The Other California
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Tables and Maps
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Mexican Borderlands
1. Building the Mexican Borderlands
2. The Making of Baja California’s Multicultural Society
3. Revolution, Labor Unions, and Land Reform in Baja California
4. Conflict, Land Reform, and Repatriation in the Mexicali Valley
5. Mexicali’s Exceptionalism
conclusion: the “All-Mexican” Train
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Reviews
— Journal of American History"The Other California is a fine work with broad application and relevance well beyond its Mexican-U.S. context to scholars of ethnicity, race, and migration around the world as well as of borderlands and transnational history."
"Verónica Castillo-Muñoz provides a fascinating and richly detailed account of the ethnic and gender dynamics shaping transnational labor migration and land redistribution in northern Mexico. Her innovative attention to indigenous communities, Asian farmers, and Mexican migrant workers to the United States as central actors in Mexico’s agrarian reform is pathbreaking."—Heidi Tinsman, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine
"Skillfully depicting the Baja California borderlands as a multiracial and transcultural space, this book stands out in several ways: attention to Mexican, mestiza, and native women as laborers, activists, family, and community leaders; recognition of the significant presence of Asian immigrants (mostly Chinese and Japanese men) as protagonists in frontier development; and close examination of Mexico's revolutionary land and agrarian reform under the ejido program, especially for Mexican families deported from the United States during the Depression years of the 1930s—all of which make this book a revelation!"—Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Professor of History, American Studies, and Ethnic Studies, Brown University
"This is borderlands history at its best. The Other California offers a deeply-researched, humanized view of Baja California and its border-crossing communities, showing how natives and newcomers turned the power of states, markets, and politics to local advantage in one of the most vulnerable contact faces on the continent.”—Samuel Truett, Associate Professor of History, University of New Mexico
"Long before globalization and NAFTA, the Mexican border state of Baja California, as Castillo-Muñoz demonstrates, was defined by its international character. Like its northern neighbor, Baja California as we know it today was forged through a process of interracial marriage, commerce, quests for land, and, yes, the all-too-familiar unequal and discriminatory treatment of women, indigenous communities, and immigrants from Asia who made Mexico their home, and Mexicans their kin."—Geraldo L. Cadava, author of Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland
Awards
- 2017 Gita Chaudhuri Prize 2017, Western Association of Women Historians