Contact Zone or Battle Zone

THE BORDER BETWEEN US: CONTACT ZONE OR BATTLE ZONE?
Author(s): Louis Mendoza

Source: Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Spring 1994), pp. 119-139
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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REVIEW-ESSAY
THE BORDER BETWEEN US: CONTACT ZONE OR

BATTLE ZONE?
mfs
Louis Mendoza
The language of critique is effective

... to the extent to which it overcomes
the given grounds of opposition and
opens up a space of "translation"; a
place of hybridity, figuratively speak
ing, where the construction of a po
litical object that is new, neither the
one nor the Other, properly alienates
our political expectations....
—Homi Bhabha, "The Commitment
to Theory"
The border as metaphor has become

hollow. Border aesthetics have been
gentrified and border culture as a Uto
pian model for dialog is temporarily
bankrupt. But the border as a region
of political injustice and great human
suffering still exists. The border re
Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 40, Number 1, Spring 1994. Copyright © by Purdue Research
Foundation. All rights to reproduction in any form reserved
120 MFS
mains an infected wound on the body

of the continent, its contradictions
more painful than ever; its suprema
cist groups still hunting migrant work
ers as sport; its vigilantes pointing their
car lights south; its helicopters and
police dogs terrorizing Mexican and
Central American peasants who come
to feed this country. Sadly, the border
remains unchanged.
—Guillermo Gômez-Perïa, "Death
on the Border: A Eulogy to Bor
der Art"
Metaphors abound in literature about the U.S.-Mexico border. It

has been called a desert, a scar, a scab, a wasteland, a laboratory
of the human condition, a war zone, a tortilla curtain, and a geo
political wound, among other things. These metaphors reflect the
range of attitudes about this international boundary line as either a
place of pain, a site of violence, neglect and waste, or an uncontrolled
"free" zone of capitalist activity, poverty, and vice, and as a gateway
for human traffic into the "land of opportunity." In popular discourse
on the border, its residents and migrants are often reduced to
stereotypes born from a media-generated hysteria. These people are
"terrorists," "drug smugglers and dealers," "international crimi
nals," or, as one editorialist put it in 1988, they are "the dregs of
the earth and certainly the enemies of freedom" (San Diego Union,
qtd. in Joselit 122).
It is difficult not to use metaphors when talking about the U.S.
Mexico border. Plain, descriptive, everyday terms seem inadequate
and inappropriate for articulating the lived material, cultural, and
social reality that has emerged around and across this international
boundary. Despite the difficulty of "translating" border experience,
in the last decade a vast border discourse has emerged whose
primary vehicle is language, although many multi-media presenta
tions, particularly those of visual and performance artists, also use
imagery to deliver a message about the border. From the hallways
of academia, where border studies programs are being rapidly de
veloped throughout Southwestern institutions of higher education, to
the offices of legislators and lawyers, who address the tangible
human dimension of the consequences of migration and predict or
strategize about the benefits or liabilities of free trade, to the streets,
where artists and activists from both ends of the political spectrum
MENDOZA 121
attempt to influence public opinion, the border has come to occupy

a preeminent place in the national conscience.
This essay brings together works from various narrative and
discursive sites and disciplines in order to map out the border as
a site of exchange, negotiation, subversion, and violence. The books
reviewed here were chosen because they challenge popular wisdom
about the people, the culture, and the economy that characterize
both sides of the border. In the context of the recently approved
econo-centric North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a
reading of these texts offers a way to register and mark the emer
gence of other multinational alliances, including the creation of spe
cialized institutions and bi-national organizations responding to the
discourse of cultural and economic development. Many of these
texts reveal the failure of NAFTA to take into account the human
realities of borders—the particulars of cultural, economic, and social
exchange that occur daily. Taking the social and political nature of
the border as their subject, the writers, artists, academics, and
activists addressed in this review of border narratives have confi
gured the border in a variety of ways. Some of these writings are
efforts to speak for "subaltern" classes of people that occupy the
vast, almost 1600 mile-long, swatch of territory that stretches from
Brownsville/Matamoros to Tijuana/San Diego. Other writings are the
"voices" of people of these classes in a more or less unmediated
manner. And still others are efforts to show the consequences of
a border discourse for already existing and newly established insti
tutions that address the border as a "problem."
It is no coincidence that this increased attention to the border
comes at a historical moment when there is a pronounced shift in
focus from East-West relations to North-South ones on a national
and international scale. In a similar manner in which the "resolution"
of colonialism and the cold war represent the coming to terms of
the West with the deeds and conquests of its past, within the U.S.
the increased attention to the southern border forces us to confront
our national history. Politically this involves reassessing North-South
relations in terms of the formation and enforcement of immigration
policy and diplomatic, military, and economic relations. Such a glance
is often historical in nature for it involves reconciling our ancestral
past with our political present, a task that assumes urgency because
people's lives and communities are being transformed, displaced
and relocated by the continuing processes of global capitalism.
Speaking about the cultural impact of the continuing Diaspora from
the South and the East, Guillermo Gômez-Pena has said that:
122 M FS
[t]he current Latino and Asian immigration to the U.S. is the direct
result of international conflicts between the so-called "First" and
"Third Worlds." The colonized cultures are sliding into the space
of the colonizer, and in doing so, they are redefining its borders
and its culture... . The First and Third Worlds have mutually pen
etrated one another. The two Americas are totally intertwined.
(Warrior for Gringostroika, 45-46)
Pena's innovative work as an artist/activist member of the San

