Blood Oranges: Colonialism and Agriculture in the South Texas Borderlands

Blood Oranges traces the origins and legacy of racial differences between Anglo Americans and ethnic Mexicans (Mexicannationals and Mexican Americans) in the South Texasborderlands in the twentieth century. Author Tim Bowmanuncovers a complex web of historical circumstances that causedethnic Mexicans in the region to rank among the poorest, leasteducated, and unhealthiest demographic in the country. The keyto this development, Bowman finds, was a modern colonizationmovement, a process that had its roots in the Mexican-Americanwar of the nineteenth century but reached its culmination in thetwentieth century. South Texas, in Bowman’s words, became an internal economy just inside of the US-Mexico border.

Beginning in the twentieth century, Anglo Americans consciouslytransformed the region from that of a culturally Mexican space, with an economy based on cattle, into one dominated bycommercial agriculture focused on citrus and winter vegetables.As Anglos gained political and economic control in the region,they also consolidated their power along racial lines with lawsand customs not unlike the Jim Crow system of southernsegregation. Bowman argues that the Mexican labor class was thustransformed into a marginalized racial caste, the legacy of whichremained in place even as large-scale agribusiness cemented itshold on the regional economy later in the century.

Blood Oranges stands to be a major contribution to the history of South Texas and borderland studies alike.