Borderlands: facts and fictions

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Borderlandsfacts and fictions
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• A border is
• an imaginary line between
• two nations, separating the
• imaginary rights of one
• from the imaginary rights
• of another
• Ambrose Bierce

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An elastic geo-cultural landscape

• El Norte
• La Línea
• The Southwest
• Aztlán
• The Frontier
• Desert Country
• The Margin
• The Edge

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A meeting place of

• Two countries
• Two cultures
• Two ways of life
• Two levels of consumption
• Two infrastructures

Inherent inequality Inherent opportunity
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The border is both

• Hard realities
• politics
• economics
• legislation
• demographics
• environment
• law enforcement
• national security

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• Soft expressions
• language
• emotions
• rituals
• art
• work
• memory
• community
• hope

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The Border is a tangible artifact imposed upon
the human populations and the natural geography
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The Border is an intercultural world unto
itself
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Views of the Border

• Romantic
• something falls off you when you cross the
  border into Mexico, and suddenly the landscape
  hits you with nothing between it, desert and
  mountains and vultures
• William Burroughs

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• Harsh
• On the US side everything was calm and
  reassuring, everything uniform.on the other
  side, a swarming mysterious world where furtive
  figures prowled on every corner of darkness and
  one sensed human heat, and gestures, and
  whispers.
• Georges Simenon

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Views of the Border

• Parody
• Americans have not looked for a Mexico in
  Mexico they have looked for their obsessions,
  enthusiasms, phobias, hopes, interests---and
  these are what they have found
• Octavio Paz

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BorderLore(stories of the people)

• Vernacular cultural knowledge and practices
• Groups loosely or formally organized (ethnicity,
  occupation, religion, age, etc)
• informal learning
• Artistic communication
• Verbal, Material, Customary things people say,
  make, do.

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An extensive inventory

• Ancient /indigenous

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Spanish cultural imports
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Mexican National Culture
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U.S. Western Culture (mythology)
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Popular (mass) Culture both sides
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Social Stratification

• Working class and acomodados
• Rural and urban
• English and Spanish monolingual
• Bilingual
• Natives and Settlers
• Mexicanos and Americanos
• Desert rats and day-trippers
• Ecologists and Developers
• Outlaws and Law Enforcement agents

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Cultural Fusion..Cultural Conflict
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Regional Variation
Cultural Clusters

• Lower Rio Grande or Tejano Culture
• (from both Laredos to Gulf)
• West Texan (El Paso and Juarez)
• New Mexican Hispano
• Cultura Norteña
• (Sonora, Sinaloa, Durango beef and cheese
  country)
• Baja and Alta California

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Hybrid Inventions

• Speech
• New Words
• gringo, wetback, dogo
• Caló Me explico Federico?
• Me entiendes Mendez?
• Mock Spanish
• (Casa de Laundry)

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Spanglish / code-switchingÁbrela tú. Por qué
yo? Tú tienes las keys. Yo te las entregué a ti.
Además, I left mine adentro.
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Vernacular Foods

• Quesadilla Imuris, Sonora
• Margaritas Tijuana, BC
• Chimichanga Tucson, AZ
• Fajitas San Antonio, Texas

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Folk Objects

• Vernacular Architecture
• Decorative Arts
• Religious Folk Art
• Tourist Artifacts

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Customs

• Quinceañeras
• Weddings
• Baptism
• Funerals
• Barbacoas
• Curanderas

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The border happens in and through

• State Power
• Imagination
• Desire
• Folk Life
• Work

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The border produces

• Millions of workers essential to the economic
  machines of North American agriculture, tourism,
  and industry farmworkers, low-tech labor,
  dishwashers, gardeners, maids..
• but also a military machine of low-intensity
  conflict INS helicopters, Border Patrol agents,
  infrared cameras, detention centers, books of
  regulations

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Border is also.a discourse of sadness

• Violence and death are dimensions of everyday
  life in the border zone

Women of Juarez Desert Crossers Drug-related
deaths Toxic illnesses
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Factual Border Matters

• 2,000 mile stretch
• 4 U.S. states
• (CA, AZ, NM, TX)
• 6 Mexican states
• (BC, SON, CH, COH, NL, TML)
• 60 mile zone from the line on each side
• Natural barriers Rio Grande, Sonoran and
  Chihuahuan Deserts

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Population

• 12 million people in border region
• On U.S. side 19 below poverty line (13
  nationally)
• On U.S. side 50 are Hispanic
• Mexico border states poverty rate is 28 (37
  nationally)
• In TX and NM 300,000 people live in 1,300
  colonias
• 12 million people living in US illegally
• Approximately 6.2 million (56) are from Mexico

• Health problems
• Sanitation
• Pollution
• Movement
• Access

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Crossings

• Most frequently crossed international border in
  the world
• 350 million people cross legally every year ---
  1 million cross illegally
• 45 agricultural workers in US are here illegally
• 12,000 trucks cross border daily (up 63 since
  1994 when NAFTA was enacted)

• 660, 000 people cross every day legally
• 35 points of entry
• 20 crossing into US are on foot
• In 2004, pedestrian crossing in Texas
• alone was 20 million

