Landscapes of Home: A Colonia History of America’s Borderlands

Along the Texas-Mexico borderlands, thousands of informal rural housing settlements, called colonias, have been home to generations of working-poor Mexican Americans throughout the 20th century. Often situated on unincorporated land abutting city boundaries, colonias expose the nature of the urban-rural divide at the heart of the modern U.S. Southwest. Today, more than one million Americans live in border colonias, often without access to basic services like running water, indoor plumbing, or electricity. Yet, they have enjoyed a qualified degree of freedom in their colonias for more than eight decades, in many cases becoming homeowners and building generational wealth. This talk explores the origins of America’s colonias on the northern banks of the Rio Grande and examines how their residents have transformed the modern American borderlands through creative politics and calculated risks.