In 2008 Ciudad Juarez erupted in a violent drug war. The Sinaloa Cartel and Juarez Cartel were in a battle for the lucrative drug route used to smuggle drugs into the United States, while President Felipe Calderon was waging his own war against all the drug cartels. During the height of the violence women journalists emerged on the front lines to tell the stories of Juarez. They risked their lives and dared to tell a story that others refused to. This mixed-method study examines frames used most often in the coverage of the drug war in Ciudad Juarez from 2008-2010. It examines The New York Times, the El Paso Times, and El Norte and also examines articles by the sex of the reporter. It also used in-depth interviews of both Mexican and American woman journalists who covered the drug war in Juarez to examine which themes developed about the reporter’s experiences in covering the drug war.

Public housing in the United States has been a controversial sociopolitical topic since the years of the Great Depression. The issue of appropriate and secure habitation for the country's "deserving poor" continues to be of great importance as government subsidies become scarce in the early 21st century. This dearth of support for public housing is even more evident and prominent along the United States-Mexico border of South Texas, a territory described as having a third world environment. The dissertation is a narrative history of public housing in Laredo, Texas, a border community. Compiled from news media records and the archives of the Laredo Housing Authority, the study gives insight into methods used by this authority to achieve decent habitation for the underprivileged residents of one of the poorest cities in the United States. After a historical background of Laredo, the study follows a chronological development of federally funded housing through the six decades that began in 1938. The study accentuates the continuing need for such housing as its sponsoring federal agency; the Department of Housing and Urban Development fails to properly fund its subsidiary programs and projects. Principal governmental and nongovernmental sources substantiate the dearth of appropriate housing, with the author providing further insight to his native city's plight. The conclusion outlines how funding, together with higher upkeep and energy costs, will continue in a downward spiral and will lead to an increase in the underserved poor population.

Mexican neoliberalism has systematically undermined Mexico's rural and indigenous populations and created multiple forms of displacement in communities and individual lives. This thesis traces the impacts of displacement in the lives of Mixtec families living and working on the U.S.-Mexico border. As families encounter new circumstances of risk, violation and vulnerability, they develop material, spatial and social strategies to provide safe and meaningful lives, often through contradictory and uneven processes. Central to these processes are power relations and negotiations of class, ethnicity and gender, which both maintain community and continuity as well as further perpetuate systems of inequality and differentiation between groups, families and individuals. The focus on indigenous peoples in Nogales fills important gaps in the literature of indigenous transnational migrants and the U.S-Mexico border, particularly in light of recent border policies, which are pushing more people to the Arizona-Sonora desert region.

Destined companions of the calling (compañeros del destino), huapango arribeño music practitioners often refer to each other as – a label that signifies the expressive bonding forged through the axis of encounter/engagement central to huapango arribeño’s performance. As of late, huapango arribeño, which originates in Mexico, has made its way across the border where it is performed among communities of listeners and practitioners in the U.S. This dissertation unearths the cultural dimensions of the experiences of migration particular to the immigrant communities in question with focused attention on the performative (musical/discursive) contouring of the transborder imaginary – the prism through which they live and understand their lives, make decisions, work, perform, and imagine. Attention is given to the physical and metaphysical construction of the border between the U.S. and Mexico, to its militarization and officialized discourses of the nation and citizenship that legitimate draconian policy initiatives. Huapango arribeño – as a site of conviviality and sociality –, it is argued, actively disrupts this dislocational alchemy of the borderlands, as communities themselves cultivate the linkages that shape the patterning of their multidirectional existence across borders. / text

The present project explores the narrative construction of masculinities, violence, and nationalism in three U.S.-Mexico borderland novels written by U.S., Mexican, and Mexican-American writers: Caballero (1930s-40s, pub.1996) by Jovita González and Eve Raleigh; Blood Meridian (1985) by Cormac McCarthy; and Texas: La gran ladronería en el lejano norte (2012) by Carmen Boullosa. Through the scope of masculinity, gender, and (post)colonial studies, this project examines how these authors incorporate hegemonic masculine archetypes and their attendant forms of violence (physical, economic, and epistemic) so as to interrogate claims to identity and national belonging along the Texas-Mexico border, against the backdrop of war and U.S. imperialism. In their roles as builders and/or defenders of an expanding nation-state, the male characters studied here enact distinct forms of violence in order to normalize their positions of power and further encode their claims to political and cultural hegemony. Considered together, the texts studied here demonstrate how the intersection of nationalism, masculinity construction, and particular forms of violence converge within an Anglo hegemonic masculinity to the detriment of Mexicans, non-white borderland individuals, and women--all of whom stand at the periphery of this imagined national (male) community.

