Summary Of A Line In The Sand By Rachel St John

In Rachel St. John’s book A Line in the Sand, she describes the complex history of how the border between the U.S. and Mexico changed from just a simple line on a map to a full-blown barrier. Throughout the book she is able to continue to backup this claim while also introducing and supporting many other smaller, but very important points. These points are all backed up by a vast number of historical and reliable sources along with a lot of first-hand accounts. Her book is wonderfully comprehensive and has all the information anyone could dream of to have on the history of this border. The main point St. John gets across in this book is how the border changed so much over time. She explains how it moved from an unguarded to heavily regulated

This is seen with how the government and the locals living at the border didn’t always get along, but it is also seen in other ways, like how local and federal governments had many different ideas on how to deal with issues. Federal governments had their own ideas of how they wanted the border to be, but they didn’t know what they were doing. Local governments understood the social and physical landscapes the surrounded the border and often went against the rules of the higher governments. This is seen when the author talks about an agreement that was in the works to let border officers from then U.S. cross over the border freely to help catch immigrants “although the Mexican federal government refused to sign on to this agreement, on the local level officials continued to allow U.S. inspectors to cross the border to track down immigrants” (pg. 109). The local authorities blatantly ignored the law and did what they believed worked best for the area. The things that the local governments did helped to keep the border running smoothly, but as the federal government started to stick their noses into their business more, more rules were created that accelerated the process of the border

and Mexico by providing a wealth of information on many different aspects on it. This book was written to cater to a wide and differing audience by providing so much information for different people to pick up on. This information can make it difficult to read the full book, but the author’s purpose is not for everyone to read the full book and comprehend everything. Her book allows for very detailed information to be available on everything imaginable that a person could want to know about the border. This lets people pick and choose the important information to them that they would like to read about and retain. I feel like she isn’t missing anything big in her analysis of the