The U.S.-Mexican Border Today by Paul Ganster & David E. Lorey

Author:Paul Ganster & David E. Lorey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442231122
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2015-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

6

THE CONSEQUENCES OF RAPID GROWTH IN THE BORDER REGION

Social and Cultural Change since the 1940s

After World War II, industrialization, rapid population growth, and urbanization reshaped the daily lives of border dwellers. Border natives were joined by millions of new immigrants from other areas of the United States, from central Mexico, and from many other parts of the world. The experiences of border life became more common in both countries, as the states along the boundary claimed an ever larger share of Mexican and U.S. national populations. In the postwar period a complex social mosaic spanning the international boundary emerged from what had been at the beginning of the century two distinct social avant-gardes. In the 1990s no one could describe Los Angeles—or anywhere else along the border—as Octavio Paz had in his 1957 Labyrinth of Solitude: “Mexicanism . . . floats in the air . . . ‘floats’ because it never mixes or unites with the other world, the North American world.”1 The impact of century-long migratory trends and economic integration resulted in a true Mex-America along the international boundary. The region, consisting of the ten U.S. and Mexican border states, was the most populated in North America by the beginning of the twenty-first century. The sheer number of people is certain to place the social evolution of the border onto both domestic and bilateral agendas. With its social complexities and challenges, life in the region is a portent of future life in the Americas.

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