Geraldo L. Cadava is Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University.
The headlines and debates serve as a backdrop to Geraldo Cadava’s
timely book Standing on Common Ground. Standing against
conventional readings of this border’s recent history, Cadava’s
study accents how from the Second World War through the Cold War
the history of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands ‘defied simple claims
about the opening or closing of borders.’ …For its recovery of
forgotten histories and its insistence on transnational
connections, Standing on Common Ground commands the attention of
scholars of the Arizona–Sonora region and of all who study
borderlands.
*Americas*
Thoroughly researched and cleverly organized around iconic Tucson
events and people, the book gives illuminating historical
background to current strife over racial and migrant issues. Cadava
has crafted a compelling story of the whole border region as the
various people there experienced it.
*Choice*
Cadava breaks new ground by tracing the common threads connecting
the societies on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, focusing on
the economic, cultural, and political intersections between
Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora. Among other topics, he shows
that we cannot begin to understand the current acerbic public
debates about undocumented immigration from Mexico into Arizona
without understanding the roots of those debates in the years after
the Second World War. This book represents the best of the new
borderlands history.
*Albert Camarillo, author of Chicanos in a Changing Society:
From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios, 1850–1930*
Crisis, trauma, and crime steal most headlines about the
U.S.–Mexican border, but Standing on Common Ground recovers a
deeper and more important history of everyday connections across
the line. With quiet empathy and a storyteller’s eye for detail,
Cadava expertly narrates the transnational hopes and frustrations
of the businessmen, laborers, students, politicians, immigrants,
and activists who reinvented the Arizona–Sonora borderlands after
World War II. If you care about the region’s present and future,
read this book.
*Brian DeLay, author of War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids
and the U.S.–Mexican War*
In a time when the history of the Southwest is rewritten every few
months, the simple act of telling the truth is invaluable. Standing
on Common Ground recreates the look, feel, and sound of the
greatest growth spurt the region has ever seen. The stories in
these pages are not just the stories of men, women and children
working hard to build better lives for themselves. They’re the
stories of how we got to where we are now, why we face the issues
we face, and who the people of the Southwest really are.
*Raúl M. Grijalva, U.S. Representative for Arizona’s Third
Congressional District and member of the Congressional Hispanic
Caucus*
An astute and insightful book, Standing on Common Ground is a
richly detailed portrait of a region that is very much in the news
today. Solidly researched, keenly conceptualized, and beautifully
written, it will become one of the most important explorations of
the lands and lives along the U.S.–Mexico border.
*David G. Gutiérrez, author of Walls and Mirrors: Mexican
Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of
Ethnicity*
By bringing Arizona’s relationship with Mexico and Mexicans into
focus, this groundbreaking and illuminating new book will change
the way we think about the postwar history of the southwestern
United States and help us to understand the origins of the
contentious debates over immigration and civil rights that divide
Arizonans today.
*Rachel St. John, author of Line in the Sand: A History of the
Western U.S.–Mexico Border*
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