Cristina Urias Espinoza

Everyday life and Revolution at the U.S. Colonies of Northwest Mexico, 1910-1920

This research seeks to uncover how American colonists experienced the Mexican Revolution. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Mexican government sought to populate and develop industries in northern Mexico by eliminating old restrictions on U.S. migration. Thus, American families migrated south of the border to establish colonies. The Richard E. Greenleaf Visiting Scholar Fellowship allowed to search for reports on Mexican Revolutionaries' attacks on the U.S. colonies. Archival material shows that during this time, U.S. citizens in Mexico endured economic losses from the destruction of their properties and looked for compensation from the Mexican government.

Cristina Urias Espinoza is an Assistant Professor of History at Arkansas State University, Campus Mexico. In 2022, earned a doctorate in History from The University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of the U.S.-Mexico border region, specializing in the expansionism of American capitalism and the immigration of U.S. citizens to Mexico during the late nineteenth century, which received support from diverse institutions, including The Huntington Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Richard E. Greenleaf fellowship. Her dissertation, Spatial Legacy in the Borderlands: Land Speculation and the U.S. Colonization of Northwest Mexico, 1854-1934, won national recognition in Mexico from Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revoluciones de Mexico and Premio Atanasio G. Saravia in Regional History.