Mujeres publicas: Euro-American prostitutes and reformers at the California-Mexico border, 1900--1929

This dissertation examines the role of Euro-American women in the formation of the U.S.-Mexico border in the early twentieth century. I argue that American prostitutes and reformers figured centrally in the establishment of a fortified international boundary and in the making of racial and national identities in California between 1900-1929. After the success of California's Progressive movement shut down the state's red light districts, American prostitutes moved south and reclaimed both public space and public identities in the vice districts of Mexicali and Tijuana. The presence of white American womanhood in Mexican vice dens evoked hysteria among U.S. reformers seized by fears of white slavery and its symbolic significance for the nation. As such, California clubwomen extended their reform efforts across the border and sought to eradicate American prostitution and gambling in Mexico. Their vigorous crusade to restrict passage at the international line contributed to the solidification of the U.S. Mexico-border in the 1920s. Moreover, the rhetoric of their border protests likewise made pronouncements about the internal boundaries of American citizenship. While making valuable contributions to the broader story of Progressive Era reform and U.S. women's history, my research redresses the oversight of Euro-American women in border scholarship. Significantly, this dissertation illuminates the primacy of women's bodies in the imagining of national boundaries and shows the influence of women's activism in the formation of global borders.