The Dialectics of Borderlands Radicalism: Weapons of the Weak in the US-Mexico Borderlands

• In Event: The Body Adrift: Borders, Race, and Resistance from the Rio Grande to the Pacific

Abstract

This paper examines the emergence of borderland radicalism in the early twentieth-century U.S.-Mexico borderlands, arguing that it was a historically contingent phenomenon shaped by a unique convergence of material conditions, ideological currents, and historical actors. The Plan de San Diego uprisings of 1915 serve as a focal point for analyzing how ethnic Mexicans in Texas, influenced by the broader traditions of transnational resistance, deployed sabotage, direct action, and armed struggle against the racialized structures of U.S. settler colonialism and capitalist expansion.

Building upon Scott’s concept of the "weapons of the weak," this study situates the acts of sabotage—including telegraph wire cutting, arson, and train derailments—as intentional, politically motivated resistance rather than isolated criminal disruptions. The ideological roots of this radicalism trace back to the nineteenth-century resistance movements of Juan Cortina, the Fence-Cutting Wars, and the magonista influence of Ricardo Flores Magón and the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM). By contextualizing these acts within a longer tradition of borderlands insurgency, this paper highlights how early twentieth-century Tejano radicals drew from both local grievances and global revolutionary discourses to shape their militant praxis. This analysis also engages Scott and Robin D.G. Kelley’s use of infrapolitics, where most working-class resistance is "unorganized, clandestine, and evasive," outside formal movements. The insurgents of the borderlands exemplified this framework, as their actions reflected a dual consciousness about power—not just a contempt for authority but a simultaneous grasping for it. These acts of sabotage were not simply acts of defiance but also a way to claim control over contested spaces. Demonstrating not only rebellion against domination but also the desire to assert a new order on their own terms. This dialectic—of rejecting power while simultaneously seizing it—shaped the strategic and ideological outlines of borderlands radicalism.

By foregrounding how borderland actors resisted both national and imperial formations, this work contributes to critical discussions on how local resistance movements challenge the fixed notions of nation-states and national belonging. In doing so, it invites scholars to reconsider the U.S.-Mexico borderlands not as a periphery but as a central site of radical political experimentation and historical transformation. Ultimately, this study highlights how the Plan de San Diego and the broader tradition of Borderlands Radicalism shaped future Mexican American labor and land struggles in the 1930s through the late 20th century, offering a long historical arc of resistance that challenges dominant narratives of passive assimilation.

Author

• Jazmin N Muñoz, University of Texas at Austin