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Between July of 1891 and May 1892, the Mexican Land and Colonization Company, a British enterprise with a concession over the major part of Baja California's wastelands, laid 27 kilometers of rail of what was to be known as the Peninsular Railway with the expectation of opening up lands to cultivation and settlement, and attracting investment. But the train's starting point was San Quintin, a shallow bay ill-suited to becoming an important shipping port and, as far as the tracks had been built, led to nowhere. However, the objective of this paper is not to analyze the reasons for which the railway project did not come to a happy termination. Rather, it focuses on the controversies and conspiracies which surrounded its construction, arising from the struggle between the United States and Great Britain for predominance in Mexico's far northwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tamaulipas presents a long tradition of rural migration to the United States in search of farm employment. Until the eighties, Tamaulipas' undocumented workers crossed the border easily. However, starting in the nineties, as a result of a restrictive migration policy centered exclusively on the "supply-side", crossing the border has become difficult. As a result, most immigrants are using the services of "smugglers". This paper analyses the impact of the militarization of the frontier on the emigration of Tamaulipas' illegal rural workers seeking farm jobs in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]