1848 boundary created by war and violence would remain unpoliced by both the Mexican and U.S. governments until decades later because of their lack of capacity to control the area.”43 This was not due to an absence of immigration laws; rather, as George Sanchez writes, “The presence of a strong border culture in which passage had been largely unregulated mitigated against stringent enforcement of these regulations.”44 Most of the population flow at the border was local. Mexicans and Indigenous communities that straddled the border, now separated, found it easy to visit family or friends on the
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