Bordering on Solidarity: Organizing Mexican and Mexican American Workers in the U.S. Mexico Borderlands, 1880–1930

"Bordering on Solidarity: Organizing Mexican and Mexican American Workers in the U.S. Mexico Borderlands, 1880–1930," traces three generations of transborder activism for economic justice implemented by a progressive, Tejano family—the Idars of Laredo, Texas—between 1880-1930. Running in parallel to the populist reform movements in the United States, the Idars' activism began at the turn of the century, when industries in the southwestern United States—railroads, farming, and mining—became dependent on low-wage jobs often filled by Mexican and Mexican American workers. Middle-class, Tejano reformers, like Nicasio Idar, sought to curtail the power of corporate bodies and politically and economically uplift the Spanish-speaking populace in the border region. They linked the diverse Mexican border people into a transborder network by forming Spanish-language newspapers, political coalitions, and mutual-aid associations aimed at both middle and working-class Mexicans. The dissertation argues that this network formed the basis of an early-twentieth-century Mexican American civil rights project rooted in the constitutive relationship between the Tejano middle-class and the Mexican workers of the border region. By tracing the Idar family's activity within this network, the dissertation reveals how this constitutive (though unequal) relationship between classes ensured the goals and vision of Tejano reformers encompassed a broad range of concerns including segregation, education, worker conditions, and migrant treatment. This project recovers a lost transborder activism that challenges assumptions about sharp national divides; and reveals an interconnected, cross-class transborder member network that cultivated political ideologies and community institutions created out of shared, rather than divided, experiences.