Fate of People Living in Borderlands
The
people living in borderlands have been faced by many challenges which include
mistreatment by the security officers guarding the borders and also their own
people. Mostly the women in the borderlands have been intimidated and oppressed
by the unfriendly culture which is practiced there. There people also face the
challenges of being discriminated from the American natives. These people have
being restricted from the parts of the states which experience good life and
have been let to struggle with the unfavorable conditions of the borderlands.
In the borderlands, men are the ones who make laws and take part in the good
jobs while the women can only work as housekeepers. They are not allowed to
fight for their rights lest they face the hard times of racial discrimination
by the men of their area.
As
a whole these people are seen as inferior by the Native Americans and also
women face an additional oppression from the people of their own race (Feminism
on border, 34). The black woman is considered to be inferior and not able to
participate in any crucial project of development as Gloria says. This culture
is so oppressive to the people and intimidates them making them live under fear
and pressures of the laws not able to explore their rights and discover what
they can provide for the good of the society. Anzaldua
classifies the border culture in different states and says that there is no
need for discrimination she the discriminative views on the basis of race are
only misconceptions since she have explored the efforts of the different people
being discriminated and seen that they can provide a lot to the society. She
explains that emotional Borderlands can be found anywhere where there are
different kinds of people coming together and occupying the same space or where
there are spaces that are hemmed in by these larger groups of people (Anzaldua
quoted in K. Urch, and et al., 77). This shows that emotional Borderlands are
not characterized by rigid or definite categories, that they are constituted by
ambiguities, by diverse people who happen to be searching for a place to fit
outside dominant categories, and that these Borderlands can be found anywhere.
She explains that people who are in the process of crossing from one class to
another or one country to another or one identity to another go through a
transition, a nepantla state that is
part of the Borderlands (Anzaldua quoted in K. Urch, and et al. 78). Hence, the
first of these Borderlands processes is nepantla. Borderlands are considered as a theory, where nepantla happens to
be one of its processes. The following process in the theory is Coatlicue
state.
Anzaldua explains that the nepantla state has different
stages, of which Coatlicue is one (Anzaldua and Keating, 2000, Reuman 2000).
She also states another state called “Coyolxauhqui”. This process speaks about
reconciliation and auto validation, characteristics that make it equally
fascinating. The last process in Anzaldua’s theory is “la conciencia de la
mestiza”. This is a powerful concept that integrates the work of all the
previous stages and gives the Borderlands theory a specific purpose.
Nepantla State (pathway to Change)
This process was included in the Borderlands theory as a
metaphor whereby in describing this metaphoric process, the author incorporates
some elements that existed in the etymological meaning and adds her own. Anzaldua also uses this concept, but
she also states that nepantla, the
space in-between, the luminal stage or transitional periods in identity
formation (Anzaldœa and Keating,
2000: 5, 238). The process when the self is going through the process of
transiting inside the mind, the psyche and spirit. One needs to be aware of the
diversity of know ledges that exist in the world in order to embrace, reject,
or select what is best for us. Nepantla constitutes the channel where the
journey towards self-awareness, self-proclamation, and, perhaps, liberation
begins. For Anzaldua identity is relational, it exists in relation to some
other. Therefore, it happens always in this in-between zone, the nepantla or
the Borderlands. Throughout the nepantla state, endangered peoples, cultures,
or genders gain self-consciousness about the threats that mainstream cultures
superimpose upon them and hence learn to re-invent social, political, and cultural
spaces in which they not only survive, but also counterattack their oppressors
by enhancing cultural difference as a place of power.
Coatlicue State
This state is both the most painful and elucidating process
in the Borderlands. Gloria Anzaldua has a profound admiration for female
indigenous goddesses, and hence she chose to name her next stage in Borderlands
the Coatlicue state. She was concerned about the fact that ancient myths and
fictions were and are used to produce realities that work to the detriment of
women. Women are depicted as worthless because of their womanhood. She
dedicated her work to re-position the myths of female goddesses at the center
of her theories in order to return to women the power that patriarchal cultures
took away from them. By giving female characters a central role in her theories
meant pulling females out of the shadows given that women, in the Mexican and
Chicano mythology play negative roles. Coatlicue
is a symbol of life and death. Anzaldua compares the Coatlicue state with the
stage of birth during which one is in the womb ready to be born (Anzaldua and
Keating, 2000: 225). She says that Coatlicue is crucial to the Borderlands
because it serves as the stage where one has to kill the colonized self and
everything one has learned in order to re-cognize that self. The self being
referred to is one’s identity going through
a stage where it has to confront all the identities, acquired, imposed, desired
to identify where the oppression comes from.
