Listening to Laredo
A Border City in A
Globalized age
By Mehnaaz Momen
University of Arizona Press
Publication Date: 09/12/2023
$35.00 paperback;
Electronic edition available
320 pages
In Listening to Laredo, TAMIU political science professor Mehnaaz Momen examines the issues of growth, globalization, and identity to trace the evolution of the City’s cultural and economic infrastructure and its strength to adapt to the rapid, transformative changes that have made it the nation’s largest inland port.
From December 2018 to March 2020, Momen conducted in-depth interviews with 75 Laredoans, many whose oral histories resonated with deeply rooted historic and cultural footnotes and their centuries-old familial ties with Nuevo Laredo and Mexico.
According to Momen, those interviews capture the proud ownership of an archetypal border city that has time and again resurrected itself from the misfortunes of natural calamity or manmade policy decisions.
“What was surprising to me,” she reflected, “was how the interviewees told me part of their stories and how they connected like pieces of puzzles. I had a lot of information, but I could see major themes emerging from the interviews.”
Momen said she spent the Covid lockdown days transcribing and analyzing the interviews, completing a first draft of the book by December 2021.
“I got the book contract in June 2022 and submitted the final manuscript in August 2002. Then the cycles of editing began,” she said.
A native of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Momen moved to Laredo from Cleveland in 2002 to teach at Texas A&M International University.
“I always loved the historic feel of the city and its rich heritage, however, I could not make sense of its urban growth patterns. All the theories I had learned in my Urban Studies program felt inadequate for the then-second-fastest growing city with its core of Spanish plazas, which remained underutilized, and the growing warehouses that surrounded the city. There were no delineable suburbs, and yet there was a striking north/south divide. I wanted to study the city through the lenses of urban theory, so I wrote a few articles on Laredo. But it was much later in 2017 that I started working on a book-length manuscript. I was inspired by academic curiosity about the city at first, but after living here for two decades, it feels like an intellectual responsibility to understand the city and share my frame of analysis with a broader audience,” she said.
She said her original plan was to contrast urban theory with material from the interviews of local residents, but that she soon knew that the local narratives about the border deserved exclusive attention.
“The local and national implications of a border region are not only different but often in conflict. When Laredo emerged as the largest inland port of the nation, global trade eclipsed all other frames of viewing the border,” she said, adding, “In the literary and cultural spheres, as well as in academia, the border has seldom been defined by the people who live in that space. It was fascinating how the different aspects of their stories were connected organically, which allowed me to weave a comprehensive story of Laredo. This is one of the main contributions of my work, namely to bring out the voices from the border to define the problems and possibilities of border cities,” she noted.
Momen recalled an initial reluctance to settling in Laredo.
“It took me a number of years to look at Laredo without preconceived notions even though I was living here. The cultural stereotype of the border is ingrained in all of us. I want my readers to see Laredo from the eyes of the people who live there by choice. We always hear about the dangers of the border, but the border is fragile, the border is beautiful, and the border is evolving. The border is full of possibilities, especially because it is always a little wild. For the people who live on the border, it was historically an abstract notion that had legal and political restrictions but did not obstruct cultural and economic exchanges. It is global trade and the politics surrounding the border wall that have turned the border into a concrete obstruction that has significantly curtailed economic and social flows between the two sides of the river. This hasn’t made the border safer; rather, it is stripping away the unique features of border areas,” she elaborated.
She pointed out in Listening to Laredo that although she has lived here for more than two decades, she still considers herself an outsider.
“With the exception of my home city, Dhaka, where I grew up and lived for 25 years, Laredo is the only other city where I have lived so long, especially as an adult. I was an outsider in Laredo in all senses of the term. As an outsider, perhaps I was able to perceive a lot more anomalies of the city than a local person. The city is 95% Hispanic, but has a stable history of intermarriages and has always made room for outsiders. In Laredo vocabulary, the outsider/insider divide is neither national nor ethnic, but rather who is part of the community. In that sense, my relationship with the city changed because of this book,” she said, continuing, “Laredo became a home for me through this process. I was very conscious that I was writing the stories of a number of people with whom I don’t have a shared memory or shared history. I was bringing my academic and other life experiences to connect their stories to a framework of analysis, but my voice is not the nucleus. It is important to note that although I am an observer and a participant, this story belongs to the people of Laredo.”
She concluded, “The new identities of Laredo as the largest inland port and chaotic border have put the city in national limelight. At the core, Laredo is a thriving and resilient community. I hope people of Laredo get to decide the future and direction of their city.”
(Mehnaaz Momen is a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Texas A&M International University. Her research interests include citizenship, immigration policy, urban theory, public space, political satire, and marginality. She holds an MPA (Masters in Public Administration) from Dalhousie University in Halifax Canada and a Ph.D. from Cleveland State University. She is the author of The Paradox of Citizenship in American Politics: Ideals and Reality and Political Satire, Postmodern Reality, and the Trump Presidency: Who Are We Laughing At? She is currently working on articles using materials from the Listening to Laredo interviews that were not incorporated in the book due to word limits. She is also working with Webb County to collect primary information about county services. She hopes to expand research to other border cities to explore their growth patterns. She aspires to start an alternate conversation about the border, which acknowledges the prospects of the border and border people beyond the myopic view of disorder and trade calculations.)
Praises for Listening to Laredo:
Dr. Norma E. Cantú, author of Canícula:Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, writes of Momen’s work, “What is a border town? What is a border? Questions that Mehnaaz Momen asks and answers in her brilliant Listening to Laredo: A Border
City in a Globalized Age. Through insightful analysis of the sociopolitical and economic realities of this most unique urban space whose cultural reality straddles two countries, Momen uncovers Laredo’s critical truths and social structures.”
Saskia Sassen, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and the author of Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, credits Momen with “writing a rewarding case study of globalization’s restructuring of identity in the penumbral borderlands as well as the resistance against it.”
