On The Rio Grande: A Struggle for Land and Citizenship in San Vicente del Llano Grande, 1749-1930

On the Rio Grande: A Struggle for Land and Citizenship in San Vicente del Llano Grande, 1749-1910 is a case study that evaluates the shifting patterns of land ownership and citizenship in the Llano Grande land grant from the Spanish, Mexican, Texan, and American eras. This time allows for an analysis of the changes and strategies used by its owners, Juan José Hinojosa, Rosa Marí­a Hinojosa de Ballí­, and their descendants, to expand their land holdings and maintain them through the shifts in sovereignty. This Dissertation argues that the Ballí and Hinojosa families were active participants in the land tenure history of the Llano Grande, who used their connections to the state and their status as Spanish elite, Mexican and American citizens to preserve their property for a considerable time. As such, the history of swift dispossession and displacement of the Southwest Mexican landowners, or its inevitability, had a different outcome in the Llano Grande. The land not only shaped identity but gave social, cultural, and economic meaning to its citizens, and this study centers on examining the relationship between landowners and the imperial or nation-states. At its core, this work is an examination of citizenship. Race, class, and gender conditioned access to citizenship, and it a lens used to examine citizens, identity, and land use in the Llano Grande grant