ABSTRACT
Migrants from other parts of the republic, as has been noted before, settled Mexican towns along the border and then built the cities, becoming a goodly part of the countryside and creating urban cores across the region. That was the experience of my parents, who, driven out by tumultuous times in Mexico, traveled north and settled on the California side of the Mexican border. My father, when my mother died, returned home to Mexico, but the blood of my mother darkens the soil of California where she lies buried. In this part of the world, to quote Eleanor Roosevelt, we are all “fellow immigrants”—aside from the Indians, quickly displaced by Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans alike. To talk of borderlands, no matter which side, without including Mexican migrants is nonsense; they are integral to the history and development of the region.