Diego-Tijuana Border Arts Workshop, which is dedicated to forming
transnational relations, questions the social and cultural relations
between the U.S. and Mexico by exposing the contradictions that
result from a refusal to acknowledge the interdependence between
the U.S. and Mexico. A collection of his critical essays, performance
texts, and poetry has recently been published. Warrior for Gringos
troika brings together Pena's various artistic genres to make an
indictment against fixed notions of identity, nationality, and language
that fail to consider the ways these concepts are altered, changed
or challenged along the U.S.-Mexico border every day. Gômez-Pena
has a love/hate relationship with postmodernism and multiculturalism,
two concepts that he sees as being abused, overused and misun
derstood. He believes in the power of art to transcend historically
based prejudices and myths and to heal the fractured reality of the
present. To facilitate this he emphasizes his border identity and
eschews elitist concepts:
Many "deterritorialized" Latin American artists in Europe and the
United States have opted for "internationalism" (a cultural identity
based upon the "most advanced" of the ideas originating out of
New York or Paris). I, on the other hand, opt for "borderness" and
assume my role: my generation, the chilango (slang term for a
Mexico City native), who came to "El Norte" fleeing the imminent
ecological and social catastrophe of Mexico City, gradually inte
grated itself into otherness, in search of that other Mexico grafted
onto the entrails of the et cetera .. . became Chicano-ized. (Warrior
37)
Gömez-Pena's essays are multi-lingual and promote collaboration

among races, sexes, and generations, but speak against co-optation
or the vampirism of the cultures of the "other." It is the appropriation
of cultural others that he warns against and sees as a dangerous
component of the multicultural craze in the artistic and academic
worlds. To Gömez-Pena the streets are the best stage and truest
test for whether or not one's art is relevant and meaningful. He has
used the border bridges, the river, and the federal courthouses as
MENDOZA 123
stages for his productions. In doing so Gömez-Pena uses his art to

make links between spatial politics, material forces and issues of
representation. Furthermore, his cross-cultural, transborder perform
ances and theory maintain a consistent focus on migration as a
multinational phenomenon that must continually be historicized and
understood dialectically.
That the Diaspora of Latinos, primarily Mexicans, but an in
creasingly diverse group that includes Central and South Americans,
has grown is clear; the extent to which this constitutes a problem
for U.S. society is debatable. Several of the texts examined here
illustrate the contributions Latinos make to the U.S. economy. Even
more insightful for understanding the historical nature of the north
ward migration of Latinos is to examine their legal and extra-legal
border crossing patterns in relation to U.S. economic and military/
foreign policy. The deterritorialization of a people by economic and
political circumstance demonstrates the illogic of late capitalism that
can be traced back to a U.S. generated free-trade movement of the
nineteenth century which has had a continuous presence in Mexico
through the discourse of development. One book that historicizes
the formation of economic interdependency between the U.S. and
Mexico is Troublesome Border by Oscar J. Martinez.
Martinez's book is organized topically; that is, rather than using
either political or geographical methodology to organize his discus
sion of the border, he provides an overview of the treaties which
led to its delimitation and refinement and proceeds to analyze its
particular significance for Native Americans and Chicanos, and to
trace the emergence of regional differences amongst Mexicans, as
well as the current ecological issues of concern for both sides of
the border. Martinez's study utilizes conflict as one of its central
organizing principles. In assessing the process by which the exact
location of the border was determined, Martinez demonstrates how
"developments were influenced significantly by the disparity in the
two countries' strength" (30). He concludes that the process of
establishing the border determined the immediate and long-term
economic future of these two countries. Moreover, a legacy of hatred,
suspicion, and bitterness was initiated that affected relations between
the U.S. and Mexico on many other issues as well.
At times, Martinez's approach forces him to compromise his
analysis. He clearly privileges the nation-state. This emphasis is
most evident in his chapter on Border Indians in which his primary
focus is on the "problem" Indians caused for Mexican and American
citizens and their governments when they refused to accept, and
124 MFS
even actively exploited, the national boundary in their hunting and

raiding expeditions. A lack of Native American historiography is most
evident here. Martinez relies on U.S. and Mexican historians to
articulate the problems with pacifying the Indians, including a short
age of soldiers to guard the border, and a lack of resources to
"ease [their] transition from a nomadic to a sedentary life" (59). In
national histories the indigenous populations are presented as a
border problem for the governments, while little attempt is made to
comprehend the problem of the border as a concept from the point
of view of native tribes. To many indigenous groups, the border
represented a disruption to their way of life and further dispossession
of lands; thus their use of the border to escape hostile military forces
in pursuit of them should be seen as a creative resistance strategy
and an assertion of self-determination rather than evidence of ban
ditry. At times, Martinez's restricted focus on individual groups thwarts
his analysis because it is non-dialectical, especially where it would
be most interesting to examine cross cultural relations among Mex
icans, Chicanos, and Native Americans. Instead, because conflict
is his chief organizing principle, too much attention is given to how
each group relates separately to Anglo institutions.
The section on nortehos and fronterizos is interesting because
it helps us understand the distinct history of Mexico's northern region.
Moreover, the attention paid to the development of the border econ
omy and the origins and long-term effects of dependency on foreign
capital are extremely insightful. In his section entitled "The Evolution
of Foreign Dependency" Martinez outlines the history of northern
Mexico's economic dependency on the U.S. from the late nineteenth
century infusion of foreign capital to the skewed relationships that
developed between the border towns on both sides. The establish
ment of the international boundary in the mid-nineteenth century
resulted in tariffs on goods imported into Mexico and raised the
cost of living for Mexican border residents. This unwanted devel
opment was countered by the establishment of a Zona Libre, or
Free Trade Zone, in 1858 in the states of Tamaulipas and Chihuahua.
According to Martinez, this early form of free trade "helped fron
terizos cope with the Anglo American economic competition, but
the Zona Libre was a hotly contested political issue in the interior
of Mexico, because it was regarded as a regional privilege that
created unfair competition for national products" (112). The free
zone was abolished in 1905, but it has reemerged in various forms
throughout the century, until its latest, most comprehensive form in
NAFTA. In Martinez's analysis, free trade benefits those along the
MENDOZA 125
border to the detriment of the national economy and at the cost of

