Wartime U.S.–Mexico Borderlands

During the Second World War, communities along the United States–Mexico border experienced rapid economic and social change. Military bases, defence industries and agricultural labour demand drew people into the region, while wartime regulation made movement across the border more closely supervised.

Mexico entered the Allied war effort in 1942, and the two governments expanded formal cooperation through military agreements and the Bracero Program. These changes existed alongside rural poverty, older revolutionary memories and long-established family, ranching and trading connections that did not fit neatly within national boundaries.

This context supports fiction set in New Mexico and northern Mexico during the early 1940s, including stories about ranching communities, cross-border journeys, wartime enlistment and traditional frontier lives being overtaken by national mobilisation.