Chamizal National Memorial

Rio Bravo, Rio Grande

To Mexicans, it is the Rio Bravo. North of the border, it is the Rio Grande. For hundreds of miles, the river separates the United States and Mexico, forming the major portion of the international line. And for more than a century the river’s role as border has been the cause of international discord. The story of the Chamizal, a tract cut off from Mexico as the river shifted course, illustrates how the disputed ownership of an obscure piece of land can create confusion and mistrust at the highest levels of government.

US Mexico Border

The first Joint Boundary Commission was formed in 1849 to survey the new international line resulting from the Mexican War treaty. Maj. William Hemsley Emory of the United States and Maj. Jose Salazar y Larrequi of Mexico led the survey party. The Emory-Salazar surveys disclosed that the United States and Mexico faced each other along a frontier of some 1,900 miles. Nearly 675 miles was a land frontier; 1,248 miles of the Rio Grande and 23 miles of the lower Colorado formed river frontiers. It was the rivers that accounted for most of the boundary difficulties that plagues both countries for more than a century. Historian Leon C. Metz described the problem in his book Border: The U.S.-Mexico Line: "Rivers are never absolutely permanent. They evaporate, flood, change channels, shrink, expand and even disappear. Rivers are by nature, capricious."

What Do We Did If The River Changes Course?

As early as 1856, even as the Rio Grande flowed through mostly unpopulated country, Major Emory had glimpsed something of the troubles that could develop as more people began settling along the boundary river. One of the founders of El Paso, James Wiley Magoffin, wrote to Emory that the Rio Grande threatened to change its course in the El Paso Valley. What, he wanted to know, would this do to the boundary line so recently surveyed? Emory referred the question to the U.S. Attorney General and got back an opinion that summed up the principles of international law governing river boundaries: If the river changed its course by the slow process of erosion of one bank and accretion to the other, then the boundary moved with the deepest channel. If, on the other hand, the river changed its course suddenly by avulsion – that is, if it deserted its old bed and cut a new one in a short amount of time – then the boundary remained in the old bed even if it was now dry. These guidelines were reaffirmed by the Convention of 1884, a formal agreement between the two nations which declared the boundary as the center of the deepest channel.

Which brings us to the Chamizal. In the mid-19^th century, a dispute arose concerning a section of privately owned farmland between the small settlements that grew into El Paso and Cuidad Juarez. The land was bordered on its south by the Rio Grande, whose course was gradually shifting southward in that location. Beginning in 1895 Mexico laid formal claim to the tract, hereafter known as the Chamizal. But the Mexican claim elicited counter-claims by the United States, and over the years the dispute became a major impasse. At first the Chamizal looked like a simple enough question, for the principles formalized in 1884 should have held. But the testimony of old settlers and the investigations of boundary commission engineers showed that the change in the river channel could not be definitely ascribed either to erosion or to avulsion but rather to a process that fell somewhere between the two. This technical impasse led to prolonged negotiation, arbitration, and further disagreement in the first half of the 20^th century. By this time, Chamizal had grown into an international issue that made the continuing technical and diplomatic negotiations fruitless.

Compounding the already complex issue was the tract known as Cordova Island, a detached part of Mexico on the north side of the Rio Grande. This "island" – the result of an early flood control effort which cut off the banco at its neck – adjoined the Chamizal tract. With the title to Chamizal clouded and Mexico’s Cordova projecting incongruously into El Paso, the orderly development of both cities was hampered. In 1962 Presidents John F. Kennedy and Aldofo Lopez Mateos moved to break the deadlock. This time it was technology, rather than international law, that came to the rescue: a new concrete-lined channel for the Rio Grande would bisect Chamizal and Cordova. All land south of the center of this channel would go to Mexico; land north would belong to the United States. After Kennedy’s death in 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson, long an advocate of improved U.S.-Mexican relations, completed negotiations which resulted in the Chamizal Treaty of 1963. The final agreement was signed on October 28, 1967; water was diverted into the channel the following year.

It was not just parcels of land that were affected by the treaty; about 5,000 residents of El Paso who had occupied the disputed territory were forced to relocated, along with businesses and industries. Both nations have used their acquired land for schools, public buildings, and parks. Additionally, the U.S. Congress set aside a portion of the land acquired from Mexico as Chamizal National Memorial. Here the National Park Service presents activities that celebrate the cultural traditions of the people who share the borderlands.