Geraldo Cadava teaches in the history department at Northwestern University. He is the author of two books, Standing on Common Ground (2016), about the U.S.-Mexico border since World War II, and The Hispanic Republican (2021) about how the Republican Party developed a remarkably loyal base of Hispanic support since the 1960s. His research and teaching interests are broad and include Latinx, immigration, and borderlands history, and the relationship between the past and the present. At Northwestern, he has taught courses on Watergate, the musical Hamilton, and the history of the 2016 election.
This lecture will be about the evolution of the border between the United States and Mexico--and debates about that border--from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The bookends of the talk will be the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the U.S.-Mexico War, before which there was no border to speak of, and Donald Trump's chants of "Build the Wall" in the 21st century.