Alicia Gaspar de Alba,

University of California, Los Angeles

And

Alma Lopez

24 June 2011 at  Centre for Mexican Studies, University College Cork

Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Alma Lopez

Arizona State University

Resumen

Mediante el análisis espacial imaginario de Philip Wegner, el urbanismo mágico de Mike Davis y los objetos desplazados de Silvia Spitta se investigan las obras de Saúl Cuevas Barrioztlán (1999), Ensueños: (cuentos i estampas) (2003) y Desierto Mojado: Crónicas (inédita). Los espacios geográficos y temáticos desempeñan un papel muy importante en las obras de Cuevas, quien arrastra y desplaza objetos culturales que abarcan varios países como México, Estados Unidos, Paraguay y Sudáfrica.

Mediante el análisis espacial imaginario de Philip Wegner, el urbanismo mágico de Mike Davis y los objetos desplazados de Silvia Spitta se investigan las obras de Saúl Cuevas Barrioztlán (1999), Ensueños: (cuentos i estampas) (2003) y Desierto Mojado: Crónicas (inédita). Por medio de una trama transnacional que se extiende entre distintas fronteras se retrata un lugar creado que no pertenece ni a Estados Unidos ni a México y con el cual distintas voces cotidianas van de lo utópico a lo real con varios niveles lingüísticos, construyen imágenes mediante una transformación que esculpe a sus habitantes y viajeros.

Los espacios geográficos y temáticos desempeñan un papel muy importante en las obras de Cuevas, quien arrastrando y desplazando objetos culturales que abarcan varios países como México, Estados Unidos, Paraguay y Sudáfrica, pero se enfocan particularmente en la antigua Tenochtitlán, la moderna Ciudad de México (la Capirucha); los estados mexicanos de Durango, Guerrero, Veracruz, Nayarit y Zacatecas; los barrios metropolitanos angelinos de Van Nuys y Newport Beach (Gipper Park); el desierto en Phoenix (la Finiquera); el utópico Aztlán; las regiones sureñas de Paraná, Asunción, Buenos Aires, y al otro lado del Atlántico, en los Lagos de Esmeralda, Puerto Elizabeth en Sudáfrica. Todos ellos crean una imagen o una serie de mapas complejos donde el término mexicoamericanalatinoamericanoestadounidenseindigenistachicanizadoglobalizado, forma sus propios espacios: la Vidivianda, el espacio gastronómico; la Cartelera, el cinematográfico; el Pataeperro, el turístico; el Aquí me pongo a cantar, el musical; el Dientes de Serpiente y el literario filosófico. Dentro de estos espacios hay sitios específicos como Pilsen, Mission Cementery y San Juan de los Terreros. En Barrioztlán, Estampas i cuentos y Desierto Mojado, Cuevas narra su migración desde el alacranero Álvaro Obregón en Durango, la tierra teca de San Juan de la Tapia, Zacatecas, el cucarachero Torreón hasta la Tiajuana, donde Cuevas llega “al inframundo, repleto de suicidas” (Desierto 52), una urbe fronteriza donde:

me atrapa el tráfical de las cinco, las cinco en punto de la tarde. Welcome a la metrópolis fronteriza. Después de deambular perdido por colonias i barriadas nuevas, el vaivén i la gente dirigen mi andar al conocido boulevard Aguacaliente: Carnitas Uruapan, hipódromo, La Vuelta. Subo por la Nueve i llego al primer templo, la taquería, donde siempre soy tratado cual monarca. Me repongo de malpasadas acumuladas. (Desierto 52)

Cuevas se adentra además en el territorio por la Kalifas de Amadis (Van Nuys), Chiquis, Bascurlas, Chicago y el desierto mojadote de la Finiquera, para después trotamundearse por Madrid, Paraguay y Sudáfrica.

El complejo espacio lleno de objetos arrastrados es el que ha creado nuestro autor a través de su trilogía: Barrioztlán, Ensueños; cuentos i estampas y Desierto mojado. El espacio puede relacionarse con el concepto de la tercera frontera o el tercer espacio que se establece fuera de las fronteras geográficas. Estos espacios surgen ya territorio adentro (Davis 69) como los describe Cuevas en “Barrio” donde hay un panteón llamado Mission Cementery (Ensueños 3), un parque Franklin Park, que la raza llama el Hoyito (4), una escuela llamada Van Nuys Junior High (5), en ese barrio se da El Grito (5) [1]; y también hay un lugar llamado Carpenter’s donde tocan música y en el cual tocan los Huicholos (6) [2]. En todo este barrio también se aparece “el chillido de la Llorona” se paseó por todo nuestro barrio” (7).

El espacio barrial se da con los objetos descritos en el párrafo anterior, lo cual de acuerdo con Silvia Spitta en el capítulo “Guadalupe’s Wheels: Runaway Image, Undocumented Border Crosser, Miracle Worker”, nos describe un área y un momento histórico que nos ubica en una zona que va desde Mesoamérica hasta el suroeste de los Estados Unidos y nos remonta desde la época prehispánica hasta nuestros días (117) y se ha expandido en el sur hasta Paraguay y en el este hasta Sudáfrica. Dicha tercera frontera (Davis 70), como denomina al nuevo fenómeno migratorio el sociólogo Mike Davis en Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvented the US Big City (2001), se puede estudiar de acuerdo al postcolonialismo y transnacionalismo a través de dos funciones ambivalentes: 1) la de conectar y 2) la de dividir (Singh 5). De hecho, a ese espacio fronterizo se le tipifica vía el dicho ya anteriormente utilizado: “No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá”. Es decir, en la tercera frontera se crea una utopía donde el chicano no pertenece ni a un país ni a otro; sin embargo, tal frontera es su único terruño.

La inmigración de Cuevas está clasificada entre la tercera y cuarta oleada de mexicanos hacia territorio estadounidense. De acuerdo con Albert Camarillo, las décadas de 1940 a 1960, las de los braceros o mojados, atrajo a 6.3 millones de trabajadores del campo hacia el norte y a esa migración se le considera la tercera oleada. La cuarta empezó a partir de la década de 1970 y culminó hasta la de los 2000 (27), atrayendo a más de cinco millones. Los braceros citados por Camarillo, aparecen como en las sombras, “shadowed lives” o vidas asombradas y sin embargo Cuevas, no siguió tal clasificación.

Con una rica tradición cultural, nuestro autor incorpora sus objetos arrastrados en algo que él considera como su familia ideológica. Se trata de un árbol genealógico rico de personajes ilustres prehispánicos, mexicanos y chicanos:

Mis abuelos: Tláloc, Quetzalcóatl, Tlacaélel, Don Juan, Sancho-Quijote, Séneca. Mis padres: Coatlicue i Huitzilopochtli. Mis carnales: Jorge, el Santo Niño, Pedro, Cantinflas, Joséalfredo. Mis hermanas Estrellas: La Adelita, Marifélix, Lola. Mis hermanos Cabrones: Hernán, Porfirio, Vitoriano, Diazmordas. Mis hermanos pendejos: Xocoyotl, Maximiliano I, Santanna, Inocencio. Mis Carnales a todo dar: Nezahualcoyotl, Quauhtemoctzín, Hidalgo, Emiliano, Benito, Pancho, Lázaro, José María, José Guadalupe, Rulfo, Rivera, Joaquín, Tiburcio, César. Mis carnalitas: Sorjuana, Frida, Dolores. (Barrioztlán 37) [3]

Cuevas aprovecha su educación tanto en la calle como en la academia y se puede considerar que ha entrado a una perspectiva crítica transnacional abordada y particularizada por Davis, donde se describe a los habitantes de ciudades estadounidenses viviendo en los barrios de Los Ángeles, California y otras comunidades enteras cuya identidad nacional es dual, o transnacional. No se trata de asimilarse inmediata y completamente a EE.UU. y olvidarse para siempre del espacio de donde se originó la migración. Los habitantes de ejidos, rancherías y pueblos latinoamericanos se han transportado, por diversos medios a cierta área específica de la urbe estadounidense o a ciertos espacios rurales de EE.UU., donde viven de manera simultánea como partículas numerativas, o “ciudadanos”, de dos espacios (Davis 93). Van Nuys, donde Cuevas pasó su adolescencia, aparece en varias escenas del cuento “Barrio”, como la siguiente:

Caiba la gente al guateque. Los morritos desde temprano chapulineaban, se columpiaban, pateaban un balón i apedreaban a los perros. Los batos locos tras las canchas de rebote quemaban yesca. Los cholos guachaban sus cartuchos: manos en los caquis, pañuelo colocado en la cholla, biskets chaineados i Pendeltons. Sus jainitas con vestiditos, peinadotes i caras mantequillazas. Del cartucho, el stereo aventaba oldies. A lo lejos la chota. (Ensueños 5)

En este espacio domina la marginalidad y el único elemento ajeno, la chota o policías, está lejos vigilando a todos esos seres como los morritos, batos locos y los cholos, las jainitas que disfrutan en un sitio del cual se han apropiado como el parque Franklin, que la raza lo había bautizado como el Hoyito (Ensueños 4).

Otro espacio es el de la diáspora mexicana hacia el norte de la frontera no es lo mismo que vivir en la Madre patria (Davis 17), sin embargo los espacios creados tienden a borrar ese límite fronterizo el cual indica Davis. Para Cuevas, un origen zacatecano cerca de la frontera con Durango, en San Juan de los Terreros se hace presente en el cuento “Marcos”, donde no solo hay un espacio geográfico sino también temporal, el cual se configura de sitios como “Chalchihuites, en la provincia de Nueva Vizcaya”, una región donde se dio la llegada de unos húngaros (Ensueños 32). Se menciona también una pastorela donde la gente paga con huevos de gallina, mazorcas y hasta reales, lo que conlleva a dos sistemas monetarios anteriores al peso; el trueque de la época prehispánica y los reales. Estos ya se usaban en España 400 años antes de la conquista. En América los reales se usaron desde 1535 hasta 1792, a partir de 1792 empezaron a circular dólares y pesos (http://www.cmm.gob.mx/ Nuestra.html). Asimismo habla de la llegada de la luz eléctrica y la televisión (Ensueños 33).

Davis nos informa de la construcción de suburbios trasnacionales que se entretejen con la inmigración. A ésos Cuevas puede ver no solo en el área metropolitana de Los Ángeles, sino también en Paraguay, donde se encuentran bolivianos que han inmigrado, como los mexicanos emigran hacia Estados Unidos, para encontrar una vida mejor. Irónicamente, en este caso se encuentran la muerte como nos lo cuenta el narrador, “Con el cigarro en la boca Arsenio hilvanó un relato de la guerra. Fue machetero en el Chaco, a ojos cerrados decapitó bolis [4]” (Ensueños 53). En el cuento “Patricio hogape” [5], se escuchan voces guaraníes, como mita’í [6], yaguas [7], kyra mezcladas con spanglishmos como greifu (55). [8]

Asimismo hay expresiones como, me chutaron y a la pucha, todo lo cual establece un espacio lingüístico donde se traman palabras que van de Alaska a la Patagonia. Asimismo en Desierto mojado podemos ver que Cuevas se desplaza por otras culturas:

En tierra guaraní, aprendí el amplio significado de la palabra amistad; a la vez, viví por seis meses en un estado de sitio paternalista, resultado de la ejecución del carnicero Somoza, ¿Dónde estás ahora? cuñatai (muchacha), frente al lago azul de Ypacari. (Desierto 8 )
En la Sudáfrica racista un Mercedes volador por un pelo me manda al otro mundo; es lo más cerca que he topado a la Pelona (muerte). En Port Elizabeth me invitó a su hogar a tomar té, Govan Mbaki, el compa de Nelson Mandela. Padecía arresto domiciliario, pero después de veinte años de prisión, mantenía sus ideales intactos. Vaya ejemplo a seguir. Mi producción es magra. (Desierto 8 )

Analizada de manera simultánea, Philip Wegner desarrolla y crea un nuevo conocimiento dentro de la literatura popular, integrando no solo su propia cultura, sino la que le va rodeando (xix). Es decir, Wegner afirma que las nuevas culturas asociadas a la modernidad están enmarcadas por ciertas aspiraciones globales o posmodernas cuya democracia liberal, comercialización y vida familiar, así como los derechos humanos de estas culturas, han creado nuevas formas de individualismo o identidad; se derivan tales aspiraciones de discursos ya existentes (la cultura, la historia y la tradición) y surgen en la forma de originales expresiones artísticas a nivel popular e intelectual (1). La literatura chicana trasnacional de Cuevas expresa, por lo tanto, una nueva identidad posmoderna la cual facilita una mezcla de identidades como parte de una renovada comunidad estadounidense.
En el cuento “Tarde de toros”, se puede observar un mapa espacial que abarca, España, México, Panamá, Estados Unidos, Irán y Afganistán y donde hay plazas de toros y ganaderías:

Para su ameno entretenimiento vespertino ofrecemos una lidia. El famoso espada Samuelín, triunfador en las monumentales plazas de Panamá, Granada, Teherán i Kabul, se encierra con tres auténtico fieros de la legendaria ganadería Aztlán: Astados: / 1. Spanico, de 515 kilos de peso, color bragao. [9] / 2. TEX-Mex, de 511 kilogramos, color marrón. 3. Minotauro trasijao [10] menos de 500 kilos color ajumao. (Ensueños 17) [11]

El narrador señala que la corrida de toros se desarrolla en un lugar donde “está prohibido el sacrificio de animales” (Ensueños18). Eso nos limita geográficamente a que la corrida se haya llevado a cabo en Estados Unidos, Aztlán o en algún lugar de Cataluña, en un tiempo futuro, donde por decreto del parlamento catalán, a partir de enero de 2012 quedan prohibidos los toros. [12]

Como lo describe Phillip Wegner, la utopía funciona como una imagen reversible; como reflejada ante un espejo, se ve revertida en base a una figura anamórfica que crea nuevos espacios pertenecientes a una sociedad hegemónica donde nacen formas de expresión que podrán convertirse en nuevas corrientes culturales (35). Este lugar imaginario donde se realiza la corrida de toros permite leyes para protección del animal y, sin embargo, no está exento de otras crueldades como lo cuestiona el narrador, “¿I las ejecuciones de seres humanos?” (Ensueños 18). Nos trae a la mente el maltrato que sufren los indocumentados en territorio estadounidense o en el propio Aztlán.

Un cuento donde los espacios y el tiempo, imaginarios y reales, se complican y entretejen es en “Los generales”, en el cual desde la entrada, con la introducción del Aleph de Jorge Luis Borges, el narrador “adquiere”, hurtando, un escrito misterioso en un viaje a Buenos Aires (56). Dicho manuscrito coloca a un latinoamericano entre otros “latinos”, omite la hegemonía anglosajona y tacha a Borges de anglómano, prefiriendo mejor a Ernesto Sábato (56) como alguien más cercano. Menciona a grandes generales como “Alejandro Magno, Julio César, Napoleón i Bolívar”, como lo señala el narrador, donde omite el nombre de Simón (57). Este personaje, sin embargo aparece minimizado: “En nota aparte encontré lo siguiente: ‘Las monedas, las estampillas, las escuelas; los cines, el estadio, los barrios, los primogénitos, llevaban su nombre, o su imagen; las universidades no, no hay’” (58). En el texto, este general ha sido omitido en un espacio superior donde otros dominan.

Los espacios continúan viajando en una marcha contraria a la hegemonía, yéndose más hacia el sur y hacia el oriente. En “Esmeralda”, el narrador se apropia de una escena donde recibió un premio por su buena conducta cuando era niño, y como recompensa visita un lugar utópico, un sitio que se parece a Disneylandia, a las Onuciudades o “Tesoros de la Humanidad” (67). Esos espacios han sido inventados por el hombre pero se convierten en la realidad; un espacio creado por el sistema sociopolítico hegemónico que trata de agruparnos a todos los nativos e inmigrantes de origen latinoamericano bajo las etiquetas de hispanic y latino (en su pronunciación y acepción angloamericana). Como lo señala Wegner, existe un país donde algunos de los mayores atractivos turísticos son sitios que no tienen paralelo con la realidad como Disneylandia, Hollywood o Las Vegas, acentuando la comercialización y la ambigüedad de cualquier identidad. Se trata de nuestra vida en EE.UU. (244).

El narrador ubica otro espacio semejante expresando, “¿I la ynsula? Como la Atlántida, Esmeralda ha sido objeto de innumerables pesquisas. El consorcio National Geographic financió varas brigadas de exploradores, todas fracasaron” (Ensueños 69).

Hay entidades de seres humanos que han sido dominados por objetos de la globalización antimultinacional. Eso lo expone el narrador vía los neologismos como la drogacola dietética, los aparatos mediáticos como la ABCBSNBCHBOMTVTELEVISATEIDIOTIZA, hollytrashwood o las expresiones como “me la Twenty Century Fox, Mafiantra efuiusikeis, Nacy/Dean Remy Martin, Yon Allamerikan Wine, Liza Tailor, China Pollafrigida, sonido masquedolbiTHX (Barrioztlán 23). Desde esa noción, se cita en Desierto mojado a Starbucks en un mensaje:

Ante la vulgaridad del mol, Disneyland, Las Vegas, Hollywood I Starbucks; de la apabulladora incesante tormenta de tele, celulosos i autos, de sirenas chillonas i autopistas ensangrentadas, contaminadas de fast foods; me queda, nos quedan, por fortuna, alternativas para alimentar cuerpo i espíritu:

Un instante, cualquiera, con la Wencha. Un café con leche i medias lunas en la BB.AA. Un sándwich, aunque carero, de Bianco.
Un librito de la Tía Chucha o de la Anáhuac. Un tamal de la Nana (larga vida para ella). Una mariscada confeccionada por Borboa.
Un espaguetazo de Saluín. Un arpegio con Eichdi. Un vinacho, una chela i un queso de Trader Joe’s. Una magia de André.
Cualquier aperitivo en casa de Christador. Cualquier minuto con Bonifacio i Luigi. Un gelato de Arlecchin. (Desierto 5)

El fenómeno globalizador ha creado una comunidad imaginaria utópica, la ha llevado a una nueva clase racial y étnica que ha establecido una relación colectiva entre su identidad y espacio nacional y la memoria (Wegner xxiii). Por su parte, el narrador ha incluido estos objetos globalizadores creados para nuestro propio consumo como el noescafé, “lejos quedó esa porquería llamada noescafé, abundan granos de todo el mundo (5), también hemos creado nuevos objetos globalizados como lo señala Spitta. Se menciona que la Virgen de Guadalupe ha cruzado continentes y fronteras de todo tipo, utilizando lo que se indica como wheels (Misplaced 120). Así también podemos señalar que el narrador establece la lira de Paracho. “¿QUIEN no ha acariciado las sinuosas formas femeninas de una guitarra hecha en el merito Paracho, terruño purépecha?” (Desierto 101). Se trata de un objeto de fama internacional, que también se ha globalizado.

El objeto musical nos lleva a los demás tesoros arrastrados y desplazados por Cuevas en sus obras con respecto a su repertorio musical. El personaje quirquinchero en Barrioztlán nos presenta que su riqueza musical vía su fonoteca. [13] Además aparecen los tesoros desplazados y apropiados en Desierto mojado con obras como Cantos gregorianos; Cánticas de Santa María, Llibre Vermell del monasterio de Montserrat; el cancionero de la colombina; el cancionero Musical de Palacio; Ken Burns con su colección de jazz, entre quienes podemos encontrar a Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Bird, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Sara Vaughn, Miles Davis, Dave Brubek, entre otros (137). La música chicana está representada por Los Lobos y sus álbumes Otra bandita de Los Ángeles (1978) de La bamba (1987) y otros. El grupo musical Rage Against the Machine (1992), contiene rolas indigenistas como “Pueblo del sol” (138). De acuerdo con Ignacio Corona, la música como objeto globalizante puede verse como un instrumento que envigoriza y estimula sobre todo a la gente joven y con ella se puede crear nuevos espacios (125), donde se arrastran las canciones e instrumentos como objetos que se acomodan en dichos espacios.

Estos instrumentos musicales arrastrados y desplazados que Cuevas nos expone como el charango, el cual “es un instrumento mestizo como los batos que lo tocan, es familiar dela lira” (Barrioztlán 41), forman nuevos espacios en sus textos. Estos instrumentos complican estos espacios adoptando artefactos musicales prehispánicos como el teponaztli: “un tambor pero no uno cualquiera ya que en vez de cuero vacuno, el original tendrá cuero de venado o jaguar” (41). Otros ejemplos son: 1) el atecocolli, un caracol marino utilizado como instrumento de viento y 2) el tzicahuaztli, instrumento de percusión como una sonaja de palo. Todos ellos son “instrumentos que alegran i han alegrado los vaivenes dela humanidad” (41). Entre los personajes de Barrioztlán, existe un “director de banda en cuatro idiomas indígenas, maya (hol/pop), náhuatl (ometochotli), purépecha (curinguri) y otro no identificado (cope’ eche toecechi) (43). Esto nos recuerda a Spitta, quien menciona la migración hacia los espacios hegemónicos que hace que los objetos culturales de los oprimidos se estén desplazando a través de los migrantes; es decir, quienes desarticulan los objetos para volverlos a construir en nuevos espacios (Misplaced 201).

Aparte de la música y sus instrumentos, otro objeto que se arrastra y se desplaza a nivel global es la cinta del celuloide. Dentro de Barrioztlán, en el apartado “Lira: entre tuarte i miarte mejor el séptimo arte”, el narrador nos aporta los objetos desplazados de su filmoteca entre cuyos volúmenes encontramos a directores como Kurosawa, Fellini, Buñuel, Bergman, Einsenstein y Chaplin, filmes como Citizen Kane, Viva México, y actores como Anthony Quinn (19). Enriquecidos en Desierto mojado por la “Cartelera” con las catorce cintas favoritas (136) [14] del narrador, enriquecen la filmoteca. La expande aún más al mencionar las salas cinematográficas en Torresmochas, “¿Dónde quedaron los viejos templos del cine, Torreón, Nazas, Princesa; ahí Sarita Montiel bailó el último cuplé con Cantinflas i Jerry Lewis? (74); o en el “cine Martínez, aunque restaurado a todo esplendor no olvido las tardes populares, tres de Tarzán, tres de balazos o tres de aventuras por un peso” (74); asimismo como la mención de “la cinta sonora de La Bamba, churro dirigido por Luis Valdez” (103). Spitta señala que las tecnologías visuales ponen las imágenes en el ojo del observador y ofrecen la habilidad de poner el mundo externo dentro del mundo interno (43). En el caso de Cuevas su mundo externo se forma desde su mundo interno, arrastrando todos estos objetos a su alrededor, lo cual se refleja en sus textos.

Entre otros espacios de Cuevas, “se habla inglés” dentro de un contexto californiano, es un término que Mark Davis aplica para explicar el fenómeno que fertiliza el terreno cruzado por los de sur en el norte manifiestan una visión de una hegemonía panamericana del siglo XXI (23). Con dicho término, Cuevas traza su propio mapa donde el norte y el sur puede ser como un iPad, que para verlo se puede dar vuelta y de cualquier manera se acomodará lo que se ve, no importando si el norte ha quedado arriba o abajo.
Utilizando unas letras muy pequeñas, Cuevas traza dichos espacios geográfico y editoriales de dónde fueron escritos y publicados los cuentos de Ensueños: cuentos i estampas: La panadería, la Finiquera [15], La voz (Ensueños 2), Barrio Van Nuys, Zopilote Magazine (7), Reaganoland [16], Madrid, revista del II Chicano Literary Prize de la Universidad de California, Irvine (20), Lo sencillo (27), Imagen (32), El Observador de Phoenix (35), Tenochtitlán, Aboard 774 (43) [17], Paraná (51), Culturadoor (54) [18], Asunción del Paraguay (55), Paraguaype (58) [19], Río Paraná (60), Sinmountainview (64), Malbany (69), Port Elizabeth (73), el velero (74) y Fénix (76). En Desierto mojado también se mencionan los espacios como los de Madrid, donde Cuevas menciona “pasé cinco días en la casa de huéspedes, Carabanchel (prisión) por leer una copia del periódico comunista, Mundo Obrero” (8). El poder de desplazamiento y florecimiento de estos espacios con objetos son los que constituyen el nuevo territorio americano imaginario (Davis xi).