Coyolxauhqui State
Gloria Anzaldua introduces Coyolxauhqui as the “daughter”
of Coatlicue, the moon goddesses, a
warrior woman and the sister of the Aztec war god Huitzilopochtli. She explains
that her brother decapitated her, dismembered the body and scattered her limbs
and buried the pieces of her body in different places because he was afraid of
her power (Anzaldua, 1999: 251; Anzaldua and Keating, 2000: 220). The aim of
this process is to produce meaning, coherence, ordering, and shape to the
previous work. Coyolxauhqui is in many senses reconciliation with the self, a
phase of self-acceptance and self-appreciation. According to her, Coyolxauhqui
state is a process of putting the self together not only at the individual
level, but also in relationship to the social, political, economical, or
emotional context. She also tried to express that there is no problem for
people to be different; brown, black, or any other difference and that it is
okay having different values, religions, or traditions than those of the white
man.
Putting the pieces together and accepting our work as
something in progress also means that there is always a possibility for a
change, for difference, and that nothing is universal, divine, or perfect. Yet,
this imperfection makes ones work perfect, since it is our creation, our
struggle, our voice and soul. Our identity, just as our work, is constantly
arranged and re-arranged; however, after Coyolxauhqui, we are aware of all the forces trying to influence us, and now we
decide to what to pay attention and what to ignore, what to incorporate and
what to discard.
Border La Conciencia de La Mestiza
The final process in the Borderlands theory is La conciencia de la mestiza or the
Borderlands consciousness as Anzaldua calls, a consciousness that speaks of
resistance. The new mestiza is a
space of hybridity, of multiplicity, which means that it is not exclusive of
Mexican-Americans/Chicanos, Latin Americans, Indigenous, or Indians. Even white
males can have a mestiza
consciousness since this is a state of mind. Having a mestiza consciousness mean that all the previous processes has
prepared the self to engage, to abandon previous feelings of victimization, and
to replace them with reason and political action. The new mestiza hence is capable of transformation and evolution and her
new identity makes her unique. The attributions of this new identity Anzaldœa
describes in Borderlands: The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance
for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican
culture, to be a Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle
cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode
nothing is trusted out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected,
nothing abandoned. Not only she sustains contradictions, she turns the
ambivalence into something else (Anzaldua 79).
In the new mestiza,
feelings of fear and shame together with the wound caused by the separation and
subsequent distinction of white/colored, male/female, civilized/barbarians. She
reinterprets history, and using the new symbols, she shapes new myths. She
adopts new perspectives toward the dark-skinned, women and queers. She
strengthens her tolerance for ambiguity. She is willing to share, to make
herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking. She surrenders all
notions of safety of the familiar She is able to transform herself (Anzaldua 83). Jose David Saldivar
explains, la conciencia de la nueva
mestiza, for Anzaldua, is neither espaæol,
ni ingles, but both (Saldvar 352).
Anzaldua understands that the new mestiza and education is
imperative of liberalization but the realities of living in a borderland.
Borderland that is muted culture in the midst of the hegemonic power of the United States,
the chances are slim that a Chicana will survive the battle against the
combined forces of a sexist Chicano culture and the racist power of the
dominant culture. Anzaldua’s ant hegemonic strategy aims to recreate border
history for the Mestiza while Viramonte’s strategy is to expose the extent of
the political power of the United
States. There is the oppression of the
reserve army of laborers that the United States creates and then
designates illegal Immigrants.
Viramontes shows us that we can combine feminism with race
and class-consciousness. In this Chicana political discourse, Viramontes commits
herself to a transnational solidarity with other working-class people who like
all non-indigenous tribes are immigrants to the United States. In The Political
Unconscious Fredric Jameson has said, history is what hurts but the most
important thing is to consider the past to correct our mistakes and proceed
with life rather than trying to deny our past misconceptions that there some
people from particular race who are more superior than other people of
different races. For the brown immigrants who move to the United States in
search of political freedom, their pain intensifies when they realize that for
the brown, black, and Asian races, the suppressed history of the United States
is the history of exploitation as well as racism and face many challenges.
Summary
This paper has described
the culture that is being practiced by the people of the borderlands. They are
copying a culture that makes man appear to be more superior to woman and shows
how women from various states have been intimidated. Men have been given the
opportunity to enjoy making of laws and enjoying good jobs while the women are
seeing as housekeepers. They are not given a chance of having good jobs and
enjoy good salaries as they are expected to remain submissive to their men.
When the Mexican woman
attempts to cross the border, she is more likely to face challenges such as
rape and enslavement than any other woman from the other states. Even when she
makes it to the U.S side, then she is not guaranteed any opportunity of good
life because she is only entitled to being a house cleaner and receiving very
little wages of as less as $1 per week. According to Anzaldua, there is the
need to be aware that despite of the difference in races, racism should not be
used to discriminate people of a particular race or gender. Women from the
borderlands should stand against intimidation and take part in constructive
responsibilities.
Work
cited
Aigner-Varoz, Erika. Metaphors of a
Mestiza Conciousness. San Fransisco: Aunt Lute, 2000.
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands: The New
Mestiza. San Fransisco: Spinsters, 1987.
Hector, Calderon and Jose David Saldivar. Feminism on the Border:
From Gender Politics to Geopolitics. Durham:
Duke University Press, 1991.
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