Americans, Spaniards, and Mexicans, as Mesoamerican population and ideas moved northward. He demonstrates how "cultural glue" is constantly replenished through strong family ties that reach across both sides of the border. The author describes ways in which Mexicans have resisted and accommodated the dominant culture by creating communities and by forming labor unions, voluntary associations