American Patriot....Anzaldua?

Before analyzing the week 2 reading, Borderlands/ La Frontera, I needed to organize by mind a little by getting some background information. While researching Texans of Hispanic descent (Tejanos), I found that 1820 Texas was primarily populated by Tejanos. But in the decade that followed, American settlers moved steadily into Texas, and soon outnumbered the Tejanos 6 to 1. Both groups rebelled against the authority of Mexico City. This led to the Texas War of Independence in 1835 and 1836. After the Texian (this looks like a typo but that's what they were called) army, led by General Sam Houston defeated the Mexican army, the Republic of Texas was formed. American settlers and Tejanos now had a pretty large chunk of land to enjoy freely… for a few years anyway.

As our class learned that first Sunday over coffee and doughnuts, John O’Sullivan coined the phrase, “Manifest Destiny” 9 years after an Independent Texas was formed. O’Sullivan used the phrase as he strongly approved the recent addition of Texas into the United States. He, along with others, including newly elected President James Polk, believed our expansion should continue west, and into what was then part of Mexico. This obviously led to conflict with Mexico, and eventually, war. From the spoils of our war with Mexico, we gained significant lands on the west coast, and in the process, created new borders. These new borders not only separated countries, but in many cases, families and cultures that found themselves on separate sides of the fence.

To better understand Anzaldua’s paper (which in my estimation was fairly heady), I found and read an article written by Antonia l. Castaneda, St. Mary’s University. The full article can be accessed thru the following link: http://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/aftermath/violence.html
If you’re short on time (who isn’t) there are a few specific lines I found to be educational. “….the war was about territory…access to the ports of the Pacific & ownership of all the wonderful minerals & riches that were in the soil.” But in Castaneda’s view, “it was also about profit for some. We have to understand that the war between the United States and Mexico was about violence, racism…. The war was about labor, acquiring or making wealth, about capitalist development and what that means. The war was about profit for some groups and in that process then there were people who were violated. The violence was not just military, but it was a violence of the soul — a violence of the spirit by those who committed that violence as well as by those who were on the receiving end. We live with the consequences of that conquest. We all live with the impact and the effects of the acquisition of that land, the displacement of the people on it, the appropriation of their labor at less than livable wages. In fact, in a sense, we continue to fight the war over and over and over. “

In the future, I’ll try not to include so many quoted lines in my paper, but I think it’s a very descriptive and easily understood narrative into the mindset of Hispanics that were called different things (from Mexican to Tejano to Mexican American, or just American) as we pushed the American border further west. This undoubtedly all plays an important role in forming the very complex psyche of Chicano poet Gloria Anzaldua. After my first read thru the article, I thought about the fact that it’s still a struggle for all the different ethnicities and cultures to coexist in our country. We undoubtedly grow more tolerant, even appreciative of our diversity. But at the end of the day, many of us enjoy the comfort of returning to our White,Black, Asian etc. neighborhood.

As a class, we’re studying the concepts of borders as they relate to western expansion and the formation of today’s America. Anzaldua writes of her struggles with “psychological borders”. She speaks of the difficulties facing La mestiza including undergoing “a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war.” But the real message to me is strong, heroic even. She believes her role, “the work of mestiza consciousness” is not to choose sides of the border, physically, culturally, or even frame of mind. Instead, she states that the work of the mestiza is to transcend these inward borders and struggles and through this process, become the newly evolved American that serves as the seed to end racial and gender strife. Going back to the article by Castaneda, the US Mexican war was not just physically violent, but as importantly, spiritually violent. Anzaldua concludes that the mestiza, while reconciling her own past, will form a new strong spirit that will not only serve to be self healing, it may be uniquely capable of healing our nation.

While Anzaldua wrote of psychological borders, our other week 2 reading, Magical Urbanism, Latinos Reinvent the US City by Mike Davis, primarily focuses on the physical transformation of America’s largest cities and counties as Latinos continue to populate them in great numbers. The photo used on the first page of the article was quite the eye catcher. At first glance, I realized that the woman of Hispanic descent represented by the huge, completely nude structure was obviously not Brazilian…but I digress.

Even though the Davis article is now several years old, admittedly, I had no idea that the population growth of Hispanic/Latino Americans had been so substantial. The one statistic in the article that was stunning: US Latinos will account for the third largest Latino population in the world, behind only Brazil and Mexico. Based on the continued movement of new Latinos migrating to the U.S., paired with the statistic mentioned by Davis regarding Mexican women’s greater fertility rate, it’s very possible that U.S. Latinos will surpass Mexico by 2050 or shortly thereafter. As Whites have in many cities around the country, moved to the suburbs, Latinos are populating the same major cities. As the dominant portion of populous cities, Latinos will have the opportunity to steer social, cultural, and economic influence. Has America become the new Latino frontier? A strong tie-in with some of the points made by our other article written by Anzaldua, was Turner’s inclusion of a quote from Brazilian futurist Alfredo Valladao. He “sees the new Spanish-language ‘beechheads” in US Cities as research laboratories for the cross-fertilization of North & South American cultures”….resulting in “a Pan’American twenty-first century.”

While many Mexican Americans – some recently, some for generations, enjoy their relationship with today’s American, the Mexico they left behind has not benefited from the same relationship. As Turner points out “Mexico adds 1 million more new workers each year than it can actually employ in its formal economy.” The jobs made available by U.S. companies (maquiladora) operating low wage factories on the Mexican side, has certainly inflated profits for those companies, but has done very little to provide incentive to keep the Mexican worker from seeking better opportunity on the north side of the border. Which brings us to the most important point made by Davis: We need Mexican labor in the U.S., and U.S. companies want access to the work force residing in Mexico. Do we really need armed guards at this intersection of supply and demand? During our period of western expansion, we formed laws, and developed culture to benefit the Anglo American. As Mexicans and others of Hispanic decent continue to position themselves to shape future policy, my guess is that the U.S./Mexican border will one day go the way of the Berlin wall.