| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The River Has Never Divided Us: A Border History of La Junta de los Rios. By Jefferson Morgenthaler. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. xii, 317 pp. Cloth, $60.00, ISBN 0-292-70166-7. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-292-70283-3.)
In what Americans call the Big Bend, where the Conchos River empties into the Rio Grande, is La Junta de los Rios. Here the confluence of the rivers created a green swath large enough to sustain a community of farmers and ranchers, extending from the juncture in all three directions about twenty-five miles, and in the nineteenth century another thirty miles. Although the principal towns now are Presidio on the Texas side and Ojinaga on the Chihuahua side, numerous outlying villages have been part of the historical picture.	1
Jefferson Morgenthaler anchors the book in the present, with descendants of the pioneers reappearing in the story. It is tied at both ends with a highly personal account of the killing of eighteen-year-old Ezequiel "Junie" Hernandez, who was out with his goats on the night of May 20, 1997, when he was shot by one of four Marines stationed in the brush. While the first and last sections—later chapters contain accounts of modern-day drug shoot-outs—read like a modern docudrama, the central portion of the book takes the story of La Junta from about 1830 to the end of the Mexican Revolution.	. . .

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