Today we welcome a guest blog post from Karen R. Roybal, author of Archives of Dispossession: Recovering the Testimonios of Mexican American Herederas, 1848–1960, on the importance of archival research. One method of American territory expansion in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands was the denial of property rights to Mexican landowners, which led to dispossession. Many historical accounts overlook this colonial impact on Indigenous and Mexican peoples, and existing studies that do tackle this subject tend to privilege the male experience. In Archives of Dispossession, Karen R. Roybal recenters the focus of dispossession on women, arguing that gender,...