Drawing The Boundary

The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war and defined the Rio Grande as part of the new boundary between countries. Over the next several years, the United States and Mexico cooperated on surveying, marking, and mapping.

NPS / 106 GROUP

 

With US troops occupying Mexico City, the Mexican government agreed to surrender half of its national territory to the United States. Treaty negotiators had to redraw the line between their countries. For half of the nearly 2,000-mile boundary, they drew it from the Gulf of Mexico to El Paso along the Rio Grande. Thus, a free-flowing river became an international boundary. As the river changed course, would the treaty hold?

 

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO LIBRARY

 

Javier Loera, War Captain, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Tribal Council

NPS / BRIAN KANOF

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“But to me it’s just a geopolitical division among these two relatively new nations.... It’s just a political barrier that divides two sides of the earth that have always been here."
—Javier Loera

 

• Javier Loera: The Boundary

  
  

  Excerpt from an interview with Javier Loera, War Captain, of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Tribal Council

  Credit / Author:

  NPS

  Audio Transcript

  Prior to the dispossession of our land, the land grant, our—we had people living, tribal members, on the other side of the, this so called boundary, the river. The land grant extends it to the other side of the Rio Grande, so we had a couple of families living in the Mexican side of the river, so that divided our people. But to me it’s just a geopolitical division among these two relatively new nations that have come in existence. We have lived through the Mexican and the Spanish colonialisms system. But these are just recent subdivisions that have come into place. But prior to that, we just regarded the river as something that we depended on for sustenance—for—to water our fields and to fish and hunt. But this river is a political barrier that divides two sides of the earth that have always been here.

 

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