Otra sección se podría abrir con los espacios lingüísticos de Cuevas creados por su propio tesoro de vocablos en su trompabulario muy particular, abarca una gran riqueza y alternancia de códigos como en Ensueños cuentos i estampas, “La niña que lleva flores en la canasta” y “Barrio” sirven como una guía para ubicar los registros lingüísticos del concepto que Cuevas intenta transmitir al lector. En el primero de los dos cuentos, “soy prieta I porque mastico el inglés con picoso acento mexicano (3), nos revela una identidad muy particular del narrador. “Viajaba en el metro de regreso a la central camionera” (4), se utiliza un calco lingüístico y geográfico de la capirucha, la Ciudad de México. Con este mapa de palabras y lugares se establece un espacio marginado donde se encuentra a un grupo marginado de estudiantes que desean entrar a la UNAM (2). En “Barrio”, Cuevas establece lingüísticamente los espacios como un lugar escondido NEVEREVER (3), dónde nunca se encontrarán a los personajes que se esconden. Mission Cementery (3), lugar donde se realizó un funeral muy fregón. Con párrafos cargados de registros en caló, en spanglish e inglés, en un espacio dominado por el español:

Al bato lo quemó la jura; una vez que lo pararon le pedicharon ID. Mientras sacaba la cartera lo cuetiaron. Después el perro juró que disparó en defensa propia, pensó que Lupe cargaba. Como no encontraron fusca el officer fue castigado. –Suspended for two weeks – dijo el Judie. Big Deal! Dijo el jefe tira: – Well, these Mexicans have a short memory. (Ensueños 4)

Estos espacios comienzan a tener una pluralidad lingüística que proviene de una multiculturalidad heredada que puede ubicarse en cualquier lugar (Davis xv), inclusive hasta en una periferia, como la señala Davis, “La metrópolis latina es principalmente el cruce de transformaciones importantes en la cultura urbana y la identidad étnica (Davis 11). Este constante cambio de calco lingüístico establece un espacio multicultural donde se mueven los personajes de Cuevas.

En Barrioztlán, la riqueza lingüística se mezcla con la literaria, en la tradición de autores como Miguel Méndez, Rolando Hinojosa Smith, Ana Castillo, Alejandro Morales y Margarita Cota-Cárdenas entre otros, como lo indica Manuel de Jesús Hernández en la introducción, colocando “1) un sujeto fragmentado, descentrado y eschizoide; 2) un sentido de historicidad y 3) el uso de la parodia (Barrioztlán XV)”. Cuevas maneja un amplio discurso literario que abarca no solo la influencia chicana, eulatina y latinoamericana, sino también atraviesa fronteras para ir hasta la madre patria y el resto del mundo, así como entrando al mundo de la filosofía como en En Barrioztlán, podemos encontrar referencias a Piaget, Freud, incorporándolos a sus juegos de palabra, rebautizándolos con los nombres de Piashit y Fraude (32). También podemos ver la incorporación de Kafka y Wilde, entre otros. “Pero así como resulta cómodo que Kafka o Wilde nacieron antes de su tiempo, con el Vate resulta conveniente afirmar ques un neorromántico tísico que acabará con el suicidio; teoría probable pero inexacta (33). Sus personajes incorporan estas ideologías dentro de sus espacios, arrastrando sus pensamientos.

En Desierto mojado, los tesoros literarios, filosóficos y lingüísticos de Cuevas se provienen desde sus notas bibliográficas, “Biblos a mi manera” (126), con palabras desenterradas en las publicaciones como Memín pingüín con su respectivo comentario de “En mi país indo-mestizo no se toman en cuanta las gotas de sangre africana (Desierto 127) y Alarma con los célebres casos delictivos de “El chacal la violó, la mató, la descuartizó… Las Poquianchis… El rey Lopitos asesinado” (127); hasta el Libro del buen amor (1330) del Arcipreste de Hita; Milagros de nuestra señora de Gonçalo de Berceo; Amadis de Gaula (1508), quien desplaza como objeto el nombre de la princesa amazona Califa. Los nombres son también objetos culturales que en el caso mexicoamericano se van repitiendo borrando fronteras de espacio y tiempo, como lo señala Spitta con el nombre de Analco (Nuevo México), cuyo significado en náhuatl es del otro lado del agua (152).

Otros tesoros incluyen la edición italiana de Storia antica del Messico: cavata da’ migliori storici spagnuoli… (1780-1781) de Francisco Javier Clavijero; Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico de Joan Corominas y José A. Pascual, quienes aportaron el valor histórico las palabras en la mente de Cuevas; el Tesoro de la lengua española o castellana (1611), según el narrador es el más divertido de los diccionarios; la Conquista de la Nueva España (1632) de Bernal Díaz del Castillo, al cual se califica irónicamente como el soldado escritor; el Diccionario de la lengua castellana (1726), el cual “explica el verdadero sentido de las palabras”, enriquecidas en proverbios, refranes y palabras “otras inconvenientes al uso de la lengua” Diccionario de mejicanismos (1899) editado por García Icazbalceta y concluido por Francisco J. Santamaría (1959), obra que según el narrador tuvo una enorme influencia en su cultura, aunque algo ambigua, con el comentario, “Chile con carne: Detestable comida que con el falso título de mejicana se vende en los EE.UU. del norte, desde Tejas hasta Nueva York” (128). Las tradiciones como la comida, literatura, teatro, danza y música entre otras, son elementos que ayudan a movilizar la latinidad, la cual circula dentro de un proceso evolutivo (Spitta 211). Las palabras que representan estos elementos sirven para que fluyan y se transformen dentro del texto de Cuevas.

Estas palabras tomadas prestadas por la voz del narrador como El Cid (1207) y los ciegos: “El viejo sabio Borges me enseñó a sacar de la manga libros i personajes de la historia, a inventar la misma vida, bibliotecas infinitas i otros universos” (129), con lo cual podemos ver cómo Cuevas construye su propio tesoro bibliográfico, seguidos por el también ciego Homero (129). Los diccionarios de “Molina (1571); Covarrubias (1611); Autoridades (1726); Santamaría (59); Corominas (61); el del Dr. Johnson; los 20 volúmenes del casi infinito Oxford (89); el persignado norteamericano Webster’s (1828)” (Desierto 129).

Sus obras de cabecera y de consulta diaria como su inseparable amigo, El Pequeño Larousse, su compañero por más de cuatro décadas, el cual “herido y remendado mi querido tumbaburros me guía desde su privilegiado sitial” (129).

El mago de los sueños cuevanios es el Gabo, con Cien años de soledad. (1967), quien lo invitó a soñar “con El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985), con el cual acompaño sus “siestas con chocolate i almojábanas” (Desierto 129). Como un peregrino, las palabras van caminando a través de las comunidades, expandiendo su cultura (Spitta 105). Dentro de la mente de Cuevas, estas palabras van enterrándose y arraigándose para que las pueda manejar y aplicar en sus textos.

Cuevas atraviesa el manto acuífero atlántico, donde recoge al valenciano Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Arroz i tartana (1894); las Cañas i barro (1902). El narrador explica cómo de allí pudo encontrar el origen de “la palabra paella viene de la voz latina, patella, en referencia a la cazuela de doble mango que usaban los campesinos para cocinar la delicia” (Desierto 129). Otras influencias que se citan son el Guinness Book of World Records (Edición anual), los “excesos i loqueras del hombre i la naturaleza” (129). Siempre utilizando los títulos en su idioma original, el narrador nos cita a Johannes Gutenberg y su “historia de la imprenta i de Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1397-1468)”, del cual se menciona el dato deshemogenizante:

… casi un milenio antes, hacia 593, monjes budistas chinos usaron tablas de madera (xilografía) para imprimir en telas de seda. Pi Cheng (1040) usó arcilla cocida i mejoró la invención de los monjes. Hacia 1392 en Corea usaron tipos de cobre (metalografía)” . Otro dato curioso que Cuevas menciona es una de las 21 copias actuales de la Biblia de 42 líneas circa 1455, la cual la atesora la biblioteca Huntington en L. A.” (Desierto 130)

De regreso a América, también se destaca la anécdota de Cuatro libros de la naturaleza y virtudes de las plantas y animales que están recibidos en uso de medicina en la Nueva España (1615) de Francisco Hernández de Toledo con la colaboración de Fray Francisco Ximénez, quienes publicaron una descripción de “cerca de 3 000 especies vegetales: achiote, chile, cacao, maíz, papaya, peyote, tabaco, tomate, belladona; así como 400 animales de la fauna mexicana” (Desierto 130). Del nuevo mundo, también se cita la Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (s. XVI).

“Casi todo sobre nuestro pasado indígena. No puedo pasar por alto los colaboradores del padre: Antonio Valeriano, Alfonso Vegerano, Martín Jacovita i Pedro de San Buenaventura “todos expertos en tres lenguas, latina, española e indiana. Aparte de escribanos i pintores. (Desierto 134)

Entre las obras de los escritores preferidos de Cuevas, encontramos a Platero y yo (1917) de Juan Ramón Jiménez, volúmen que nuestro autor califica como su libro de cabecera, compañero de soledades y algo “mágico, una de las cúspides de nuestra literatura”, del cual una vez encontró tirada en una tienda de segunda mano una versión dedicada a una persona querida, la cual Cuevas imaginó paseando frente a la Alameda en capitalina atardecer de ojos negros (Desierto 131). Otros autores de textos atesorados por nuestro autor son Kafka, Sartre y Dostoyevsky, de los cuales aprendió a ilustrarse:

del polaco… a como el ser humano es rebajado a vil cucaracha por los aparatos ideológicos de Estado: la familia, la iglesia, el gobierno. Del francés aprendí a disfrutar la filosofía literatura a través de las naderías de unos personajes estáticos; Atrás dejó la filosofía dentro de un revuelto mar de oraciones hermética, imposibles de entender; Dostoevski es el padre de ambos. (Desierto 131)

De su influencia indígena, el narrador nos refleja la aportación que Nezahualcóyotl hizo con la frase, “Cualquier poema sobre lo efímero de las cosas i la vita” (132). Así como también el Diccionario de aztequismos (1904) de Cecilio A Robelo, conteniendo “palabras del idioma náhuatl, azteca o mexicano, introducidas al idioma castellano bajo diversas formas” (134).

Para su percepción culinaria, el narrador cita a Fortunata i Jacinta (1886-87) de Benito Pérez Galdós, ya que al leerla “detesté el supermarket sin olor, sin sabor i volví a apreciar nuestros mercados de perfumes, colores i sabores (132).

Su influencia chicana se debe a autores como Tomás Rivera y Miguel Méndez, quienes le:

inspiraron a capturar la tragedia del emigrante mexicano. Ellos reflejan la desdichada contradicción de los paisanos campesinos: su trabajo en los campos más fértiles i productivos del continente alimenta a medio mundo; sus vidas son torturadas i de escasez. (Desierto 134)

Mezclando los autores chicanos y españoles, el narrador nos menciona sobre Ulibarrí, refiriéndose a una posible influencia de “Juanramón en Ulibarrí” (135):

El pechicolorado, recién llegado, desfilaba su dignidad. El ruiseñor clavaba sus notas musicales en los cielos i en los horizontes. Los canarios i los chinchontes, en jaulas i en ramas, llenaban todo el aire de alegría. Florecitas atrevidas i bailarinas trepaban las laderas i se miraban en el agua cristalina. (Desierto 135)

De las obras hegemónicas como la revista Time, el narrador señala su desprecio irónicamente señalando “no pierda dinero comprando estas revistas, léalas en los consultorios de los matasanos (docs), i mazorqueros (dentistas), si le gusta alguna llévesela a casita” (Desierto 12).

Un aspecto filosófico interesante en el texto es la referencia hacia Tomás Moro:

Utopía: voz griega, equivale a “no-lugar” o sitio inexistente, es también el título del libro de Tomás Moro de 1516, en donde describe una sociedad perfecta, por lo tanto, imposible. Al no existir una palabra para describir una sociedad de pesadilla valga, utopía negativa, también queda topía, lugar común, tomando en cuenta lo irracional de nuestras sociedades actuales. (Desierto 135)

¿Se trata o de una outopia o de una eutopia? A toda esta suprarrealidad nos llama la atención Louis Marín en su libro Utopiques: Jeux d´espace, particularmente el ensayo “Disneyland: A Degenerate Utopia”, donde se refiere a tales mundos mágicos no como una utopía, sino como un mito (cit. en Wegner xxi), o la outopia—ningún lugar. Cuevas también puede nombrar espacios utópicos como “En Gotham, agotadora metrópolis, topé con atractivas trampas i puertas falsas, Tú amor es un periódico de ayer” (Desierto 8).

La utopía también se traslada a los objetos gastronómicos del narrador, los cuales están incluidos en Desierto mojado en el capítulo “Vidivianda”, en el cual nos ilustra la palabra Guajolotazo, la cual se refiere al “pleno bacanal de football, alcoholes i pavo biónico, cabe recordar una cena de más espíritu i menos consumismo por el demente afán de consumir” (14). Sin embargo, el narrador lo retrasa a un tiempo donde “cuatro siglos atrás llegaron a nuestro continente unos mojados, pero bien mojadotes, habían cruzado apenas cinco mil kilómetros de salado mar. (14). Se arrastra esta ave para darnos la receta del pavo del Día de Acción de Gracias y mezclarlo con tradiciones prehispánicas y globales como la trasnacional mexicana Bimbo:

Turkey (pavo): En EE.UU. el cuarto jueves del mes de noviembre, en una celebración heredada de tiempos atrás cuando se agradecían las cosechas, marca un feriado de cuatro días, el Thanksgiving o tiempo de dar gracias. En cuanto a la voz guajolote. No confundir con el pavo real o pavón (Pavo cristatus), el guajolote, cócono, pípilo, totol, mulito (Mex.), guanajo (Antillas), bimbo, pisco (Col.), chompipe (Amer. Centr.); quizá tiene raíz en kuasholotl cabeza desnuda, pues tiene la cabeza pelona. (Robelo 135)

En Ensueños: (cuentos i estampas), el narrador también ha identificado otros ejemplos de espacios y nos transporta a un sitio donde ocurre un intercambio recíproco entre dos áreas distantes, una ubicada dentro de la zona hegemónica del norte y otra hacia el sur, donde se crea un puente trasnacional. El autor hace una ruta contraria a la inmigración de sur a norte, yendo hacia una América Latina más distante en Paraguay y Argentina, para después alejarse al lado opuesto dominante de occidente, yéndose todavía más al sur hasta Sudáfrica, donde el propio autor revela que vive entre musulmanes (“Entrevista”).

Las obras de Saúl Cuevas nos han transportado desde el norte chicano en el parque Franklin de Van Nuys, pasando por su territorio natal en Zacatecas, pasando por Tenochtitlán, hasta los parajes guaraníes y gauchescos, para terminar en Esmeralda, un islote donde se confunde los desechos de gaviotas con la nieve (Ensueños 69).

Endnotes

[1] Por dar el Grito, se puede remontar a la noche del 15 de septiembre de 1810, en la que el Cura Miguel Hidalgo dio el Grito de Dolores, en Guanajuato, México. back to text

[2] Palabra compuesta por huichól, grupo indígena mexicano de la zona de Nayarit (Los indios 24), según Fernando Benítez, etnólogo mexicano en su obra Los indios de México: Antología, y la palabra cholo, cuyas varias connotaciones son: véase en el diccionario de la RAE, mestizo de sangre europea e indígena; Dicho de un indio: Que adopta los usos occidentales; o como lo define el Urban dictionary: A cholo is term implying a Hispanic male that typically dresses in chinos (khahki pants), a wifebeater sleeveless teeshirt or a flannel shirt with only the top buttoned, a hairnet, or with a bandana around the forehead, usually halfway down over the eyes. Cholos often have black ink tattoos, commonly involving Catholic imagery, or calligraphy messages or family names. back to text

[3] Jorge (Negrete); El Santo Niño (de Plateros); Pedro (Infante), Joséalfredo (Jiménez), Lola (Beltrán); Hernán (Cortés), Porfirio (Díaz), Vitoriano (Victoriano Huerta), Diazmordas (Gustavo Díaz Ordaz); Inocencio (Francisco I. Madero); Emiliano (Zapata), Benito (Juárez); Pancho (Francisco Villa/Doroteo Arango); Lázaro (Cárdenas); José María (Morelos y Pavón); José Guadalupe (Posada); (Diego) Rivera; Joaquín (Murrieta); Tiburcio (Vásquez); César (Chávez); Dolores (Huerta). back to text

[4] Según Cuevas, bolivianos. back to text

[5] Según Cuevas, la casa de Patricio. back to text

[6] Niños en guaraní. back to text

[7] Perros en guaraní. back to text

[8] Toronja. back to text

[9] Véase el diccionario de la RAE: bragado, dicho del buey o de otros animales: Que tienen la bragadura de diferente color que el resto del cuerpo. back to text

[10] Véase el diccionario de la RAE: trasijado, que está muy flaco, que tiene las ijadas recogidas, a causa de no haber comido o bebido en mucho tiempo. back to text

[11] Véase el diccionario de la RAE: ahumado, que tiene color sombrío. back to text

[12] Nota de El País, del 28 de julio de 2010: “Cataluña prohíbe los toros”. El Parlamento autónomo ha abolido las corridas por 68 votos contra 55. La ley entrará en vigor en enero de 2012. El PP anuncia que llevará la fiesta a las Cortes para declararla de interés general y así blindarla. back to text

[13] Canciones en Barrioztlán, proporcionada gentilmente por el mismo Cuevas: “Cuarteto Cedrón: Una canción que dice: Nada detiene el sol, nada detiene al gallo cantor, nada detiene a la Revolución” o algo parecido; Agua que va a caer: ¿?; Alma Llanera (canción del llano el segundo himno de Venezuela, quizá me versión favorita es la de Marco Antonio Muñiz; “Aventurera” (bolero), Agustín Lara; “Canción de invierno” (nueva trova), Silvio Rodríguez; Charango (andina): Savia Andina; Corrido de Guanajuato (corrido), José Alfredo Jiménez; Crónica de una muerte anunciada (vallenato): ¿?; Danubio Azul (vals); El aguacero (ranchera): Lola; El arriero (andina); ¿?; El barzón (ranchera/corrido): Luis Pérez Mesa; El bodeguero: Orquesta Aragón; El herradero (ranchera): Lola Beltrán; Eres casado (norteña): Lalo González ‘El Piporro’; Gracias a la vida (canto nuevo): Violeta Parra; Guantanamera (¿?): Roberto Torres; La del moño colorado: ¿?; La negra noche: ¿?; Luces de Nueva York: Sonora Matancera; Maldición de Malinche, de Gabino Palomares canta Amparo Ochoa; Marihuana, Oscar Chávez; Me lo dijo Adela (cha-cha-chá): Orquesta América; No soy de aquí ni soy de allá (canto nuevo): Alberto Cortes; Norte de mi territorio: Calchakíes; Paloma errante, Las Hermanas Huerta; Pedro Navaja (salsa consciente): Rubén Blades; Píntame angelitos negros (bolero) Toña la Negra; Qué dirá el santo padre (CN): VP; Que me coma el tigre: ¿?; Rat Race: Bob Marley and the Wailers; Riders of the Storm (rock): The Doors; Sinfonía concertante 364 (Mozart): Filarmónica de Berlín; von Karajan dirige; Sinfonía Pastoral (Cuarta), iv movimiento: Beethoven; Vasija de barro (andina): ¿?; Volver (tango): Carlos Gardel”. back to text

[14] Sunrise de Marnau; Napoleón de Gance; El hombre de la cámara de Dziga Vertov; Caja de Pandora de Georg Wilhelm Pabst; El ángel azul de Josef von Sternberg; Iván el terrible de Sergei Einsenstein; Campeón sin corona de Alejandro Galindo; Sansho de Yasujirô Ozu; Cuando pasan las cigüeñas de Mikhail Kalatozov; Accatone de Pier Paolo Passolini; Vidas secas de Nelson Pereira Dos Santos; Chica negra de Ousmane Sembene; Playtime de Jacques Tati; y Andrei Rublev de Andrey Tarkovski. back to text

[15] Cuevas se refiere a Phoenix, Arizona. back to text

[16] Aunque Ronald Reagan nació en Tampico, Illinois, se mudó hacia Los Ángeles, California en 1924. (www.reaganfoundation.org) back to text

[17] Avión Boeing 774. back to text

[18] Revista publicada por el Dr. Manuel Murrieta Saldivar, tanto impresa como electronicamente (http://www.culturadoor.com/).back to text

[19] Lugar de muchas aguas en guaraní. back to text

Obras citadas y consultadas

Benítez, Fernando. Los indios de México: Antología. México: Siglo XXI Editores, 1989. Print.

Camarillo, Albert. “Alambrista and the historical context of Mexican immigration to the United States in the twentieth century”. Alambrista and the U.S.-Mexico
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Corona, Ignacio et al. Postnational Musical Identities: Cultural Production, Distribution, and Consumption in a Globalized Scenario. Lanham; Lexington Books, 2008. Print.

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Universidad Nacional Autónoma México

Abstract

Sandra Cisneros’ short story “Woman Hollering Creek” is a display of multiple bordercrossings, several of which are addressed in this article. From crossing bodies to crossing narratives, I will take a look at intratextual linguistic translation as strategies to indicate cultural markers of chicanidades and their relation to mexicanidades within the context of a migrant woman crossing to and back from the U.S. I also will briefly look into how it crosses/translates into Spanish and for a Spanish-speaking audience living in Mexico, and take a look at how this short story and its main themes bordercross into present day border issues, problematizing existing notions of migrant worker profiles.

Puente 1: Narrative bordercrossings

Set in pre-9/11 times when the Mexico-U.S. border was not as migra-infested and Big Brother camera-eyed as it is today, the narrative in “Woman Hollering Creek” focuses on a migrant Mexicana from northern Mexico who crosses over to Texas: “Seguín. Tejas. A nice sterling ring to it. The tinkle of money” (Cisneros 1991, 51).

This is the same lure that entices millions of unemployed and poverty-stricken Mexicans to cross into the U.S. A crossing that turns into death for some (officially 725 in 2008 and 5,607 over the last 15 years, although at least double that number remain unaccounted for), and arrest for others (officially 427,940 in 2010) in addition to willing return and unwilling deportation, (known as “retornados”) that is rapidly increasing.[1]This has, therefore, become a major political, cultural and trauma-related issue for Mexican citizens.

In this narrative the American Dream turns nightmare for the protagonist, Cleófilas, who faces solitude, alienation, ostracism and domestic abuse that haunt her into what becomes a routine of fear. The latter is suggested through the transits from individual to collective narrative perspectives woven throughout the stories.

The border-line creek emulates the Río Grande or Río Bravo, according to who names it and from what side of the border it is viewed. The creek becomes a simulacrum of “where the Third world grates against the First and bleeds” (Anzaldúa 1987, 3).

In this sense the creek, el arroyo, and the bridge Cleofilas crosses both ways, become “nepantla” sites for the narrative’s multiple bordercrossisngs . Nepantla in Nahuatl, an ancient Mexican language, means “bridge” or “land in-between”, a term Gloria Anzaldúa has reconfigured as in-between spaces that become, as she puts it, the “locus and sign of transition” (Anzaldúa 2005, 99). Both are also the site for the protagonist’s own bordercrossings from her initial arrival as a romantic and naïve bride—“Such a funny name for a creek so pretty and full of happily ever after” [2]— to her crossing on her way back to Mexico as a wiser, although physically abused, pregnant mother, able to let out a “long ribbon of laughter, like water” gurgling from her own throat (Cisneros 1991, 47). Cleofilas thereby traverses from one world to another, from innocence to experience, from migrant worker to “retornada”, from one kind of cuchicheo to another, from one kind of silence to another, as the narrative traces her as a speaking subject in the make. Moreover, for the reader, the narrative becomes in itself a nepantla in-between space that focuses on personal and collective agency for transformation.

