INTRODUCTION

This chapter constitutes the first of three final chapters that will narrate the local history of one repatriate colony that made its way back to Chihuahua, Mexico on three separate occasions. I focus on Chihuahua for the following reasons. First and foremost, of all the repatriate colonies founded throughout the nineteenth century, the case of La Mesilla, New Mexico (later to become La Ascensión, Chihuahua in 1872) is the best documented and has provided the most data to date. Second, because of this key consideration, this local, more nuanced perspective allows me to begin completing my threefold approach from the global, to the national, and ending with the local. Finally, this thick description provides us with a series of opportunities to examine and analyze the early process of return migration after the war, particularly how one specific colony fared under a Mexican system of governance.

The town of La Mesilla was founded in Mexican territory in 1850, resettled in the United States as part of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, and reconfigured in 1871 when part of its population migrated back to Mexican territory. These resettlements have been the subject of several historiographical interrogations by students of nineteenth-century New Mexican history, specifically as this history relates to the electoral violence that engulfed the town in 1871. The narrative in each of these interpretations usually ends in 1872, and they do not follow the contingent of Nuevo Mexicanos that left for Mexico after the election. In short, their narrative ends where the border begins, and hence misses an opportunity to apply a truly transnational approach to this growing body of research. In this chapter I will broach this historiographical gap and discuss how the colony of La Mesilla was founded, including its early history in the postwar period. I dedicate the latter half of the chapter to elaborating on the events that led to this particular episode of political violence only twenty years after the end of the war. But first, let us turn to the founding of La Mesilla and the violent event that would split the loyalties and fates of residents thereafter.