Tracing Intergenerational Narratives of Ecological, Cultural, and Sexual Violence in the U.S./Mexico Borderland

Abstract

In an oft quoted line from the seminal text, Borderlands/La Frontera=The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa states, “The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country––a border culture.” Anzaldúa’s metaphor of a throbbing, breathing wound evokes the grotesque violence of a region where abuse is commonplace. In 1848 the Rio Grande River/Río Bravo del Norte became the border that separated two dominant nations and cultures, and the region became a chaotic place of ecological, sexual, racial, and national violence. These forces tear at each other now. As they do, they tear at the environment in the process, resulting in crises of rampant exploitation, sexual violence, and irreparable degradation. Since 1993, there have been 370 women and young girls who have been brutally murdered in what has become known as the Feminicidios en Ciudad Juárez. I argue that literature provides a narrative solution to the phenomenon of femicides in the borderland. The texts highlighted in this project offer a mix of imaginative storytelling, subaltern voice, research, and testimony in a medium that can transcend the region and hopefully inspire opposition to the issues that infect the borderland and beyond. Their narratives implicate generations of local, regional, national and international actors in what I, and they, perceive as a confluence of environmental degradation and sexual violence.