The creek’s name in English, Woman Hollering, becomes a colonial historical referent, the locus of historical erasure, particularly as its translation into English denotes, the geopolitical, linguistic and cultural appropriation—by means of the 1848 Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty—that amounted to almost two-thirds of the Mexican territory and its people. Today, according to the Master Narrative, those who cross over “illegally” in a massive reterritorializing exodus are transmuted instantly into “aliens” whose status is “clandestine transnational actors” which in “national security-speak…[is a] term for undocumented migrants, [along with] refugees and asylum seekers, drug and human smugglers, potential terrorists—all those who cross borders and transgress national boundaries without state authorization,” according to Tram Nguyen (XIV). Metaphorically and metonymically, then, the creek-as-border in this narrative becomes a permanent state of flux and fluidity between cultures, territories, legal systems, histories (the accounts of the Alamo are told differently on each side of the border) and languages, all of which are in continuous transcultural translation and transit.

The arroyo La Gritona thereby also becomes a locus of resistance by means of its re-translation into Spanish, even though the original and historical name remains unknown: “The natives only knew the arroyo one crossed on the way to San Antonio, and then once again on the way back, was called Woman Hollering, a name no one from these parts questioned, little less understood. Pues, allá de los indios, quién sabe –who knows, the townspeople shrugged…” (Cisneros 1991, 46).

Whereas the linguistic translation of the creek’s name into Spanish is La Gritona, culturally it is transmuted into la Llorona, and is thereby associated directly with myriad myths surrounding this highly complex figure of Mexican and of now Southern U.S. lore. Once the cultural rather than the linguistic translation becomes available to the protagonist, the creek and la Llorona become entwined and lure her in a very different way to the “tinkle of money” that lured her across to border to Texas. For the creek is “a thing with a voice all its own, all day and all night calling in its high, silver voice. Is it La Llorona, the weeping woman?” (ibid. 51). Instead of the sorrowful, guilty, wailing and screaming mother, however, she is related to the silence of death, the specificity of suicide,[3] abuse and femicide. Cleofilas, in fact, bears domestic abuse in a silence that literally haunts her as la Llorona does

It seemed the newspapers were full of such stories. This woman found on the side of the interstate. This one pushed from a moving car. This one’s cadaver, this one unconscious, this one beaten blue. Her ex-husband, her husband, her lover, her father, her brother, her uncle, her friend, her co-worker. Always. The same grisly news in the pages of the dailies. She dunked a glass under the soapy water for a moment -shivered. (ibid. 52)

The protagonist’s bordercrossing into the US becomes, ironically enough, through her own experience, a mere exchange of inhabited geopolitical sites: “The town of gossips [in Mexico]. The town of dust and despair. Which she had traded for this town of gossips [in Texas]. This town of dust, despair….No huddled whisperings on the church steps each Sunday. Because here the whispering begins at sunset at the icehouse instead” (ibid. 50).

“Cuchicheo”—the term used in the Spanish translation of the narrative to mean both whispering and gossip- counterpoints Cleófilas’ own inner world articulated mainly through romantic dreams and memories of the past: “But what Cleofilas has been waiting for, has been whispering and sighing and giggling for, has been anticipating since she was old enough to lean against the window displays of gauze and butterflies and lace, is passion” (ibid. 44). [4]

It is, however, only when Cleófilas crosses the creek and bridge again as a willing “retornada”, in the company of Felice, a Chicana feminist activist who owns a truck of her own, that bordercrossing as a rite of passage takes place. The Llorona-related creek and the bridge are transformed into nepantla in-between spaces that Anzaldúa explains is not only the “locus and sign of transition,” as has been mentioned previously, but also a “psychological, liminal space between the way things had been and an unknown future … [where we] are forced to take up the task of self-redefinition” (Anzaldúa 2005, 99). Thus the rewriting of La Llorona “transshapes” (ibid. 102) the wandering wailing figure into a Chicana “yell as loud as any mariachi” (Cisneros 1991, 55), a “holler like Tarzan” (ibid.), un grito, that signals freedom and, in this narrative in particular, the possibility of self-expression and a new lease on life for Cleofilas, paradoxically enough, by crossing over the border and returning to her hometown in Mexico.

The two Chicanas Felice and Graciela—happy and grace—become bridging agents of potential transformation (binary counterparts to the Mexican women neighbors in Texas, Dolores and Soledad) through orality, but mainly through the counterpart to La Llorona’s wail and death association by means of Felice’s happy grito and Tarzan yell: “Woman Hollering. Pues. I holler.” This functions as a prelude to Cleofilas’ own “long ribbon of laughter, like water”, initiating her to incipient self-narrative practices.

She returns as a willing “retornada” migrant–saved by Chicana activists from a grim future of abuse—without, however, a trace of defeat. Rather, she has acquired a power all her own through experience of new cultural practices that she immediately turns into praxis by recounting the nepantla-site-initiation-crossing to her all-male family of father and brothers . She does so in her own voice marked by an authorial orality she has accessed through the personal experience of a ritual bordercrossing: “Can you imagine, when we crossed the arroyo she just started yelling like a crazy, she would say later to her father and brothers. Just like that. Who would’ve thought?” (ibid. 56)

Puente 2: Bordercrossing and intratextual translation practices

The use of English in Chicana writing can be read as being “subversive,” because, as Norma Klahn states, “Chicanas [have] appropriated the language of the colonized to accuse the long history of oppression and defacement of a language and culture.” In this way it is appropriated as well as problematized and reconfigured from within a linguistic and cultural stronghold such as literature. On the other hand, the very presence of Spanish and the use of interlingual or code-switching practices in Chicana textuality (as opposed to bilingual ones in which both codes appear separately), as Artega has noted, provokes a crisis because “it precludes the status of English as sole, unchallenged code for civilized American discourse” (Arteaga 22). Such identity markers of chicanidad are thereby reminders of a cultural and linguistic specificity of mestizaje that demands acknowledgment.

Interlingual practices are both a tracing of everyday code-switching oral usage, as well as aesthetic practices that Pérez-Torres calls the “mestizaje of linguistic form” (231) and Harryette Mullen refers to as “syncretic aesthetic” (5). The particularities of Chicana poetics, it could be said, then, include what Walter D. Mignolo terms “intentional bilanguaging” (Mignolo 2000). Although these interlingual practices “privilege(s) bilingual, biliterate and bicultural readers, as Norma Klahn points out, they also become markers of chicanidad intrinsic to the very inclusion/exclusion politics of Chicana textuality when it comes to monolingual English- and Spanish-speaking “attentive outside readers,” as Klahn calls them (149). Thereby, self-reflexive translation politics, that I refer to as “intratextual translation strategies,” become identity markers for Chicana textuality.

I have tentatively identified and labeled several of these practices given the absence of available referents. I have used “Woman Hollering Creek” as a specific narrative reference point.

1. Literal translation from Spanish into English, such as “on the other side” (Cisneros 1991, 43) a literal translation of ‘en el otro lado’ or ‘al otro lado’. Introduced in the first four lines of the narrative, its deliberate “foreignizing” effect is a reminder that the main perspective is that of a Mexican migrant woman and that the narrative location/site is close to the border.
2. Approximate and contiguous translation, for instance when the narrative voice alludes parenthetically to Cleófilas’ non-violent and loving upbringing, since at home they called her “la consentida, the princess” (ibid. 47-48). “The princess” is a culturally encoded Mexican endearment—princesa or princesita—although the contiguity of both terms has the effect of an approximate cultural translation, for an English-speaking audience, of “la consentida.”
3. Other strategies are more complex and at times resort to interlingual practices. I have labelled two of them non-contiguous intercallated and differed translations, illustrated in this example: “Don’t go out there after dark, mi’jita, stay near the house. No es bueno para la salud. Mala suerte. Bad luck. Mal aire. You’ll get sick and the baby too. You’ll catch a fright wandering about in the dark….” (ibid. 51) “No es bueno para la salud becomes an approximate translation as “You’ll get sick” a few phrases ahead—and thereby differed—even as it is simultaneously intercalated by other phrases and translations.
4. Another differed translation would be “Mal aire” and “You’ll catch fright wandering about in the dark,” which is, additionally, an explanatory translation, since the cultural specificities of mal aire become “you’ll catch fright,” to which is added the explanation “wandering about in the dark”.
5. “Mala suerte. Bad luck” is a contiguous parallel translation.
6. An elliptical or textually unreferenced translation, “The Rich Also Cry,” (46) has been deliberately translated quite literally from the original title “Los ricos también lloran”,a well-known Spanish-language telenovela. Ironically, this becomes a means of privileging the bicultural and bilingual reader by the literal translation itself that proves a giveaway.
7. “La Llorona, the weeping woman” also becomes a compact explanatory cultural translation.
8. Although onomatopoeias may at times require translation (such as a barking dog, rendered in English as woof woof and in Spanish as guau guau) Cisneros’ choice to sidestep direct intratextual translation, yet still evoke sensorial effects for the reader in a different language and culture, is a further indication of the importance of intratextual translation possibilities and their range. The use of “rrr, rrr, rr” is related, through contiguity, to a sewing machine within the context of gossipy neighbors talking about Cleofilas’ gift as a seamstress. Another example is the sensorial exegesis added to a simile: “This is what Cleofilas thought evenings when Juan Pedro did not come home, and she lay on her side of the bed listening to the hollow roar of the interstate, a distant dog barking, the pecan trees rustling like ladies in stiff petticoats –shh-shh-shh-, shh-shh, shh— soothing her to sleep” (ibid. 44, my emphasis). The onomatopoeia here enhances the silence and solitude in which the protagonist finds herself immersed in a culture alien to her own.
9. There are also several instances in “Woman Hollering Creek” of translation resistence that often function as markers of orality denoting specific idiomatic cultural referents, such as: “Entiendes? Pues”(ibid. 46), mìjita” (ibid. 51), mi querida (ibid. 52), híjole (ibid. 54), Qué vida, comadre” (ibid. 55). These oral markers make no concessions to English-only readers, and function, as do other sporadic untranslated terms such as “farmacia”(ibid. 44), telenovela (ibid. 44), tele (ibid. 45), as reminders of the border space as narrative location.

By means of this range of intratextual translation strategies, the tension of languages and cultures becomes textually visible on the page, de-stabilizing a monolingual English language reading, revealing the complexities of Chicano/a transitions, mestizaje, and hybridity, pressing the point that the very reading can become a postcolonial site that requires and even demands the reader’s compliance to engage in active bordercrossing practices (Arteaga 4).

Puente 3: Bordercrossing and translation politics

Once Chicana texts written in English bordercross into a Spanish translation, they begin to “speak”, as it were, in what Arteaga calls “an other tongue” (Arteaga 1994), that is, en o con otra lengua (in or with an other tongue). As soon as Spanish becomes the “dominant” linguistic code, encoded textual signifiers, as well as cultural and identity markers such as the use of interlinguism are dis- and re-located, and consequently subjected to potential erasure and a form of inverted assimilation (Joysmith 2003, 150).

Since poetic and political interlingual practices risk erasure when bordercrossed in a translation into Spanish, in my own translation (Cisneros 1996) I have suggested the possible implementation of certain alternative translation strategies, such as the use of typographical font variations (including italics for what is not translated and remains in English), that may consciously mirror politicized identity-related markers in the terminal text. For example,
would read/look like this in my translated version:

Another translation strategy would be to maintain in the terminal text in Spanish the visibility of rupture and the resistance to linguistic and cultural translation in the text of origin (in English ) as forms of disruption in the “dominant” code being used (Spanish in this case ), through the use of italics. For instance, “Bad luck” quoted above or the oral rendering of a one-sided telephone conversation between two Chicana characters that, as the narrative indicates, was “in a Spanish pocked with English”, becomes a site for “intentional bilanguaging” cultural practices (Mignolo 2000). Since the narrative in “Woman Hollering Creek” is about a Mexicana migrant worker, its translation into Spanish, it might seem, would make this narrative more accessible to readers in Mexico. This may be so linguistically, but culturally it is complicated by several factors. A reader whose geocultural and “situated knowledge” (Haraway 1988) site is, say, central Mexico, and who is unfamiliar with Chicana politics and practices, will almost undoubtedly experience cultural dislocation when reading a narrative depicting a Mexicana migrant worker in translation from English into Spanish. Above all, because “intentional bilanguaging” practices, as has been suggested, are a means of implementing counterhegemonic activities while simultaneously making a claim to mexicanidades, a further dis-location for the Spanish-speaking reader in Mexico.

Moreover, the unsettling ambiguity of chicanidades themselves and their encoded interlingual practices in fact de-stabilize monolithic conceptions of what is labelled as “Mexican” within the boundaries of Mexico as a geocultural site. In this sense, it is worth noting that the alternative translation strategies suggested above maintain these dis-locating features not only as core expressions of chicanidades, but also as a de-stabilizinging agency that may possibly contribute to problematizing, for instance, the inclusion/exclusion politics of mexicanidades themselves and their cartography of cultural complexities from a Mexico-centered perspective.

This would constitute, it should be added, one of the political and cultural motivations I tend to engage with when translating a narrative such as this into Spanish. In this sense, the very act of translation becomes a complex transculturing agency in a broader context of transformative textual and critical cultural practices that problematize the poetics and politics not only of Chicana literature, but also of the cartography of mexicanidades from the “situated knowledge” site of Central Mexico, where “resistant reactions,” (see Joysmith 2001, 2003, 2011a) as I have called them, emerge in academic and public circles. I perceive the latter as highly complex and elusive, emotionally and psychologically rooted reactions, an array of entrenched cultural, nationalist, religious, and linguistic prejudices, possibly even a collective unconscious fear of transgression, entailing deep undercurrents of mistrust, aversion, insecurity toward what is at once strangely alien yet uncannily familiar. The transgressive core of Chicana discourse, imagery and representation also provokes such reactions. This is, however, gradually changing as a result of present intensified (im)migration flows as well as greater awareness of the complexities of migration and globalizing processes.

“Woman Hollering Creek”, it is worth remembering, is not a narrative about a Mexicana migrant worker becoming a Chicana; it is, rather, about how the narrative deploying of Chicana politics may contribute to re-directing cultural practices through varied cultural bordercrossing praxis outside U.S. geopolitical borders. This is, in itself, hugely unsettling and problematic for a Mexican reader.

Nuevos puentes: Post-9/11 migra and narco times

Once Cleofilas has crossed over creek and bridge borders and has undergone her rite of passage thanks to Chicana female role models that initiate her into some form of “liberation”- it would be interesting to enquire as to what her fate would be in the present violent context of the northern Mexico border.

One wonders whether “Woman Hollering Creek” wouldn’t now urgently require a sequel, as in a telenovela become a reality show for real. During a colloquium on Chicana literatura that took place recently in Central Mexico, a participant suggested to Sandra Cisneros (present at the event) that she rewrite this narrative into the contemporary context of excess violence, because, she noted, “Hoy en México nos deslizamos al territorio de los aullidos de dolor y de rabia, donde no hay liberación…dentro de una realidad nacional tan supresora y aniquiladora” (Belausteguigoitia fc.).

Recently, the shocking case of Marisela Escobedo Ortíz,[5] mother of a femicide victim, quien dió un grito, un aullido de Llorona as she demanded justice, but was ultimately killed outside the courthouse December 13th, 2010, raises many questions that remain as yet unanswered.

What if Cleofilas as a migrante retornada, one of thousands today, had to find work in the maquiladoras in Ciudad Juárez, now the most violent city on the planet, with a two week contract, and live in a two-by-four room with six other working girls, earning 40 dollars a week, living day in, day out with the threat of becoming one more femicide victim among well over 6,000 in Mexico (2,015 between 2007-2009), without any alternative, without any hope of escape? How would la Llorona be transshaped and reconfigured? What kind of hollering, gritos and cuchicheos would prevail amid the echo of bullets and the silence of hope, when no more “long ribbons of laughter, like water” can be heard on the Mexico-U.S. border? What kind of role-modeling would Chicanas take on? What kind of narratives could they be writing given the present situation? What kind of narratives do Mexicana writers and artists need to shape nowadays?

Perhaps, I might here suggest, it is time for this narrative to be rewritten in post-9/11 and unprecedented narco-violent times.

Endnotes

[1]In 2010 “Mexican nationals accounted for 73 percent of all aliens removed” and “The next leading countries were Guatemala (8 per-cent), Honduras (6 percent) and El Salvador (5 percent). These four countries accounted for 92 percent of all removals.” Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2010. (http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/enforcement-ar-2010.pdf). back to text

[2]“Pain or rage, Cleófilas wondered when she drove over the bridge the first time as a newlywed and Juan Pedro had pointed it out. La Gritona, he had said, and she had laughed. Such a funny name for a creek so pretty and full of happily ever after.” (47) back to text

[3] “La Llorona calling to her. She is sure of it. Wonders if something as quiet as thus drives a woman to the darkness under the trees.” (51) and “There is no place to go….Soledad on one side, Dolores on the other. Or the creek.” (51) back to text

[4]This is a reminder of what Gloria Anzaldúa claims about Chicana writings: “In addition to the task of writing, or perhaps included in the task of writing, we’ve had to create a readership and teach it how to ‘read’ our work” (1990, xviii) back to text

[5]See, http://www.elmundo.es/america/2010/12/17/mexico/1292605079.html. back to text

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987. Print.

—. “Let Us be the Healing of the Wound: The Coyolxauhqui Imperative –La Sombra y el Sueño.” One Wound for Another/Una herida por otra. Testimonios de Latin@s in the U.S. (11 de septiembre de 2001-11 de marzo de 2002). Ed. Claire Joysmith. México: CISAN. UNAM, The Colorado College and Whittier College, 2005. 92-103. Print.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Let Us be the Healing of the Wound: The Coyolxauhqui Imperative –La Sombra y el Sueño.” The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations). Ed. AnaLouise Keating. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. 303-317. Print.

Arteaga, Alfred. An Other Tongue: Nation and Ethnicity in the Linguistic Borderlands. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994. Print.

Belausteguigoitia, Marisa. “Sandra Cisneros: La escritura como réplica y grito en Caramelo y ‘El Aullido de la Llorona’.” Nepantla Aesthetics. La espina de nopal en el corazón: Escritura y representación chicanas. Ed. Claire Joysmith. Mexico: UNAM (forthcoming). Print.

Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1991.

—. “El arroyo de la Llorona.” El arroyo de la Llorona y otros cuentos. translation by Liliana Valenzuela. New York: Vintage Español/ Vintage Books, Random House, 1996: 47-61. Print.

—. “El arroyo de la Gritona.” in Joysmith, Claire. “La literatura bífida.” Revista Mexicana de Cultura. 39 (October 1996). Print.

Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges.” Feminist Studies. 14.3 (Autumn 1988): 585. Print.

Klahn, Norma. “Literary (Re)Mappings: Autobiographical (Dis)Placements by Chicana Writers.” Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader (Post-Contemporary Interventions). Ed. Gabriela F. Arredondo et al. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. 114 -145. Print.

Nguyen, Tram. We are all Suspects Now. Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. Print.

Mignolo, Walter D. Local Histories / Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print.

Mullen, Harryette. “‘A Silence Between Us Like a Language’: The Untranslatability of Experience in Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek.” Melus. The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethinic Literature of the U.S. 21.2 (Summer 1996): 3-20. Print.

Pérez-Torres, Rafael. Movements in Chicano Poetry. Against Myths, Against Margins. Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.

Sánchez, Marta E. Contemporary Chicana Poetry: A Critical Approach to An Emerging Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Print.

Margarita Ramos,

University of Guadalajara

14 June 2010 at Bielefeld University

Margarita Ramos

University of Ulster, Coleraine

Abstract

Writing in The New York Review of Books in April 2010 the Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, described the delight of Twitter as being “like having fairies at the bottom of your garden.” Taking what is a social networking tool and turning it into a space for dialogue, promotion and fan feedback is one that many others have also used. Twitter is not the only platform used in this way. Taking full advantage of what web 2.0 has to offer, writers are using a variety of online tools including websites, blogs, Twitter and Facebook, to reach and engage with their readers. Where before writers had to rely on a well-financed and enthusiastic publishing house, now they impel their private selves into the public in short bursts of pithy observations and commentaries. This article considers this transition from producer to vendor that writers have had to adopt, and the differing uses that a selection of Mexican and Chicana writers make of online spaces and social networking tools in order to bridge the gap and dialogue with their fairies.

Writing in The New York Review of Books in April 2010 the Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, described the delight of Twitter as being “like having fairies at the bottom of your garden”. Taking what is a social networking tool and turning it into a space for dialogue, promotion and fan feedback is one that many others have also used. The micro-blogging site has established itself as a useful tool for politicians, celebrities, and writers to communicate efficiently and casually with their ‘followers’, as Twitter friends are called. Twitter is but one of the new tools that have become prevalent for writers to engage with their readers. The social networking site, Facebook, and more conventional personal blogging sites have also been employed by writers to communicate with and draw in a readership. Where before writers had to rely upon the skills of their publishing house’s marketing department, now they choose to impel their ‘private’ selves into the public in sometimes short bursts of pithy observations and commentaries in Twitter and Facebook and longer, more discursive pieces in blogs and websites. This paper will consider this transition from producer to promoter that writers have had to adopt, and the differing uses that a selection of Mexican and Chicana writers make of the web, blogs, and social networking tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, in order to bridge the gap and dialogue with their fairies.

Twitter, Facebook and blogs are part of what is called web 2.0, a term devised by Tim O’Reilly to differentiate the newer form of interaction on the web from the previous, static, spaces created by individuals, companies, governments and organizations (Walker Rettberg 9). Jill Walker Rettberg describes this transition, “[t]he first wave of Web developers focused largely on publishing content. Web 2.0, on the other hand, develops services that allow users to share their own content and to use the Web as a platform” (ibid.). This platform is also one which the reader can (usually) have access to and comment on, thus allowing for dialogue.

The interactivity varies according to the rules and functionality of the specific platform. A website may have space for a discussion thread, and this, in turn, can be edited and controlled by the author or site manager. This is also the case with a blog. Most blog sites allow the author the right to edit comments, or even disallow comment on their posts. In contrast, Twitter is a live feed, others can interact with, comment and discuss what has been posted, without authorial control. Facebook, whose express aim on its welcome page is that it “helps you connect and share with the people in your life”, foregrounds positive sharing and connection, as too do its ‘comment’ or ‘like’ options after posts.

Each of these forms encourage and foment different types of interactivity, comments and sharing. Those blogs which allow open-ended discussions and interaction necessitate vigilance by the author, creating extra work. The author has to read and sometimes must edit these. Whilst most readers of blogs who comment engage positively with authors’ posts there are other more negative presences, such as spam or trolls. The only options to get rid of these persistently negative posters – or trolls, who can create havoc on sites by instigating rows – are for the author of a blog to read the discussion threads or block comments entirely. Similarly, with spam the author must edit consistently, therefore requiring significant work.

The open-ended nature of the blog, which may instigate a discussion that can lead the readers to discuss entirely unrelated matters, is both one of its strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand for the author he/she can read, respond and engage with his/her readers, creating a sense of a personal relationship. On the other, if the blog is very popular it can lead to very time-consuming and detailed discussions which stray from the author’s interests. For all of these reasons authors often disallow comments, thereby negating the interactive nature of a blog.

In contrast, Facebook and Twitter encourage both interactivity and brevity. Facebook allows for lengthy posts, but only shows a portion of them, therefore generally resulting in short posts. Devised for mobile technology, Twitter only allows 140 characters which is the same as a text message. As a result, they are more difficult to edit. Facebook does allow for deletion; Twitter only if it violates US law. However, it is unusual on both platforms. What most authors do is remove friends or followers if they no longer wish to engage with them.

Much of the research for this paper relies on a longitudinal study, because there is a need to build information about the authors’ self-presentation in what is a different medium.[1] This project took place between August 2010 and July 2011, which allows me to provide both an evolution of online usage, but also an insight into a moment in time in what is an ever-evolving situation. In this article I use the word ‘author’ to mean the persona that is presented on the web and ‘writer’ when I refer to the person behind the work of fiction. This is to differentiate between the often invisible presence of a fiction writer, as opposed to the online self-characterisation that takes place through the web, blogging and social media. Here the conceptualisation of self is important. Vivane Serfaty writes about the “veil of the screen” which suggests “that online diarists and bloggers use their writing as a mirror that allows them to see themselves more clearly and to construct themselves as subjects in a digital society, but also as a veil that will always conceal much of their lives from their readers” (Walker Rettberg 12). What is concealed is impossible to determine. However, what is revealed through the veil of the screen will be the subject of this article. Allied to this is Zygmunt Bauman’s exploration of “individualization” which, for him, “consists in transforming human ‘identity’ from a ‘given’ into a ‘task’ – and charging the actors with the responsibility for performing that task and for the consequences (also the side-effects) of their performance” (144). [2] Following on from these conceptualizations the writer thus becomes author through the performance of an online self.