tying the border region closer to the United States, culturally as well
as economically. The northward looking culture and economy that
has resulted from U.S. hegemony over the border has further isolated
this region from the interior of Mexico.
Furthermore, the booming border economy has enhanced north
ward migration, resulting in an overpopulation of the region. The
availability of a large pool of workers near the border has functioned
well as a reserve labor force for the U.S. But this tendency to look
northward, to the border and beyond, for work is not without cause.
Various legal and extra-legal practices have had a role in drawing
people to the border over the years, as a place to find work or as
a springboard for a journey to the other side. As Martinez says,
"This situation has been especially favorable to employers who
derive large profits from the rock-bottom wages they pay workers
who have no documents. Middle- and upper-class people in the U.S.
borderlands also benefit from the low-cost maids, gardeners, and
other service workers ... ( 119).
The entire border has experienced accelerated population growth
since the 1950s. Of all the cities along the border, El Paso and San
Diego, and their counterparts, Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana respec
tively, have experienced the most phenomenal population boom.
Much of this growth results from the U.S. war economy: the dis
bursement of military bases throughout the Southwest during the
cold war and the concomitant increase in border tourism resulting
from the great expansion of military personnel, as well as the demand
for Mexican raw materials and cheap labor during periods of conflict,
enriched Mexico and facilitated border development.
Despite the conflict-oriented nature of his research, Martinez's
assessment of future border relations is positive. He concludes that
there are many signs of cooperation at the local level as both sides
effectively manage conflict through bilateral efforts. This is evidenced
by the creation of a Binational Border Cities Association, and the
maintenance of international relations committees by municipal gov
ernments, chambers of commerce, and service clubs. According to
Martinez, conflict is best managed by those who understand life at
the border. When government officials from the interior, who have
little understanding of the dynamics of everyday border life attempt
to impose solutions from afar, the potential for misunderstanding
and conflict is heightened.
Two books that document the precarious nature of life on the
border and the process of miscommunication that occurs on a daily
126 MFS
basis are Luis Alberto Urrea's Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times
on the Mexican Border and Debbie Nathan's Women and Other
Aliens. Unlike Martinez's book, the stories told by Urrea and Nathan
are written in a prose style that is wrought with the emotion of first
hand experience and which exhibit a sense of personal investment
in their subject matter. Nathan's book is a collection of journalistic
essays; clearly written for an educated audience, her essays are
witty and acutely analytical of the social power wielded by the media.
Urrea's book, on the other hand, is organized in chapters that
introduce individual people or places to the reader. His narrative is
about his personal Odyssey over a period of four years in and out
of Tijuana as a translator for a ministry conducting relief work in
the cotonias (undeveloped, unincorporated communities, sometimes
created by land squatting, usually with no public services or utilities).
Knowing their motivations for living on the border and their occasion
for writing offers some insight into their portrayals of the border.
Urrea's book is highly personal. In the preface he calls it a book
of fragments in which he tries to penetrate the veneer of the many
euphemisms for the border. Urrea wants the stories he narrates
about the lives of the people that live in the colonias of Tijuana to
add a human dimension to our understanding of the border; he
insists that we comprehend their reality—their hourly, daily, and
yearly existence. He is not interested in presenting the prepackaged
tourist version of the border experience. Rather, he wants to implicate
everyone in the conditions of poverty, squalor, starvation, and de
humanizing demands of border survival: "Learning about their pov
erty also teaches us about the nature of our wealth" he says (2).
Consequently, he insists that the reader discard any romantic notions
about los fronterizos: "Poverty ennobles no one; it brutalizes common
people and makes them hungry and old" (2).
Urrea's stories are intended as an exposé of the criminal nature
of the human condition along the border. He engages his readers,
the nearby San Diegans, Californians, and Mexican nationals, in the
hope that they will share his outrage. He is further motivated to tell
the stories that he does because, he says, the people he speaks
of have urged him to do so: "They believed that if you knew where
and how they live, then they wouldn't simply fade away, relegated
to as pointless a death as the lives they have been forced to live"
(3). Of the many people he writes about who eke out a living on
the border economy, Urrea focuses on those who reside more or
less permanently in the border region, "the outcasts of an outcast
region," as he call them. Along the border, time and space mean
MENDOZA 127
different things according to your citizenship status and your wealth.

