Table Of ContentWorking Women into the Borderlands
connecting the greater west series
Sterling Evans, Series Editor
Working Women
into the borderlands
Sonia Hernández
Foreword by Sterling Evans
texas a&m university
College Station, Texas
Copyright © 2014 by Sonia Hernández
All rights reserved
First edition
Connecting the Greater West Series
Manufactured in the United States of America
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO, Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Binding materials have been chosen for durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hernández, Sonia, 1976- author.
Working women into the borderlands / Sonia Hernández ; with a foreword by
Sterling Evans.—First edition.
pages cm.—(Connecting the greater west series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62349-040-9 (cloth : alk. paper)—
ISBN 978-1-62349-041-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)—
ISBN 978-1-62349-139-0 (e-book)
1. Women in the labor movement—Mexico, North—History—20th century.
2. Women in the labor movement—Mexican-American Border Region—History—
20th century. 3. Women labor union members—Mexico, North—History—20th
century. 4. Mexican American women labor union members—Mexican-American
Border Region—History—20th century. 5. Economic development—Mexico,
North—20th century. 6. Economic development—Mexican-American Border
Region—20th century. I. Title. II. Series: Connecting the greater west series.
HD6079.2.M6H47 2014
331.40972'1—dc23
2013043168
To three generations of norteñas:
Senorina Morado Véliz,
Eustolia Véliz Hernández,
Camila Chávez Hernández
Contents
Foreword, by Sterling Evans ix
acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Norteño History as Borderlands History 1
One. Selling the Norteño Borderlands: Capital, Land, and Labor 17
Two. Peasant Women’s Work in a Changing Countryside during
the Porfiriato 35
Three. “We cannot suffer any longer from the patrón’s bad
treatment”: Everyday Forms of Peasant Negotiation 61
Four. (En)Gendering Revolution in the Borderlands:
Revolucionarias, Combatants, and Supporters in the Northeast 83
Five. Women’s Labor and Activism in the Greater Mexican
Borderlands, 1910–1930 107
Six. Class, Gender, and Power in the Postrevolutionary Borderlands 123
Epilogue 141
Appendix one. Selected Mutual-Aid Societies and Related
Collective Organizations in the Mexican Northeast, 1880–1910 145
Appendix two. Selected Organizations in Texas Affiliated with
the Partido Liberal Mexicano, 1911–1917 149
Appendix three. Selected Estatutos (By-Laws) and Artículos of the
Unión de Obreras “Fraternidad Femenil” (Xicotencatl, Tamaulipas) 151
Notes 155
Bibliography 195
Index 217
Foreword
Importantly, and I would add, very proudly, Sonia Hernán-
dez’s Working Women into the Borderlands is the first book in the Connecting
the Greater West series. In so many ways, Hernández’s work embodies the very
essence of the series, to explore the changing and growing ways that historians
and others are coming to view the North American West, a West that includes
the American West, northern Mexico, western Canada, and the borderlands
areas between the regions. Subject areas of books in the series will include trans-
national history, borders and borderlands, immigration, environment and agri-
culture, and indigenous negotiations of bordered regions. Thus, the book before
you here examines the bordered region between the northeastern Mexican
states of Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and south Texas—an area characterized by
robust agricultural development (tobacco, cotton, ixtle fiber), and later, indus-
trialization (textile and garment factories, industrial bakeries), on both sides of
the Rio Grande that separates the United States from Mexico in this part of the
continent.
Working Women into the Borderlands also makes a welcome contribution to
the ever-growing literature on borderlands history, and adds important research
and analysis to the understudied gender history of the region. Indeed, Hernán-
dez “works” women into the Tamaulipas/Texas boundary region, but her book
is also about “working” women, those norteñas who provided essential agricul-
tural and industrial labor there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries. You will read in this book how gender fits neatly into other themes to tell a
more complete story of the agricultural and industrial history of the lower Rio
Grande Valley. As she explains in the Introduction, “The process of negotiat-
ing the making of the borderlands involved the articulation of gender, racial and
class ideologies, as well as ideas of modernization.” And you will get to meet
many of these women, as Hernández through meticulous binational research
has uncovered their voices via archival sources, and has interviewed others so
that their memory of these times and places can be preserved and used to help
us understand borderland labor history more thoroughly. So, you get many