The selves that are being considered are a comparison of a selection of Chicana writers: Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Gwendolyn Zepeda; and Mexican women writers: Carmen Boullosa, Ana Clavel Ana García Bergua and Cristina Rivera Garza. These writers were chosen because they have a web presence, that is they or their publishers host a website, blog, engage with Twitter or have an active Facebook. Not all of the writers that I am considering here have the same level of activity online, but they do have web personas. In contrast, there is a Facebook fan site in Norma Cantú’s name but there is no activity there. Similarly, Denise Chavez does not have website or blog. Consequently, neither of these writers is under consideration here. What is of interest in these two examples is that despite the apparent imperative to market a self in the world of publishing and the growth in platforms and media, there are many writers who do not have an online presence beyond their publisher’s page or that of an online bookseller.

Although most of my focus is on social media and Web 2.0, I shall start with websites. These are often the base through which connections to other author sites can be found. Outside of listservs, which work on an invitation only basis and before social media, websites are where people connect and source information. [3]In the introduction to this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation, AnaLouise Keating states that, “[t]he Internet is my lifeline, my intellectual sustenance, my connection out of this small dusty town in eastern New Mexico” (Keating 6). She mentions two sites which particularly sustained her: chicana.com and chicana.net, neither of which is now maintained. They have become superseded by individuals’ sites. Where before there were connected, aggregation sites such as these, there is now a page lost in cyberspace alongside multiple individuated selves.

Sandra Cisneros has a strong online presence. Her website, which is designed and maintained by her publishing house is testament to how a successful writer is well supported by a publishing infrastructure. Her page (http://www.sandracisneros.com/index.php) has simple visuals with a photo of herself in a Mexican shawl, indigenous style jewellery, a straw hat, flowing hair against the background of a ruined building and is clearly labelled to be taken at Mineral de Pozos, Guanajuato, Mexico by Alan Goldfarb. The banner image is a multicolour flag behind her name in white font. The colourful banner evokes the Mexican blankets and echoes her self-stylisation in the photo. This is Cisneros wearing her indigenous Mexicanness proudly and as part of her online self. As a medium “where the visual is of primary importance” and “[p]resentational qualities take precedence over the discursive”, such imagery is of primary importance (Gibson 5). Many of the other photographs of Cisneros reflect this same self-stylisation using a mix of Mexican indigenous and ‘western’ clothing.

Ana Castillo plays with similar imagery on the home page of her website (http://www.anacastillo.com/content/). Place, while unmarked by any title, is obviously important in the photograph used. She is sitting outside in a Mexican-style chair, in what is recognizably a Mexican-US border landscape. Unlike Cisneros, she is dressed in a plain white shirt and blue jeans and is wearing hooped earrings. Therefore, her clothes are not evocative of an indigenous past, but of a US style. In other photos on the site she is dressed in contemporary ‘western’ clothing. Instead, Castillo uses landscape in the photograph as an identifiable marker, as well as the style of the banner and content of the page, to assert her Chicana identity.

In contrast, the self-styled ‘Chick Lit’ and children’s book writer, Gwendolyn Zepeda’s website (http://gwendolynzepeda.com/) is devoid of obvious Mexican borderland visual markers. Her home page is a photograph that she took of birds on electricity wires at dusk on a cloudy day. The clouds, relative lack of colour, cables, and the birds mean that the photo lacks any identifiable specificity. Over the photos is a rolling series of quotations of positive reviews of her work. Zepeda is of a younger generation of chicana writers and, therefore, traces her ethnicity differently. She chooses not to present an ethnic self in a specific landscape and, instead, is appealing to a wider audience. Unlike Cisneros and Castillo, Zepeda has multiple other links and ways of following her online. Where Cisneros writes an intermittent news section that is styled as a letter to her readers, and Castillo updates her homepage regularly with news of appearances, collaborations and public engagements, Zepeda has links to her blog, Twitter and Facebook pages as well as her email address. All three have links to their agents and publicists. While Castillo and Cisneros limit links to the last two, Zepeda has a long history of online usage. She is an active blogger (including some under a pseudonym) and is very self-conscious of her online personae (Zepeda 2011b). Zepeda’s web presence is an example of how “[n]etworked communications need interfaces that hop across nodes, exploiting the unique character of distributed communication” (Kelly and Wolf 222). Cisneros and Castillo’s pages are closed and encourage the reader to explore the sites further or direct the user to read their books; whereas, Zepeda encourages movement from her page to other pages following the dynamics of Web 2.0. That is, she provides opportunities for node hopping, as Kelly and Wolf have fashioned it, in order to continue an enriched experience of the author and her world, interests, and connections.

Zepeda’s blogging activity linked to her current site consists of a blog which is directed at her readers and is about her working methods, some vignettes from her personal life, reflections on the nature of blogging, and information on forthcoming novels and appearances. She does not allow comments on her blog site, as she states in one post, “I’m disabling comments on this post (and probably on future ones, too) because I’ve received my lifetime quota of spam comments from people selling knock-off watches and bags” (Zepeda 2011c). Instead, she gets reader feedback on her Facebook and formerly on her Twitter account. Added to this blog she has several other blog postings which are largely biographical illustrated stories, variously entitled “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, “Mexico Love”, “Patterns”, “Prom Love” and “Strip Club Adventure.” From these the link back to the blog page on her site is entitled “back to Gwen’s Trailer Trash Page.” This is typical of the idiosyncratic, ironic and humorous tone of the blog entries and the illustrated stories.

Another small button above these stories brings the reader to yet another blog site “Damn Hell Ass Kings”, which is a filterblog, where the blogger functions as a curator and filters and collates other blogs often without any editorial comment (Walker Rettberg 12). The reader can follow a series of these links to other sites. Often blogs have favourite sites linked on the right or left hand sides of the homepage, but this filterblog is linked through a small rectangular image with the aforementioned title and a picture of a baby doll that could easily be overlooked by the reader. Its name does not give any indication of what it is until the reader clicks through and then follows some of the links given. In a Twitter exchange, the author confirmed that it is a reference to a Simpson’s episode, “referencing the only curse words they could say on tv” (Zepeda 2011a). The title is both playful – further building the author’s web persona – and results in a very clean presentation of the website and the blog. Therefore, Zepeda’s blogging practice is diverse and creatively explores the three categories of blogs outlined by Walker Rettberg: the aforementioned filterblog, her illustrated stories are “personal or diary-style” blogs and, the work and book promotion blog conforms to the “topic-driven” blog (Walker Rettberg 12). None of these categories is exclusive and, as I have already considered, there is some overlap. All three contribute to creating her authorial voice and a ludic online voice aimed at building a readership as well as expressing herself creatively in a different medium.

Success online and off is not equivalent nor does it have an easy correlation. Cisneros and Castillo have sold many books and had been well-established names in Chicano studies for many years before the web has been used as a tool for authors. Zepeda has had good sales of her books, but, as a less well-known author, she relies on the web as a tool for dissemination and promotion more than the other two writers. In many ways, Zepeda is working in a different publishing environment to the one in which Cisneros and Castillo emerged and built a readership. Now is a time of much uncertainty and competition for readership.

Alicia Gaspar de Alba sits somewhere between Cisneros and Castillo’s largely closed websites and the multi-nodal nature of Zepeda’s site. Gaspar de Alba’s site opens on a banner page with an image of a pen commemorating the 400th anniversary of Miguel de Cervantes; images of the cover pages of her four novels and of one of her critical texts, and a visit counter. There the visitor can click on the pen to get to the homepage or on the various texts to go directly to the books. This format foregrounds her writing and encourages the visitor to become a(n offline) reader. On the homepage there are several links to the left where the visitor can find out more about the author, click through to the texts (some of which are highlighted), go to her blog, a news link, and a link to the University of California, Los Angeles, where the author works. Like Zepeda, the design is not markedly Chicana; it foregrounds Gaspar de Alba’s writing. The pen as a metonym for writing with its oblique allusion to a Hispanic writing legacy in its design, positions herself clearly as a writer first and some of her other identifying markers (Lesbian, Chicana, activist, professor, bowler and so on) are revealed later in the site. This connection to her writerly self is made clear in a playful blog entry, which is framed as a letter to Gaspar de Alba from the Mexican poet and writer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz:

What I most like (other than that impressive collection of fountain pens on display) is that it shows the world that you are a writer first and foremost, and that your academic life, though rich and productive and successful, is but one aspect of your identity. Let the world know that you wear both the mortar board of an academic and a writer’s hat (a brown felt Stacy Adams that you bought on Venice Beach), and that for 15 years now, you’ve been doing a juggling act balancing your writing projects with your working life at the university. (Gaspar de Alba 2008)

Sor Juana is an omniscient critical voice here who Gaspar de Alba uses to underscore textually what is evident from the visual interface of the site.

Gaspar de Alba is not a regular blogger on this site: six in 2008, two in 2009 and four in 2010, none so far in 2011). The entries on “Cooking with Sor Juana” are reflections on writing, in particular her two attempts at writing 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month and a third successful go; her travels; some book releases; and some personal diary-style entries. There is some overlap between these. Therefore, these entries conform to two of the three types of blog: topic-driven and personal. With no filtering or links to other blogs, this blog is that of an author reflecting on the creative process from a very practical point of view. Primarily, she writes about getting time through sabbaticals and making time by changing career, and, like all of the others, of promoting her own output. As with Zepeda’s topic-driven entries there is much reflection on the process of writing and juggling this with personal and career demands.

There are few connections to other nodes on the website and in the blog. The only contact details on the site are through an email address that can be accessed through an automatic button, with no connections to publishers or publicists, unlike Cisneros, Zepeda, and Castillo. However, this may be because through her profession as an academic she is easily accessible. The other link is to her Facebook page, one which she can filter carefully whether to accept or decline friendship requests. Of the other two Chicanas, only Zepeda has a similar Facebook link.

It is evident that there are variations among these writers as to their use of the web. Of the writers I contacted who have been mentioned in this article, Cisneros’ publicist made it clear that Cisneros does not maintain or design her site, and is too occupied in her other work to engage in a more regular blog or more frequent Facebook posts (Bergholz). However, this would suggest that the other two more regular bloggers and posters are less busy individuals, which is far from true. It is about a different relationship with the Internet. Gaspar de Alba and Zepeda use the Internet as both a creative and promotional tool that is another output as their professional online authorial selves.

The Mexican writers under consideration here do not have the same type of web presence on the whole, and there is some variation. Of the four novelists I consider here only two have websites: Ana Clavel and Carmen Boullosa. Ana Clavel has two: “Cuerpo náufrago” (www.anaclavel.com), the other, “Las violetas son flores del deseo” (http://www.violetasfloresdeldeseo.com/). Both are given as transmedia projects linked to her eponymous novels, Las violetas son flores del deseo (2007) y Cuerpo náufrago (2005). “Las violetas son flores del deseo” has more sophisticated links than “Cuerpo náufrago,” but is more text based. The viewer can leaf through sample pages of her work, for example. “Cuerpo náufrago” is built around her novel of the same name, which in itself is a bricolage of photographic and textual elements (Lavery). In Jane Lavery’s words, just as Cuerpo náufrago “is a calculated copy of the works by other authors or artists, so is it a dialogic reworking through parody and digital manipulation” (ibid.). In collaboration with the artist Paul Alarcón, Clavel has created a page with ludic and sensual elements that are part of the presentation of a project rather than a creation of an online self. The opening page is the same as the cover image of her novel, that is a montage of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres La Source (1856) and instead of the familiar urn, the naked woman is holding Marcel Duchamp’s La fontaine (1917). Wrapped around her, covering her naked breasts and pubis are police signs saying “zona de riesgo” [danger zone] and “prohibido paso” [area forbidden]. If the user scrolls over these they fall away, leaving a naked woman. Such elements on the site as this photograph and the video performance are deliberately provocative and ludic, intended to invoke a response in the user. The site is intended as a stand-alone art piece not a developed performance of the self that is evident in the previous sites considered.

Despite having her name as the domain name there is little of what the previous writers had on theirs. For example, there is no biographical information, no links to other publications, no connections to other projects, blogs or news sections. It is dated as 2005, and there are no apparent updates on the site. Similarly, although “Las violetas son flores del deseo” has strong degree of interactivity and functions well as both a provocative and promotional site, it is closed. So, while they are good examples of hypermedia as remediation, where the designers of such sites “import earlier media into digital space in order to critique and refashion them,” they are not an example of Web 2.0 (Bolter and Grusin 53). There are no further communicating nodes that encourage the user to explore beyond the bounds of this site. This is a digital space that “responds to, redeploys, competes with, and reforms other media” and does so in order to provoke a response (ibid. 55). However, Clavel hasn’t developed any further online presence beyond Facebook, which I shall explore later.

The homepage of Boullosa’s site (http://www.carmenboullosa.net/) has a simple design. It is divided in two columns. The right hand side has news of publications, talks, activities, interviews and so on, while on the left are a poster for the launch of her most recent book, Las paredes hablan [The Walls Talk] (2010) with images of the covers of different editions of her other novels below. There is no obvious marker of Mexicanness in the visuals of the website other than the chili on the cover of the English language version of Leaving Tabasco (2001). Boullosa’s covers have tended to use art works or original photographs that suggest universal (and often European) themes rather than specifically Mexican narratives. However, the predominantly Spanish language site works as a textual marker of her Mexican identity. There are four drop down tabs on the top of the homepage which bring the reader to more information on the author, publications, information about her books and ‘otros’ [others]. The latter includes an organization that she co-founded called ‘Café Nueva York’ [New York Café] which celebrates writers who have lived or currently reside in New York; CUNY-TV a project with the City University of New York; an embedded documentary entitled “Arqueología y literatura” [archaeology and literature]; two news sections entitled “por venir” [upcoming] and “últimos recientes” [most recent]; and “Blog de la Boullosa” [Boullosa’s blog]. Her involvement in Café Nueva York, with its manifesto on the site identifies her clearly as both a Latino identified and Mexican author,

Nosotros, escritores de Hispanoamérica y España avecindados en Nueva York, declaramos, con la legitimidad que nos otorga la centenaria tradición de autores latinoamericanos y españoles que han vivido en esta ciudad sin desertar de la pertenencia a nuestra lengua, culturas y países. (Boullosa 2011)

[We, Hispanic American and Spanish writers resident in New York, declare, with all the legitimacy that we are granted by the century-old tradition of Latin American and Spanish authors who have lived in this city without deserting our belonging to our language, cultures and countries.]

Interestingly, here the six signatories use ‘Hispanoamérica’ in the first instance, which emphasizes the Spanish language basis of the group, and then ‘latinoamericanos’ in the second instance, which broadens the geographical scope, or, it could be argued, subsumes the continent into a Spanish-language speaking zone. The latter contention is reinforced by the use of the singular for ‘lengua’ [language] alongside plurals for cultures and countries. Spanish language usage on the site is evidently a deliberate marker of identity for Boullosa.

Despite her assertion that “[d]urante años me resistí a la idea de tener un blog” [for years I have resisted the idea of having a blog] (http://www.carmenboullosa.net/esp/projects/blog.html), Boullosa’s blog is quite extensive. It is made up of three to four blogs a month between March 2007 up to the present (July 2011 was her most recent up date), with some short gaps. They are well catalogued and cross-referenced. On the right hand of the page are archive categories including: recentes [sic], which have four of the most recent posts; categorias [categories], broken down into ‘cuarto de estudio’ [study room], El Universal, Hasta atrás [looking back], and textos [texts]; archivo [archive] which is a list of dated posts in reverse chronological order; Blogroll, a series of links to other writer and journalist’s blogs; and Meta, links to RSS feeds. One curious feature is that the blogs are searchable by date, but the archived pieces do not have a cross-referenced date.

Due to their origins as published pieces the blogs are longer than is conventional for something that is originally written as a blog and longer than those of any of the other authors. They are a mix of creative writing and essay pieces, generally current, given the nature of their original publication. Some of her earlier pieces have an element of the personal, although it is difficult to catalogue them strictly speaking as diary-style in the way that Zepeda and Gaspar de Alba’s are. She writes about historical figures, themes or ideas that are of interest to her, but they appear to be strictly on an intellectual plane without much self-revelation. Her inclusion of an anecdote on a former family dentist catalogued under ‘hasta atrás’ becomes a meditation on sculpture, for example. In her journalistic pieces she often includes biographical detail, including stories about her travels, but there is little reflection and more analysis or reportage. Her last personal post to date was in February 2010, a short in memoria for the recently deceased writer Carlos Montemayor. Since then the blog has been a filter blog of her own published pieces, that is, a personal archive of publications.

Boullosa has discussed her engagement with Web 2.0 in a link dated 3rd November 2010, “El día en que me asesinaron en Facebook” [the day I was killed on Facebook], originally published in Nexos. In the article, she discusses her attraction for and later removal from Facebook and the FacebookYo [FacebookMe] she had created there. Her article explores her initial reticence to join Facebook, talking about it as an unwanted birth, and that she was a “mamá por error” [mother by accident]. She describes herself as an irregular user who nonetheless delighted in discovering friends old and new,

Como por encanto brotaban de vez en vez algunos lectores de mis libros inencontrables, varios colegas mexicanos y extranjeros a los que tenía tiempo sin ver, o con los que acababa de tomarme unos vinos; me escribió un poeta colombiano del que acababa de leer un par de reseñas entusiastas (le pedí el libro, me lo envío, lo degusté con entusiasmo), algún francés, un croata cuyo original me fue imposible de descifrar, etcétera. La bolita creció y se volvió un bolón. (Boullosa 2010)

[As if by magic now and again many different people appeared: readers of some of my difficult to source books; several Mexican and foreign colleagues, who I had not seen in some time, or with whom I had just shared a few drinks; a Colombian poet about whom I had just read a few positive reviews (I asked for his book, he sent it, I enjoyed it enthusiastically); some Frenchman, a Croatian whose origins were impossible for me to decipher, etc. The numbers grew and became a crowd.]

Facebook became a source of tension, due to her infrequent access to it and a forced gregariousness, an opportunity to “dar rienda suelta a paranoias disparatadas” [to give free rein to a variety of paranoias], and “otra obligación más, un deber, algo que no podía desatender, una carga encima de los mil pendientes, una monserga a la hora de pelear minuto a minuto el territorio para escribir la novela” [one more obligation, a requirement, something I couldn’t ignore, a commitment on top of many others, a weight that took from the time that should have gone into writing a novel]. This writer’s struggle to find time for writing against the time-consuming nature of Facebook is echoed elsewhere by the British writer, Zadie Smith.

Facebook remains the greatest distraction from work I’ve ever had, and I loved it for that. I think a lot of people love it for that. Some work-avoidance techniques are onerous in themselves and don’t make time move especially quickly: smoking, eating, calling people up on the phone. With Facebook hours, afternoons, entire days went by without my noticing.

For Boullosa, the tension between “mi Inspirada-Novelista-Yo” [my inspired-novelist-me] and her FacebookYo becomes a meditation on herself and what other selves she could have been or is, including a fantasy other “RancheraYo” [rancher me] that she details at length. Gradually, she develops a kinship with her FacebookYo.

Mal que bien, me fui acostumbrando a FacebookYo. Conviví conmigo tan bien o tan mal como el resto de mi persona, que se me volvió parte de la batalla cotidiana, otro más en la arena, que, aunque estuviera lejos de ser un protagónico, contaba. (ibid.)

[For good or ill, I became accustomed to FacebookYo. I lived with myself as well or as poorly as the rest of my personae, it became part of my everyday battle, another in the arena, who though far from taking the lead, nonetheless counted.]

That is, until she was killed by Facebook. She sought explanations for why they cut her off, but could not find any reasons. Somewhat tongue in cheek, she speculates on some, including envy, her Revolutionary friends or her RancheraYo, evidently feeling this removal as a loss. Unlike the unified, singular, identifiable personhood that Smith evokes when talking about her engagement with Facebook,

Specifically we have different ideas about what a person is, or should be. I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate. Perhaps Generation Facebook have built their virtual mansions in good faith, in order to house the People 2.0 they genuinely are, and if I feel uncomfortable within them it is because I am stuck at Person 1.0.

According to her own account, Boullosa’s on- and offline self is a messy, complicated, multivalent being who is constantly re-negotiating this idea of selfhood. Smith’s conclusion is that she is not of a generation that can see herself in this distantiated way, for Boullosa that is part of the appeal that it holds for her. Both are struggling with the negotiation between being Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, and the complications that the latter entails. Boullosa conforms to the “remediated self” that Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin explore,

in her [sic] quest for immediacy, the subject in virtual space is not satisfied with a single point of view; instead, she seeks out the positions of other participants and objects in that space. She understands herself as a potentially rapid succession of points of view, as a series of immediate experiences derived from those points of view…she is defined as a succession of relationships with various applications or media. She oscillates between media…and her identity is constituted by these oscillations.
(Bolter and Grusin 235)

Boullosa’s description of her FacebookYo and her other selves that negotiate with it is an instance of what Bolter and Grusin are describing. In addition, her recent, gradually increasing use of Twitter as another expression of her online self is a multiplication of these selves. Many of her 116 tweets since she joined on the 8th of July 2010 are quotations from others, concern about the violence in Northern Mexico, criticisms of the Catholic church (although many of these are forwarded tweets by others ‘retweets’), and the occasional gnomic statements (“A la media noche, eviten las mediasnoches. Al medio dia, eviten vivir mediocre vida, o (por lo menos) las medias idas” [At midnight, avoid midnights. At midday, avoid living a mediocre life, or (at least) the half-travelled]) (21 March 2011).

Boullosa’s Twitter self is growing in range and scope. With just 346 followers, she is far from popular. This can be for many reasons. Only since March 2011 have her frequency of tweets gone up, from six in that month to 32 in July 2011, a significant increase. However, the frequency of tweets is not always a measure of popularity. For example, Elena Poniatowska has 41,947 followers and has only tweeted 39 times since she joined on the 20th of November 2009. This could be more to do with her international renown as an author than with her tweeting habits. Public profile has a significant bearing on her following. Another Mexican author, Guadalupe Loaeza, who has a considerable public profile in Mexico through various forms of on- and offline media, has a similar number of followers to Poniatowska (41,935) but a significantly higher number of tweets (1,272). Loaeza largely uses Twitter to draw attention to her publications. In comparison to these three writers, the Canadian author, Margaret Atwood, who is very active on Twitter, not only posts there to draw attention to her appearances, travels, publications and some occasional daily thoughts, she also uses it as a forum to voice her advocacy for campaigns such as those against the closure of public libraries and her support for environmental issues. Thus, she creates a rounded self as author, activist and reflective thinker. These result in many retweets by her and of her posts, which create larger ‘buzz’ around her profile and an increased readership.
Poniatowska has posted little and much is about her family (births and birthdays) with the occasional mention of attendance at an event. What is interesting about Boullosa, Loaeza and Atwood’s tweets is that they are performances, not the phatic writing that Twitter has been accused of producing. For danah boyd,

Twitter – like many emergent genres of social media – is structured around networks of people interacting with people they know or find interesting. Those who are truly performing to broad audiences (e.g., “celebs”, corporations, news entities, and high-profile blogger types) are consciously crafting consumable content that doesn’t require actually having an intimate engagement with the person to appreciate. Yet, the vast majority of Twitter users are there to maintain social relations, keep up with friends and acquaintances, follow high-profile users, and otherwise connect. It’s all about shared intimacy that is of no value to a third-party ear who doesn’t know the person babbling. Of course, as Alice Marwick has argued, some celebs are also very invested in giving off a performance of intimacy and access; this is part of the appeal. (boyd 2009)

boyd’s blog post is a reaction to a 2009 Pear Analytics study that categorized 40.55% of tweets as “pointless babble.” Poniatowska, through her postings on her family and locations, most explicitly provides a sense of a ‘shared intimacy’, just as, it could be argued, so too does her work. Boullosa does so through her quotations and references in a type of curatorship that brings the reader towards an understanding of what other writers she is reading or have significance for her, while her comments on political or religious matters provide an insight into her broader beliefs. Whilst many of these concerns can be gleaned elsewhere, most particularly in her journalistic writing, the tweets provide a snapshot of her as author.