In Tijuana, there is little reason for many transient Mexicans or
residents of the colonias to go to the tourist sections, where Amer
icans and other non-residents flock. They are not really Tijuana
residents, and Tijuana is already a no man's land. Located on the
geographical margins of the city, the colonias he writes about are
occupied only by the disenfranchised and missionaries. Although he
is not telling his story as an advocate for the missionaries, he is
self-conscious about the potentially questionable nature of missionary
and anthropological work, enough certainly to know that he should
identify Spectrum Ministries, the group he worked with, as a "slightly
renegade group." He is honest about his experiences as a translator
for the ministries. He witnesses the daily life of disease, violence,
love, birth, and death that are part of the humanscape surviving in
subhuman conditions. In the midst of all this he admits to feeling
exhilaration in his work: both the goodness and the squalor he
witnessed were "fun," "exciting," "nasty," and "thrilling." Yet he
realizes that it would take another insider to understand this reaction
to his experiences.
The prologue of Across the Wire sets a context of war—who is
fighting who or what depends on your vantage point. For the residents
of the colonias, the enemy may be disease, poverty, or capitalism.
To the INS, Latinos are the enemy: crossing the border defines you
as an adversary, the prey of uniformed men who use helicopters,
guns, dogs, flashlights, buses, vans, and trucks to conduct their
hunt. After almost thirty pages of prologue, introduction and preface,
Urrea finally begins by introducing the dump. The dompe is an
important place. He details bravery, sickness, strength, pride, dignity,
generosity—people's efforts to make homes, a community, out of
the trash. But it is not idealistic by any means; power and its abuse
reside here as they do anywhere.
"Across the wire" is a euphemism that refers to the journey
into the United States; in Urrea's case, however, it refers to his
journeys south. He spends a lot of time translating border polyglot
for his readers as well as spelling names phonetically, which sug
gests that he is writing to a non-Spanish speaking audience. Ex
tracted from notes he wrote as a missionary, the stories are organized
around holidays (birthdays, Easter, Christmas) and individuals, a
framework which reveals a Protestant influence with its emphasis
on individual salvation. The story of Negra is a good example of
how this outlook is manifested in his book. Negra, a girl whose
family is from Michoacân, lives in one of the communities within
128 MFS
the Tijuana garbage dump. It is clear from his sentimental depiction

of her that her living conditions and extraordinary efforts to lead a
stable and ordinary life have deeply affected him. She befriends him
and offers him insight into how people survive off of the trash. One
Christmas he buys her a doll, which she never takes out of the box,
for fear that the dust and ash of the dump will ruin it. Negra's story
also exemplifies the difficulty of obtaining an education. Unable to
go to school because she doesn't have the proper uniform shoes,
when she finally does receive some, her shoes are stolen. When
they are replaced, she discovers that she has been failed because
of too many absences. Negra disappears with her family one day
and Urrea loses contact with her for eight years until he returns
one Christmas and they have a reunion. At this point she is a mother
of three, and like her own mother, is the sole head of the household
because most of the men have gone across the wire to work. Many
are never heard from again.
The extraordinarily harsh impact that life on the border has on
women is implicit in Urrea's stories; Debbie Nathan makes this an
explicit concern in her essays, as is indicated by the title of her
book. She locates the motivation for her collection, Women and
Other Aliens, in her early encounters with the border and border
people in Houston, a city that contains plenty of its own border
zones, colonias and migra. Nathan is glib in her description of the
border. She terms the clash resulting from the disparity of incomes
along the border the stuff of which tornadoes or hurricanes are
made, complete with an ominous "about-to- blow" quiet at its center.
The twin plant economy of the maquiladoras dominates her essays,
for in employing primarily women, and in underpaying and under
insuring them, these employers have altered the local and domestic
economies. The stark life-and-death reality of the border is marked
by the pervasiveness of guns and drugs, a fact that she says is
certified by the
veritable alphabet of militarization (USAF, CIA, DEA, DOD, FBI,
INS).. .. "The U.S.-Mexico line, after all, is where dollars, notions
of empire and concomitant imperial mistrust slow down to get
translated into correct political and monetary currencies before
heading for Latin America. And here is also where not just the
mind-altering commodities, but also the people displaced by these
tumultuous renderings make their pit stops on the journey north.
(11-12)
Legal and extra-legal activities provide the lens through which
Nathan views the border; it is the abuse of power by representatives
of the legal system that is most horrific to her. Several of these
MENDOZA 129
essays are reprints from periodicals such as The Village Voice, The
Texas Observer arid The Chicago Reader. She writes with the intent
of offering an educated and politically progressive audience an al
ternative to the mainstream media's depiction of events on the
border. There is a prevailing perception about the border that says
that the flexible unique nature of law and survival there results from
the border's distance from the federal capitals. But she does not
let the nation state and the prevailing economic system off the hook:
.. . more and more, late 20th century capitalism everywhere is
basing its survival and growth on making people work for long
hours at rock bottom wages without unions or occupational safety
or decent housing or environmental controls—in other words vio
lating tenets of human decency and dignity whose enactment into
reality and statute was part of the historical project of the past
century. (12)
She asks the ominous question about the two governments' laissez
faire attitude toward the border: Is life "on the lawless frontera ...
actually the avant guarde of our larger cosmopolitan manana?" (12).
With this question in mind, she brings together essays that focus
on people who might otherwise be termed "outlaws," but whose
activities are often judged illegal or wrong because such a deter
mination makes control over them easier, or cheaper, or more con
venient than confronting the larger social problems or anxieties that
need to be addressed. Women, in her eyes, are particularly vul
nerable to the manipulation of social values and many social fears
regarding change are manifested in phobias about female sexuality.
But the ways in which women have responded to the social, political,
cultural, and economic exigencies have proven insightful and are a
prelude to further change, one that we should listen to and learn
from.
In "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You," the opening essay of
the book, Nathan takes the title of a popular state song meant to
inspire patriotic feelings of warmth, endearment and protection and
demonstrates the chauvinistic, racist, regionalist and classist atti
tudes built into the culture of the border, attitudes that can be
reduced to a vaguely defined but very particular fashion "look" that
distinguishes one's citizenship status. While the "look" doesn't guar
antee one's safety, it may allow you passage past "the final arbiter
of fashion," the border patrol. She uses the harsh terminology of
the border, calling people "mojados," "wets," "illegals." But it is
part of a subversive sarcasm for her to adopt the tone of a ster
eotypical Texan in order to mimic the people who complain even
130 M FS
while they are benefiting directly and indirectly from the exploitation
and vulnerability of others. For instance, Nathan notes the hypocrisy
of residents who constantly complain about illegal immigration, and
go on to take advantage of a "divine" right to cheap labor: "After
all, if God hadn't wanted us to have $1.50 an hour maids, waitresses,
and minimum wage mechanics and onion pickers, He wouldn't have
created the border patrol. Chase them around in a squad car, kick
'em back to Juarez every once in a while, and they'll work hard
without demanding things like social security benefits or public health
care" (23).
With no lack of appreciation for the political and economic nature
of the border, Nathan points out that the tortilla curtain, the chain
link fence along the Juarez/El Paso border, was built during the
Carter administration, disproving any notion that it is only the most
hardline right wingers who believe in erecting barriers to stop the
"invasion" from the south. Her analysis is astute; she recognizes
that the contemporary migration is spawned by the current crisis:
"postcapitalism's very efforts to jack up its falling profit rates have
naturally fueled the global wanderings of people as well as money"
(23).
As a reporter for the El Paso Times, Nathan had the opportunity
to cover Margaret Randall's immigration trial in 1986. The critical
examination of Randall's search for citizenship may seem odd here
for it is about a renowned author's quest for citizenship and her
battle with the INS. Yet Randall's story is telling with regard to the
seemingly arbitrary exercise of power that occurs along the border,
a power that is in fact highly charged with ideological significance.
Nathan is brutally honest about Randall's self-indulgence and self
absorption as a member of the 60s New Left. She accomplishes
this by way of reviewing Randall's early books, much as the INS
does in assessing her political views. Her critical readings of Ran
dall's life and literature are contrasted with that of the INS agents
who read every word literally. Nathan, on the other hand, reads
them as typical of the arrogance and hypocrisy of American radicals.
Her assessment of the actors in the case as bland, tired, and sad
looking makes the entire trial appear pathetic. In characterizing the
political atmosphere of the times to contrast with the era of Randall's
early writings and the present day, Nathan describes the contem
porary political scene with her customary trenchant wit as "not so
much Amerikkka as Ameriggga—i.e., morally muddied, politically
slogged down, boring, demoralized, televised, and ultra-commodi
tized" (98).
MENDOZA 131
The real war to stop immigration, however, is both at the border

