Blood Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands (Connecting the Greater West Series)

298 Pages·2016·13.775 MB·English

by  Timothy P. Bowman

blood oranges
connecting the greater west series
Sterling Evans, Series Editor
.
.
Blood Oranges
colonialism and agriculture
in the south texas
borderlands
Timothy Paul Bowman
Foreword by Sterling Evans
texas a&m university press
College Station
Copyright © 2016 by Timothy Paul Bowman
All rights reserved
First edition
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Binding materials have been chosen for durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bowman, Timothy Paul, 1978– author.
Title: Blood oranges : colonialism and agriculture in the South Texas
borderlands / Timothy Paul Bowman ; foreword by Sterling Evans.
Other titles: Connecting the greater west series.
Description: First edition. | College Station : Texas A&M University Press,
[2016] | Series: Connecting the greater west series | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015044744| ISBN 9781623494148 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781623494155 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Foreign workers, Mexican—Texas, South—History—20th
century. | Migrant agricultural laborers—Texas, South—History—20th
century. | Mexican American agricultural laborers—Texas,
South—History—20th century. | Unfair labor practices—Texas,
South—History—20th century. | Mexico—Emigration and
immigration—Economic aspects—History—20th century. | United
States—Emigration and immigration—Economic aspects—History—20th
century. | Mexican-American Border Region—Ethnic relations. | Texas,
South—Ethnic relations.
Classification: LCC HD8081.M6 B69 2016 | DDC 338.1/7431097644—dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044744
for my parents, lois and paul bowman

contents
Foreword, by Sterling Evans ix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Terminology xv
Introduction 1
1. Border Colonies: Mexicans, Anglos, and the South Texas Borderlands
from Ranchland to Commercial Agriculture 14
2. From Farmers to Colonizers: Boosterism and the Creation of
Commercial Farming Colonies 53
3. Making the Border Orange: Citriculture and the Changing Landscape of
the South Texas Borderlands during the 1920s 89
4. “More Texan Than the Texans:” Colonialism and Race in the South Texas
Borderlands, 1917–1930 108
5. Many Valleys: The Fates of Small Growers and Mexican Workers during
the 1930s 129
6. Toward a Homeland: The Chicano Movement and the Intellectual
Creation of Homeland in South Texas 164
Conclusion 208
Notes 215
Bibliography 249
Index 263
Gallery follows page 88

foreword
Before you is an important new book on a fascinating angle of the agricultural
history of the bordered region between Texas and northeastern Mexico. Blood
Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands, by histo-
rian Tim Bowman, narrates several stories all under one cover. First, it deals
with the history of the citrus industry in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South
Texas, with emphasis on the development of grapefruit and orange orchards
there. Thus, the book, as an agricultural and commodities history, contributes
significantly to a larger Texas historical literature. That the industry developed
in that bordered area of South Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, and
that it was dependent upon a Mexican labor force for its success, however,
makes this book an essential addition to the ever-expanding historiography of
North American borderlands as well. But it goes geographically further than
that, as we learn herein that the developers lured farmers and investors from
other parts of the United States, and especially from Midwestern states such as
Iowa—by advertising the area’s mild climate and year-round growing climate,
the proximity to inexpensive Mexican labor, and the cultural exoticness of
being next-door to “Old Mexico”—to relocate to the Lower Rio Grande Valley
to try their hands at citrus growing on land that very certainly used to be Mex-
ican and more recently had been owned by Mexican Americans. In many ways,
then, the orange and grapefruit orchards became a connective force through-
out the American West, linking agricultural development in the Valley to a
Mexican migrant labor regime, to Midwestern farmers, to markets for citrus
throughout the United States, and to competition for those markets with other
citrus regions such as Florida and California.
And connections are what this series of books is all about. Bowman’s Blood
Oranges fits to a T as number five in the Connecting the Greater West Series.
These books explore new ways in which historians and other scholars are com-
ing to view the North American West, a region that must include the west-
ern United States, northern Mexico, western Canada, and the borderlands