National Moat, Regional Lifeline: The Campaign for the All-American Canal, 1917–1944

Abstract

This article contends that the Colorado River Delta, an arid region and a border region, offers fresh insight into the intimate relationship between federal reclamation, nation building, and citizenship. Its primary focus is the campaign for the All-American Canal, which was authorized in the same legislation as the Hoover Dam. Both projects established the basin-wide hegemony of the Imperial Irrigation District and the Bureau of Reclamation, and set a new, literal, line of sovereignty between nation states. The paper argues that the campaign revealed various means by which government representatives, corporate interests, and local residents constructed “Mexican” and “American” identities in the early 20th century. It further argues that the international competition influenced not only the trajectory of land reform in the delta but the larger federal reclamation policies of both nations.

Notes

H. Chandler to J.C. Allison. December 26, 1935, Folder 3A, Colorado River Land Company [CRLC] Papers, Sherman Library, Corona del Mar, California.

Two notable exceptions are works by DeBuys (1999) and Ward (2003). DeBuys predominantly examines the social and physical landscapes of the US side of the delta. Ward's model binational history chronicles the post-World War II era.

While these historiographies are too numerous to quantify, the following works have influenced the arguments made here. For studies of Mexican migrant labor, farm ownership, and family farm ideology, see Guerin-Gonzales (1996), Sackman (2005), and Vaught (1999). For studies of race and class along the US–Mexico borderlands, see Benton-Cohen (2009) and Truett (2006). For studies of “social engineering” and the Bureau of Reclamation, see Pisani (1983, 1984, 1996), Tyrell (1999), and Worster (1985). Tyrell has written an excellent transnational history of race and reclamation reform in California and Australia, where several high-profile US engineers received their training. Tyrell has shared my interest in the influence of Anti-Asian sentiments on early twentieth century conservation policies (Boime 2009), but his subject matter does not broach US–Mexico relations. I argue that these geopolitical views become most vivid when the policies are implemented along the borderlands. In tracing these views, I have examined the speeches, writings and archival papers of notable reclamation reformers and politicians promoting irrigation projects on the delta. Because the delta has received little scholarly attention, many of these primary documents have been underutilized and, in the case of George Maxwell, unused. My analysis of the local conflict is based on US Congressional testimonies, local archives, and the newspapers of the Imperial Valley. I also have examined the General Archives of Mexico City because several presidential administrations made regular contact with the Mexican-based CRLC. The CRLC papers have been extensively maintained by the Sherman Library in Corona del Mar, California.

Swing to M. Witter. January 29, 1925. Box 142, Phillip David Swing Collection, University of California, Los Angeles Research Library, Los Angeles.

H. Chandler to H. Hoover. November 10, 1931. Ray Lyman Wilbur Papers, Herbert Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

The Boulder Canyon Project Act specified that it “shall be deemed a supplement to the reclamation law, which said reclamation law shall govern the construction, operation, and management of the works herein authorized, except as otherwise herein provided.” Until 1986, when the courts definitively settled the question, critics argued that county land owners operated in violation of the law. The owners successfully argued that they had won exemption in subsequent negotiations with the Interior Department. See Boulder Canyon Project Act, 45 USC. 617a, 617c(b), 617k, 617m (1964).

H. Addis to P. Swing. February 6, 1928. Box 142, Swing Collection.

Interview with M. Warlow by Percy Martin (1919), Survey of Race Relations, Herbert Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

H. Chandler to A. Haskell. July 2, 1933. Box 3A. CRLC Papers.

Ibid.

Recent efforts by Los Angeles and San Diego to purchase IID water have reversed this trend. L.A. footed the bill to cement the All-American Canal, which has remained dirt-lined for 60 years. While municipal agents have hailed the project as a paragon conservation project, it now deprives Mexico of a seepage supply upon which it has depended for decades.