Similar posts can be read on Ana Clavel and Ana García Bergua’s Facebook posts. They post regularly, sometimes several times a day. Some of the posts can be described as phatic, that is, those statements which do “social work rather than conveying information”, such as, García Bergua’s comments about her cats or when both provide links to different videos (ibid.). But, many are posts on readings; engagement with the No más sangre [No more blood] movement, a campaign against the killings in Northern Mexico; their own or other’s book launches; quotations, or references to other writers; and incidental pieces. For example, García had a series of micro-stories, which recounted her experiences in taxis. These literary experiments bear comparison with her fiction writing and were amongst the posts that have elicited most responses.

Unlike the other three Mexican writers, Cristina Rivera Garza uses Facebook as a way of disseminating her posts on her blog. Entitled “No hay tal lugar: U-tópicos contemporáneos” Rivera Garza is very deliberately foregrounding the idea of space on and off-line. The front page of the blog has her posts on the left hand side, photos of her books and collections in which she has published on the right, and below these images are an archive of her blogs. After the first two images of the books there are links to two other projects: “Mi Rulfo mío de mí” [My very own Rulfo], reflections on reading Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, and “Las aventuras de la increíblemente pequeña” [The adventures of the incredibly tiny], a largely image based work. These last two are external sites. The book images aren’t live links, therefore to get more details on her publications and where to source them the reader would have to look elsewhere.

Rivera Garza is a regular poster. She has been blogging since the 9th of January 2004 and posts between nine and 39 posts a month, mostly averaging about 20. This makes her by far the most active online writer of all of the Mexican writers discussed here. Like Boullosa, Rivera Garza’s blog is a combination of a filter blog with pasted articles from her Tuesday column “La mano oblicua” [the oblique hand] in the Mexican newspaper, Milenio, and Periódico de poesía, and links to articles by others, and a topic-driven blog like Gaspar de Alba and Zepeda. However, Rivera Garza’s page does not include reflections, instead hers has the more oblique and aphoristic quality of some of Boullosa’s Twitter posts alongside posts such as, translations of poetry, appearances and readings, photos of the residue left in her cup by coffee, which she calls the “monstruillo de los posos” [the little dregs monster], and there are images of her project, “Las aventuras de la increíblemente pequeña.”

“Las aventuras de la increíblemente pequeña” is subtitled “una fotonovela mensual” [a monthly photonovel] and is a Tumblr site. Tumblr is a fast growing platform that allows for blogging, high-resolution images and social networking. It is akin to a confluence of blogging and platforms like Facebook and Twitter and, due to this greater flexibility, it has grown in popularity in recent months. The first page of each monthly installment gives Rivera Garza’s location as San Diego-Tijuana, foregrounding her as a binational citizen. Begun in January 2011, the incredibly small of the title are five figurines scantily clad in fifties-style beach wear photographed against different backdrops and in a variety of locations. Sometimes these locations are indicated by the story (e.g. Falköning in the January 2011 story). The titles suggest a linear detective narrative (e.g. “el extraño caso de la roca descomunal” [the strange case of the unusual rock], whereas the narrative and the images are much more beguiling and open-ended. To a large extent they could be best described as explorations of a concept in image and text. These are multi-dimensional art pieces employing a graphic interface that allows for creative experimentation. It is evident that Rivera Garza is employing the creative potential of the internet to add extra dimensions to her work. In recent months for the most part, she has used Facebook to promote and disseminate this blog and to promote her recent novel Verde Shanghai (2011).

Where Twitter is public and all posts can be accessed by anyone, Facebook is a more private space. While there have been frequent discussions about Facebook and its violations of privacy settings, it has many settings that are intended to ensure that certain information can only be seen by ‘friends’ (Arthur). However, while a private individual may wish it to function as a way of keeping in touch with family and acquaintances, for a writer, using it to build on their readership it can have a different function. In the main, writers do not use it as a way of talking to their families and near acquaintances, instead it is a way of communicating a self (pace Boullosa) to their readership. There are exceptions when, for example, members of García Bergua’s family congratulate her on achievements or post positive comments on a photograph of her or her husband and children. There is some blurring between private and public, which can give the reader a sense that they have access to her private life without any real shared intimacies. Zepeda in an interview told me how she is very aware of the performative aspect of her Facebook page, as are her family (Zepeda 2011b). Whilst she posts personal details, e.g. details about her Chinese take out meal or make-up tips, it is deliberately about the ‘performance of intimacy and access’ that boyd discusses.

The changes in the publishing industry, including the marketing of a self online is one that is ever-evolving. There is every possibility that by the time of publication of this article there will be another massive shift. Twitter may augment its offering, Facebook with its dwindling numbers may disappear, and another form of social media may supersede both. Therefore, this article should be read as a snapshot in time, an account of what a selection of writers/authors are doing online and how Chicana writers compare to Mexican writers.

On the whole, Chicana writers may appear to have more established online personae than their Mexican counterparts. Of those I have examined, they have sites that have been in existence for longer and have a greater readership, according to the site statistics. Through this avenue, they have negotiated new routes into promoting their work to a wider readership. However, this digital divide between countries north and south of the US-Mexico border is not clear cut, in contrast to what the studies of the differences may suggest. For example, in 2006 only 15.1% of Latin Americans had access to the internet, whilst the number for the US was 69.1%, with Brazil (26 million) and Mexico (18.5 million) the largest users in the region (Taylor and Pitman 4-5). A 2010 Technocrati study of worldwide bloggers found that only 2% were resident in South America, 33% in the US and 38% in North America (Sobel). The North American figures are not disaggregated further, so it’s not clear how many of these are in Canada or Mexico. The fact that the survey was carried out in English and therefore ignores the other languages on the continent, will obviously be biased against Mexican or South American bloggers, which would seem to be a fundamental flaw of the study and questions the inclusion of Spanish speaking countries in the survey. Therefore the project is somewhat incomplete as a true survey of the area. Of the bloggers surveyed only one third are female, with 62% of bloggers posting more due to perceived benefits to their professional earning capacity, according to the analysis. The current trend is for more writers to engage in social media, whether this is motivated by their own interests, or due to encouragement by their publishers. Therefore, this is an area that is experiencing considerable growth and will necessarily evolve considerably over the coming years. Like other bloggers, writers, both Mexican and Chicana, post for a variety of personal, creative and professional reasons.

There is no clear-cut differential. Boullosa’s engagement with the Internet constitutes another writing experiment, a project like her other books. The closest comparisons can be drawn between her and both Zepeda and Gaspar de Alba’s reflection on their writing and self-curatorship. Clavel and Rivera Garza’s remediations are comparable. But, where Clavel’s sites are closed, Rivera Garza’s is multi-nodal, just as Zepeda’s is. Whilst, Clavel’s closed sites could be considered to have primarily promotional function, the experimental nature of these and their evidently collaborative nature, suggest that they are also creative outlets. Cisneros and Castillo’s usage appear to have the most purely promotional objectives, due in no small part to the input of publishers. This hierarchical, website based approach is not the only way to promote and draw in a readership, as is evidenced by the use of Facebook and Twitter by writers such as Clavel, García Bergua and Boullosa. It is a complex and evolving picture.

There is some growth in work around Latin American cyberculture, as this online world in all its vagaries is being labeled, particularly notable is that which has been carried out by Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman in the UK. There is scope for much more. The basic data about the use by writers of online means to discuss, promote, and creatively produce work is as yet incomplete, and given its ever-evolving dynamic nature it is near impossible to fully grasp the complete picture. The distinctions between the largely English-speaking US-based Chicanas and the Spanish-speaking Mexican writers reflects the differences between trends in the countries and their languages, but is not fully explained by linguistic or geopolitical variabilities either. Just as the internet has become a multi-media space and one that allows for many expressions of creativity, so too does it appeal differently to those wishing to employ it as a form of creating and performing one or many selves.

Endnotes

[1]See, for example, Susan C. Herring, Lois Ann Scheidt, Inna Kouper, and Elijah Wright “Longitudinal Content Analysis of Blogs: 2003-2004”, Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media edited by Mark Tremayne (New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2007) and Walker Rettberg op cit.back to text

[2]See, also, Brenda Laurel “Computers as Theatre.” Reading Digital Culture. David Trend ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001) on the performance of self online.back to text

[3]See, Henry Jenkins in “Blog This!”, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture (New York & London: New York University Press, 2006) on the comparison between blogs and listservs.back to text

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. “Atwood in the Twittersphere.” New York Review of Books. 29 Mar 2010. Web. 10 Aug 2011.

Bauman, Zygmaunt. The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Print.

Bergholz, Susan. E-Mail Exchange. 24 Jul. 2011.

Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Massachussetts & London: The MIT Press, 2000. Print.

Boullosa, Carmen. “El día en que me asesinaron en Facebook .” Nexos, 3 Nov. 2010. Web. 8 Apr. 2012.

—. “Manifesto.” Carmen Boullosa.net, 2011. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.

boyd, danah. “Twitter: ‘pointless babble’ or peripheral awareness + social grooming?” WordPress, 16 Aug. 2009. Web. 9 Aug. 2011.

Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. “Cooking with Sor Juana: A Note from Sor Juana.” Blogspot, 19 Sep. 2008. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.

Gibson, Stephanie B. “Introduction.” The Emerging Cyberculture: Literacy, Paradigm, and Paradox. Ed. Stephanie B. Gibson. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press Inc., 2000. Print.

Hassan, Robert. The Information Society. Cambridge & Malden: Polity, 2008. Print.

Herring, Susan C., Lois Ann Scheidt, Inna Kouper, and Elijah Wright. “Longitudinal Content Analysis of Blogs: 2003-2004.” Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media. Ed. Mark Tremayne. New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Jenkins, Henry. “Blog This!” Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York & London: New York University Press, 2006. Print.

Keating, AnaLouise. This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. Ed. AnaLouise Keating and Gloria E. Anzaldúa. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Laurel, Brenda. “Computers as Theatre.” Reading Digital Culture. Ed. David Trend. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001. Print.

Lavery, Jane. “Ana Clavel’s Las Violetas Son Flores del Deseo and Peritextuality.” Hispanic Research Journal (In Press), 2011. Print.

Smith, Zadie. “Generation Why?” The New York Review of Books. 25 Nov. 2010. Web. 8 Aug. 2011.

Sobel, Jon. “WHO: Bloggers, Brands and Consumers – State of the blogosphere.” Technorati, 3 Nov 2010. Web. 9 Aug. 2011.

Taylor, Claire and Thea Pitman. Latin American Cyberculture and Cyberliterature. Liverpool: Liverpool Univeristy Press, 2007. Print.

Walker Rettberg, Jill. Blogging. Cambridge: Polity, 2008. Print.

Tremayne, Mark. “Preface.” Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media. Ed. Mark Tremayne. New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Zapeda, Gwendolyn. (2011a) Twitter Exchange. 8 Oct. 2011.

—. (2011b) Unpublished Interview. 26 Jul 2011.

—. (2011c) “Working.” Gwendolyn Zepeda. N.p., 20 Apr. 2011. Web. 8 Apr. 2012..

Catherine Leen,

University of Maynooth

14 June 2010 at Bielefeld University

Catherine Leen

University College Cork

Abstract

Margaret Randall states that “as we re-search our histories … infrequently there is an exploration of an uncharted, complex terrain, and some new mapping happens” (8). Adopting Randall’s statement, this paper examines travelling poetry and anti-capitalism in the poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes and the song lyrics of Rage Against the Machine (RATM) both of whom are based in California. With reference to Randall’s assertion Cervantes and RATM present complex transnational mappings of silent and silenced imperial history located within and beyond the national boundaries of the US. Cervantes is a Chicana, Feminist, activist poet. RATM is an American rap metal band, formed in 1991. The lead singer, Zack de la Rocha, identifies as Chicano which is an important influence on the group’s music in both form and style. This paper examines Cervantes’s “Poem For the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between the Races,” “Coffee” and “On Why I Boycotted Cinco de Mayo.” Cervantes’ works are juxtaposed with RATM’s “Sleep Now in the Fire” and “People of the Sun.”

Margaret Randall states that “as we re-search our histories … infrequently there is an exploration of an uncharted, complex terrain, and some new mapping happens” (8). Adopting Randall’s statement, this paper examines travelling poetry and anti-capitalism in the poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes and the song lyrics of Rage Against the Machine (RATM) both of whom are based in California. With reference to Randall’s assertion Cervantes and RATM present complex transnational mappings of silent and silenced imperial history located within and beyond the national boundaries of the US. Cervantes is a Chicana, Feminist, activist poet. RATM is an American rap metal band, formed in 1991. The lead singer, Zack de la Rocha, identifies as Chicano which is an important influence on the group’s music in both form and style. This paper examines Cervantes’s “Poem For the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between the Races,” “Coffee” and “On Why I Boycotted Cinco de Mayo.” Cervantes’ works are juxtaposed with RATM’s “Sleep Now in the Fire” and “People of the Sun.”

The poems and lyrics examined in this paper are rooted in history and politics of the Americas. To apply Adrienne Rich’s assertion, the works of Cervantes and RATM reject “the dominant critical idea that the poem’s text should be read as separate from the poet’s everyday life in the world,” thus placing “poetry in a historical continuity, not above or outside history” (180). The geopoetic works discussed here situate American imperialism in a geo-historical continuity across time and space, mapping a terrain of capitalism and ongoing imperialism that extends throughout the borders of the Americas and the globe. As Paul Jay argues, “American criticism has traditionally located its interests within National borders, achieving a central coherence for American literature by ignoring forms of cultural production that take place in the liminal spaces where national borders overlap” (166-7). This paper constructs an unusual dialogue between Chicana poetry and Chicano song lyrics, both of which were written out of the U.S. Mexico borderlands and beyond the physical borders of the nation state. By virtue of this, the poems and lyrics discussed in this paper can be defined as travelling poetry, a term that originated with James Clifford.[1]

Jahan Ramazani defines travelling poetry as “the imaginative enactment of geographic displacement” (52). Through their travelling poetry, Cervantes and RATM guide the reader through a rich and troubling landscape once indigenous, and now bearing the scars of the ongoing legacy of imperialism. A number of motifs and techniques such as the list poem and geopoetic imagery are employed in these travelling poems which enhance their transnational effect. That is to say, the use of these poetic techniques is effective in transporting the reader back and forth between territories within and outside of the Americas in order to bear witness to the damaging effects of capitalism and imperialism.[2]

In “Poem For the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, an Intelligent, Well-Read Person Could Believe in the War Between the Races” the poet tackles the issues of race, class, and gender in the US Mexico borderlands. Before the poem begins, Cervantes spells out exactly what her intentions are in writing it. Additionally, the poet indicates that the man in question accepts her as an intellectual. However, in referring to Cervantes with the neutral term of “person”, the man neglects to acknowledge how her gender has influenced her border experience. The poem opens with Cervantes constructing an imaginary continent where

there are no distinctions.
The barbed wire politics of oppression
have been torn down long ago. (35)

These lines refer to the U.S-Mexico border and the physical, emotional, cultural, and political barriers that its presence continues to impose on the Americas. The “barbed wire politics” imbricate the partition that divides Mexico and the U.S. with the imperious politics of Anglo America. Thus, in her mind’s eye, Cervantes wishes to escape this border reality, delineated by Gloria Anzaldúa in Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza as a

1,950 mile-long open wound
dividing a pueblo, a culture,
running down the length of my body,
staking fence rods in my flesh,
splits me splits me
me raja me raja. (24)

In Cervantes’ creative conception, this border lesion is removed giving way to a free flow of artistic appreciation. The poet goes on to describe this vast, cultured landscape of her imagination as a Chicana / poet / feminist / activist, traversing the boundaries of reality. She states that:

In my land
people write poems about love,
full of nothing but contented childlike syllables.
Everyone reads Russian short stories and weeps.
There are no boundaries.
There is no hunger, no
complicated famine or greed. (35)

The poet has transported the reader to a romantic vision of a peaceful and fulfilling landscape that is far from the “complicated” reality of the U.S Mexico borderlands. The only tears in this fantasy world are those wept over the beauty of literature. In Cervantes’ romantic vision, art is central in a world released from the restrictions of borders and discrimination. Next, Cervantes speaks directly to the white man, asking:

Do you think I can believe in a war between races?
I can deny it. I can forget about it
when I’m safe,
living in my own continent of harmony
and home, but I am not
there. (35)

Having confirmed to her addressee that this continent is just a dream, the poet abruptly returns to reality in the Americas, refusing to let us dwell in unrealistic fantasy:

I believe in revolution
because everywhere the crosses are burning,
sharp-shooting goose-steppers round every corner,
there are snipers in the schools. (35)

Cervantes refers to the Ku Klux Klan and conservative politics as the channels for white patriarchal bigotry. Goose Steppers is a term frequently used to describe those who blindly follow a political movement with unquestionable loyalty. The reference to snipers in the schools is an allusion to the rise in student shootings, as well as a metaphorical reference to the indoctrination of certain belief systems in children under the guise of education. The poet’s belief in revolution, or the “war between the races” as the poem’s title suggests, stems from the discrimination confronted in these lines. Cervantes then directly speaks to the white man once again, stating,

[I know you don’t believe this.
You think this is nothing
but faddish exaggeration. But they
are not shooting at you]. (35)

Alfred Arteaga states that “in describing a situation unimaginable to the young white man, the poet acknowledges that their different world views are in conflict” (104). According to the poet, the dominant society is wilfully blind to any oppression that is suffered by Chicanas/os and other ethnic communities in America. The poem is thus a heteroglossia of differing worlds and borders: the ideal, romantic world of the poet’s imagination, the reality of racial discrimination and violence in the Americas, and the ignorant world that the white man inhabits. The reader is thus transported between these conflicting spaces by the poet.

Cervantes struggles to form any connections between her world and that of the white man’s without encountering the violence, oppression and racial bigotry that he sees as “a faddish exaggeration.” Cervantes states:

I’m marked by the colour of my skin.
The bullets are discrete and designed to kill slowly.
They are aiming at my children.
These are the facts.
Let me show you my wounds: my stumbling mind, my
‘excuse me’ tongue, and this
nagging preoccupation
with the feeling of not being good enough. (36)

In these lines Cervantes reveals her wounds inflicted by the border lesion defined by Anzaldúa as “una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country – a border culture” (25). In showing the young white man the insecurities and inner conflicts inflicted on her by the collision of their two worlds, Cervantes expresses the border (to use Anzaldúa’s definition again) as being “set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them”…“a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (25). The poem closes with the statement:

Every day I am deluged with reminders
that this is not
my land
and this is my land.
I do not believe in the war between the races
but in this country
there is war. (37)

It can be argued that these lines are an allusion to Woody Guthrie’s promises of a more equitable America in his iconic folk anthem “This Land is Your Land”, a promise that for the poet only exists in her imaginary continent. Therefore, the wounds of imperialism are still present for Cervantes. This final statement is also a reference to Aztlán, an area located across the American Southwest that is seen as belonging to Chicanas/os and Native Americans despite colonisation by white Anglo Americans, also sometimes construed as an imaginary homeland. Luis Leal states:

As a Chicano symbol, Aztlán has two meanings: first, it represents the geographic region known as the Southwestern part of the United States, composed of the territory that Mexico ceded in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; second, and more important, Aztlán symbolized the spiritual union of the Chicanos, something that is carried within the heart, no matter where they may live or where they may find themselves. (8)

Thus, the closing statement encapsulates this dual symbolic power of Aztlán as defined by Leal. Amid the racial prejudice in the US that designates people of colour as second class citizens, the poet’s Chicana consciousness gives the Southwest symbolic power that transcends the reality of race, class and gender divides.

In her latest collection, Drive: The First Quartet, the poet delves deeper into this war she believes is taking place in the Americas. For example, the poem “Coffee” uses the 1997 Acteal Massacre to expose the greed, cruelty and blood lust of white capitalism to illustrate the continuing devastation inflicted upon those perceived as minorities. In the opening lines of the poem, the poet takes the reader south of the border fence:

in Guatemala the black buzzard
has replaced the quetzal
as the national bird (9)

The black buzzard is a species of vulture that feeds mainly on carcasses. For the poet, a symbol of death is a more fitting national motif as the buzzard is morbidly emblematic of the encroachment and destruction of the land and people by white America for profit. The poet interposes vulture and man in the lines:

the shadow of a man glides
across the countryside,
over the deforested plantations; a death
cross burnishes history into myth
as it scours the medicinal land into coffee (9)

Here, the reader is given a bird’s-eye view of the man-made destruction of the natural, native landscape of the Americas for capitalist motives,

while on Wall Street,
the black sludge of a people trickles through
cappuccino machines like hissing snakes (9)

Thus, in the opening lines of the poem, Cervantes creates an intergeographic space that allows the reader to alternate between an indigenous village south of the border in Guatemala and the North American nucleus of imperialist exploitation in New York City (NYC). This “geopoetic oscillation,” a term used by Ramazani to describe the “imaginative movement back and forth between discrepant topographies,” translocates two different places in the Americas to uncover a trail of violence and destruction of the indigenous landscape by white male profiteers (Ramazani 58).

In section two of “Coffee,” Cervantes describes the Acteal Massacre which involved the killing of 45 indigenous villagers by paramilitary forces. The victims were mainly women, children and pregnant mothers. The poet states:

Acteal. December 22, 1997. Bloodied
mud sucks the plastic sandals of a child,
velas gutter through the saged prayers
in the little church blasted through with
twenty-two splintered holes the size
of a baby’s tender fists. Melon heads pop
and the hacking drum of a machete
meeting bone counts down the hours
of matanza. (10)

This harrowing image captures the brutality of the attack on the indigenous community of Acteal. The agonizing images of children at the centre of gunfire and murder enhance the cold-blooded cruelty of the situation. Cervantes continues to describe the bloodshed stating:

Matted hair clings
To the coffee plants, each green leaf,
Another listening ear; each red seed
Another eye dislodged from its skull (10-11)

Here, the poet juxtaposes the destruction of a community and their broken bodies with the plants that will eventually form the coffee consumed by the corporate masses in North America. The images of small, dismembered body parts like ears and eyes heighten the sense of destruction and dehumanization that occurred in Acteal. Ears and eyes connote the five senses. Their detachment from the bodies is symbolic of the senseless nature of the killings by Anglo profiteers. In this section, Cervantes also tackles the cover-up of the events of December 22, 1997:

I hear
nothing happened in Acteal. And if it did
no one knows who they were. The PRI
press machine stands on the ridge
of Destiny, staring Truth in the eye
as men lie to the cameras. Twenty yards
away, the survivors are speaking
the names of men paid 600 dollars
American. (11)

In exposing the cover-up that occurred following the Massacre Cervantes is resisting white America’s denial of Acteal, condemning the brutal greed of imperialist capitalism, and placing Acteal on the map as a site of colonial terror. In particular, Cervantes uses harrowing images of women and children tortured, murdered or surviving the catastrophe to emphasise Acteal as a site of imperialist violence. For example, in the fifth section of “Coffee” the story of a young girl survivor whose mother and siblings were shot dead in the massacre is used to express the inhumane violence that could be seen as comparable to the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. It also expresses a sense of transnational community and global solidarity against imperialist terror. The young girl

testifies to anyone who will listen. How they
stripped the dead women and sliced open their breasts,
forced sticks between their legs, opened the wombs,
passing the fetuses from machete to machete. (17)

The poet singles out the physical and emotional suffering and torture of women in frank and brutal detail to give voice to the most silenced and oppressed victims of imperialism. As Cervantes writes, the young girl’s work like Chicana writers and poets “is to be the mouth / of a people” (17). This sense of community amongst women of colour is also expressed earlier in the poem when Cervantes describes that following the massacre,

the women form a chain of hearts.
They have dried the earth baked with their tears.
Each one carries a red mud brick
from the killing floor. (11)

These mud bricks from the site of the massacre, reddened from both the sun and the bloodshed, commemorate each victim. The bricks are also emblematic of the intergeographic space created by the poet as she reveals the ongoing imperialism inflicted on indigenous communities by the dominant culture of North America.

