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April 18, 2004
Borders
Just read a great text by Gloria Anzaldua called "Borderlands/La Frontera: the new Mestiza" (1987), in which she discusses the ideas and realities of living in the border between Mexico and the USA. These places exist in a continual state of transition/hybridity, and it permeates all aspects of the border culture ñ language, music, food, and art.
'Chicanos', and especially their use of language ['Tex-Mex', or 'Spanglish'] are looked down upon with some disgust by both the Spanish speaking Mexicans, and the English speaking Texans.
She says: a borderland is a vague and undetermined place . . . the residue of an unnatural boundary . . . the prohibited and forbidden are it's inhabitants . . . the perverse, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the halfbreed . . . those who crossover, or go through the confines of the normal.
Improper use of language, mongrels, halfbreeds, . . . all the result of hybridisation, and all [generally] devalued by society . . . those 'Protectors of Culture' again? Yet this is the way things go ñ we cannot stop evolution . . .
Posted by Luke Wood at April 18, 2004 08:58 PM