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Mexican Borderlands

710 Words3 Pages

In class last week, we discussed how a border is defined not merely as a political line dividing nations, but an undefined barrier that exists between different cultures. A borderland in Texas, I thought, was just cities or towns that just happen to reside along the border after the U.S. acquisition of Texas in 1848. I never thought much of the community within the borderland areas other than believing that most communities there had a deep-rooted Mexican culture. However, Gloria Anzaldúa best defined the border as, “a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary.” The community within the borderlands is not as simply defined as a borderline. Furthermore, Anzaldúa describes the border in her book Borderlands/La …show more content…

Chicano writers created fictional tales related to the Chicano movement. Moreover, Mexican-American male writers also wrote about the injustices against the Chicano community such as the farm workers. According to the introduction to Borderlands/La Frontera, the Mexican culture was seen as “explicitly inferior to the U.S. culture.” Though there were movements being driven by males of Mexican descent, their message did not speak for the women of the community. Not one mention of how social injustices affected the women of Mexican descent was stated. Chicana writers did not begin to become predominant until the 1970s with writer Berta Omelas in 1975. In the 1960s, the Chicana Feminist Movement began to take hold. Those involved wanted to speak out about the social injustices of gender just as the Women's Suffrage Movements had done. Moreover, women of the Chicano community desired to flee from the patriarchal notion of their community. In the preface of Borderlands/La Frontera, Anzaldúa describes the border as an area of contradiction. Men within the Chicano community felt that they were done a social injustice by “white” citizens. Moreover, women who were “white” felt that they were done an injustice by white males. The contradiction of the border, stated in the preface, is due in part to the Chicano community believing that they were better than the “white” community. Furthermore, the men of the Chicano community had done a gender injustice to the

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1022 Words | 5 Pages

John’s book, like all others, holds various strengths and weaknesses. Largely, St. John’s thesis is supported by offering a varying look at the borderlands throughout multiple decades and discussing the progression of change as it occurred across eras and regions. St. John provides interesting historical details that would otherwise probably not be known to the reader, such as her statement in the Introduction that the desert border running from west of El Paso to the Pacific Ocean did not conform to any previously existing geographic features. This fact, like others provided in “Line in the Sand,” might not seem interesting but indeed is in the sense that it forces the reader to consider it and to contextualize it based on what the reader knows of the border. For example, reading this fact, I was forced to contemplate how the border boundary was formed west of Texas and how the line that is in place to day came to be.

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895 Words | 4 Pages

In her book, From Out of the Shadows, Viki L. Ruiz argues the contributions to history that was made by farm workers, activists, leaders, volunteers, feminists, flappers, and Mexican women. She explores the lives of the innovative and brave immigrant women, their goals and choices they make, and how they helped develop the Latino American community. While their stories were kept in the shadows, Ruiz used documented investigations and interviews to expose the accounts of these ‘invisible’ women, the communities they created, and the struggles they faced in hostile environments. The narrative and heartfelt approach used by Ruiz give the reader the evidence to understand as well as the details to identify or empathize with.

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1348 Words | 6 Pages

The fact that these Anglo men do not even want to take a glance at the Mexican women because they are not important shows their real position in the eyes of those who actually had a voice. Another example of a negative stereotype regarding the Mexican worker is that it is in their biological nature to not understand the fundamentals of learning how to read and write. For instance when Jose was speaking with Don Santiago, their was a inference of not being capable of learning. For instance the narrative states, “Not that Jose thought of it as a privilege, his simple mind recoiling at the very thought of penetrating its mysteries “(175). The author’s remind the reader that peons were simple-minded humans who

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741 Words | 3 Pages

Basically, what the authors tries to show is a strong abandonment of the government to the chronic gang violence and a big division of two group of people. “Sociologist Buford Farris likewise described the social relation between Anglos and Mexican Americans in the mid-sixties as a model of two almost separate systems”2. The division of these two group of people made that a small group of businessmen “controlled all commences and development”3. In the second part, the author gives a description of how the Chicano Movement starts getting Mexican American students and politically aware youth workers and to form the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO). Later, the women movement is going to be added to this group since they were not strong enough or they were not considered equal as the Chicanos.

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1149 Words | 5 Pages

Situated near the U.S.-Mexico border during the early twentieth century is the fictional setting of Fort Jones, the outskirts of which is where Americo Paredes’ short story “Macaria’s Daughter” takes place. Emblematic of the disappropriation of Mexican land, as well as the increased marginalization of the Mexican people, the overbearing presence of Fort Jones reveals the struggle for preservation that characterizes the Mexican-American community of the story. “Macaria’s Daughter” is the tragic account of what happens in a small community when the upholding of Mexican values and institutions, and opposition to Anglo-American culture, become more important than a young woman’s life. In this essay, I will argue that “Macaria’s Daughter” is a text

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285 Words | 2 Pages

In, “The Book of Unknown Americans” by Christina Henriquez, the central theme projected by the author is the harmful impacts of stereotypes on the experiences of immigrants. The Toro and Rivera families are similar in that they are first-generation Americans. With this, they are constantly subject to violent stereotypes. Mayor toro, the youngest son of the Toro family, regularly found himself at the forefront of racial aggression, “I turned around and saw Garret Miller grinning at me...’[I’m] going home,’ I said. ‘Back to Mexico?’