Using the Three Border Model developed by Mike Davis and Alessandra Moctezuma, this thesis presents a number of case studies focused on the narratives of power and transformation that continue to develop on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border in the post-9/11 context. The first case study overviews the history of the U.S.-Mexico border in relation to the ongoing fortification of the physical boundary and its legal reification in federal policy. The second case study examines the exclusionary policies enacted by the state of Arizona as well as the anti-immigration agenda instituted by the Minuteman Project. The third case study examines the ways in which urban communities in the borderlands contest the material manifestations of the border present in their everyday lives. By surveying case studies at different sites and scales along the U.S.-Mexico boundary, this thesis challenges traditional conceptions of state power at the border.

Using the Three Border Model developed by Mike Davis and Alessandra Moctezuma, this thesis presents a number of case studies focused on the narratives of power and transformation that continue to develop on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border in the post-9/11 context. The first case study overviews the history of the U.S.-Mexico border in relation to the ongoing fortification of the physical boundary and its legal reification in federal policy. The second case study examines the exclusionary policies enacted by the state of Arizona as well as the anti-immigration agenda instituted by the Minuteman Project. The third case study examines the ways in which urban communities in the borderlands contest the material manifestations of the border present in their everyday lives. By surveying case studies at different sites and scales along the U.S.-Mexico boundary, this thesis challenges traditional conceptions of state power at the border.

This dissertation addresses native activism in response to United States and Mexico border enforcement policies on the U.S.-Mexico border among indigenous peoples whose communities are divided by the international line. Fieldwork for the dissertation was conducted in collaboration with an indigenous grassroots community organization with members in both the U.S. and Mexico who advocate for rights of border mobility among native border peoples. This work discusses the impacts of border enforcement policies on native community cultural maintenance, local interpretations and uses of international human rights tools, and the challenges faced by U.S.-Mexico border native activists in communicating their ideologies to a broader public. This work further addresses the complex identity construction of Native Americans with cultural ties to Mexico, and conflations of race and nationality that result in distinct forms of intra-community racism.

This dissertation examines changing relationships among natural landscapes and state agencies, as these relationships intersect in transboundary protected wildlands and in debates about natural resource protection and U.S.-Mexico border policy. Recent increases in undocumented migration, smuggling, and border enforcement along the Arizona-Sonora border impact ecology and public land management practices. In this dissertation, I analyze how natural and national spaces and boundaries are produced through institutional and individual practices and discourses in border wildlands. Further, I consider how different productions of space restrict or create opportunities for collaborative responses to ecological impacts resulting from migration, smuggling, and border enforcement. This research builds on anthropological scholarship on conservation, borders, and the production of space through an ethnography of conservation institutions as they face dramatic political and ecological changes in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to explore the understanding of pre-diabetes and the possibility of developing diabetes among Mexican Americans at the U.S.-Mexico border. This study also explored how Mexican Americans adjust to living with pre-diabetes. While extensive research has been conducted regarding pre-diabetes, diabetes, and how individuals perceive their susceptibility to these illnesses, few studies have examined how Mexican Americans understand pre-diabetes and the possibility of developing diabetes. The increased prevalence of diabetes among this population, the divergent understandings of risk held by diverse cultural groups, and the large presence of Mexican Americans in the U.S.-Mexico border region prompted this study.There are gaps in the literature about how Mexican Americans understand pre-diabetes and their possibility of developing diabetes. Current literature focuses on studies of causality, folk beliefs, symptoms, and treatments. Current studies do not provide a framework in which healthcare professionals can identify how Mexican Americans understand pre-diabetes and the possibility for developing diabetes or how to incorporate these lay understandings into their practice, research, and education.An ethnographic study, guided by Freire's framework (2000) was conducted to provide insight into the understanding of pre-diabetes and the possibility of developing diabetes among Mexican Americans living at the U.S.-Mexico border. An overarching theme Living with Pre-diabetes emerged. This theme emerged from two major themes: 1) Awareness; and 2) Adjusting to Living with Pre-diabetes.This study revealed that Mexican Americans may not understand pre-diabetes or their possibility of developing diabetes until told of having pre-diabetes by a healthcare provider. Becoming aware of pre-diabetes may not necessarily imply understanding of what pre-diabetes is. The study also revealed that an awareness of having pre-diabetes may lead to changes in lifestyle, but may not always make these changes sustainable. The use of Freire's framework may prove useful when addressing the needs of Mexican Americans with pre-diabetes.