Open Borders to a Revolution: Culture, Politics and Migration. Jaime Marroquín Arredondo, Adela Pineda Franco and Magdalena Mieri (eds). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2013. Maps, figures, illustrations, bibliographical references and index. xxi + 275 pp.

Megan Ybarra*
Willamette University

Joining the ranks of new scholarship reflecting on the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, Open Borders to a Revolution stands out for its commitment to multidisciplinary discussions, bringing together both academic and public historians to reflect on cultural politics. The volume’s 13 chapters are bookended with the editors’ introduction and Gil Joseph’s afterword, which situate the theoretical dimensions of borders as a privileged locus of enunciation (vii) to critique one-dimensional nationalist imaginaries. More than simply locating the discussion on the US-Mexico borderlands with all its norteño charm, contributors demonstrate that a rigorous commitment to transnational studies and border thinking can offer new insights on the Revolution.

The first section of the book, “Traveling Borders,” seeks to rethink both popular and scholarly notions of Mexico’s revolutionary legacy in the United States. The first chapter is the editors’ (Pineda and Marroquín) brief interview with John Womack, in which he usefully sketches the contributions of American historiography to scholarly understandings of the Mexican Revolution, as well as the historical memory of Zapata in both Mexico and the US. Next, Britton outlines public and diplomatic debates over the Revolution, particularly debates on private property and the role of the US in protecting its citizens’ private interests in the face of Article 27’s property reforms. To do so, he follows Mexican intellectual interventions in US struggles to understand a non-communist revolution, even in the face of massive oil company propaganda. Where Britton focuses on the role of Mexican intellectuals in political culture, Delpar looks at the reception of Mexican Revolutionary art’s “friendly invasion” in the US. Continuing to demonstrate the role of artists as public intellectuals, Marroquín Arredondo and Pineda Franco examine the politics of representation, critiquing “fallen utopias” in revolutionary novels and how Mexican intellectuals critique Hollywood film representations respectively.

Contributors to the “Traveling Borders” section shine a light on relational aspects of identity. A particularly fascinating example López’s work to demonstrate the links between Anita Brenner’s exploration of her own Jewish Diaspora identity (including syncretic survival and Jewish heritage in the Americas) and her celebration of indigenous syncretic religions as “idols behind altars.” Likewise, “Brown, Black and Blue” (Vaughan and Cohen) seeks to rewrite Pan Americanism from a singular (i.e., USA, imperial) effort to a series of artistic exchanges that augured possibilities of a socially inclusive and multiracial revolution. As a whole, contributions to this section by Britton, Delpar, Arredondo and López depict the ways that the Mexican Revolution was a key driver in shaping US-Mexican relationships and lo mexicano as a potentially unifying national identity.

The second section of the book, “Living Borders,” posits transnational imaginaries that write Mexicans on the northern side of the border into the production of the Mexican nation. For example, Romo’s contribution focuses on El Paso (Texas, USA) as a site of political and artistic production for Mexico, including as a key site for the anarchist magonista insurrection and Teresa Urrea’s revolutionary and curandera vocations. By siting and recuperating revolutionary memories on the northern side of the border, Romo critiques Anglo erasure and repeated portrayals of Latinas in the US as recent and/or temporary immigrants. Zavala’s work is directly in conversation with this piece in claiming that Juarez’s current “state of exception” borderlands violence is also haunted by Pancho Villa and the Revolution, but the argument is occasionally crowded out by a broad spectrum of theory that is not woven into the piece. Continuing in the borderlands backdrop, Peña examines the relational patriotisms through spectacle and performance in El Paso, delightfully juxtaposing fears of the actual Revolution across the border with representations of patriotic spectacle. In “Pancho Villa’s Head,” Martínez Carranza explores the parallels between the Mexican national identity of mestizaje and the ways that Chicanos grapple with questions of difference in assimilating into the American Dream. As with Pancho Villa, the authors in this volume highlight the ways that Chicanos and Mexicans living north of the border (re)produce historical memories of the Revolution to affirm their identities.

The book is punctuated by Gomez-Peña’s “open letter” to a crime cartel boss (written as an exclusive contribution to the volume), in which he asks “the lord of the heavens and the beaches, the highways and the trailers” if he has ever thought about the havoc that drug trafficking and rampant violence have wrought on Mexicans living in the United States. He ends with a poignant wish to return home, to Mexico. This contribution implicitly calls attention to the inconclusive nature of the development of the Mexican nation-state and the ways that violent politics do not respect borders, even as they unwittingly reproduce them.

In his afterword, Gil Joseph summarizes key revolutionary watersheds, and reflects on how “border thinking” (following Mignolo) might extend our analysis. With the rollback of Mexican constitution Article 27 for NAFTA, Calderón’s drug war, and now Peña Nieto’s petroleum “reform,” the status and legacy of the Revolution is still unfinished. In that regard, the questions raised in this volume signal new possibilities for Revolution in culture, politics and migration in the Mexico-US borderlands.

The book is largely directed to an audience of public historians and cultural scholars who are conversant with the history and geography of the US-Mexico borderlands. Interested readers who need to brush up on their history might benefit from first reading Gil Joseph and Jurgen Buchenau’s new book, Mexico’s Once and Future Revolution: Social upheaval and the challenge of rule since the late nineteenth century (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013)Overall, the volume’s commitment to a multidisciplinary approach about borders and transnational studies is exemplary, and the book is a welcome addition to scholarship on the Mexican Revolution.



* Dr. Megan Ybarra is an Assistant Professor of Political Science with appointments in Latin American Studies and American Ethnic Studies, Willamette University.  She has done fieldwork in northern Guatemala focusing on indigenous territoriality and environmental justice. Her most recent publications include “You cannot measure a Tzuultaq’a: Cultural politics at the limits of liberal legibility,“ in Antipode A Radical Journal of Geography  45(3):584-601 (2013) and “Taming the jungle, saving the Maya Forest: Sedimented counterinsurgency practices in Guatemalan conservation” in Journal of Peasant Studies 39(2): 479-502  (2012).  Her forthcoming book is titled “Green Wars: Conservation, Remilitarization and Activism in Guatemala’s Maya Forest.”