Fifty Years of Change on the U.S.-Mexico Border: Growth, Development, and Quality of Life

Preface and Acknowledgments

preface and acknowledgments The regions along the border between the United States and Mexico have experienced rapid demographic and economic growth since 1950. Growth has proceeded on its own terms, almost without regard for the ups and downs in relations between the two nations, and for both nations it shows the increasing influence of factors on the other side of the border. In as symmetrical a manner as possible, we discuss the nature and dynamics of this growth and what it has meant to the lives of border dwellers on both sides of the border. To compare the quality of life in the different parts of the border region, we develop a Border Human Development Index (BHDI), which is constructed in a way that allows cross-border comparisons. We define the border region as all the counties (U.S.) and municipios (Mexico) that touch the U.S.-Mexico border. Most of the analysis in this book is based on data at the county and municipio level from the U.S. and Mexican censuses of 1950 through 2000. The data are presented in summary form here; detailed county and municipio data are available on an associated Web site, http://latinamericanstudies.sdsu.edu/BorderData.html. A book of this sort owes to many. We thank David Molina, Paul Ganster, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments. We also thank our many colleagues in the Association for Borderlands Studies who commented on parts of the book they heard at the annual ABS conference and at other venues. Especially helpful to us in deepening our perspective were the comments of Michael Patrick, Jorge Carrillo, Eduardo Mendoza, James Pick, Jim Peach, Tom Fullerton, Roberto Coronado, Bill Gilmer, Jesus Cañas, Keith Phillips, and William Gruben. We would also like to acknowledge the help we received from Ilian Emmons, Ivonne Jimenez, Julie Miller, and Juana Purchase, all of whom provided careful and accurate work in assisting with the data gathering; cartographer Harry Johnson , for creating the maps; Lisa Foster, for taking most of the photographs; and Ying Jiang, who formatted the data tables published on the Web site related to this research. Portions of Chapters 7, 8, and 9 appeared in slightly different form in an article we published in Journal of Borderland Studies , “A Human Development Index for the United States–Mexico Border” (vol. 19, no. 2, Fall 2004, pp. 1–26); we are grateful to the editors for granting permission to reuse the material here. We are especially appreciative of the funding and other support received from the Transborder Institute at the University of San Diego and the Center for Latin American Studies at San Diego State University. Thank you, all! Needless to say, any errors of omission and commission are our own. viii preface and acknowledgments fifty years of change on the u.s.-mexico border THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK ...