Informality, Illegality, and Inequality

The United States-Mexico border historically has been characterized by its isolation from the core of both nations. The United States side has viewed the border as a place of lawlessness, poverty, backwardness, and ethnic difference, physically and culturally distant from either the Midwestern "heartlands" or the urban "melting pots.' ' Mexicans, too, traditionally dismissed their northern borderlanders as pocho, tainted by their proximity to the United States. Margaret Montoya captures the view from both sides: "Border towns everywhere are different, incorporating the characteristics of the nation-states they link together, but nowhere are they as distinct from their respective core zones as along the United States/Mexico border."