Negotiations at the Border: Local Experiences of the Guatemala-Mexico Frontier in the Nineteenth Century

The 1883 border treaty between Guatemala and Mexico, negotiated in Washington D.C., was only the mid-point in a drawn out experience of national instability for those who made their homes at the edges of two countries still fighting for internal cohesion. This paper will look at the process of consolidating a frontier from the perspectives of those living on it. The Soconusco district of the Mexican state of Chiapas was claimed by both countries at Independence, left as a neutral zone for twenty years, and then violently fought over for the following forty. For locals and the slowly growing number of immigrants drawn to the region by the potential of coffee, the frontier meant both continual fear for property and person and the opportunities of loosely regulated exchange. The stabilization of the border became a rhetorical tool used to petition the national government for infrastructure investment and political concessions. At the same time, the region continued to serve Guatemalan politicians as a rallying cry for Central American unity and Guatemalan dissidents as a safe haven. This paper will examine how the residents of the Soconusco experienced and participated in these clashes and eventual negotiations. Using discourses of national consolidation and prosperity, they improved their home and maintained a degree of local autonomy based on local knowledge. For even once the line was drawn, the lives of those in the Soconusco continued to be defined by its porous nature and distance from centers of political power.