Stemming from four years of ethnographic research media analysis of over 750 national news
articles published in the 2010s and decades of the author's professional and personal
immersion in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas Rhetoric and Reality illuminates a place at
the heart of our national conversation: the U.S.-Mexico border. K. Jill Fleuriet contrasts the
rhetoric of national political and media discourse with that of local border leaders in
economics health care politics education law enforcement philanthropy and activism. As
she deconstructs the common narrative of a border in need of external intervention to control
corruption poverty sickness and violence Fleuriet engagingly illustrates the range of
regional organizing local development strategies and community responses in the borderlands
that ultimately situate the Rio Grande Valley as the true North of the U.S. national
compass-where the Valley goes the rest of the country soon will follow. Rhetoric and Reality
asks us to question our own assumptions especially about those areas that drive national
decisions about resource allocation economic development and national security.Rhetoric and
Reality is an important ethnographic study of the deeply misunderstood increasingly vilified
Rio Grande Valley located on the Texas-Mexico border. Fleuriet presents a balanced
counter-narrative that that shows the region as one of growth innovation complexity and rich
with meaning. Rhetoric and Reality is an excellent example of place-based reflexive
scholarship appropriate for use in courses on border theory applied anthropology and research
methods. Written clearly and crisply with a wide readership in mind Rhetoric andReality is
mandatory reading for those wanting to better understand the US-Mexico border region and the
people who live there. --Margaret A. Graham Professor and Chair The University of Texas Rio
Grande Valley USA This is an important book as it describes life in the Rio Grande Valley
rather than 'on the border.' The notion of 'the border' as an open range in need of external
help is challenged as the author illustrates the wide range of leadership and programmatic
change occurring in the Rio Grande Valley. --Roberto R. Alvarez Professor Emeritus of Ethnic
Studies University of California San Diego USA