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Economy

• US is Mexicos 1 trading partner
• Mexico is USs 2 trading partner
• 795 million traded every day
• 2,7000 maquiladoras in Mex. Border states
• Average maquiladora salary 45 per week

Average maquiladora work week 48 hours
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Historical Border

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Chronology of a Fence

• 1819
• Adams- Onis Treaty
• between Spain and US
• 1821
• Mexican Independence
• Mexico permits Texas settlement
• 1836
• Texas Independence
• 1846
• Mexico-US War

1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 1853 Gadsden
Purchase
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• 1849
• Gold discovered in CA
• 1882
• Chinese Exclusionary Act
• (railroad and mining workers)
• 1904
• Border Patrol established
• 1910
• Mexican Revolution begins
• 1921
• Immigration Act (Quotas)
• 1924
• Border stations established
• 1942
• Bracero Program

1948 Mexican-American GI Forum 1953 Operation
Wetback deports 3.8 million 1962 Cesar Chavez
organizes farm workers in Delano, CA
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• 1964
• First Maquiladoras (BIP)
• Bracero Program repealed
• 1965
• Immigration and Naturalization Act
• (family reunification / skills)
• 1982
• Peso devaluation crisis in MX
• 1986
• IRCA (hiring of illegal aliens a crime)
• 1994
• NAFTA enacted
• Zapatista Army rebellion
• Operation Gatekeeper
• 1996
• Immigration Reform Act

BP agents 11,000 (89 at US- Mex border) Bush
at the end of 2008, 6,000 more agents 2005 473
migrant deaths 2,570 rescued Surveillance
includes electronic sensors, night vision
scopes, aircraft, ground vehicles Current
security contract RFP 2 billion
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Major arguments Against Immigration

• --Security
• --Taxes
• --Crime
• --Welfare
• --Jobs
• --Ecology
• --Language
• --Culture

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Major arguments For Immigration

• --Remittances (12 Billion)
• --Globalization -Jobs
• --Family
• --Wealth Disparity
• --History
• --Exploitation/Crime
• --Culture

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Words cant hurt me?

• Illegal alien? (beaner?)
• Illegal immigrant? (wetback?)
• Undocumented worker? (greaser?)
• OTM Other than Mexican

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Effects of criminalization discourse

• Create class of persons,
• --legal
• --illegal
• Social reality vs. legal status
• Emphasis on control
• Rise of oppositional moral discourse
• --deserving v. undeserving
• --just v. unjust deportations
• Administrative apparatus to unmake illegality

Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects Illegal Aliens
and the Making of Modern America
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The border is a placebut it is also an idea

• Some people think border is a perfect metaphor
  to talk about identity.

Some people think border is a perfect metaphor
to talk about the conditions that frame life in
the world today
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Border v. Borderlands

• A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip
  along a steep edge.
• A borderland is a vague and undetermined place
  created by the emotional residue of an unnatural
  boundary

Gloria Anzaldúa
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For Anzaldúa, there are two border territories

• The actual physical borderland that I am
  dealing withis the US Southwest-Mexican border
  The psychological borderlands, the sexual
  borderlands and the spiritual borderlands are not
  particular to the Southwest..in fact.

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• the Borderlands are physically present wherever
  two or more cultures edge each other, where
  people of different races occupy the same
  territory, where under, lower, middle and upper
  classes touch, where the space between two
  individuals shrinks with intimacy

Borderlands/La Frontera The New Mestiza, 1987
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Why metaphor?

• Metaphors are pervasive in everyday life
• Our ordinary conceptual system is fundamentally
  metaphorical in nature
• Metaphors structure how we perceive, think, act

A Concept argument Conceptual Metaphor
argument is war Everyday Language He attacked
every point Ive never won an argument with
you She shot down all my points His
criticism was right on target
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Metaphors.

• Enliven ordinary language
• Encourage interpretation
• Maximum meaning with minimum words
• Create new meanings
• Express things for which there are no easy words

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Guillermo Gomez - Peñas border metaphors

• I live smack in the fissure between two worlds,
  in the infected wound

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Too much metaphor?

• Anthropologist Alejandro Lugo thinks the phrase
  border crossing as a metaphor for identity has
  become overly optimistic.
• Border inspections are actually more pervasive
  than border crossings in the lives of most
  people at the physical border.

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Luis Alfaros border dilemmas
I am a Queer Chicano A native in no land An
orphan of Aztlan The pocho son of farm worker
parents The Mexicans only want me when they want
me to talk about Mexico But what about Mexican
Queers in LA? The Queers only want me when they
need to add color add spice like salsa
picante on the side
With one foot on each side of the border not the
border between Mexico and the United States but
the border between Nationality and Sexuality I
search for a home in both yet neither one
believes that I exist.
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What kinds of border inspectionsand border
crossingshave you experienced?
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• Can the border withstand being a buzzword for
  theories of power, struggle, and connection?

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Developing a critical conscience about uses of
metaphor.

• What kinds of issues are border metaphors useful
  for?
• Are there instances in which this metaphor is not
  helpful?