Section three of “Coffee” is an elegy where the poet lists the names of the forty-five victims of the massacre. It can be argued that this section of the poem “resembles one of the most ancient forms of poetry: the list poem or catalog verse” (Ramazani 142). The elegiac list ends with the declaration, “we are One Spirit, One Heart and One Mind” (13). This line or epitaph constructs this section of the poem as a transnational elegy.[3] Cervantes is writing out of California commemorating a community from Acteal, south of the US Mexico border. According to Ramazani, “elegiac transnationalism in its genetic, intrageneric diversity redirects poetic mourning across national borders, building affective microcommunities that instance the possibilities of a public sphere not contained and subsumed by the nation-state” (82). However, while Ramazani links the use of the list poem to decolonised and liberated territories and peoples, Cervantes uses the list or catalogue also to reveal the continued imperialism, encroachment and subjugation of people and places in the Americas. Hence, the poet is compiling an historical, social, factual document through the medium of poetry. The list in “Coffee” also serves as an immortal epitaph honouring those who have been lost and forgotten. So, in naming the victims Cervantes is commemorating the dead, and ensuring that those whose lives were brutally ended will not be forgotten or silenced by the dominant culture.

In addition to naming those murdered in the Massacre, the poet goes on to name those who she sees as the real Anglo, North American culprits behind the murder and injustice inflicted on Chicanas and Natives on both sides of the U.S-Mexico border. For instance, in section six we are told that

the only end to bullets for profit is knowledge –
knowledge that will not appear wedged between
commercials for Taster’s Choice and
Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee like the living body of
an indigenous child found two days after massacre
in a bullet-ridden cave (231-6 18).

In the same section the poet states that “Néstles makes the very best…MUR…DER” (239 19). Cervantes also declares her own plan of action against the capitalist organisations she sees as responsible for oppression and murder of minorities

I will not bank
with assassins. I will buy crafts not Kraft,
Néstles, Proctor & Gamble, McDonald’s Sara Lee….
I will fight this way for ever (259-262 19).

Again, the poet utilises the catalogue verse; but in this instance the list functions as an anti-capitalist critique of the multi-national companies who profit from the obliteration of indigenous people and places.

We find similar anti-capitalist critique, travelling texts and the use of catalogue poetry in other forms of popular culture in the Americas, most notably in the lyrics and music videos of Rage Against the Machine. In particular their song, “Sleep Now in the Fire” is exemplary of this in both the lyrics and its accompanying music video which is itself a political act of resistance against American imperialism. The title, a line repeated three times in the song, is an ironic invitation to Americans to rest or “sleep” in land of moral decay, capitalism and globalization. “Sleep” is a dramatic monologue told through the voice of the American Empire. Dramatic monologue is also used widely in Chicano and South American male poetry with José Hernández’s “El Gaucho Martín Fierro / Martín Fierro the Gaucho” and Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’s “I am Joaquín” being seminal texts. These texts exhibit a singular point of view, manifesting traditional notions of machismo and masculinity as well as exhibiting issues of solidarity and revolution which characterises much of Chicana/o literature. The song inverts this use of dramatic monologue to unveil the Anglo patriarchal standpoint of the American Empire. Throughout the lyrics, the Anglo voice exercises its dominance over the American landscape and its inhabitants vocalising the mass violence and control employed in the construction of a nation. The song opens with the statement:

the world is my expense
the cost of my desire
Jesus blessed me with its future
and I protect it with fire

These lines refer to Manifest Destiny, white America’s vocation to expand westward and colonise in the name of Providence.

The American Empire orders its citizens,
Don’t dare take what you need
I’ll jail and bury those committed
Crawl with me into tomorrow
Or I’ll drag you to your grave

The American Empire asserts itself here as leader and aggressor who must be obeyed at all costs. Through the language of power, ownership and authority, the speaker takes command of its inhabitants. Words such as “crawl” imply the desire for submissive citizens who must follow or be consumed by the higher power.

The second verse utilises the catalogue verse or list poem as America lists its many imperialist faces:

I am the nina, the pinta, the santa maria
The noose and the rapist
And the fields overseer
The agents of orange
The priests of Hiroshima
The cost of my desire
Sleep now in the fire.

The song lyrics take the reader on a transnational journey through history from the transatlantic voyage of the 15th century to the slave fields of America to the atrocities of Vietnam and Japan. The use of the word “priest” again insinuates America’s belief that its imperialist acts are guided by providence, a denial of the capitalist and globalization motivations involved in such acts. Then we return to the U.S which tells us that this is “the cost of my desire / sleep now in the fire” of the American Empire. Clearly, this list depicts a continent born and nurtured through the exploitation and destruction of land and people both inside and outside of the Americas. This list verse unites a global population of victims of corporate America. Cherríe Moraga provides an exemplary discussion of this as she states: “Geopolitical borders mean little when the technological capacity of destructive weaponry available to countries [as well as the ‘terrorist’ discontent] ensures our shared status as a world population of potential victims” (19). “Sleep” endorses Moraga’s statement, cataloguing the technological terror inflicted by the American Empire through economic, biological and nuclear methods both within and outside the nation state.

While the song is told through the voice of the American Empire, the list has a similar effect to that which we encounter in “Coffee.” Judith Butler states in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence that grief, mourning and elegy “furnish a sense of political community” (22). Clearly the epigraph to Cervantes’ elegiac list evokes this sense of community: “We are One Spirit, One Heart and One Mind” (13). For Cervantes the border between the two nations is porous and the cultural and political essence of border communities is united despite the physical barrier imposed by the dominant culture. In “Sleep” while the voice of the American Empire lists imperialist acts, in doing so it traverses national borders to unite and commemorate a community of victims. These transnational lists of victims and places create new spaces of shared and transferable identity and mourning.

The music video which accompanies the song further emphasises these issues. The video was filmed on the steps of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall St. directed by Michael Moore. Like Cervantes’ “Coffee” we see the positioning of Wall Street as the epicentre of American imperialism in RATM’s music. The video also contains shots of a game show called “Who Wants to be Filthy F#&%ing Rich?” The censorship of the word “fucking” in the video is an ironic allusion to America’s tendency to cloak or modify certain imperialist acts like those named in the list verse of “Sleep.” The quiz show is modelled on the popular “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” television programme. The questions featured in “Who Wants to be Filthy F#&%ing Rich?” focus on issues such as healthcare, gender and distribution of wealth and poverty in America. A series of well-dressed yet hapless contestants give incorrect answers to seemingly straightforward questions, highlighting not only the disproportionate distribution of wealth and elitism in the Americas, but also the glut of ignorance that appears to run in tandem with this. The winner of the game show, a homeless black man rejects the armfuls of money handed to him and instead of seeing just one person taking all the profit the entire audience shares the wealth, a strong anti-capitalist message.

We see vivid images of nuclear warfare followed by shots of a cigar being lit with a dollar by a man in an expensive suit and champagne bubbling from the neck of a magnum, interposing images of violence with symbols of affluence. These images further highlight the damaging effect of imperialist capitalism. Moreover, the images in the music video as well as the list of imperialist acts provide commentary on Anglo masculinity. The smoking cigar and foamy spray gushing from the magnum of champagne are phallic images, exhibiting white male virility through symbols of affluence. The atomic mushroom cloud explosions shown just before these images are also symbolic of white male ejaculation. Thus, RATM’s lyrics and Michael Moore’s video interpretation clearly merge Anglo imperialist machismo with acts of terrorism disguised as progress. Hence, it can be posited that “Sleep” in its lyrics and music video compound Anglo patriarchy and masculinity.

The band’s presence shut down Wall St., a political act which further emphasises the anti-capitalist message. The video ends with a voice over by a news broadcaster stating: “A band called ‘The Machine Rages On’ or ‘Rage Against the Machine’…That band is anti-family and pro-terrorist!” The sardonic inclusion of this statement at the close of the video is significant in a number of ways. Firstly the video links the media with capitalism and imperialism. The voice of American imperialism that delivers the lyrics is underscored by the voice of the media accusing RATM of supporting terrorism. Of course, in writing a song that reveals and condemns the violent and hypocritical nature of American expansionism, the band actually reveals itself to be anti-terrorist.

RATM’s “People of the Sun” is a tautology of anti-capitalist critique and travelling poetry. The song is inspired by the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. Like “Sleep” the lyrics take the reader on a transnational and transtemporal journey across time and space. The song traces a history of violence from the sixteenth century to present day Mexico and America:

Since 1516 minds attacked and overseen.
Now crawl amidst the ruins of this empty dream
Wit their borders and boots on top of us
Pullin’ knobs on the floor of their toxic metropolis.

In these lines, the band states that from the beginnings of colonialism in Mexico the landscape and its indigenous inhabitants have been oppressed. The border clearly refers to the physical barrier that divides the U.S. and Mexico, as well as the racial, class and gender borders imposed by the dominant culture. The “boots on top of us” is a reference to the violent tactics of the border patrol as well as police and military brutality. The “toxic metropolis” bespeaks of the noxious nature of physical partitions. Thus, in this verse RATM delineates the border as a physical and psychical barrier on the landscape and society. This is further emphasised by the mention of “Troops strippin’ zoots” in the second verse of “People”. This line takes the reader/listener back to the Los Angeles zoot suit riots of June 1943 when “hundreds of U.S. military personnel went on a two-week rampage in Los Angeles, California, attacking scores of Mexican American youth who wore the zoot suit style of dress” (Griswold de Castillo 367). According to Richard Griswold de Castillo “This episode in American history has been interpreted by Chicano historians as one in a long series of anti-Mexican reactions motivated by wartime frustrations and racial stereotyping against Mexican-American youth” (367-8). The song brings the reader back to a seminal site of discrimination against Chicanas/os in the Americas. Thus, the song commemorates a history of racially motivated violence from a Chicano point of view ensuring that the reader is aware of a violent event that was instigated by a largely white group of military personnel against Chicanas/os, despite the disturbance being remembered as the zoot suit riots.

Moreover, “People” is a call to action addressing the Mexican and Chicana/o community. In the first verse, the lyrics urge the reader/listener to “get offensive like Tet”, a reference to the Tet Offensive, a Vietnamese military operation against American troops during the Vietnam War. The call to action continues in this verse: “Tha fifth sun sets get back reclaim / Tha spirit of Cuahtemoc alive and untamed”. To adopt Eduardo Matos Moctezuma’s analysis of the Aztec calendar, “The Fifth Sun or Nahui Ollin, the Sun of Movement, in the middle of the sculpture, must be fed so as not to detain its movement” (63). Consequently, the reference to the fifth sun of the Aztec Calendar is a call for Chicanas/os to re-ignite a metaphorical feeding of the sun through the reclamation of the indigenous culture and identity that has been silenced through centuries of Spanish and American imperialism and encroachment of indigenous territories and people. Cuahtemoc is the last ruler of the Aztecs, who was captured by Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who ordered his torture and execution, finally overthrowing the Aztec empire. Cuahtemoc is revived and immortalised as a cultural and political icon in the song. It is not uncommon for Chicana/o writers and artists to make reference to Aztec rulers and warriors. Some of the most well-known examples include Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales’s “Joaquín” and Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza which make reference to a pantheon of Aztec rulers, warriors, folk heroes and icons. RATM states that Cuahtemoc’s spirit is now untamed and calls upon Chicanas/os to claim the Aztec warrior spirit as their rightful inheritance because “Tha vulture came ta try and steal ya name / But now you got a gun, yeah this is for the people of the sun.” Here, similar to the opening lines of Cervantes’s “Coffee”, the vulture symbolises Euro and Anglo colonialism and its overthrowing of the Aztec Empire as well as their theft and murder of a culture. The gun represents the Zapatista movement and the people of the sun denote the Aztecs as well as their contemporary descendants, Mexicans and Chicanas/os. “People” conjures the warrior spirit of Aztec ancestors in order to encourage readers to resist the imperialism that RATM believes is ongoing in the Americas.

In the second verse of “People” RATM indicts the violence of Anglo imperialism, linking it to capitalism:

Yeah, neva forget that tha whip snapped ya back,
Ya spine cracked for tobacco, oh I’m the Marlboro man, uh
Our past blastin’ on through the verses
Brigades of taxi cabs rollin’ Broadway like hearses.

The song invokes a historical continuum of racial and capitalist motivated slavery, abuse and exploitation at the hands of the Anglo imperialists, again taking the reader on a journey across time a space to the tobacco plantations that were formed in Mexico by the European colonists from the sixteenth century using indigenous slave labour. This mass industry gave rise to the Marlboro man, the iconic Anglo cowboy figure featured in a highly successful advertising campaign for the Marlboro cigarette company in the mid-twentieth century. The campaign led to a huge surge in the popularity of smoking in both men and women which in turn caused an increase in cancer and respiratory illnesses. Hence, the song connects the dominant culture to murder via capitalism in contemporary America. This troubled history blasting through the verses of “People” is juxtaposed with the stagnant resultant culture of white America symbolised by taxis moving through the streets of NYC like a funeral parade. “Sleep” creates a morbid and monotonous topography, and again, like Cervantes, RATM locates NYC as the epicentre of imperialist capitalism and cultural decay.

To conclude, Wai Chee Dimock describes the American nation as “a set of erasable lines on the face of the earth” (1). The works examined in this paper endorse this statement. Cervantes as RATM provide a rich geopoetic mapping of American imperialism, exhibiting the malleable, moveable nature of borders in the Americas and across the globe. Evidently, Cervantes and RATM correlate this translocal and transnational movement with capitalism and expansionism. The elegiac and condemnatory lists employed in the poems and lyrics discussed are cartographic records of the history of capitalist-motivated violence that that is inherent in American imperialism. Clearly, the travelling poetry of Cervantes and RATM adopts techniques such as geopoetic imagery and lists to provide a transnational critique of capitalism in the U.S., challenging what Adrienne Rich calls “the white noise of the media” (167).

Endnotes

[1]Refer especially the section entitled, “Travels” in Clifford’s Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century.back to text
[2] In American literature the list poem is primarily associated with Walt Whitman. However, the poems and lyrics examined in this paper demonstrate that the use of the list or catalogue is prominent in poetry outside of the Eurocentric American literary canon.back to text
[3] This act of naming the dead is certainly reminiscent of other postcolonial writers. For instance, W. B. Yeats names and commemorates the patriots of the 1916 Easter Rising in “Easter, 1916”:

I write it out in verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born (153-4).

back to text

Works Cited

Anaya, Rudolfo A. and Francisco Lomeli eds. Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Albuquerque: U of NM P, 1998. Print.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2007. Print.

Arteaga, Alfred. Chicano Poetics: Heterotexts and Hybridities. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 1997. Print.

Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2006. Print.

Cervantes, Lorna Dee. Drive: The First Quartet. San Antonio: Wings, 2006. Print.

—. Emplumada. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1981. Print.

Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. Print.

Dimock, Wai Chee and Lawrence Buell eds. Shades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007. 1-16. Print.

—. Introduction. Shades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature. Ed. Wai Chee Dimock and Lawrence Buell. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007. 1-16. Print.

Gonzalez, Rodolfo Corky. “I am Joaquín.” Latin American Studies. N.p. n.d. Web. 12 Apr 2011.

Griswold del Castillo, Richard. “The Los Angeles “Zoot Suit Riots” Revisited: Mexican and Latin American Perspectives.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 16.2 (2000): 367-91. JSTOR. Web. 26 Jul 2011.

Jay, Paul. “The Myth of ‘America’ and the Politics of Location: Modernity Border Studies, and the Literature of the Americas.” Arizona Quarterly 54.2 (1998): 165-92. Print.

Leal, Luis. “In Search of Aztlán.” Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Ed. Rudolfo A. Anaya and Francisco Lomeli. Albuquerque: U of NM P, 1998. 6-13. Print.

Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo and Felipe Solís. The Aztec Calendar and Other Solar Monuments. Mex. City: Grupo Azabache, 2004. Print.

Moraga, Cherríe. A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000-2010. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. Print.

Rage Against the Machine. “People of the Sun.” Rage Against the Machine. N.p. n.d. Web. 01 Jun 2011.

—. “Sleep Now in the Fire.” Rage Against the Machine. N.p. n.d. Web. 01 Jun 2011.

Ramazani, Jahan. A Transnational Poetics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009. Print.

Randall, Margaret. “Review: Una Conciencia de Mujer.” The Women’s Review of Books 5.3 (1987): 8-9. JSTOR. Web. 29 Apr 2010.

Rich, Adrienne. Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose. London: Virago, 1987. Print.

Sleep Now in the Fire. Dir. Michael Moore. Perf. Rage Against the Machine. Sony BMG Music Entertainment, 2000. Youtube. Web. 31 May 2011.

“This Land is Your Land.” Woody Guthrie. woodyguthrie.org. Woody Guthrie Publications, n.d. Web. 03 Jun 2011.

Yeats, W. B.. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. London: Wordsworth, 2008. Print.

Visual Presentation and Reading by Cherríe Moraga (Los Angeles) and Celia Herrera Rodríguez (Berkely)

25th June 2011 at Centre for Mexican Studies, University College Cork

Cherrie Moraga and Celia Herrera Rodriguez

Alma College, USA

“What can account for the fact that certain bodies are hyper-exposed, brightly visible, and magnified, while others are hidden, missing, and vanished?” Monica Casper and Lisa Jean Moore, Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility

“The category of the ‘human’ retains within itself the workings of the power differential of race as part of its own historicity. But the history of the category is not over, and the ‘human’ is not captured once and for all. That the category is grafted in time, and that it works through excluding a wide range of minorities means that its rearticulation will begin precisely at the point where the excluded speak to and from such a category.” Judith Butler, Undoing Gender.

“I want to humanize migrants” says Rebecca Cammisa, director of the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary Which Way Home (2009). “With my film, I want to humanize migrants in a dehumanizing system; put a human face on discourses of immigration.” She wants to “vizibilize” invisible migrants, specifically children, through the vérité style documentary that follows unaccompanied child migrants. These children travel by freight train across Mexico in their quest to reach the U.S. for reasons such as longing to reunite with family members, planning to work to send money home to help support their families, and hoping to be adopted and to be “re-born.” I worked with Rebecca on this film as a field producer and translator—my first foray behind the scenes of a film rather than sitting in the audience or viewing a film from behind a scholar’s critical lens. Working with a film and a director with such goals—humanizing the dehumanized; making visible the invisible—inspired me to question the representation of migrants on the big screen. Not wanting to analyze documentary (for fear of being too close to my own film), I wondered how similar questions might play out in fiction films. Through examples from primarily Mexican films (and co-productions) from the past ten years that take up the topic of immigration, this article analyzes the participation of recent border fiction films in the discourses of (de) humanization and (in)“visiblization” of celluloid migrants. [2]

What does it mean to be human? Humanized? Dehumanized? Even if we can agree upon the universal category of human as referring to the scientific species of Homo sapiens, we must also concede that the conceptualization of what it means to be human is far from universal, but rather (re)constructed through time and space according to specific socio-cultural (and economic) lenses. Colonial (and neo-colonial) discourses are rife with the suggestion that some humans are more or less so than others (questioning whether a particular group has a soul, cognitive functions, animalistic qualities, etc.) as justification for the domination of one group of humans over another (the Conquest, the slave trade, and the Holocaust come immediately to mind). Parting from a contemporary gender studies perspective, Judith Butler asks, “Which populations have qualified as the human and which have not? What is the history of this category? Where are we in its history at this time?” (38). [3] And, I would add, what is at stake here? How do the images around us, like those we see in film, help shape contemporary conceptualizations of categories of humanity? I frame this essay with Butler’s reflections that expand questions of gender to broader considerations of humanity, reminding us that there are populations that, at this moment in history, are dehumanized.

A New York Times photo from April 24, 2010 of a young girl holding a “We are human” poster at a march in Phoenix to protest Arizona’s SB 1070 (Archibold) and the ubiquitous signs declaring “No human being is illegal” at various pro-immigrant marches, [4] offer telling responses to Butler’s query (especially considering the latter phrase’s origin in the discourse of Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel). Arguably, government policies, some of which date back to the 1800s, have contributed to public discourses that, intentionally or not, have contributed to the dehumanization of different groups of immigrants at different points in time. I suggest that recent policies and anti-immigrant attitudes stem in large part from the failed promises of NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Agreement), a trade agreement signed in 1993 that was sold to the public as a panacea to reduce illegal immigration, but instead has contributed to its increase. [5] For this essay I concentrate on fiction films that reflect concerns of the post-NAFTA era and that in this context offer alternative representations of migrants than those portrayed in main-stream media where they are often reduced to political talking points, statistics, and gross generalizations. I am particularly interested in considering how these films, some of which explicitly dialogue with government policies, work to rearticulate the category of “human” to include migrants from South of the Rio Grande first by showing them to us—making migrants visible, and then by “humanizing” them through a variety of cinematographic techniques.

Visibility through erasure: invisible labor forces

Since it took effect in 1994, NAFTA has opened borders for products, but not for human beings [6]—something that hasn’t changed under the last two administrations in spite of discussions suggesting possible renegotiations. [7] Arguably a side-effect of NAFTA on both sides of the U.S. Mexico border has been an increased sense of the invisibility of the human aspect of the labor force where the product is valued over the person that makes it, grows it, or constructs it. The same year that the trade agreement took effect, California saw anti-immigrant movements like the famous proposition 187 supported by Governor Pete Wilson. [8] This legislation, also known as “Save Our State” (or SOS), inspired the short film, “Un día sin mexicanos,” (Sergio Arau, Mexico, 1997) which used a “mock-documentary” or “mockumentary” style to imagine what would happen if all the Latinos (regardless of their immigration status) suddenly disappeared from the state. Clearly contextualized not only by references within the film, but also by the final text that dedicated the film to the governor—to whom the filmmakers sent the film as a Christmas gift in 1997 (Arau 26), the short film sought to enter the immigration debate through satire and comedy. Several years later, the same team of Sergio Arau and Yareli Arizmendi took their idea to the big screen with Arau’s first feature film, A Day Without a Mexican / Un día sin Mexicanos (Sergio Arau USA/Mexico/Spain, 2004), whose goal was to “visibilize the invisible”[9] and to emphasize Anglo ignorance of immigrant contributions to California’s economy.

Once again in “mockumentary” film style, A Day Without A Mexican envisions what would happen if all the Latinos in California disappeared through following the stories of Senator Abercrombie (an anti-immigrant senator named governor when the Latino governor disappears), ranch owner Louis McClaire (friendly to immigrant concerns, though his son is a member of an anti-immigrant group that resembles the Minute Men), teacher/housewife Mary Jo Quintana (whose musician husband has disappeared), and reporter Lila Rodríguez (presumably the only Latina inexplicably left behind) interspersed with “experts” who offer testimony regarding possible explanations for the mass disappearance (an “alien” abduction, a form of apocalyptic ascension, a protest for having been taken for granted, etc.). As they day goes on, the state of chaos progresses and the California economy comes to a halt as fruit and vegetables rot in fields or in delivery trucks, trash overflows, children are left without teachers and nannies, restaurants cannot serve food, stores close, lawn mowers are left abandoned, and the border patrolmen complain of boredom and resort to hiring actors to apprehend. Eventually, “the realization that what has disappeared is the very thing that keeps the ‘California Dream’ running—cooks, gardeners, policemen, nannies, doctors, farm and construction workers, entertainers, athletes, as well as the largest growing market of consumers—has turned Latinos and their return into the number one priority in the State.” [10]

The film aspired to humanize “Mexicans” and other Hispanic migrants, [11] however, scholars Marambio and Tew suggest that the film failed to meet this goal, in part due to the decision to use a collective character and in part due to the use of a pseudo-documentary style with talking heads and titles to inform the audience of the many contributions of Latino workers, with the criticism that “the titles […] are impersonal and do not put a human face on the Latinos who are missing” (483). Although I do agree that the film is flawed in its humanization of migrants, especially in its overuse of hyper-stereotypes, I would argue that the choice to use “mockumentary” serves to question the transparency of “truth” in the documentary film genre. [12] The film also questions “truth” and representation in mass media with the inclusion of satire of news broadcasts within the film, complete with the “whitening” of the character of reporter Lila Rodríguez who has been advised to go by “Lyla Rod,” thus “invisibilizing” her ethnicity (until, of course, it becomes useful from a ratings standpoint for her to “come out” as Latina).[13] Together, these questions of “truth” in representation highlight the ways in which migrant bodies are figuratively “disappeared” in dominant media discourse.

