Border Bodies: Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and Violence in the Nineteenth-Century Borderlands

245 Pages·2022·21.284 MB·English

by  Bernadine Marie Hernández

Border Bodies
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Bernadine Marie Hernández
Border Bodies
Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and
Vio lence in the Nineteenth- Century
Borderlands
The University of North Carolina Press C hapel Hill
This book was published with the assistance of the Authors Fund of the
University of North Carolina Press.
© 2022 Bernadine Marie Hernández
All rights reserved
Set in Arno Pro by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the
Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hernández, Bernadine Marie, author.
Title: Border bodies : racialized sexuality, sexual capital, and violence in the
nineteenth-century borderlands / Bernadine Marie Hernández.
Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021052599 | ISBN 9781469667881 (cloth) |
ISBN 9781469667898 (paperback) | ISBN 9781469667904 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Sex role—Southwest, New—History. | Women—Southwest,
New—History. | Mexican American women—Southwest, New—History. |
Sex crimes—Southwest, New—History. | Sexual abuse victims—Southwest,
New—History. | Capitalism—Southwest, New—History.
Classification: LCC HQ1075.5.U6 H47 2022 | DDC 305.30979—dc23/eng/20211108
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052599
Cover illustration: Woman identified as “Carmen” (colorized version of monochrome photo).
Arizona Historical Society, Gustave van Hemert Schneider Archive, 1912.
Chapter 4 was previously published in a dif er ent form as “Productive Racialized
Sex: The Sexual Economy of the Southwest Borderlands, the Nuevomexicana
Body Politic, and Memory Archives,” in Querencia: Reflections on the New Mexico
Homeland, eds. Vanessa Fonseca- Chávez, Levi Romero, and Spencer R. Herrera
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020).
For Eleanor Tapía Barreras and Guadalupe María Hernández,
my first examples of what it meant to be a fierce mujer.
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Contents
Acknowl edgments xi
Introduction: Sexual Frontiers, Racialized Bodies,
and Sexual Capital 1
chapter one
The Oikopolitic: The F ather of All, Brokering of the Californiana
Body, and the “Natu ral Order of T hings” in Alta California 25
chapter two
Cir cuits of Brown, Black, and Red: The Politics of Racialized Gender
and Sexuality in the Nineteenth- Century Borderlands 48
chapter three
Absent Presence: The Ghost of the “Only Woman Hanged” in
Texas and the Abstract Labor of Gender Racial Formations 79
chapter four
Productive Racialized Sex: The Sexual Economy of the
Southwest Borderlands, the Nuevomexicana Body Politic,
and Memory Archives 105
chapter five
Technology of “Unproductive” Brown Bodies: The Po liti cal
Economy of Prostitution and Racialized Sexual Pathology in
Arizona at the Turn of the Century 139
Coda 176
Notes 181
Bibliography 203
Index 219
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Illustrations and Map
illustrations
Anita de la Guerra de Thompson 46
Map of San Patricio County 82
“C hipita,” by Iris Guthrie 97
Bettie 166
Unnamed woman 167
Carmen[?] 170
Molly 1 172
Molly 2 173
Molly 3 173
Women’s Memorial Park cross 180
map
The Cotton Trail to the Rio Grande 92