REVIEWS

BROKEN PROMISED LAND

Between Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta in the state of Sonora, Mexico, lies the border between the United States and Mexico—an imaginary line just south of what once was an American company town made prosperous by a copper smelting plant. For work and for fun, Americans and Mexicans traversed that line with ease and in both directions. By the time Aida Hernandez’s story begins in the 1990s, the smelter has closed. Douglas is in steep decline. And yet immigrants still cross over in search of opportunity and safety. Aida arrives in Douglas in 1996 at age eight with her mother, who with her children is fleeing a violent husband. Aida spends the next 20 years crisscrossing this divide, a quasi-stateless survivor with only partial rights in either country, her story the lens through with Bobrow-Strain examines larger themes.

This ethnographic tale bristles with defiant humor and heroic characters constrained by a hardening border that disdains empathy. In 1965, Johnson administration reforms slashed legitimate Mexican migration, beginning the era in America of the “illegal immigrant,” a phrase defined by an enforcement-only strategy offering little flexibility or nuance. Management of border security evolved to emphasize a “militarized masculinity” harder on women, who if undocumented are less likely to report abuse by a partner or a border official, than on male migrants. Incarcerated, Aida confronted officials to demand access for herself and fellow female prisoners to