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Mexican Borderlands

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

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

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