The authors also astutely problematize the passivity of the disappeared Latinos (they are not active agents—and when they reappear, they don’t even know they were gone) in comparison with the active role of the Anglos (484). I agree with this criticism, though it may come from targeting the film towards an Anglo audience (that it was released in the US rather than Mexico is telling) [14] with a goal to inspire consciousness in the public, as it does in the film. A Day Without a Mexican is more about the non-Latinos in the film coming to appreciate the contributions of Latinos—coming to see these bodies through their absence—than about Latinos recognizing their own contributions and agency. There is a sort of irony present in the suggestion that this visibility actually requires erasure, which then begs the question of whether the film is subverting notions of invisibility or reinforcing them.

All of this changed in 2006 when, regardless of the film’s actual message regarding Latino agency, it was recontextualized so that it, like the short film it is based on, entered into dialogue with anti-immigrant legislation—this time HR 4437, a law that, according to the film’s directors, “represented on a national scale what Wilson and Proposition 187 represented for California” (Arau 26). The film itself enjoyed renewed interest and many of the marches that took place between March and May spanning more than 160 U.S. cities across 40 states (Bada et. al.) are known by names (some self-selected and some given by the press) that resembled the film’s title: “A Day Without Immigrants,” “A Day Without a Latino,” etc. [15] More than three million immigrant bodies filled the streets to claim visibility for immigrant rights (documented and undocumented) and protest the anti-immigrant “Sensenbrenner Law” that had been approved by the House of Representatives in December of 2005. Part of their strategy mimicked the film with a two-fold symbolic attack on the U.S. market: first by refusing to work in the hopes that, like in the film, their labor contributions would be felt and recognized; and second by boycotting consumerism to demonstrate the role of immigrants as consumers as well. However, unlike the film’s resolution, which is full of new found appreciation for Latino contributions shown through embraces between Anglos and the returned Latinos (including final images of the border patrol celebrating and embracing the Mexicans who have just crossed the border), recent rhetoric continues to call for closing and fortifying the border in the name of security.

In 2008 a film premiered that takes the invisibilization of a Latino workforce to another level as it visualizes a time when the border is completely closed to immigrants from the South and explores the limits of an invisible labor force of “cybraceros” in a world “connected by technology, but divided by borders.” Alex Rivera, director and screen-writer of the science fiction film, Sleep Dealer (US/Mexico 2008), explains in the director’s comments on the film’s website that “This ironic reality pushed me to imagine a future in which borders are sealed, and immigrants no longer come to America. Instead, in the world of Sleep Dealer, immigrants stay in their home countries, connect their bodies to ‘the net,’ and send their pure labor to robots in America. This is what used to be called the ‘American Dream,’ five minutes into the future.” Rivera’s film interrogates the relationship between technology and a variety of political issues including immigration, global economic systems, privatization of natural resources (water), and the war on terror. It is precisely through a visualization of the dehumanization of migrants through technology that the film engages with their humanization. In the words of film critic Steve Ramos in his review of the film for Indiewire.com, “‘Sleep Dealer’ is a film with something to say about humanity and its relationship with technology. This sense of humanity, more than its numerous mind-blowing fantasy images is what ultimately sets ‘Sleep Dealer’ apart.”

This human connection comes through protagonist Memo Cruz’s physical and psychological migration from his traditional (and technologically disconnected) hometown in rural Mexico to bordertown Tijuana, “City of the future.” Memo, a young farmer from Oaxaca obsessed with technology, spends his evenings among circuits and parts listening to the radio and inadvertently intercepts a transmission between drone workers hunting aqua-terrorists. Believing the source of the transmission to also be an aqua-terrorist (who overheard the killing of an unarmed civilian), drone pilot, Rudy Ramirez, followed orders to “eliminate the terrorist intercept.” In a metacinematographic scene that problematizes our role as spectators of violence, the film’s audience sees the diegetic audience of the live reality TV show “Drones” (where “high tech heroes use cutting edge technology and blow the hell out of the bad guys”) cheer to the image of Memo’s father’s charred body as he attempts to crawl from the burning rubble and cheer even louder when Rudy, who first hesitates to follow orders when he sees his human “terrorist” target, finally complies with orders to finish the job and riddles the already mutilated body with bullets. [16] Through this scene, the film asks us to confront the media spectacle of violence (in the names of both reality TV and counter terrorism) and our role as spectators in perpetuating this violence on living bodies. After witnessing his father’s murder, for which his brother blames him and his “pinche radio,” Memo leaves home and migrates from southern Mexico to the northern border in search of work at one of the many cyber-maquilas, known as “sleep dealers.”

Rivera first introduced this invisible workforce in the short-film “Why Cybraceros?” (1997), a mock propaganda announcement modeled after those used during the Bracero Program. (In fact, the short includes some stock footage from original Bracero propaganda films.) The term “Cybracero” bears unpacking. “Bracero” directly engages with the U.S. Bracero Program of 1942-1964, a program that, taking its name from the Spanish “brazo” or “arm,” linguistically fragments migrant bodies and contributes to a discourse of dehumanization. [17] In their article “Fronteras seguras, cuerpos vulnerables: migración y género en la frontera sur” (“Secure Borders, Vulnerable Bodies: Migration and Gender on the Southern Border”), Christine Kovic and Patty Nelly refer to “Brazos sin personas” (arms without people) to describe the program and criticize it for being “based on counting arms (workers), not human beings” (74). The authors connect the attitudes of the Bracero Program with those of today that continue to look for cheap labor but without wanting “human beings with rights” (76), a concern echoed in the short film in its definition of “Cybracero”: “In Spanish Cybracero means a worker who operates a computer with his arms and hands. But in American lingo, Cybracero means a worker who poses no threat of becoming a citizen. And that means quality products at low financial and social costs to you, the American consumer.”

The short film comically represents this idea by showing an animation of a Mexican flexing his arm muscles as he bounces (in 90’s video-game style) towards a border wall, where his body bounces back and his disembodied arms detach and cross. Similarly, Rivera’s first feature film, Sleep Dealer, takes up the technological possibility of disconnecting the “brazos,” the labor, from the people that do the work. They connect their bodies to “nodes” and become part of a globalized machine and are completely dehumanized for their employers— those who receive the fruits of this labor do not have to consider human beings with rights because the body never crosses the border. In the words of the manager of the cyber-maquila, “Este es el sueño americano. Les damos a los Estados Unidos lo que siempre han querido. Todo el trabajo sin los trabajadores” (This is the American Dream. We give the United States what they’ve always wanted—all of the work, without the workers).

As a worker for the “Cybracero” company, the migrant body, invisible in the U.S., becomes a “cyborg” “bracero.” What are the implications here? What does a migrant body cum cyborg mean? [18] Donna Haraway, in her landmark essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” claimed that the cyborg would transgress borders and hierarchies. No longer defined by the material body, for her, the cyborg represents the possibilities of a post-gender, post-race/ethnicity world. More recent scholarship questions this utopic vision, suggesting that the division between human and machine must be considered in terms of gender and class by calling into question who has access to machines versus who is expected to behave like them (González 60). Afro-Cuban performance artist and scholar Coco Fusco argues that technology repeats the colonization of the subaltern body: “The digital divide is not just about access to computers and phone lines—it is about how subaltern bodies are positioned vis-à-vis technology. Colonialism abjected the subaltern body through militarism, forced labor, and scientific objectification—new technologies elaborate and diversify these strategies of domination” (Fusco xvi).[19]

These concerns manifest themselves in the film Sleep Dealer through the images of the cyber-braceros where the portrayal of multiple characters suggest not the post-hierarchy vision espoused by Haraway, but rather a subjugated cyborg that repeats hierarchies of class and gender. The work performed by these cyborgs mirrors that of their bodied selves in contemporary U.S.: José is working at a slaughterhouse in Iowa, María as a nanny in Washington, Memo works construction. We do not see examples of women working construction or men taking care of children—the labor follows traditional “gendered” expectations. Nor do we see doctors, lawyers, professors, or other “white-collar” professions, but rather a repetition of socio-economic division of labor. These cyborgs are not post-hierarchy and, in fact, due to the risks to the body through the cyborg existence, they are not post-body, but rather they highlight the vulnerability of the human migrant body that continues to exist in this world of virtual border crossing.

Visibilizing vulnerable bodies: children crossing borders

In Sleep Dealer, the danger to the migrant body comes through crossing the border virtually through the use of nodes. Long-time node workers go blind, not to mention the risk presented by computer viruses and short circuits that Luz, an aspiring writer with a “coyotec” ex-boyfriend, describes before she installs Memo’s nodes. However, the migrants who are drawn from around Mexico to Tijuana express no desire to physically cross the border to the U.S. Other films, such as the feature films La misma luna / Under the Same Moon (Patricia Riggen Mexico/USA, 2007) and Sin nombre (Cary Fukunaga Mexico/USA, 2009), and short films Victoria para Chino (Cary Fukunaga, Mex/USA 2005) and El otro sueño americano (Enrique Arroyo, Mexico 2004) take up the physical dangers to the body in the physical crossing itself through scenes that depict the vulnerability of migrant children’s bodies.

Patricia Riggen’s first feature film, La misma luna / Under the Same Moon (Mexico/USA, 2007), tells the story of nine-year-old Carlitos’s journey across the border to try to find his mother Rosario (Kate del Castillo) who has been working as an undocumented domestic in Los Angeles and sending $300 dollars a month to Carlitos and his grandmother for the past four years. [20] The film quickly sets up the human bond between mother and son who talk on the phone every Sunday morning at 10am. As director Patricia Riggen explains in the director’s commentary, this is a love story, and like all love stories, the “lovers” long to be together. Both director Patricia Riggen and screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos emphasize that the story is about love and the separation of families. In fact, Villalobos explains that her goal with the screenplay was to “explore the theme of abandoned children” and “only years later did she realize that setting the story against the background of illegal immigration would allow her to ‘introduce the public to all of these people that are working in this country and see them as human beings instead of an issue’” (Johnson). By framing the story in this way, the film establishes empathetic connections between the audience and the characters—especially Carlitos. Through his story, the film puts a human face, a child’s face, on immigration and its effects on families.

When Carlitos’s grandmother dies, he decides to find his mother using money he’s been saving and contacts he’s met through his part time job helping shop owner and coyota, Doña Carmen. When Doña Carmen refuses to cross Carlitos to respect a promise she had made to his mother and grandmother, he seeks out two Chicanos who, with their broken Spanish, had come to the office to offer to smuggle babies. These inexperienced nervous smugglers are not part of any organized crime operation, but rather two students looking for a way to pay their college tuition. Martha (America Ferrera) asks for Carlitos’s money and gives it to her brother as she opens up the back seat of the van, revealing a small compartment in which Carlos will hide—contorting his body to become part of the car. Through the positioning of the camera with extreme close-ups of Carlos’s sweating face, juxtaposed with a close-up of his disembodied eye peeking through a small hole in the leather, the audience gets a sense the claustrophobic conditions. The use of close-ups helps remove the distance between the spectator and the “Other” (in this case, a child migrant) while at the same time, this cinematographic technique also fragments the body. Ironically, it seems that the only way to embody fully is to disembody. These images, combined with the audio of Carlitos complaining that is it “too hot,” and the strong beat of menacing music, contribute to escalating our concern for his well-being when the car is impounded for unpaid parking violations and we imagine the danger of this child’s entrapment inside a closed vehicle in the desert sun in El Paso. Fortunately (and somewhat unrealistically), Carlitos is fine and easily works his way out of the car later that evening, only to find himself in the hands of a junkie who tries unsuccessfully to sell him into sex work. [21] Through these two narrow escapes, the film introduces the theme of the child migrant body as commodity that can be bought and sold (a theme that we will see again in El otro sueño americano).

Through the portrayal of Carlitos, the film successfully captured audience (and some critical) support, achieving the rank of highest grossing Spanish-language film in the U.S. in its premier weekend (Hernández), but it met with mixed reviews in both Mexico and the U.S., especially due to its “blunt[ing of] the hard edges of immigration with a thick coating of preciousness” to cater to “middlebrow movie audiences [who] prefer their thorny social issues served lite and with a side order of ham, an opportunity to shed happy tears and enjoy a guilt-free drive home to the (let us hope, legal) baby sitter” (Catsoulis). Several critics point to the narrow escapes described above as unconvincing. In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan writes:

Unfortunately, once ‘Under the Same Moon’ gets past the central mother-son relationship, it relies too heavily on coincidence and obvious plot devices. Obstacles suddenly appear and then magically disappear, crises come and go, and nothing feels as real as we’d like it to. This problem is especially acute when it comes to the film’s few but pivotal English-speaking characters, who come across as evil or feeble or both. Not only do the Anglos tend toward caricature, none of them have the slightest idea of how to have fun. The Mexicans, hard-working as well as fun-loving, come off much better.

Both Turan and New York Times film critic Jeannette Catsoulis draw attention to the film’s portrayals of Anglos. The latter sums up the film’s portrayal of race as depicting “bad white people, hard-working brown people and morally ambivalent people of mixed race.” Catsoulis astutely observes that, “the movie lines up a succession of nasty gringos to block [Carlos’s] path. As he evades the clutches of a drug addict, child traffickers and the United States Border Patrol, nonwhites rally to protect him in the form of kindly migrant workers and traveling musicians.” At the same time that the film humanizes migrants, it dehumanizes Anglos—a characterization that repeats in other films with similar concerns (for example, the truck driver in “Victoria para Chino” and Tim in El otro sueño americano).

While some films, like Patricia Riggen’s La misma luna / Under the Same Moon (Mexico/USA, 2007), hint at physical dangers to migrant bodies,[22] others, such as short film Victoria para Chino (Cary Fukunaga, Mex/USA 2005), are more explicit. The film also follows a minor on his journey across the border, though his experience is far more harrowing than Carlitos’s border crossing. Like La misma luna, the film’s use of child protagonists helps to humanize the migrant experience, though as a 13-minute short film it has less time to create an empathetic connection between spectators and characters.

The film attempts to establish this connection quickly, first identifying us with the teenage protagonist, Chino, who walks into the frame brushing his teeth, followed by a pan of the group as the film opens. It offers us glimpses of people doing everyday activities with which viewers can identify (Chino’s friend uses an inhaler, a father plays with his son, a man talks on his cell phone, a woman eats while another man seems to be trying to pick her up, etc.) and that are key to set up the humanity of the group in contrast with the inhumane treatment they receive from the coyotes (both Mexican and Anglo). The smuggler’s call that it is time to go interrupts these activities and the frame opens to a wide shot as we see some seventy people stand in response. As they all climb into the back of a tractor-trailer, a young man expresses concern that there are too many of them, only to be reminded by the coyote that he paid to cross—it seems the smuggler is merely providing a service.

The doors close and the screen goes black.[23] For the next several minutes, the film imagines what happened inside that trailer and we are witnesses to their journey through fragmented glimpses that visually create a sense of a chaotic and even dizzying experience for the viewer. A close up pan of sweating faces contrasts with the opening pan of the group. Instead of laughing and playing, we see a close up of the young boy’s worried face; instead of talking on cell phones and brushing teeth, we see close ups of hands clawing through the insulation around the tail lights to try to reach air and raise to boy to the open hole. As they near a checkpoint, the boy cries and one man threatens to kill him. The child appears to be convulsing and though Chino wants to call for help, the others won’t let him, telling Chino that “many of us aren’t going back to your Mexico. If we die, we die.” The father continually tries to convince himself, his son, and the group that they will all be fine, but the boy’s condition continues to deteriorate and as a woman begins to cry out “el niño,” we know that he will not be as lucky as Carlitos. Perhaps more than the character of Chino himself, this boy (who is named in the credits if not within the film) is key to the humanizing project of the film. The relationship that the film establishes between this child and others in the trailer (his father and Chino who try to protect him, the migrant who threatens to silence the child to protect himself and the group from discovery, reactions to his condition and death) are integral to establishing a human connection that ranges from empathy, fear, and sadness (even mourning), to outrage. Like La misma luna, the film counts on the parent/child connection to elicit a primal, visceral reaction in the audience, though unlike the former, Victoria para Chino takes the potential vulnerability of child migrant bodies to its extreme consequence: death. Through this child’s death, the film visibilizes risks to migrant bodies by showing us a human face that we can connect with on an emotional level that circumvents political leanings regarding immigration policies.

Unlike La misma luna that seems to want to humanize the smugglers as well through Martha and her brother, Victoria para Chino is an indictment of the cruelty of the smuggling system. The migrants are transported like goods—human merchandise—in the back of a tractor trailer with no ventilation and no consideration for their basic needs (such as water). For the coyotes, these are not human beings, but a product, something emphasized by their mode of transport. The film visually represents the commodification of migrant bodies that has been occurring along the border, at least in part, according to Raymod Michalowski, due to government policies that have increased border militarization, which in turn has fed the human smuggling business:

This system has transformed unauthorized migrants from human beings into commodities. Groups of migrants are now a valuable load, a cargo, to smugglers. All of the practices connected with transporting and protecting shipments of illegal drugs now apply to human cargos of irregular migrants: loading as much ‘product’ into transport vehicles as possible, jettisoning anything that might increase risk of capture (i.e. migrants unable to keep up the pace of marching across the desert), and in some cases, raiding rival syndicates to steal their loads. (Michalowski 67)

The film emphasizes that coyotes on both sides of the border treat migrants as Michalowski describes. When the American driver finally pulls over, he is more concerned about his truck, an object that represents his economic livelihood, than for the human life it carries. An image of the driver inspecting the truck is followed by a cut to the inside where bodies are piled on the floor. Before opening the doors to check on the passengers, the driver calls his contact to complain that “your people are destroying my trailer!” and ignores the calls from inside that announce what the audience has suspected “el niño, el niño está muerto” (the boy, the boy is dead), responding with “I don’t speak Spanish!” He opens the door and bodies of migrants (some alive, some dead) fall out on him. The driver, instead of trying to help them, first tries to convince them to get back inside to continue the journey in the back of the truck. Later, he closes the door and abandons them. Though the film also includes Mexican smugglers, its treatment of the Anglo smuggler seems to suggest not only US complicity in the commodification of migrant bodies, but also a complete lack of consideration for their humanity.

The last image of Victoria para Chino is one of the abandoned trailer accompanied by the text that confronts the spectator of the reality of what we have just witnessed: “In May 2003, a Truck carrying 90 illegal immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America departed Southern Texas for Houston. The trailer never reached its destination. When the Highway Patrol discovered the abandoned trailer in Victoria, Texas, they found 19 people dead. Among them, a five year old boy and his father.” By ending in this way, the text emphasizes the death of the child, as well as the connection between father and son that was present throughout the film, visibilizing the reality of the dangers posed to migrant bodies that were only hinted at in La misma luna. In the context of pure fiction (like La misma luna), a viewer might dismiss the driver’s actions as lacking verisimilitude, but the text forces us to confront the reality that a driver, who had it in his power to help save (at least some) of the immigrants suffering in his truck, instead abandoned them to die. The focus, at least to an extent, shifts from the illegal act of undocumented entrants crossing the border without documents, to the heartlessness of the Anglo driver.[24]

Like several of the other examples in this essay, the issues raised related to immigration in Fukunaga’s short film serve as the nucleus for a later feature length film, Sin nombre (Mexico/USA, 2009), a film that from its title, addresses questions of invisibility.[25] Director Cary Fukunaga explains, “Sin nombre” means “without a name,” or “nameless.” And that in all honesty came because there was a scene with one of those crosses on the border that said “Sin Nombre,” and it has to do with people who died on the border and they don’t know who they are, like a John Doe. […] But I also thought that thematically it had a lot to do with immigrants and the gang members not really having an identity besides what their group is” (Fukunaga, cited in Smith).

Like “Victoria para Chino,” Sin nombre follows a teenage migrant, in this case Honduran-born Sayra, on her journey north and exposes dangers to migrant bodies as they strive to reach the U.S. border. This time, rather than transported like cargo in a truck, they travel like cargo by freight train across Mexico. While riding atop the train with her father and uncle, Sayra meets Casper, a gang member who joins the migrants to escape certain death at the hands of his gang after he kills fellow-member Lil’Mago and throws him from the train. Although most of the violence we see in the film is directed at bodies of gang members (gang bodies are foregrounded in the film via tattoos, beating, sex, etc), the brief scene that starts with Casper, Smiley, and Lil’Mago robbing migrants and ends with Smiley’s discovery of Lil’ Mago’s mutilated body beside the tracks also reveals the vulnerability of migrant bodies.

Mara Salvatrucha gang members, the teenage Casper, the newly initiated pre-adolescent Smiley, and adult leader Lil’ Mago board the train with the explicit purpose of robbing migrants, threatening bodily harm with guns and machetes. When they come upon Sayra and her family, after taking their valuables, Lil’ Mago knocks out her father and grabs Sayra, throws her down to the roof of the train, pins her with his legs and holds a gun to her head, yelling, “Shut up or you die bitch!” Close ups of Sayra screaming are juxtaposed with close ups of Casper standing back and watching, presumably imagining Lil’ Mago’s attack on Martha, Casper’s girlfriend, that ended in her accidental death. Casper steps in and interrupts this display of sexual violence, cutting Lil’ Mago’s throat with a machete, then kicking the body off the train as it lurches forward to continue North. Shortly after, the gang banger’s mutilated body serves as a visual example of the dangers facing migrants who fall (or are thrown) from the train. Smiley, having followed Casper’s advice to leave the train, walks along the railroad tracks, and with a line of sight shot we see a close up of a boot on the ground between the rails. We realize that the boot contains a severed leg as the camera pans left to Lil Mago’s body next to the tracks. Through this sequence, the film ties the threat of gang violence to dangers to migrant bodies: death or sexual assault at the hands of gang members, or mutilation and possible death under the wheels of the train.

Vulnerability of female migrant bodies takes the forefront in the short film,

El otro sueño americano (The Other American Dream, Enrique Arroyo, Mexico, 2004).

This short, which frames itself within the discourse of the Ciudad Juarez feminicides, presents the female migrant as merchandise and places the spectator in the role of witness to the last 10 minutes of a young girl’s life as she thinks she has found a ride to “the other side,” but instead falls victim to the darker side of human trafficking.

Sandra, a fourteen or fifteen year old Oaxacan, has migrated to the border town of Ciudad Juárez where she has evidently been barely surviving as a sex worker and seems willing (though reluctant) to trade her body for passage to “el otro lado.” In the first few seconds of the film, the invisible driver-narrator who, due to the positioning of the camera remains out of the frame for most of the film, very quickly sets the scene and provides the spectator insights into both characters with the line, “a poco creías que cruzando al otro lado te quitabas lo puta” (You really thought that crossing to the other side would take the whore out of you). This short line sets the scene for the film: a young female sex-worker is trying to cross the border with the help of the driver/narrator. The narrator reveals his disdain for her, suggesting that being a “whore” is something intrinsic, rather than the result of circumstance or place. According to the director, portraying the main character as a sex worker caused IMCINE (Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía) to reject this script because “everything happened to a prostitute and how the right wing thought that the dead women in Juárez had it coming to them because they were prostitutes. That bothered me a lot because before prostitutes, they are women” (Arroyo in Segoviano). Although Arroyo’s comments suggest that he wants to humanize prostitutes by seeing them as women first, I would argue that IMCINE had a point. The choice of portraying Sandra as a prostitute feeds into the myth that the disappeared women were sex workers as it has been framed by reporting and even the Mexican government. Rosa Linda Fregoso criticizes the way the state has repeatedly discredited the victims by saying they were leading double lives: factory worker by day, prostitute by night, “as though nontraditional sexual behavior justified their killings” (Towards 37). How would the film and its message change if Sandra were a student or a house wife instead of a prostitute? How would it be different if Sandra were an adult woman sex-worker rather than a minor?

