‘Give us his name’

Painter, Genevieve

doi:10.4324/9781315167695-6

Cited by 1 publication

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“…By accepting rumor as evidence in his court, Maxey became a co-author to Anglo El Paso’s rumor by reaffirming a legal racial regime of property founded on the idea that Anglo American possession is always legitimate and timeless. This was only possible by producing and upholding “a specifically legal narrative time-space of perpetuity” wherein El Chamizal—contrary to all evidence—has always been the possession of the United States (Renard Painter, 2019: 109). Rumor in this context became law, which reciprocally upheld a White temporal-spatial imaginary where any challenge or rupture to Anglo White possession is unintelligible.…”

Section: A Codified Truthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By striking out these testimonies, Maxey employed the law not simply to negate these questions, but to foreclose a time-space wherein the Río Grande may not have acted in favor of Anglo American possession. His decision demonstrates “how state law not only relies upon and produces temporalities” in order to discipline deviance (the Río Grande and Partido Chamizal claimants) into disappearance (“striking-out”), but also how “the law is buffeted by times that exceed its control (Renard Painter, 2019: 114).”…”

Section: A Codified Truthmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“El Chamizal is ours forever:” Rumor, time, and the law in El Paso’s settler society

de Hinojosa

2023

Environ Plan D

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This essay contributes to literature on the intersections of white settler colonialisms, racial capitalism, and U.S.-Mexico borderlands history by tracing the web of spatial, temporal, and legal power relations that produced El Paso, Texas’ seemingly legitimate possession of stolen Mexican territory known as “El Chamizal” in the El Paso-Cd. Juárez borderlands. This land theft became the Chamizal Dispute: an international land and boundary conflict between the U.S. and Mexico caused by the meandering Río Grande that defines the “fixed” international border between El Paso, Texas and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua. In the 1860s, multiple shifts in the Rio Grande “relocated” El Chamizal north of this river/boundary. Soon thereafter, and despite Mexico’s sustained claim to and jurisdiction over this land, recently arrived Anglo American settlers incorporated El Chamizal into the nascent City of El Paso. In 1964, the U.S.and Mexico finally agreed to resolve this conflict by virtue of the landmark Chamizal Treaty, which ceded 630-acres of El Paso to Cd. Juárez as El Chamizal. Contrary to what dominant state accounts and the mainstream historical literature on this settlement would have us believe, however, this ceded land includes only a fraction of the original contested terrain. El Chamizal therefore remains a stolen tract of land nestled within the heart of El Paso. Drawing on oral histories, court testimonies and affidavits, and an array of binational records, this essay demonstrates that this ongoing theft is not a finite or complete project. Rather, the process hinges on a fragile web of spatial, white settler temporal, and legal practices of concealment/denial anchored to a colonial rumor that refuses to open this region to the mystery and wonder of the Río Grande’s “wayward life, beautiful experiment in how to live.”

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Section: A Codified Truthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Codified Truthmentioning

confidence: 99%