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1731 Words | 7 Pages

Cohen’s fourth thesis talks about the differences among groups of people in areas of race, gender, etc. and how those differences can create monsters in society. Unauthorized immigrants often get placed into a “different” or “unwanted” group and that causes them to face unfairness in society. “How Immigrants Become ‘Other’” correlates to Cohen’s thesis because unauthorized immigrants can be made into monsters due to differences in race and legal status. The group of unauthorized immigrants can become alienated in society, and the people themselves are sometimes referred to as “illegal aliens.”

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938 Words | 4 Pages

The immigrants entering the United States throughout its history have always had a profound effect on American culture. However, the identity of immigrant groups has been fundamentally challenged and shaped as they attempt to integrate into U.S. society. The influx of Mexicans into the United States has become a controversial political issue that necessitates a comprehensive understanding of their cultural themes and sense of identity. The film Mi Familia (or My Family) covers the journey and experiences of one Mexican-American (or “Chicano”) family from Mexico as they start a new life in the United States. Throughout the course of the film, the same essential conflicts and themes that epitomize Chicano identity in other works of literature

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504 Words | 3 Pages

“Aztlan, Cibola and Frontier New Spain” is a chapter in Between the Conquests written by John R. Chavez. In this chapter Chavez states how Chicano and other indigenous American ancestors had migrated and how the migration help form an important part of the Chicanos image of themselves as a natives of the south. “The Racial Politics behind the Settlement of New Mexico” is the second chapter by Martha Menchaca.

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626 Words | 3 Pages

The Chicano movement derives from early oppression of Mexicans. Robert Rodrigo, author of “The Origins and History of the Chicano Movement” acknowledges that, “At the end of the Mexican American war in 1848, Mexico lost half of its territory to the United States and its Mexican residents became ‘strangers in their own lands.’” In stating this fact, Rodrigo exemplifies the United States’ relations with Mexico, that, ultimately, led to their oppression. Moreover, these early relations led to social injustice for the Mexican community. Carlos Muñoz, author of The Chicano Movement: Mexican American History and the Struggle for Equality reports, “As a conquered people, beginning with the Texas-Mexico War of 1836 and the U.S. Mexico War of 1846-48, they have

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1143 Words | 5 Pages

Through this characterization, the author suggests that the inhabitants are victims of the Borderlands, not only in a geographical sense, but more notably mental. The intention of the Borderlands is to infect the inhabitant so as to allow the inhabitant to bear negative symptoms regardless of physical departure. With this, the Borderlands inhabits the inhabitant. In addition to personifying the region to depict the nature of the Borderland-inhabitant relationship, the author strategically embeds various languages and elements of culture to highlight the incongruity that inhabitants bear under the conditions of the lands. For example, the

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899 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout “The Mexican in Fact, Fiction, and Folkore” examines the term “Mexican” as it is applied in Southwest literature and argues the Anglo society has made a conscious effort to misrepresent Mexicans (Rios 60). He states the people of Mexican descent are viewed as un-American because they are perceived as filthy, lazy, and dumb. Ricatelli adds to the conversation of Mexican stereotypes by examining the literary expressions of Chicanas and Mexicanas in the literature of both the United States and Mexico. In “The Sexual Stereotypes of The Chicana in Literature” Ricatelli explains how in Yankee literature, the Chicana is referred to as the “fat breeder, who is a baby factory” meanwhile the Mexican is described as an “amoral, lusty hot tamale” (Ricatelli 51). He makes note of these stereotypes in order to highlight the ethnocentric and nativist points of view that dominated Anglo literature.

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750 Words | 3 Pages

Even though culture division is a part of the mestiza consciousness, borderlands acknowledge the cultural roots of the Latino writers, which allow them to embrace their heritages in their writing. Mestiza is a Spanish word meaning mix race and these writers embrace all of who they are in their stories and showing how their different cultures coexist in their characters. Latin American writers such as Judith Ortiz Cofer of Hispanic heritage and Sandra Cisneros of a Puerto Rican heritage incorporated their culture with the American culture. Bothe authors use Spanish words within the writing, but before they are introduced to you as the readers, you have an understanding of the situation in the previous dialog. An example would be Cisneros, story “DIRT”, where a young girl tells a story of a typical

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1132 Words | 5 Pages

2.What Material is studied (based on book evidence) Focusing on a particular area of the U.S.-Mexico border, Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, Ethnography at the Border brings out the complexity of the border experience through the voices of the diverse people who inhabit the region. In a series of ethnographic essays that investigate specific aspects of border existence, the contributors provide rich and detailed insights into such topics

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1054 Words | 5 Pages

In the poem “To live in the Borderlands means you”, the borderlands become a place of change, such as changing from just one culture or race into a diverse culture or race and not-belonging. (Singh, A., & Schmidt, P. 2000). The poem describes how the author’s own background ethnicity people, mixicanas, identifies people like her, chicanas, as “split or mixture that means to betray your word and they deny “Anlo inside you.” (Anzaldua, F. 1987). The poem describes that the borderland is a place of contradiction, such as of home not being a home.

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