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In this paper I propose to analyse the particular features of a society dominated by the landowner power of agrarian, regional, proprietary and mercantile base, in Argentina which was characterized, during the nineteenth century, by the process of territorial and productive expansion of the border, the transfer of public land to private hands, the incorporation of this lands into the productive process and the formation of estancias. The landowners (merchants, politics, hacendados and militaries) became the new hegemonic group, which has his center of expansion entrepreneur in the estate-large property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the water culture in the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo Basin in Northern Mexico and Southwestern us, analyzes the survival of ceremonies, dances and material resources around the water from two case studies and a general review of the history of the Basin. It is clear that, small works of irrigation and its associated rituals are common in both borders and they are related to the hispanic and tlaxcalteca inheritance. The study constitutes an outlook of the material life and thought of the inhabitants and the meaning of the irrigation in the historic construction of the water culture. Soil and water handling fetch the mot of water culture manifested in language common values, symbols of rituals, dances, parties,festivities and other social interactions. All those manifestations are located in several groups of population of the area. The importance of these rituals is provoked by its cultural inheritance implicated as well as processes of social adaptation that they symbolize to the local people, and also their bonds and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The border region that divides Mexico and the United States is one of the shared areas of greatest stress in the world from the environmental point of view. This situation poses many questions for both countries as well as for the people who live in the region. Potable water service is scarce and an ever greater number of household, agricultural and industrial users compete for the limited surface water and underground resources which often are contaminated. This article analyzes how over the last 20 years the economies on both sides of the border have grown at an accelerated rate due to industrial development, which has stimulated waves of migrant workers, mostly from central Mexico, increasing the population. In the face of this situation there is serious pressure being exerted on the natural resources of the region. It is a growth that does not consider regional environmental differences and the natural limitations of a semiarid region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Mexico sharing borders with three other countries, as recently as the beginning of the 1970s, there still predominated the idea that the only important border was the one with the United States. Chiapas, at the southern end of Mexico, constituted a territory apart, to which one could always turn in search of natural resources and political favors, but about which federal officials had little interest. As new variables appeared on the horizon—connected to both petroleum and hydroelectric exploitation and the Central American conflicts, as well as to the adjustments within the Mexico's political class—the scene began to alter, and the region went from abandonment to being of strategic interest. This work focuses on these considerations, and it seeks to prove that, by the beginning of the 1990s, the relationship between the federal and the state government spheres had already changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of all the processes of space-time redefinition occurred during the course of the XX century, the concept of place acquires a special meaning in relation to issues of personal and group identity construction. This redefinition of the term 'place' is accompanied by new evaluations of other related terms such as 'displacement' and 'border' that as a whole constitute a central element within post-colonial discourse and literature. This idea of place can be traced in the works of many Chicano writers in the USA and that is the reason why I will attempt an analysis of the previously mentioned concepts and of the ways in which they contribute to identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]