Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso, Texas

Rivers have frequently made convenient borders between neighboring groups. But what happens when years and years of erosion and shifting weather patterns cause a river to change its course? What happens when someone builds a dam or irrigation controls that alter the river’s path? It had been a nearly universally-practiced convention that with the gradual and natural changes to a river over the course of many years, the boundary also gradually moves, but that sudden or man-made alterations would not change the location of a border. But what happens when…

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