Land of Necessity: Consumer Culture in the United States-Mexico Borderlands (review)

Land of Necessity is a collection of scholarly essays that explore scarcity, abundance, and consumer culture along the border between Mexico and the United States from the time of European settlement in the 1500s to the present. The common thread among the essays that make up the book is its focus on how trade and consumption, both legal and illegal, has shaped the history of a region that stretches nearly 2,000 miles from Southern California to Texas in the Unites States and from Baja California to Tamaulipas in Mexico. The border, the current boundaries of which were established after the Gadsden Purchase of 1853–54, helped to create markets, disrupt traditional cultures, harm the natural environment, and exacerbate conflicts among ethnic groups and between labor and capital.

The book is divided into three sections. The first entitled, "Histories of Nations, Consumers, and Borderlands" consists of two essays by Alexis McCrossen, the editor, which discuss the role of consumer goods in the development of Mexico and the United States and how the flow of goods and contraband across the border in both directions helped shape patterns of development and social relations in the region. The second section entitled, "National and Transnational Circuits of Consumption" has five essays that deal primarily with the development of tourism, leisure, and labor relations in the region. The four essays that make up the third section, "Consumption in National and Transnational Spaces" discuss the history of trade, smuggling, and the black market in the border region.

Among the more exceptional essays is "Selling the Border" by Rachel St. John, which describes how American businessmen and promoters used the border between Baja California and California to create a zone of drinking, gambling, and prostitution in Tijuana and Mexicali in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to circumvent American vice laws, especially during prohibition. Another outstanding essay, "Promoting Pacific Borderlands" by Lawrence Culver, outlines how regional boosters, such as Charles Nordhoff and Charles Lumis, helped repackage Southern California from a region known for mining and farming into a tourist destination and place of leisure after 1870. Culver describes with great insight how the transformation of California sustained a labor system based on race in which people of color labored for the benefit of Anglo newcomers and how Anglo sportsmen displaced local fishermen and subsistence farmers in the name of conservation during the Progressive era. Another essay, "Confined to the Margins" by Robert Perez, tells the story of how increasing militarization of the border has impacted the Native American tribes living near it. Not only did the border cut across tribal lands, but local tribes were also caught up in cattle rustling in the nineteenth century and alcohol and drug smuggling in the twentieth. In some cases, Indians engaged in, and benefited from smuggling; however, in others they became victims of drug cartel violence and racial profiling by border guards.

With its many illustrations and diverse essays, Land of Necessity is an excellent collection that sheds light on how the Mexican-United States border has created a unique culture of consumerism that has been impacted by wider trends in trade, politics, migration, and marketing in both countries. As the "only place in the world where a developed country shares a border with a developing country," (325) the border exhibits extremes of poverty and wealth, deprivation and privilege which provide us with a window into the history and development of North America.