ABSTRACT
Difference and social distance as they display themselves in the region of present-day Tijuana-San Diego were far from predestined. A number of factors came together to bring about the region’s social divisions that reveal themselves most overtly in the form of national difference. The making of the modern territorial states of Mexico and the United States has inevitably involved the production of national difference, as nation-state building and the production of boundaries-in both the physical and social senses-are inextricably intertwined (Conversi 1995; Kearney 1991; Manzo 1996; Paasi 1996). Had the location of the international boundary between Tijuana and San Diego been located north or south of the two cities, or had the political-geographical organization of what are today the United States and Mexico been different, the nature of the social distinctions and the breadth of the social distance that manifest themselves in San Diego-Tijuana would be something other than they are. That is not to say that social divisions based on race, class, and gender are not also present, and are not profoundly intertwined with national distinctions. Rather, it is merely to suggest that nationalism-at least in the context of the U.S.–Mexico boundary-is the most salient form of difference and, as such, embodies and helps to mask other forms of difference that underlie conflicts surrounding the international divide.
