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In Samuel Truett’s Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Truett examined the history of the “copper borderlands” between southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by focusing on the appropriation of space and landscapes. Truett contends that the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands was one of a “transnational collaboration [that] extended deep into both nations” (p. 4) through cross-border investments as well as economic and industrial development. Despite my lack of knowledge and expertise in this particular area of American history, I did find myself compelled by Truett’s determination to prove what became of the “lost world” as it transformed into “one of the most industrialized and urban spaces in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands” (p. 6) by the early twentieth century. Not only does Truett seek to show his readers how regions were essentially produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century but also how spaces were made and landscapes fundamentally transformed. By dividing his analysis into four parts, Truett manages to paint a broad picture spanning from America’s colonial attempts at domesticating its borders until the arrival of the railroad in the nineteenth century to narrowing his focus on the interactions between state and local inhabitants as well as the men who attempted empire building but failed spectacularly.
Similar to David, I also agree that Truett never took sides, nor did he ever focus on one particular group over another; instead, he gave explanations for their motives, what drove them, and why they sought opportunities in the borderlands. Truett does well in this regard when he showcases the different array of “actors” who ultimately became involved between the borders as they cooperated, plotted, or fought against one another due to racial and ethnic differences and even class antagonism. From the Apache and Opata Indians to the Spanish and Mexican miners, white American settlers and Anglo entrepreneurs, all of these groups of people played a major part in marking out the different areas in the region as they struggled to achieve their ends and dreams in a “fugitive landscape.”
As for where this book is placed within the broader historiography of borderlands history, I would have to agree with David, Suzanna, and Taylor that Pekka Hamalainen’s Comanche Empire especially comes to mind. While Hamalainen’s focus was narrow as he particularly focused on the Comanche Indians and their rise to power against the Euro-American colonists during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Truett’s attempt at borderland history within the United States is much more expansive and broad as he focuses on the everyday lives of the people who lived and struggled between the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In the end, I found Fugitive Landscapes to be an insightful and satisfying read as it gave me a much more broader picture and history of the American West and its borderlands with its different cast of characters compared to Hamalainen’s narrow focus on the Comanche Indians and Euro-American colonists in Comanche Empire.