Municipal Treasuries and the Economy of Water in the 20th-Century US–Mexico Borderlands

This paper argues that municipal treasuries were central, though understudied, institutions in the economic transformation of northern Mexican border cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on urban waterworks in Nogales, Sonora, and Tijuana, Baja California, this study examines how local officials financed hydraulic infrastructure in the absence of consistent federal oversight. Rather than treating waterworks as purely technological or sanitary projects, the paper situates the management of urban waters within the fiscal architecture of the municipio, the Mexican municipality. This methodological shift into the municipal archives of two border cities reveals how treasuries managed debt obligations while sustaining unprecedented urban growth at Mexico’s northwestern border. It asks: how did border cities finance public works within, and across the international boundary? By centering municipal treasuries, this paper contributes to new directions in Latin American economic history that move beyond export commodities and national macroeconomic policy to foreground subnational fiscal regimes.