A Brief History of the Chamizal Dispute

The Chamizal Dispute (1864-1964) was an international land and boundary conflict that shaped the lives, spaces, and power relations of Mexican, Mexican American, and Anglo American fronterizos in the El Paso-Cd. Juárez borderlands for more than a century. Caused by the meandering Río Grande, the Chamizal Dispute illuminated the social construction of the U.S.-Mexico border by constantly moving the river/border across this landscape.

In 1852, following the United States’ victory in the U.S.-Mexico War, the Rio Grande was surveyed, mapped, and officially established as the U.S.-Mexico boundary between what is now El Paso and Cd. Juarez. According to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended this war, everything north of the Rio Grande is the US and everything south is Mexico. However, rivers are not fixed in place like lines on a map, and the Río Grande refused to stay put.

Over the next fifty years Mexican authorities will record at least five distinct southward movements from the river’s location in 1852—with the most dramatic shift taking place after a flood in 1864. Together, these meanderings “transferred” land formerly south of the river/boundary north of the Río Grande and seemingly into U.S. jurisdiction. As the river’s meanderings continued, and as more Anglo American settlers began arriving to this region in the late 1880s and settling this territory as part of the United States, these processes together created the swath of contested land known as “El Chamizal.”

So began the Chamizal Dispute.

One hundred years later, the United States and Mexico agreed to finally settle this conflict by virtue of the Chamizal Treaty of 1964. This settlement returned 437-acres of South El Paso to Cd. Juarez as “El Chamizal.” This settlement remains the first and only time the United States has ever given land back to Mexico after the Mexican state lost more than half of its territory to the United States after the U.S.-Mexico War. 

Returning El Chamizal to Mexico, however, was only possible by first renegotiating the boundary between these two border cities and streamlining the Rio Grande through a concrete canal along that redrawn boundary. Secondly, the settlement was only possible by then displacing 5,600 mostly Mexican American residents from their El Paso homes within the 437-acres defined as El Chamizal. In this way, the Chamizal story evokes the Chicana/o Movement’s refrain, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” but in a contemporary setting.

The homes of those displaced made up four working-class residential subdivision in South El Paso—Rio Linda, Cotton Mill, Cordova Gardens, El Jardin—as well as the two most southerly blocks of Segundo Barrio.

Despite the profound sacrifices these residents were forced to make and the ongoing consequences of their coerced displacement, their stories have largely gone unacknowledged and unattended. Instead, the U.S. and Mexico continue to insist the Chamizal Treaty was a “borderlands beacon” to the US-Mexico friendship and diplomacy that finally ushered in a “Happy Ending at Last.”

The Underground Chamizal National Memorial troubles this “happy ending” story. It does so by offering a more complex, living history of the Chamizal Treaty and its ongoing aftermath on the lives of Chamizal residents.

Map produced by state of Mexico showing Río Grande meanders between El Paso and Cd. Juárez from 1827-1896. (Source: M. Quesada Brandi’s El Chamizal: Solución completa, albúm gráfico. UTEP Special Collections.)

Source: James F. Connors Papers, UTEP Special Collections