The Mexican and U. S. governments settled the location of the border with the signing of the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. But long before there was a border, Indian communities had settlements in the areas between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. In the seventeenth century, Spanish settlers established the same area as the northern frontier of New Spain and then of Mexico after its War of Independence in 1810. In the Spanish colonial period, this area was a frontier that attracted the most adventuresome explorers and dedicated missionaries. As Dr. Ceballos points out, residents of these towns like Laredo felt a strong allegiance to a Mexican identity.
Many small towns established before the creation of the border still dot the Texas Valley.
Shortly after their rise, these merchants began to acquire extensive tracts of land in Texas and to assert dominion over the earlier Spanish and Mexican settlers. This created an environment of cultural and economic conflict that characterizes the border to this day. During the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, the border population increased significantly as many moved across the border seeking refuge. Migration patterns were established between particular states in Mexico and particular regions or towns on the border. For example, refugees from central Mexico who settled in the Texas valley were likely to be joined later by immigrants from their hometowns.