The South Texas Border, 1900-1920: Photographs from the Robert Runyon Collection

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Go directly to the collection, The South Texas Border, 1900-1920: Photographs from the Robert Runyon Collection, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection.

Students can use South Texas Border to learn more about the Mexican Revolution while also practicing a variety of historical thinking skills. The collection's photographs can be used in fun timeline projects that encourage students to think chronologically and to research the Mexican Revolution in other resources. Other projects direct students to analyze the role images play in shaping public opinion and to examine the United States's military response to raids along the border. Finally, teachers can draw upon the visual nature of the collection to help students comprehend what it was like to live in the midst of the violence of a revolution, so far removed from most students' lives today.

Students can create a timeline of the Mexican Revolution to practice thinking of history chronologically. To ascertain the major events of the revolution, students can use the special presentation, "The Mexican Revolution: Conflict in Matamaros", resources about the revolution referenced there, and other materials. Then have them search the collection with the names of Mexican and American military leaders, such as Villa, Madero, Carranza, Blanco, and Pershing, incorporating the images they find into their timelines. They can also illustrate their timelines with photographs depicting battles in Northeastern Mexico. They can further develop their timelines by going beyond the geographic and chronological scope of Runyon's photographs to include such international episodes as the Tampico Affair, the siege of Vera Cruz, Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, and John J. Pershing's military expedition into Mexico. Finally, the timeline can be expanded to illustrate the place of the Mexican Revolution in world affairs by including other important events of the time, such as those surrounding World War I.

General Venustiano Carranza, Colonel A.P. Blocksom, et.al., meeting on International Bridge, November 30, 1915.

Historical Comprehension

Charity House, refugees.

With some inference and imagination, students can use the collection's photographs of the Mexican Revolution to understand what it was like for people to live in the midst of a violent revolutionary movement. Search on wagons, and charity house for images of civilian refugees mingling with the military as they flee Monterrey, and others seeking aid from the Charity House across the border in Brownsville. Repercussions of violence also appear in photographs of the dead, wounded, and incarcerated; search on prisoners and war casualties.

Students can write an essay on the bitterness of this revolution based on their analysis of these images. Alternatively, students can imagine themselves a civilian resident of Monterrey or Matamoros during the battles there and write a journal entry or short story reflecting this perspective and experience.

Historical Analysis and Interpretation

Students can analyze images in this collection to see how the use and audience of an image can determine its meaning and impact. Have students search on land distribution for images documenting a land distribution ceremony. The redistribution of land to the poor, or land reform, was one of the fundamental goals of the Mexican Revolution. Yet, this was a controversial issue even among the Constitutionalists who disciplined their own military leaders for redistributing land without official approval. One of these leaders was General Blanco who is pictured on the right in a ceremony in which he gave peasants land deeds for Los Borregos, a plantation he had seized outside of Matamaros. The government was angered by Blanco's initiative and transferred him to Western Mexico. Share this background with your students and have them analyze the photographs with the following questions:

Lucio Blanco and land distribution ceremony, 1913.

• Some of these images portray peasants with land deeds. What effect would the circulation of these photographs have had upon owners of large estates?
• How might these photographs have enlisted support for or opposition to the Revolution?
• Why would the central government have been alarmed by field commanders such as Blanco distributing lands they had seized?

Copy Photo: Cremation.

Some of Runyon's photographs were sold to Americans as postcards, others were used in American newspapers, while still others, found by searching on Lone Star, helped to promote land speculation. How might these different uses have changed the way Runyon took his photographs? What is the purpose of a postcard? What aspects of the Revolution would be appropriate for a postcard? Which aspects would not? What is the purpose of newspaper images? What is the purpose of promotional images? How do these considerations affect the way you look at these images and the inferences you make from them?

Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making

Shipping casket containing Private Anthony Kraft, killed September 13, 1915.

Private Arthur Kraft, a young enlisted man, was assigned military duty on the South Texas border. He had only been there four months when he was killed by insurgents during a raid. This photograph of Kraft's casket aroused public concern at the time about the United States' retaliation against raids on the Mexican border. It can be used today by teachers to engage students in a discussion about the United States's most appropriate course of action in response to these raids during the Mexican Revolution. Teachers can structure discussion around the following questions:

• As a U.S. official deciding what course of action to take in response to the raids, what factors would you need to take into consideration?
• What are the alternatives to a military response? Which course of action do you think would have been the best?
• What pressure might you expect to come from the public after seeing this photograph in local and national newspapers?
• Should public pressure affect decisions about international incidents?
• Are there issues in the news today that are similar to the Kraft case?

The limitations of Runyon's photographic record of the Mexican Revolution engender interesting questions that provoke further research of the war in other resources:

• Do Runyon's photographs comprise an accurate representation of the Revolution? Or do they distort the movement through the desire to sway U.S. public opinion for or against the Federales or Constitutionalists?
• Is Runyon's record of the Revolution in Northeastern Mexico and the South Texas border reflective of the Revolution throughout Mexico and along other parts of the Mexican border?

Copy Photo: Pancho Villa, Alvaro Obregon and John J. Pershing, August 27, 1914.

Alternatively, students may use the photograph of Francisco "Pancho" Villa with General Pershing as a starting point for research into these two individuals and their respective governments. What can students find out from the collection? What more do they need to know to get the complete picture? What search words can they formulate by looking at the collection? Teachers may want to assign several students to examine the New York Times or other newspapers for contemporary accounts of Pershing's American Expeditionary Force and its pursuit of Villa in Northeast Mexico. How did America's incursion into Mexico affect diplomatic relations between the two countries?