HISTORY OF THE US AND MEXICO BORDER    pt1      1700w

Introduction

Regulating the border between the United States and Mexico is not a new issue. In fact, concerns over what to do with the border, what it should look like, and who should be allowed to cross have been prevalent questions since American and Mexican diplomats sat down to establish the border in the aftermath of the Mexican-American war in 1848. While the eastern half of the border is easily distinguished by the Rio Grande, the western border does not correspond to any recognizable geographic features and was instead made up of arbitrarily drawn lines through an uninhabited desert. It is along this permeable border that a borderlands historian like Rachel St. John’s monograph, Line in the Sand (2011), is concerned. While St. John’s work declares itself to be a history of the actual border, earlier historians like Clarence Clendenen and his work, Blood on the Border: The United States Army and the Mexican Irregulars (1969), is more of a military history discussing the United States army’s