and outside the city limits of border towns and is mostly directed
against people who would dare head for the interior. The INS has
intensified its militarization of the border—using TV cameras, infrared
body sensors left over from Viet Nam, helicopters, as well as plain
clothesmen in airports and bus terminals to survey people's move
ments. "In the rest of America a person can do something legal or
illegal, but on the border, being legal or illegal is a fact of daily
existence" (25, emphasis added). The criminalization of Latinos has
made any simplified notions about identity politics impossible. For
Latino border patrol agents, arresting "illegal aliens" is a routine
work activity, an attitude that many migrants find difficult to accept.
In interviews with Nathan, the agents refuse to consider politicized
notions of power and history as being relevant to their work. This
is belied by the testimony of many border crossers who say that it
is the Hispanic agents who are the meanest.
Between the Lines by Larry Siems chronicles the hazardous
journey across the border and the difficult task of finding work and
maintaining an invisible existence. The books discussed previously
have primarily looked at the border as a specific site of negotiation
and exchange, with its own particular culture and economy. In this
book, however, the border is reduced to an experience, a marker
of national difference that is an ever-present reality, even when
geographically distant. Comprised of everyday writing forms, this
bilingual collection of letters offers a view of immigrants in U.S.
society that challenges conventional notions of undocumented im
migrants coming here to live a life of luxury and pleasure. Although
a collection of letters might be seen as a rather traditional form of
literature, especially in relationship to other literature on the border,
Siems' book can be seen as experimental because of the collabo
rative nature of the work and its multiple authors. This formal ex
perimentation is one useful strategy for revealing the transnational
character of the lives of immigrants in the U.S. Between the Lines
creates a cultural space for those seen as "other" that can facilitate
a redefinition of asymmetrical relations of power by offering readers
an insider's view of life as an indocumentado and the human cost
involved in assuming that status.
Between the Lines is a collection of letters gathered by human
rights activist Larry Siems over a three year period (1990-1992) in
Los Angeles. Most of the authors of these letters were associated
with La Placita, perhaps the largest Latino dominant church in L.A.,
Mission Dolores, and/or the Central American Refugee Center (CRE
132 MFS
CEN). They include letters from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador,

