River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands by Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez (review)

The Latin Americanist, December 2014 inadequacy. We learn that mid-century Mexico accrued less federal taxation revenue than any other Latin American nation because of a regressive tax code, an insufficient collection infrastructure, and frequent tax strikes. Ultimately, Smith concludes, this lack of revenue reduced the coercive and the co-optive powers of the state and made dictablanda a practical necessity. Whereas Smith’s essay offers the most convincing explanation for dictablanda, it also exposes two lacunae in the book’s analysis: oil and owners. It was oil revenue, writes Smith, that enabled the state to partly overcome its insufficient taxation revenue. Petroleros thus recognized their strength and mobilized at elevated rates in the 1960s to pursue “revolutionary ” priorities that increased national control of the industry, among other things. Patrones (business owners), too, pushed their weight around via large commercial organizations and were also more often rewarded than thwarted in their dealings with the government. The conciliatory and accommodating modus vivendi the state maintained with these powerful sectors seems ideally suited for the application of dictablanda, yet these discussions are absent in the text. Having internalized the paradigm on hegemonic process articulated by Mallon, Sayers, and others, Dictablanda’s contributors have yielded a familiar but nuanced understanding of the dynamics that guided Mexican state formation in the mid-twentieth century. Gillingham and Smith’s volume treads some familiar ground and omits important discussions , but is nevertheless a book with an impressive archival basis and lively narratives that no serious student of postrevolutionary Mexico should ignore. With Dictablanda, Duke now has a quadrilogy of edited volumes that collectively and definitively debunk once-entrenched notions about Mexican authoritarianism and governance during a historically stable and prosperous period. Joseph U. Lenti Department of History Eastern Washington University RIVER OF HOPE: FORGING IDENTITY AND NATION IN THE RIO GRANDE BORDERLANDS . By Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013, p. 384, $26.95. River of Hope evaluates the impact of three different colonial projects on identity formation among residents of the lower Rio Grande Valley over the period between 1750 and 1900. Valerio-Jiménez’s work is an important contribution to a growing body of regionally focused studies of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands that includes monographs by Catherine BentonCohen , Anthony Mora, and Eric Meeks. Through an analysis of municipallevel sources, including census reports, judicial records, and ecclesiastical registers, Valerio-Jiménez adeptly illustrates the various contingencies 92 Book Reviews involved in the creation and selective usage of multiple ethnic and national modes of identification along the Lower Rio Grande. Methodologically, the study appraises the process of state formation at the local level. Defined as “a type of cultural revolution in which governments define acceptable social categories and discourage alternative modes of identification that challenge their rule” (2), Spain, Mexico, and the United States attempted state formation in the Rio Grande Valley. As each state worked to established itself in the region—a place on the fringes—residents altered and developed their own modes of ethnic identification to navigate the current political reality. As a result, multiple local constructions of ethnicity and nationality emerged. All the while, the river itself stood as a symbol of economic and cultural hope. During the Spanish and Mexican periods, it was a channel of commerce—first in contraband, then legitimated in 1823 with the Mexican government’s opening of the port at Refugio (today Matamoros). Although the river continued to hold economic meaning after 1848, it also became the physical boundary between the United States and Mexico. As such, it offered hope to the region’s inhabitants in a different sense: by making the decision to cross the river at strategic moments, people redefined their economic, ethnic, and citizenship status. By the close of the nineteenth century , Mexican laborers regularly migrated between their home villages in Tamaulipas and sites in south Texas for work, family, or political reasons. In the final chapters of River of Hope, Valerio-Jiménez examines the processes by which the region’s inhabitants went from ignored Mexican citizens to coerced American citizens. Despite the promise of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, tejanos in the Lower Rio Grande Valley...