Shattered Dream Volume 7

Around the turn of the 19th century, people, goods, and capital flowed between Texas and Mexico, forming deep cross-border connections. But the Mexican Revolution of 1910 changed things in a profound and lasting way, perhaps nowhere so much as San Antonio. In Shattered Dream, Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga examines the economic, social, and cultural relationship between the Alamo city and Northeast Mexico from 1880 to 1920, revealing how the Revolution shattered a time of prosperity and reconfigured these communities in ways that remain visible to this day.

In peaceful times San Antonio was a source of manpower, technology, investment, and tourism for its southern neighbors. Shattered Dream explores how in the period of war the city became a sanctuary for exiles and immigrants fleeing the violence, as well as a source of support for those remaining in Mexico. The Revolution disrupted commercial traffic, with devastating effects for businessmen who had invested heavily in Mexico. It produced thousands of refugees, burdening the already impoverished Mexican barrio, and led political and military exiles into San Antonio and El Paso to engage in arms trafficking, propaganda, conspiracy-mongering, and fund-raising for their cause. And in an effect both immediate and long-lasting, it provoked the militarization of the border, where Texas Rangers and vigilante groups killed hundreds of innocent Mexicans, ostensibly to keep revolutionary violence from spreading north.

González-Quiroga describes the trauma still felt by those whose families were victims of this arbitrary violence. But he also documents the extraordinary positive impact of the influx of immigrants whose economic contributions offset the losses of San Antonio businessmen and whose social and cultural influence revitalized and forever transformed communities in San Antonio and throughout Texas.