Guatemala, and Nicaragua. For the most part Siems presents the
letters unmediated, in their original Spanish and translated into Eng
lish. His notes on the text clearly identify the editing decisions that
were made to omit repetitions and extended salutations. The letters
speak of the economic hardship, racism, exploitation, and the pain
of separation experienced by recent migrants. The book is organized
into seven different sections that serve as loose thematic ties for
the correspondence. The section titles are straightforward and range
from "The Strangeness: Letters on Arrival," which narrates stories
of border crossings in minute detail, to "My Heart: Love Letters."
Some letters describe to family or friends the living and working
conditions of the U.S. and newly formed relationships with people
as friends, co-workers, or employees. Siems has also included in
this collection letters sent to migrants from their homeland, which
makes the dialogue much more complete because we see both sides
of the conversation and learn local and national news from another
country.
Many of the letters are testimonial in nature, and often they are
transmitted orally through a third party who acts as scribe. Other
letters are transcripts of audio tapes, a form of correspondence not
uncommon for indigenous groups who neither read or write Spanish.
The letters bear witness to the era. Several include warnings against
AIDS. From one letter we learn that a young woman from Mexico,
Sylvia, is working as a house maid living in silence and made to go
to bed at 8 o'clock when the children do. She advises her sister to
"get ahead in Mexico, in whatever part of Mexico, but in our
Mexico.... If you only knew, sincerely, what many people who have
come to the United States have suffered, you'd be surprised the
enormous things that have happened to them" (21). From another
letter several months later, we learn that Sylvia has switched jobs
and is a seamstress making fifty dollars a week, but still unable to
work her way out of debt.
It is their continued status as illegals, as migrants, as crossers
under, around, over or through the wire, and as letter writers, that
links the subjects of this text together. Through their letters we see
them maintaining family and community ties, supporting family mem
bers, soliciting and giving advice, and making plans for the future.
Oftentimes it is the grueling journey that is the most difficult ex
perience of all, yet many make that trip several times a year. For
these, Siems says, "the border doesn't divide them psychologically
from their families; it remains an external physical obstacle, a prob
MENDOZA 133
lern they face now and again. Each time they leave the country they
must reenter illegally" (xix). Furthermore, this outsider status allows
them cultural and political insight about life in the U.S. The letters
are full of critical commentary about films and music, as well as
political commentary on social issues, such as the abusive use of
pesticides and local and national elections. An especially interesting
letter writer is Angela Gomez, from Mexico, who goes to school and
volunteers for Radio Bilingue in Southern California. In the section
"Insubstitutable Comrades" Gomez describes her first impressions
of being in the U.S. where a hostile environment exists, especially
for Latinos. To support her claim she cites the killing of 17 year old
Ismael Ramirez by INS agents, an occurrence that she notes is
frequent (this killing is explained in detail in an America's Watch
Report that is reviewed next). Clearly, the lives of many of these
people are marked by violence both at home and in the U.S. The
letters from El Salvador speak of violence by the state army and
the guerrillas. One letter, whose origins are unclear, is a death threat
addressed to all "who work there," at CARECEN or El Rescate in
California. The letter identifies specific individuals and says they will
be "disappeared." This form of intimidation and violence is not
unusual in the violent climate of a civil war; its horror, however, is
magnified when it becomes an inescapable force that tracks people's
actions and movements in the United States.
Siems notes that the border can be seen as a network of
"intricate international, linking paths of products, jobs and money
but for many it is a "hard, practical matter" that must be confront
each time it is crossed. It always involves danger, a loss of agenc
and its crossers often assume a fatalistic attitude about their chances
of a successful crossing. Crossers are used to being chased, if not
at the border, then at the bus or train station, or in the fields or
factory where they find work. In his introduction, the author says
that these experiences become stories that are transmitted back
and forth. No one comes to the border with rosy, naive expecta
tions—yet they still come, for the opportunity to work, to enjoy the
"luxuries" that many of us consider basic (hot water, toilets, carpet,
etc.). These are the things that mark the difference between the so
called Third World and the margins of the First World, and often
the most that they can expect to experience as an "illegal."
The stories told about border crossings by the above authors
are partially corroborated by America's Watch 1992 eighty-one page
report entitled Brutality Unchecked: Human Rights Abuses Along the
U.S. Border with Mexico. This report focuses on abuses by INS
134 MFS
officials during the arrest and detention of undocumented immigrants.

The lack of response to the abuses within its agency is appalling.
The report is insightful for the observations it makes regarding the
moments most prone to abuse: as punishment following a chase,
when migrants are uncooperative or protest poor conditions or the
mistreatment of others; the coercion of confessions, and the de
terrence of available legal rights. The authors of the report cite a
lack of adequate training, failure of supervision, poor record main
tenance and monitoring procedures, and low agent morale as some
of the reasons that the agency is ripe for abuse. Cover-up of agency
misconduct is only facilitated when the agency or its former em
ployees are also the ones responsible for conducting in-house in
vestigations of abuses. Impuqity for violations of rules and regulations
is the norm and has helped perpetuate misconduct. The abuse of
discretionary powers, such as the arbitrary filing of criminal charges
against border crossers, is yet another way in which abuse is covered
up. This abuse of authority is further compounded when it is shrouded
in secrecy; the agency refuses to release names of agents involved
in violent incidents, making follow up and documentation by external
organizations or individuals extremely difficult. Furthermore, ac
cording to the report, public hysteria and public policy have continued
to produce a climate of tolerance towards abuse. More recently,
the INS's increased role in the war on drugs has led to a militarization
of the border that has been accompanied by high-tech equipment
and military hardware that have helped further define migrants as
national enemies.
The report contains nine sections documenting specific forms
of physical abuse, such as shootings and other forms of lethal force,
beatings, torture and sexual abuse. Other abuses of power include
racially motivated conduct, the use of raids on residences and work
places, ill-defined conditions for detention, including denial of due
process, and the detention of children. According to the report, the
very specific limits set forth by the INS regarding the use of firearms
are regularly violated and the offenders rarely face consequences.
Primarily using newspaper reports from the L. A. Times and the San
Diego Union, as well as magazine articles, and the INS rules and
regulations handbook, Brutality Unchecked documents recent cases
of shootings, several which have resulted in the death of young
migrants at the hands of INS agents in which the agents were
ultimately exonerated of any culpability. An especially important
source for this report is a 1992 document entitled "Sealing Our
MENDOZA 135
Borders: The Human Toll," compiled by the American Friends Service

