A Tale of Two Families: The Mutual Construction of ‘Anglo’ and Mexican Ethnicities Along the US-Mexico Border

Abstract

In the American Southwest and along the US–Mexico border, ‘Anglos’ and Mexicans are often viewed as the quintessential ‘others’. This ethnographic study problematises the Anglo-Mexican opposition with ethnographic data from interviews with a Mexican farmworker family and an ‘Anglo’ farmer family of the EI Paso Lower Valley. I argue that ‘Anglo’ hegemony is not based exclusively on cultural separation but often involves hybridity (including ‘Mexicanisation’) and patron-client relations entailing ‘benevolent’ paternalism. I show how the concept of ‘Anglo’ is a contested identity constructed through interactions between Mexicans and Euroamericans. Through this study of border crossings in situations of asymmetrical power relations, I advocate a ‘complicit’ anthropology that presents competing ethnic groups in their full complexity rather than as stereotypes or caricatures of their ‘others.’

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