The border between Mexico and the United States has been an active place for much longer than most people consider. Texas independence (1836) dramatically altered the location of the border and a dispute over the new boundary sparked the war of 1846–48. The Rio Grande may appear to be a border but is actually a river that makes for one unified cultural and ecological system. While matters of contraband and human smuggling occupy the news these days – with drugs, violence, and demagoguery regularly making the headlines – lively extralegal commerce has been a part of Rio Grande valley life and lore for generations. Gracefully weaving together archival and newspaper sources with the folkloric corridos associated with south Texas, George T. Díaz relates the story of border contraband in the first hundred years of Texas–American history.

The author explains how contraband trade began not as the smuggling of prohibited goods but more simply as a way to avoid tariffs on many everyday consumer goods, which in turn enabled lower prices and thus greater sales and profits. The difficulty of enforcement along the long Rio Grande made the evasion of government duties all the more simple, especially when we think about how those in towns on both sides of the river shared culture, language, and even kinship. Given the benefits to both buyer and seller of contraband in the mid-nineteenth century, there came to be something of a “moral economy” regarding such trade. What the Mexican and American authorities saw as necessary to fund government – the collection of tariff duties as there was no income tax in the US until 1913 – contrabandistas and their customers came to see as arbitrary and oppressive. Hence their avoidance was, in their minds, actually licit, or at least “moral.” “By 1900,” Díaz writes, “contrabandistas succeeded in making illicit trade an accepted fact of life” (61).

This would change rather quickly because of two events: Revolution in Mexico and Prohibition in the US. As regards the former, “the U.S. Customs Service on the border transformed from primarily being a revenue-collecting agency to a national security force” (65). Violence from the Revolution inevitably spilled north over the border and, as was well known, various factions sought arms and staging areas in the north. After 1920, “mounted ethnic Mexican liquor smugglers, known commonly as tequileros, supplied Mexican liquor to American markets.” Moreover, because prohibition laws conflicted with border drinking culture, “Mexican Americans and other borderlanders accepted and celebrated certain groups of liquor smugglers as folk heroes within the moral economy” (93). The tequileros were not “primitive rebels,” but more simply “rural ethnic Mexicans who predominately came from poor ranching backgrounds” seeking to supplement their income (97). And it was dangerous work: one corrido sang of those “killed treacherously by the cowardly Rangers” (103).

The drug trade, however, presents us with a very different outcome. While minuscule in the years before 1945 when compared to the present day, narcotics trafficking violated community norms, brought violence to border communities, and sent its sons and fathers to prison for lengthy terms. Díaz notes how “the corrido ‘El Contrabandista’ [whom he includes in the appendix] narrates the downfall of a former drug smuggler who turned to the drug trade and subsequently ended his days behind bars in a Texas prison” (109).

A solidly researched volume that gives historical background to a contemporary hot topic, Border Contraband also demonstrates how smuggling has been a central part of borderlands Mexican American culture and lore. “Tequileros’ actions in fact and song,” both of which Díaz chronicles, “added to the machista culture of the border, and their courage, real or imagined, is enshrined in lore as exemplifying masculinity and honor.” Indeed, “they are history and also legend” (97).