TheHorcón Tract was a parcel of land surrounded by an oxbow bend of the Rio Grande, including the village ofRio Rico, Texas, that inadvertently defaulted to Mexican administration with the passage of time after an irrigation company in 1906 dug an unapproved cut across the oxbow to change the course of the river.[1] The issue, which was not technically a dispute as both sides were in agreement about its legal status upon its discovery, was resolved by the 1970 treaty which ceded the land to Mexico, but the official handover did not take place until 1977.
Numerous border treaties are jointly administered by theInternational Boundary and Water Commission, which was established in 1889 to maintain the border, allocate river waters between the two nations, and provide forflood control and water sanitation. Once viewed as a model of international cooperation, in recent decades the IBWC has been heavily criticized as an institutional anachronism, by-passed by modern social, environmental and political issues.[2] In particular, jurisdictional issues regardingwater rights in theRio Grande Valley have caused tension between farmers in the border region and sparked a "water war,"[3] according to Mexican political scientistArmand Peschard-Sverdrup.[4]
^Robert J. McCarthy, Executive Authority, Adaptive Treaty Interpretation, and the International Boundary and Water Commission, U.S.-Mexico, 14-2 U. Denv. Water L. Rev. 197(Spring 2011) (also available for free download athttps://ssrn.com/abstract=1839903).
^Peschard-Sverdrup, Armand (January 7, 2003).U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Water Management: The Case of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo (1 ed.). Center for Strategic & International Studies.ISBN978-0892064243.