Committee's Immigration Law Enforcement Project. If this official
abuse continues unchecked and unrecognized as a problem that is
in effect sanctioned by our government, how are we to expect forms
of unofficial abuse or vigilantism to abate?
Militaristic approaches to sealing the border continue to char
acterize U.S. national policy. Even as the voting date for NAFTA
neared, the INS office in El Paso, Texas, initiated Operation Blockade
in an effort to completely "shut off the flow" of illegal immigration.
Notwithstanding the immediate negative impact on the El Paso com
munity, the INS decided to make this a permanent operation; utilizing
the more sanitized rhetoric of development, the project is now termed
The Border Empowerment Project.
The Border Guide by Milton Jamail and Margo Gutierrez is a
revised and updated edition of the 1980 version published by Latin
American Center at the University of Arizona. The book is a com
pendium of organizations and institutions located along the entire
stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. This guide is an extremely useful
source for anyone interested in conducting border studies or who
could benefit from a brief introduction to the communities along the
border. The authors provide their readers with short descriptions
and histories of the major twin cities along the border. They also
identify the major institutions and the current issues of negotiation
and debate that have emerged in the last several years. This very
practical approach to the border leaves the reader with a different
sense of the area. Unlike many of the other books that have been
reviewed in this survey, very few people are discussed; instead the
only names provided are contact people for various private, non
profit and governmental agencies or commissions. In many cases,
these organizations and institutions represent the formal and informal
mechanisms that have been formed to work out binational relations
in efforts to prevent misunderstandings.
Jamail and Gutierrez utilize a framework of economic depend
ency to delimit their analysis and description of the border zone.
The leading sources of revenue for Mexico—the petroleum industry,
the maquiladoras, tourism, and the remittances sent home from
migrants in the U.S.—are all tied to the United States. Prior to the
mid-nineteenth century, the border, the Rio Bravo, was just a river
along which towns settled. But after it became an international
boundary, the area served as a line of division, and many more
towns arose out of necessity dictated by this boundary. The authors
note that at the turn of the century only 70,000 people lived along
the border. By 1990, the population had increased to approximately
136 MFS
10 million. Mexico's border region is generally more prosperous than

other sections of the country, and stands in stark contrast to the
U.S. side of the border, the site of some of the most poverty stricken
regions in the U.S. even though per capita income for residents
north of the border is three times higher than their southern neigh
bors. The economic nature of the border is highlighted by the fact
that, according to Jamail and Gutierrez, the largest growth industry
along the border is the money exchange shop. They note what was
once a region characterized by neglect has, in the last 20 years,
turned into a site of fascination, as witnessed by the formation of
specialized economic, social and political institutions on both sides
of the border to address transborder concerns. This trend can be
seen most apparently in academia and in official governmental de
partments and agencies. "Today, the most important borderland
issues involve the flow of people and goods between the two coun
tries. This includes the everyday crossings of both documented and
undocumented Mexicans who work in the United States, tourists and
shoppers from both countries, the export-import business, and the
illegal drug trade" (3). Given all the opportunities for and actual
occurrences of disagreement, Gutierrez and Jamail point to the ways
in which formal and informal mechanisms have emerged for reducing
or resolving conflict. But they also recognize that cross-border co
operation often circumvents formal mechanisms, especially when
these are unresponsive or slow. According to the authors, one of
the purposes of The Border Guide is to facilitate dialogue and the
ongoing work of cooperation along the border. Indeed, for readers
unfamiliar with the border, the listings of institutions and agencies
they provide can begin to complicate the picture and introduce us
into an ongoing conversation.
The Guide describes the various border communities and the
role of the federal governments (Mexican and U.S.) in forming and
coordinating binational relations. Diplomatic and political represen
tatives and their locations are identified. Agencies and offices of
the State governments and elected officials on both sides are ex
amined. A section on maquiladora-related organizations is included,
as is a chapter on communications media: newspaper, radio, and
T.V. A listing of universities, research centers and colleges located
in the border region is provided. Gutierrez, who works at The Uni
versity of Texas' Benson Latin American Collection, has also com
piled an impressive bibliography of Border Studies as well as a guide
to library research on border related topics.
MENDOZA 137
The Other Side: Fault Lines, Guerrilla Saints and the True Heart
of Rock 77' Roll by Ruben Martinez is a collection of writings that
signals the emergence of journalist essays as a new force in Chicano
literature. (Other high-profile writers of this genre would include
Richard Rodriguez, Elizabeth Martinez, and Guillermo Gômez-Pena).
Many of Martinez's essays are reprinted from the LA. Weekly, where,
until recently, he maintained a regular column. Others are excerpts
from his journal, selections of poetry, and previously unprinted ma
terials. Martinez, born of a Mexican father and a Salvadoran mother,
in many ways represents the internationalization of U.S. Latino cul
ture. Although Mexicans still comprise the largest subgroup of Latinos
in the U.S., more and more Central Americans have arrived over
the last 15 years, many of them the logical result of an aggressive
U.S. foreign policy that has displaced hundreds of thousands of
people throughout Latin America. Now, many barrios of the South
west, Midwest and Northwest that were once predominantly Mexican
have been infused with other Latinos. Martinez's essays combine
political commentary with social satire, cynicism with idealism. His
frank appraisal of the current moment bespeaks a new breed of
leftist intellectual who is keenly aware of both the pitfalls and the
pragmatism that fuel identity politics. He also has a sharp eye for
the ways in which lumpen culture rebels at not only the mores of
mainstream society, but those of its own community as well. Power
is disbursed, be it at the hands of the graffiti artists of East L.A. or
the rockeros of Mexico City. At times, Martinez is wry, pithy, and
smug in his assessment of post-New Left politics: "Mine is the
generation that arrived too late for Che Guevara but too early for
the fall of the Berlin Wall" (1). His observations of the current moment
bespeak too the political angst and uncertainty of a middle class,
anxiety-ridden, self-aware postmodernist whose fragmented self is
nostalgic for a time when it was acceptable to at least believe in
the idea of unity: "I must hold on to some hope: that the many
selves can find some kind of form together without annihilating one
another" (2).
There are 23 entries in The Other Side, eleven of which are
reprints from various magazines and periodicals. The book contains
vivid photographs of Martinez's family and street life in L.A., San
Salvador, and Tijuana. Martinez's essays are the musings of a trav
eler who crosses borders and who has come to discover that trav
eling alone cannot heal the wounds of history, of capitalism, of
technological and political difference—especially during times of war
and natural disaster. He is both witness and active participant in
138 MFS
the local and national power struggles he documents; yet, unlike

