Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Town That Forgot It Was Part of the United States

Starting point is 00:00:00 International borders can be strange things. Sometimes they're measured down to a millimeter and are heavily marked and fortified. Other times they run through desolate areas where hardly anyone pays attention to the actual location. The latter was the case with much of the U.S.-Mexican border in the early 20th century, and it caused a great deal of confusion. Learn more about a Rio Rico, the American town that everybody thought was a Mexican town, and then it eventually was, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind

Starting point is 00:00:42 start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nicolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've

Starting point is 00:01:19 been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. There are all sorts of international borders. Sometimes they use mountain peaks to define a border. Other times are just arbitrary straight lines that were drawn on a map that cut through whatever happens to be there. One of the most common natural features which are used as international borders are rivers. For the most part, rivers make for good borders. It's a body of water that's difficult to cross that keeps one side apart from the other. However, rivers too can have their issues as borders. What, for example, is the status of an island in the middle of a river?

Starting point is 00:02:03 There is a small island in the Bidisoa River, which serves as the border between France and Spain. Their solution was actually to have joint custody of the island. Its Spanish territory from February 1st to July 31st, and French territory. from August 1st to January 31st. Borders don't necessarily run down the middle of rivers either. The Quarantine River, which serves as the border between Surinam and Guyana, is entirely within the territory of Suriname. So if someone fishes in the river from the bank in Guyana,

Starting point is 00:02:32 they're actually making a border crossing. The biggest problem with using rivers as borders, however, is that rivers move over time. Almost all rivers will naturally meander changing their shape. If you remember back to my episode on Terranullius, there is a border dispute between Serbia and Croatia because of a river meander. This is a very long-winded introduction to get me to the subject of this episode, the Rio Grande, the river which serves as much of the border between the United States and Mexico. The Rio Grande was established as the border between the United States and Mexico when Texas became a state in 1845. For the most part, that was good enough. The river wound through a desert region with the river.

Starting point is 00:03:14 a very low population. If somebody knew where the river was, they knew that one side was Mexico, and on the other side was the United States. The problem was in certain sections of the river where the river seriously meandered. There are portions of the river where the river had S-shaped turns. This resulted in lobes of land that were almost totally surrounded by one country, with only a small isthmus that connected it to the country it belonged to. This was the case with a relatively small tract of land known as the Orcon Tract. The Orcon Tract. The Orcon Tract was a 413 acre or 1.67 square kilometer bit of land, which was surrounded on three sides by Mexico, but connected to the United States. It was located in one of these S-shaped meanders in the river.

Starting point is 00:03:57 While the area did look odd on a map, everything was fine, and there was no controversy or confusion until 1906. It was then that the American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Company decided to cut off one of the meanders to shorten the length of the river. No one on either side of the border ever approved this action. The company just did it and ended up having to pay a steep fine for their actions. However, the end result was that the bit of land that connected the or contract to the United States was now cut off by the new channel of the river. The ore contract was now completely south of the Rio Grande. Normally, when a river bend is cut off naturally, the result is what's called an Oxbow Lake.

Starting point is 00:04:38 In this case, the former river meander, no longer being fed by the Rio Grande, just dried up. Moreover, no one set up any new border markers after this happened. People just went about their business as before and treated the Rio Grande as the border, United States to the north and Mexico to the south. Fast forward to 1929. The United States had ratified the 18th Amendment which made the sale of alcohol illegal, aka prohibition.

Starting point is 00:05:06 This made for excellent business opportunities along the border. To take advantage of this, the town of Rio Rico was established just over the Rio Grande as a destination for Americans to drink and gamble in Mexico to avoid prohibition. And it was conveniently located between the towns of Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. And it was built on the Orcon tract of land, which was now south of the Rio Grande as of 1906. The town was a success. Americans came across the border to do all the things that were illegal north of the river. It was even said that Al Capone visited. but there's no evidence to support it. Eventually, Prohibition ended, but the town of Rio Rico

Starting point is 00:05:45 continued to exist as a functioning, Spanish-speaking, Mexican border community of several hundred people. Now the story fast forwards to 1967. James Hill Jr., a geography professor at Arizona State University, was studying old geological survey maps of Texas when he noticed something. The Orcon Tract, the location of the town of Rio Rico, was still, technically, part of the United States. The reason why had to do with a long-standing principle in international law. When a river serves as a border between two countries, any natural meander in the river is reflected in the border. In other words, when the river naturally changes its course, the border will change as well. The problem was that the 1906 diversion in the river wasn't a natural

