Brian Behnken’s comprehensive Borders of Violence and Justice: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Law Enforcement in the Southwest, 1835–1935 is the first installment of a two-book research agenda examining extralegal activity, policing by and against ethnic Mexicans, and the criminal justice system in the U.S. Southwest before World War II. Behnken is uniquely qualified for this task, having published half a dozen books on Mexican American and African American race relations and racial attitudes. Building on the exploding fields of carceral, lynching, and law enforcement studies, this book makes a strong case for how racism, violence, and justice pertaining to Mexican citizens and Mexican Americans along the southern borderlands are directly related to contemporary interactions with law enforcement, the criminal justice system, prisons, the military, and immigration enforcement.
Behnken makes several important arguments, presented clearly in the introduction and summed up in a long conclusion. First, despite the existence of law...
University of California Press