many of the people of which he writes, he stands in a position of
privilege, able to fly into or out of dangerous situations. This privilege,
granted to him by money, professional status, and his U.S. citizenship
is a source of inner tension with which he grapples. Within his own
family reside the tensions between the reactionary and the revolu
tionary paradise: his is a world in which the other is an invalid
concept, for both intra- and intercultural dynamics are utilized to
maintain unequal social relations among people. Martinez's essays
are also about exile. Sometimes this exile is self-imposed, sometimes
forced. His observations about his mother's relocation to the U.S.
and her isolation within their home and the forced exile of his artist/
activist friends from El Salvador, who are pushed out of the country
for their subversive activities and words, are equally poignant. In
contrast to Urrea's Protestantism, Martinez embraces the Catholic
world view in which pain is a sure sign that redemption and salvation
are forthcoming. But The Other Side is also about other exiles within
local communities, such as graffiti "writers" who take great risks
to assert their identity, as well as border artists, like Hugo Sanchez,
whose phantasmagorical street performances dramatize life on the
border and critique elitist concepts of gallery art. The literal and
figurai borders that Martmez negotiates in these essays point to the
material and ideological processes by which the past and future are
fashioned in the present.
CONCLUSION
Our generation belongs to the world's

biggest floating population; the weary
travelers, the dislocated, those of us
who left because we didn't fit any
more, those of us who still haven't
arrived because we don't know where
to arrive at, or because we can't go
back anymore.
—Guillermo Gômez-Pena,
Warrior for Gringostroika
The books reviewed here document the emergence of new com

munities of people who are surviving the abrupt, unwelcome, and
often violent process of deterritorialization. The profound lack of
knowledge about the history of U.S. borders and the causes of
MENDOZA 139
border crossings have reduced many conversations on the border

to diatribes against people and places. The books reviewed here
can help provide a larger context for future discussions on the border
that can create new opportunities for bilateral alliances and con
structive negotiations. Dialog between people assumes many forms.
G<5mez-Pefia defines dialog as the "opposite of national security,
neighborhood watch, racial paranoia, aesthetic protectionism, na
tional sentimentalism, ethnocentrism, and monolinguality" (Warrior
48). He suggests that it is only through an ongoing public dialog in
the form of publications, conferences, and collaborative intercultural
art and media projects that the wounds caused by borders can begin
to be healed. It has been said that "Intercultural dialog unleashes
the demons of history." It is these demons with which we must
come to terms through a process in which all parties enjoy equal
negotiating powers.
WORKS CITED
Bhabha, Homi. "The Commitment to Theory." New Formations 5 (1988):

10-11.
Brutality Unchecked: Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with
Mexico. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992.
Gömez-Pena, Guillermo. Warrior for Gringostroika. Saint Paul: Graywolf,
1993.
"Death on the Border: A Eulogy to Border Art." High Performance
58 (1991): 8-9.
Jamail, Milton H. and Margo Gutierrez. The Border Guide (2nd edition).
Austin: CMAS Publications, 1992.
Joselit, David. "Living on the Border." Art in America. December 1989:
121-128.
Martinez, Oscar J. Troublesome Border. Tucson: Arizona UP, 1988.
Martinez, Ruben. The Other Side. London: Verso, 1992.
Nathan, Debbie. Women and Other Aliens: Essays from the U.S.-Mexico
Border. El Paso: Cinco Puntos P, 1992.
Siems, Larry. Between the Lines. Hopewell: Ecco, 1992.
Urrea, Luis Alberto. Across The Wire: Life and Hard Times On the Mexican
Border. New York: Doubleday, 1993.

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THE BORDER BETWEEN US: CONTACT ZONE OR BATTLE ZONE?

Author(s): Louis Mendoza

THE BORDER BETWEEN US: CONTACT ZONE OR

The language of critique is effective

The border as metaphor has become

mains an infected wound on the body

Metaphors abound in literature about the U.S.-Mexico border. It

attempt to influence public opinion, the border has come to occupy

Pena's innovative work as an artist/activist member of the San

Gömez-Pena's essays are multi-lingual and promote collaboration

stages for his productions. In doing so Gömez-Pena uses his art to

even actively exploited, the national boundary in their hunting and

border to the detriment of the national economy and at the cost of

different things according to your citizenship status and your wealth.

the Tijuana garbage dump. It is clear from his sentimental depiction

The real war to stop immigration, however, is both at the border

CEN). They include letters from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador,

officials during the arrest and detention of undocumented immigrants.

Borders: The Human Toll," compiled by the American Friends Service

10 million. Mexico's border region is generally more prosperous than

the local and national power struggles he documents; yet, unlike

Our generation belongs to the world's

The books reviewed here document the emergence of new com

border crossings have reduced many conversations on the border

Bhabha, Homi. "The Commitment to Theory." New Formations 5 (1988):

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