Starting point is 00:06:31 change in the river. It was a man-made change. Moreover, it was an unauthorized, private, man-made change. That meant that the Orr contract, which now included the town of Rio Rico, was actually part of the United States, which was located south of the Rio Grande. The United States in Mexico had previously cleared up one of the biggest outstanding border issues in 1963 with the Chamazal settlement. This resulted in a small swap of land between the countries in the cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez. The U.S. and Mexico took steps to rectify the problem with the Boundary Treaty of 1970, which, resolved all of the minor border issues between the two countries, including the or contract and the town of Rio Rico. The treaty confirmed the reality on the ground that everyone had been living under for decades. Rio Rico officially became a part of Mexico in 1972, and it became a part of the state

Starting point is 00:07:24 of Tamalipas in 1977. As an aside, I should note that as of today, there are no outstanding boundary issues between the United States and Mexico, however small. And that is not the case between the United States and Canada, which still has a few small issues remaining. I covered them in a previous episode on the U.S. Canadian border. The Boundary Treaty of 1970 didn't end the story, however. In 1972, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service attempted to deport a man by the name of Homero Conto Trevino. Trevino was born in 135 in the town of Rio Rico. Trevino's argument was that he was born in the United States, and as such, was a U.S. citizen and, and, as such, was a U.S. citizen, and could not be deported. The case spent several years going through the courts. The government

Starting point is 00:08:11 claimed that Trevino wasn't a U.S. citizen because the U.S. government did not administer Rio Rico at the time. Trevino claimed that it was nonetheless part of the United States, and proof of this was the boundary treaty of 1970, where the United States acknowledged it was part of the country at that time. Furthermore, the federal government paid back taxes to the state of Texas on federally owned land dating back to 1906, acknowledging that the land was part of the United States. A court initially ruled in favor of the government in 1976, but the next year a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Mr. Trevino and said that anyone born in Rio Rico prior to 1972 was in fact a U.S. citizen. About 250 people who were born in Rio Rico

Starting point is 00:08:56 claimed U.S. citizenship. Each case had to be handled separately, and in some cases people had to prove what room of a house they were born in. Homes were built on the dried riverbed that used to form the border, and were technically located in both countries. The result of the ruling devastated the town of Rio Rico, almost everyone who lived there who could prove their birth, left and moved north with their newly found American citizenship. Moreover, it proved to be an excellent loophole for a whole lot of people in northern Mexico. Suddenly, in the 1980s, hundreds of people began to go to Rio Rico to try and get birth certificates

Starting point is 00:09:32 showing that they were born there, as it was a free ticket to the United States. Town administrators were actually very strict about issuing any documentation showing that people were born in Rio Rico because they didn't want to ruin things for those who were actually born there. That didn't, however, prevent an illegal market from developing for forged birth and baptismal certificates. People not only from Mexico, but Europe and even China tried to claim that they had been born in Rio Rico. Almost all of these attempts were unsuccessful. Today, Rio Rico is just another small border community. There's some historical markers that indicate the unique history of the town, but that's about it.

Starting point is 00:10:11 If you are ever in South Texas or the northern part of the state of Tamalipas, you can visit Rio Rico. There isn't much to see, but it does have the distinction of being the only community that was part of the United States and later became a part of Mexico. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I have a couple of reviews today. The first comes from listener Schooner 85 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, terrific. Love the quick to the point information for so many incredible subjects.

Starting point is 00:10:47 Keep up the good work. Thanks, Schooner. I'll keep making them if you keep listening. The next comes from listener Emmy Metzler over on Spotify. She wrote, Hello, Ni Hao, Vanakam from Singapore. I have caught up on all the episodes now. Thanks, Emmy.

Starting point is 00:11:01 We can now officially open our Completionist Club chapter in Singapore. I have a nice spot picked out on Orchard Road and we will have our own private hawker stand. Remember, if you leave a review or send a boostergram, you two can have it right on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Town That Forgot It Was Part of the United States

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