These first few seconds also establish the power relationship between Sandra and the driver. She asks, “¿Adónde vamos?” (Where are we going?). After insulting her, the driver, who clearly has control of the situation, responds with, “no quieres ver la procu, verdad? Como nos vamos a arreglar?’” (You don’t want to go to the station, do you? How are we going to fix this?). This is no run-of-the-mill coyote, but a police officer who has detained Sandra for possession of cocaine. The choice, then, to cast Sandra as a minor serves to underline the power differential, as this is not just a question of police with authority over a criminal, but also an adult male pedophile who uses this power over an underage girl for his own sexual gratification.

They “fix” the situation with a corporal transaction—she “pays” the coyote-cop by showing him her breasts—although with a speed that reveals certain modesty and immaturity rather than the confidence of a woman with agency over her body and sexuality. The payment is not complete, however, and she fellates him,[26] an act that to some degree shifts the focus to the male body—though a body absent from the frame of the film due to the angle of the camera that remains fixed on the dashboard and aimed at the passenger’s seat.[27] During this oral sex act, which frustrates the potential erotic gaze by taking place mostly out of the frame, we only see the movements of the top of the girl’s head. The film juxtaposes this image with several pink crosses, such as those found around Juárez to denote graves of anonymous women, which we can see out the passenger window when the car crosses the railroad tracks at the same time as the driver climaxes. This detail links this girl with the missing women, las desaparecidas, while simultaneously visually associating this police officer, this sexual predator, with the perpetrators of the Juárez murders, who continue to evade justice. At the same time, intentionally or not, it eroticizes feminicide as male sexual gratification is connected with the dead women.

Following the driver’s ejaculation, Sandra spits out his semen, and for such a rejection of his fluids, of his manhood, he beats her. Sexual pleasure rapidly turns to violence enacted on this woman-child’s body. Moments later she tries to escape, only to be caught and handcuffed to the inside of the vehicle. This child, who was “fixing” a possible arrest for cocaine possession, becomes a victim of human trafficking. To avenge her rejection of him, the cop calls “Tim” and tells him he has a “sorpresita” (little surprise) for him, then goes on to describe to Sandra all the horrible things that these “vatos locos” (crazy dudes) have done to women (and says he has witnessed their screams).

The fixed camera shows us Tim, with his María Sabina T-shirt and his marked “gringo” accent in Spanish while he takes a “probadita” (little taste) of the merchandise by touching Sandra’s breasts without looking her in the face—he separates her body from her face, her identity; she is invisible to him. He buys her from the cop, passing him a roll of dollars. For both men this woman is a disposable product. The policeman warns Tim not to throw her body near the train tracks (where we saw the pink crosses) because he’ll have to come back for him, presumably to arrest him. With this line, the spectator knows what we have already suspected: the policeman knows that this gringo has killed other women and will kill Sandra, but he doesn’t care. He does nothing, but rather takes his money and leaves. The film overtly criticizes the role of Mexican law enforcement in the Juárez murders—they are paid to turn a blind eye and even actively participate in finding victims. They profit from allowing the feminicides to continue.

The policeman, however, has limits framed by his own particular morality. Although he doesn’t hesitate to sell this woman to the gringo, when Tim asks him for “riñones chiquitos: (very small kidneys), the cop replies, “esto es pecado” (that is a sin). Although he can dehumanize the sex worker and see her as merchandise with economic but not human value, he draws the line at selling children for their organs. While the film clearly suggests collaboration between Mexican authorities and rich Americans in these disappearances and murders, it seems to suggest, through Tim, that the U.S. is responsible for driving the actions of the Mexicans involved. Like several of the other films mentioned here, even if a Mexican character is cast in a negative light, the “gringo” is worse and often an over-the-top caricature of evil. The film paints an image of the American man as someone who sees Mexican bodies (be they women or children) in terms of their economic value and disposability.

Where several of the films discussed in this article frame themselves within the context of U.S. policies and events, this short film overtly enters into discourses surrounding Mexican policies and the handling of the feminicides in Ciudad Juárez by authorities by including a corrupt police officer who remains invisible for most of the film, echoing the invisibility of the perpetrators of these crimes since to date most remain unsolved. Additionally, the film ends with the following text before the credits roll:

It would be a pleasure to say that any resemblance to actual events is a mere coincidence. Certainly, our characters are fictitious, but it is not fiction that 11 year old girls, students, house wives, prostitutes, workers, all women, have been victims of impunity for over 10 years. The PGR [Procuraduría General de la República or Federal Attorney General's Office] has reported 258 dead women as of August 2003. Amnesty International reports 370-500 disappeared women…[28]

This concluding text clearly situates the film in the discourse surrounding “las desaparecidas,” the disappeared women of Ciudad Juárez, and interrupts the spectator’s potential voyeuristic positioning by confronting us with the reality of the violence (often sexual) enacted on the bodies of women[29]—many of them migrants from other parts of Mexico and Central America who travel to the US/Mexico border with hopes of crossing into the U.S. (like Sandra) or with the promise of economic opportunities represented by the global companies, often referred to as “maquiladoras” or “maquilas,” that operate (or operated) on the border and exploit the cheap labor that comes from economic necessity. [30]

“El otro sueño,” like all of the films analyzed here, strives to bring light to current issues related to immigration. Like the others, it struggles with the tensions between advocacy, storytelling, and exploitation. These films raise questions about responsible representations of human bodies as well as responsible looking. How to represent violence and suffering in a responsible way? How to visibilize and humanize without falling into the same trap of either inadvertently contributing to the same rhetoric one proposes to contest, or to humanize one group at the expense of dehumanizing another? In spite of their shortcomings, all of these films endeavor to participate in speaking against dehumanization of migrants through making them visible by depicting migrant experiences on the big screen.

As has been recognized in many contexts, film can have a powerful impact on perceptions of the “other” (which, as we know, can have positive and negative effects). I personally had never considered why immigrants came to the U.S. illegally until, as a college student, I saw the film El norte (Gregory Nava, USA/UK, 1983). In class we had touched on debates regarding California’s Proposition 187 (though from across the country in a liberal arts college on the East Coast), and I wasn’t really sure how I stood on the issues. Over sixteen years later, I still remember how that film brought tears to my eyes as it opened them to realities I had never imagined. Witnessing the celluloid journey of the Mayan brother and sister from Guatemala to Los Angeles made me think less in terms of political rhetoric and more in terms of human rights. Now that I am a professor, I can see similar reactions in my students after viewing and reflecting on many of the films in this essay.

Without wanting to suggest that film representations of migrants (be they fiction or documentary) are unproblematic, offer a perfect solution to the complex issues surrounding immigration, or are a magic bullet to change the way spectators stand on these issues, I do maintain that they impact conversation on a variety of levels. I have witnessed these conversations following screenings of the films mentioned in this essay (both in Mexico and in the US), in classrooms, in film festivals, and even among policy-makers. Perhaps if the public and politicians alike come to see the human impact of current policies (in the U.S. and in sending countries) they might also realize that “Los cuerpos, no las fronteras, son puntos vulnerables” (Bodies, not borders, are vulnerable points), [31] and perhaps, just perhaps, we might see humane immigration reform.
[1] I presented an earlier version of this essay, “(In)visibilidades, (des)corporalizaciones y globalizaciones: El cuerpo migrante en el cine mexicano de la frontera de los 2000,” at SEPANCINE’s “5o Congreso Internacional de Teoría y Análisis Cinematográfico” in Morelia, Mexico on October 2, 2009. I would like to thank the organizers of and participants in the conference for their feedback, as well as my colleagues Amy Schneidhorst, Kate Blanchard, Amy Sarah Carroll, and Joanne Gilbert. I especially thank the editors of FIAR, Wilfried Raussert and Yolanda Campos García for the opportunity to expand the original piece and present my work in this forum.

[2] I begin with this personal anecdote because my experience working with the documentary truly inspired this line of questioning. However, documentary is not the focus of this essay, in part because I want to resist analyzing my own film (I know I am too close to it to be objective), even if I do use it as a starting point and find some commonalities between Which Way Home and some of the fiction films I analyze here. I ask the reader to indulge this choice and to understand that I realize that documentary and fiction, even if they share common goals, use very different methodologies and theoretical frames to reach those goals. There are many noteworthy Mexican documentaries (and co-productions) from the 2000s that deal with immigration including, among others, Los que se quedan (Carlos Hagerman and Juan Carlos Rulfo 2008, Mexico), Little immigrants (Frances Lausell and Miguel Picker 2007, Puerto Rico/MX/USA), De Nadie (Tin Dirdamal 2005, Mexico), Al otro lado (Natalia Almada 2005, Mexico/USA), Cheranasticotown (Dante Cerrano 2005, Mexico), Sueños binacionales (Yolanda Cruz, 2005 Mexico/USA), La sexta sección (Alex Rivera 2003, Mexico)—not to mention U.S. productions such as Farmingville (Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini 2003). For theoretical approaches to the concept of visibilization through documentary, see, for example, Collecting Visible Evidence, edited by Jane M. Gaines and Michael Renov, and Patricia Zimmerman’s States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies.

And indeed, there are noteworthy Mexican fiction films (and co-productions) not included here such as Los Bastardos (Amat Escalante 2008, Mexico/France/USA), Norteado (Rigoberto Perezcano 2009, Mex/Spain), El viaje de Teo (Walter Doehner 2008, Mexico), 7 soles (Pedro Ultreras 2009, Mexico), among others. The films included in this essay were chosen for the ways they engage with (in)visibilization and (de)humanization of migrant bodies, particularly in terms of the two foci here: visibility through erasure: invisible labor forces; and visibilizing vulnerable bodies: children crossing borders. Practical factors also contributed to defining the corpus as films were chosen in part based on their availability at the time of this investigation. Additionally, I chose to include films that I have used in my college classroom. I have taught all of the films analyzed here with particular success and, at least with my classes, have found that they were instrumental in opening discussions regarding broader immigration issues. My pedagogical analysis is fruit for another essay; nevertheless, I hope that this article might provide some background for those interested in teaching film or teaching through film. The shorts analyzed here can be particularly attractive in a classroom as they can be shown in their entirety without the need to break the narrative flow even in classes with time constraints where showing complete feature films is not practical.

I also chose to restrict my corpus to recent films. However, there is a long history of films that take up immigration and the representation of Mexican migrants that remains outside the scope of this essay. For a history of the representation of Mexican migrants in border film, see for example, Rosa Linda Fregoso’s The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture (1993); David Maciel’s “Visions of the Other Mexico: Chicanos and Undocumented Workers in Mexican Cinema, 1954-1982” in Gary Keller’s edited volume, Chicano Cinema: Research, Reviews and Resources (1985); David Maciel’s “Pochos and Other Extremes in Mexican Cinema; or, El Cine Mexicano se va de Bracero, 1922-1963” and Alex Saragoza’s “Cinematic Orphans: Mexican Immigrants in the United States since the 1950s” in Chon Noriega’s Chicanos and Film: Representation and Resistance (1992); Norma Iglesias’s Entre yerba, polvo y plomo: Lo fronterizo visto por el cine mexicano, Vol 1 (1991).

[3] I recognize that Butler has been accused of neglecting issues related to race and ethnicity in her writing and nods to these criticisms, though somewhat superficially, in Undoing Gender.

[4] These posters were seen most recently May 1^st of this year when groups met across the country to protest Arizona’s SB 1070 (a law that gives police officers powers to demand proof of citizenship—something previously reserved to immigration officers) and more famously on May 1^st 2006 to protest the “Sensenbrenner law” HR 4437 (that included, among other aspects, construction of additional border walls, a redefinition of undocumented migrants as criminals, and criminalization of any kind of aid given to undocumented migrants). Both laws were interpreted by migrant groups as anti-migrant and by more conservative groups as part of increased border security measures. At the time of this writing, HR 4437 has been defeated and did not become law, and SB 1070, a law “which proponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations” (Archibold), is being contested from some groups and at the same time applauded by others. While U.N. experts question the “law’s compatibility with relevant international human rights treaties to which the United States is a party” (Nebehay), others, such as Michigan State Representative Kim Meltzer, are proposing similar legislation (Hornbeck). For more information on HR 4437, see the Library of Congress website at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.04437; for more on AZ SB 1070, see the Arizona State Legislature website http://www.azleg.gov/ .

[5] Joseph Moriarty, writing an opinion piece responding to AZ SB 1070 for the Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled “Immigration problem? Blame NAFTA,” would agree. He writes, “It’s time to face the truth. We, the United States, brought this calamitous situation on Mexicans and on ourselves when Congress passed the NAFTA treaty in 1993. NAFTA was sold as a magic formula that would improve the American economy while at the same time reducing poverty in Mexico. At the NAFTA signing, then President Bill Clinton said this: ‘Pass NAFTA and we will have jobs for Mexicans in Mexico. Defeat NAFTA, and there will be a tremendous flow of Mexicans in the United States.’ In practice, NAFTA accomplished exactly the opposite.” (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/92546759.html). Ted Lewis, writing for The San Diego Union Tribune explains in his article, “Linking NAFTA and Immigration,” “Even the most conservative estimates make it clear that during the first decade of NAFTA the annual number of undocumented immigrants arriving in the United States from Mexico nearly doubled.” (http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080229/news_lz1e29lewis.html). See also Louis Uchitelle’s New York Times article, “Nafta Should Have Stopped Illegal Immigration, Right?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/weekinreview/18uchitelle.html)

[6] The agreement does have provisions for business visas (where visa holders are not permitted to enter the US labor force but are paid by their home country) and for a non-immigrant TN (or Trade Nafta) Visa. According to the U.S. Department of State Website, TN Visas are available for “Professional” Canadians and Mexicans, requiring “evidence of professional employment” and “educational qualifications or appropriate credentials demonstrating professional status” (“Visas”). The agreement has no provisions for the vast numbers of non-professional immigrants that represent the majority of undocumented workers who take manual labor jobs in fields such as agribusiness, construction, domestic services, etc.

[7] For an idea of the stance of Mexican president Felipe Calderón and George W. Bush regarding NAFTA reform, see for example, Myers’s 2008 New York Times article, “Next-Door Neighbors Back Bush on Trade.” For an idea of President Barack Obama and President Calderón’s recent meetings in which NAFTA reform was discussed, see for example, MacGillis’s Washington Post article “Mexico not worried about Obama campaign pledge to renegotiate NAFTA” from May 2010, in comparison with articles that report on the Jan. 2009 meeting of the two leaders: Gillman’s Dallas Morning News article “Obama talks of ‘upgrade’ to NAFTA with Mexico’s Calderón”; and Marshall’s Guadalajara Reporter article “Obama-Calderon Talk Overshadowed by Nafta Discord.”

[8] Passed by California voters in 1994, Proposition 187 (also known as “Save Our State” or “SOS”) included the denial of public benefits to illegal aliens in California and measures for public officials (including police, healthcare workers, and teachers) to verify legal migratory status before providing service. A federal court found it unconstitutional and in 1999 Governor Gray Davis helped end appeals to that finding.

[9] All translations from Spanish are by the author unless otherwise indicated.

[10] http://www.adaywithoutamexican.com/

[11] The film addresses the common assumption that all Latinos are Mexican when Senator Abercrombie erroneously refers to the men his wife hired to paint the house as “illegal Mexicans […] from Guatemala and Honduras.” The film uses text on the screen to correct the error, informing us that “Guatemalans and Hondurans are not Mexicans.”

[12] For an in-depth study of fake or “mock-documentaries” as a subgenre of documentary film, see F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing, edited by Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner.

[13] We later find out that she is not, in fact, Latina, but rather that she was an Armenian adopted by a Mexican family, a somewhat disappointing resolution that explains why she does not disappear with the other Latinos. She finally does disappear, live on “Lila Cam,” after finding out she was adopted and claiming that blood doesn’t matter: “I was raised Mexican and I was treated like a Mexican […] Love is thicker than blood. You belong to the people that taught you the world, and my heart, my heart is Mexican. Please don’t take that away from me.” This seeming attempt to question identity politics divorces cultural association from the body.

[14] The marketing in México actually excluded Anglos through its tagline “Nadie sabe lo que tiene un día sin mexicanos ¡los gringos van a llorar!” (No one knows what a day without Mexicans has in store, The gringos are going to cry!) which many “gringos” would feel as offensive if not outright aggressive as it suggests that the film (and Mexicans) will inflict suffering on them, making them cry.

[15] Marambio and Tew make the relationship between the film and the march names explicit when they explain that the Milwaukee march “was organized as ‘A Day Without a Latino,’ borrowing its name from the title of the movie” (477).

[16] This scene also works to humanize “terrorists” and casualties of war. What is at stake by showing (or not showing) the toll of war on bodies? I am focusing on the humanization of migrants here, but am also intrigued by Rivera’s inter-weaving of multiple dehumanizing discourses into his film. Through the character of Rudy, a node-worker and drone pilot, the film suggests the impact of visibilizing the “enemy.” When he sees his human “target,” something that the T.V. narrator tells us is uncommon in his line of work, Rudy hesitates to follow orders. After he complies, he, like Memo, begins a physical and psychological journey that leads him to question his role as node-soldier and to attempt to make amends to Memo’s family. The film seems to question discourses that dehumanize more than one side of the “War on Terror” with its treatment of both soldiers (Rudy) and suspected terrorists (Memo and his father).

[17] The most important fiction film from either side of the border to deal with the Bracero program is undoubtedly Alejandro Galindo’s Espaldas mojadas (México 1955). An analysis of this classic film is, unfortunately, outside the scope of this article.

[18] I first consider the implications of a Chicano-cyborg body in my article, “Entre las palabras y el cuerpo: estrategias performáticas fronterizas en las obras de Guillermo Gómez- Peña.” Mexican-born performance artist Guillermo Gómez –Peña has played with notions of the cyborg in various performances and videos over his career. Although in my article I consider the commodification of the Chicano-male body in Gómez-Peña’s Binational Boxer video (in Ethno-techno: Los Video Graffitis, USA, 2004) in terms of sexuality and gender roles, I do not expand upon implications of the racialized cyborg and hope to begin to address that here, though in a different context.

[19] The subaltern does, of course, talk back through technology in unexpected ways. I am considering, for example, the strategic use of technology by the Zapatistas in Mexico, “hactivism” performance interventions by artist and scholar Ricardo Dominguez, and Alex Rivera’s own use of technology to make, market and distribute his independent film through his webpages http://www.cybracero.com/ and www.sleepdealer.com, but also the use of technology to reach a broader audience by releasing the film on cable “On Demand” networks the same day it opened in select theaters in the U.S.

[20] One more than one occasion our film, Which Way Home, has been compared to La misma luna since both look at the separation of families and the journey of undocumented migrants through the experiences of children. When I first saw La misma luna, I was immediately reminded of three Salvadoran children, brothers and sisters aged 9, 10, and 11, whom I had met while working on the documentary. Their mother had been working legally in Los Angeles for seven years and, like Carlitos, they had been living with their grandmother. When the grandmother passed away, the mother, not knowing that she could have applied to bring her kids legally, sent for them using a coyote. The kids had crossed El Salvador, Guatemala, and part of Mexico when they were picked up by Mexican immigration agents, having been abandoned by their smuggler.

[21] In the haste of his escape, he leaves his money behind, which places him in another situation where we fear that bodily harm will come to him. When he is unable to pay a junkie the 100 dollars he had promised so that the man would help him buy a bus ticket, the junkie sells the boy to a pimp. Fortunately he is saved yet again as a concerned bystander, Reyna (María Rojo), steps in.

[22] In fact, the film has been criticized by Mexican audiences for making light of these dangers since we see no actual harm come to any migrants at any point in the film. I believe that the film wants to humanize the migrant experience for U.S. spectators and to that end has made choices to avoid alienating potential viewers through graphic images.

[23] This film brings to mind similar scenes that open and close the film, Raíces de sangre (Jesús Salvador Treviño, Mexico/USA 1979). Both are based on actual events—this kind of transportation did not begin with NAFTA, though a principal difference is that “Victoria” takes us inside the truck and Raices does not. Film Scholars Rosa Linda Fregoso and David Maciel have signaled Raices de sangre (with Espaldas mojadas) as one of the most important Mexican films to deal with immigration and the Chicano experience in the U.S.

[24] The actual driver was a Jamaican immigrant from New York that in this film was cast as a light-haired “gringo” with no indication that he might be a non-citizen.

[25] This film has also often been compared with Which Way Home as a fictional representation of the perils of the freight train journey across Mexico. Erik Davis, in the context of the Tribeca Film Festival, writes, “Which Way Home and the recently-released Sin Nombre would make for an excellent double feature, as the former — currently screening in the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival — is a riveting documentary that taps into the same concept and themes of Sin Nombre, except it’s all real and it’s all heartbreaking to watch. Like Sin Nombre, Which Way Home follows the stories of several children attempting to illegally cross the Mexican border into the United States by way of riding on the tops of trains. But while Sin Nombre works in a fictional plot involving love, friendship and gang violence, Which Way Home covers the topic from several different (and fascinating) points of view. From the boys and girls riding the trains to the kids who’ve already been caught and are on their way back home, the film brings us everything we’d expect from a solid, well-made documentary — injecting passion, honesty and heart into a topic that certainly needs more attention drawn to it.”

[26] These two moments shocked the students in my film course. They were concerned that the age of the actress (though as it turned out, she was not a minor when she made the film) might make this film akin to child pornography and brought up questions of the tension between exposing violence to women’s bodies and the risk of repeating the violence to the woman’s body through the act of filming. This kind of tension is present to different degrees in many of the films discussed here.

[27] The film has a flavor of a home video due to the quality of the image and the fixed camera—it remains positioned towards the passenger seat throughout the film. Some explanation of the quality and positioning of the camera comes at the end when the policeman yanks it out of place and turns it off—he knew the camera was there and recording, but why? Since we know he is a cop, we might suspect that it is a surveillance camera in his squad car, but the positioning doesn’t support this (it is focused on the front passenger seat, not the back where a suspect might be held). At the risk of projecting today’s technology into the past, it feels like a web-cam (although at the time of the making of the film, it would have been difficult to imagine broadcasting over the internet live from the dashboard of a truck), and I question my position as a spectator—am I a cybernetic voyeur? Or is this a personal video that the policeman will view later, but why? For pleasure? Is this a sort of a snuff film? After all, pornography and snuff films have been suggested as possible explanations for the missing women.

[28] The statistics are often disputed and vary widely from source to source. Guadalupe Loaeza, writing in Mexico’s Reforma newspaper in March of 2009, sets the number at 1060 deaths considered feminicides in the last 15 years with 544 in 2008 alone. She does not include the number of missing women in her statistics (nor does she cite a source).

[29] Rosa Linda Fregoso notes that “many of the murdered women had been gagged, raped, strangled, and mutilated, with nipples and breasts cut off and buttocks lacerated like cattle, or they had been penetrated with objects. The number of murders tabulated as sexual killings is disputed because city authorities don’t count penetration as rape when an object is used; for example, a woman found with a blanket in her anus was not recorded in police investigations as having been raped” (Toward 62).

[30] The recent award winning fiction thriller—five Ariels, including best direction and best actress for Asur Zágada (Juana), and Mexico’s submission for the Oscar for best foreign film of 2009)— Backyard / El traspatio (Dir. Carlos Carrera; screenplay Sabina Berman, Mexico 2009), also addresses the Juárez feminicides (reminding us that they continue to this day) and the topic of the disposability of women through the stories of co-protagonists police detective Blanca Bravo (Ana de la Regera) who arrives in Juárez to investigate the murders and indigenous migrant Juana (Asur Zágada) who travels to Ciudad Juárez from Chiapas to work in a maquila. I am very interested in the tensions I see in this film between humanizing and dehumanizing, between advocacy/subversion, and exploitation/reinforcing the status quo; however, a detailed analysis is outside the scope of this essay. Much has been written on the Juárez murders and feminicide the past few years. For a recent example that considers media representation (including several films), see Hector Domínguez-Ruvulcaba and Ignacio Corona’s 2010 anthology, Gender Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Media Representation and Public Response.

[31] These words are spoken by the narrative voice from the short documentary that focuses on female migrant experiences along Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, Bajo el Tacana (Isabel Vericat, Mexico, 2007)

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Elspeth kydd

08 January 2009 at Bielefeld University, Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF)

Elspeth kydd