“The Caravan of Death”: Women, Refugee Camps, and Family Separations in the US–Mexico Borderlands, 1910–1920

Abstract:This article examines how Mexican border women negotiated war and family separations and gives new insights into the lives of women, families, and children who escaped the violence of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). As hundreds of thousands of Mexicans began crossing the border to the United States during the evolution, thousands of them, especially women and children, were detained and interned in refugee camps along the US–Mexico borderlands. This article examines the role of the US military in detention centers and argues that Anglo-American ideologies of race and gender shaped assumptions about Mexican women during the revolution that increasingly prevented Mexican women and children from seeking asylum in the United States.