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Part 1, Section 6: Tlilli, Tlapalli / The Path of the Red and Black Ink
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Borderlands / La Frontera, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Borders, Hybridity, and Identity
History and the U.S.-Mexico Relationship
Chicana Feminism
Language, Storytelling, and Ritual
Summary
Analysis
Inspired by Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos’s vision of a “cosmic” mestizo race bringing together the best of all cultures, Anzaldúa declares that that “por la mujer de mi raza / hablará el espíritu” (the spirit will speak for the women of my race). While the Anglo world seeks racial purity, Vasconcelos seeks the inclusivity, hybridity, and flexibility of racial border-crossing. This vision requires a new mindset, which Anzaldúa variously describes as “a new mestiza consciousness,” a women’s consciousness, and “a consciousness of the Borderlands.”
In this concluding section, Anzaldúa weaves together the concepts that she has developed throughout the book and her analysis of Borderlands life into an overarching theory of what she calls mestiza consciousness. In Mexico, Vasconcelos’s vision of cosmic mestizaje is not just a quaint academic theory: as the Mexican Revolution’s primary cultural leader, the first national education secretary, and the head of the national university, he infused his ideas into the nation’s collective self-understanding. Thus, they are deeply salient for Mexican and Chicana/os people on both sides of the border, and Anzaldúa sees them as a powerful metaphor for the kind of thinking, mindset, and society that she thinks can overcome the violence and divisions of the Borderlands. Anzaldúa’s line “por la mujer de mi raza / hablará el espiritú” is a direct reference to the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s slogan, which Vasconcelos wrote.
Themes
Una lucha de fronteras / A Struggle of Borders. In a short poem, Anzaldúa portrays herself crossing between cultures, even as she lives in them all at once; the contradictions of living this way are both thrilling and disorienting. She describes this way of life as “mental nepantilism”—the latter word is an Aztec concept that refers to being “torn between ways.” Stuck in constant transition, facing multiple conflicting worldviews and unsure of which to pursue, mestizas fight an inner “struggle of borders.” White culture’s voice denigrates Mexican culture, and both cultures’ voices denigrate native culture.
Anzaldúa has spent her book developing a series of concepts that capture various dimensions of life in the Borderlands. Now, in this section, she will explicitly integrate them into an overarching theory of identity and social transformation. Namely, she will show how navigating the inner “struggle of borders” prepares people to build a new kind of consciousness and society—which are capable of transcending such borders.
Themes
Yet simply rebelling against domination “locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed,” so this is only the first step to liberation. Eventually, mestizas must overcome this either/or and build a new mindset, whether by merging their cultures or rejecting the dominant one and building a new one altogether.
Anzaldúa emphasizes that overcoming the violence of Borderlands life requires moving beyond the simple binary of “oppressor and oppressed,” not just reversing it. Put differently, people in and beyond the Borderlands must not just assert themselves and their identities, but also transform the way society views borders and identity more broadly.
Themes
A Tolerance for Ambiguity. Mestiza consciousness is—above all—flexible, resistant to rigid concepts, and capable of switching between different habits of thought. In particular, it can juggle “convergent thinking” (rational analysis) and “divergent thinking” (finding connections among different perspectives to build a broad, inclusive composite whole). This mode of consciousness knows how to tolerate ambiguity, but in moments of powerful, subconscious, often unexpected emotion, it can also overcome that ambiguity and achieve a synthesis that exceeds the sum of the parts. “The future will belong to the mestiza” because we must overcome such dualities if we want to live productively together.
Anzaldúa argues that the psychological orientation that people develop in the Borderlands is powerful because it treats ambiguity and contradiction as strengths, not weaknesses. Combining divergent and convergent modes of thought is not merely about envisioning multiple solutions to the same problem, but also about knowing what kind of situation calls for what kind of approach. Namely, convergent thinking is key to identifying the historical conditions contributing to inequality and the political solutions to it, whereas divergent thinking enables activists to communicate their goals in a compelling way and build diverse coalitions around shared political objectives.
Themes
Get the entire Borderlands / La Frontera LitChart as a printable PDF.
La encrucijada / The Crossroads. Anzaldúa describes the sacrifice of a chicken at a shrine to the “Yoruba god of indeterminacy.” A mestiza officiates over the ceremony. As a mestiza lesbian feminist, Anzaldúa argues, she has been rejected by her country, but she can belong to any other by loving or joining in solidarity with its women. She rejects the patriarchy of Anglo and Chicano culture but is building a new, better culture full of new meanings. If successful, this will be a major “evolutionary step forward,” a kind of “spiritual mestizaje.” Like corn, mestizas have grown hardy and adaptable through the crossbreeding of different worlds. Anzaldúa describes a woman making tortillas and compares her fellow mestizas to all the ingredients and tools involved in the process.
Anzaldúa has already argued that people can achieve personal transformation by embracing “spiritual mestizaje”—which includes confronting internal tensions and embracing the Coatlicue state. Here, she connects this theory to a vision of broader social change, in which people who have completed this personal transformation apply their wisdom to reshaping society’s overarching approach to identity and solidarity. Her insistence on loving the country that rejects her is an example of this: she does so not because she needs her country’s approval, but because she believes it can evolve and grow to accept people like her in the future—and that her experience of queerness, mestizaje, and social marginalization point the way to its doing so.
Themes
El camino de la mestiza / The Mestiza Way. Anzaldúa describes a mestiza woman digging into the ground, pulling out some bones, and throwing out belongings from her backpack to make space for them. Mestizas must “take inventory” of the baggage of history, separating “lo heredado, lo adquirido, lo impuesto”—what they have inherited, what they have acquired, and what has been imposed on them. They must reject the “oppressive traditions” in every culture, then build new traditions—and new versions of themselves.
Anzaldúa uses digging up and sorting through bones as a metaphor for her perspective on history. She respects the past not by blindly honoring traditions, but rather by holding them to the same moral standard to which she holds herself and her contemporaries. In other words, she mercilessly critiques her own culture out of love so that she can hold onto its best elements and overcome its oppressive ones.
Themes
Que no se nos olviden los hombres. Anzaldúa distinguishes between old-school macho men, who define their masculinity by loving and supporting their families, and today’s machismo—men’s strategy of dominating women to cope with their own feelings of shame and powerlessness. Often, these feelings stem from historical oppression, especially for Chicano men, who find both Anglo and Latino culture rejecting them. But understanding these root causes doesn’t mean excusing violent and sexist behavior. Mestizas must change the culture, insisting on respect for women and helping men embrace vulnerability. And they must love queer men, who are “the supreme crossers of cultures” and have helped advance freedom struggles all over the world.
Anzaldúa contrasts these two forms of masculinity not because she wants to return to the past, but rather because she wants to show her readers that women don’t need to reinvent the wheel to find solutions to their oppression. More equal societies have existed before, and this should give us the confidence we need to believe that we can create a more equal society in the future. She also emphasizes that ethnic and gender liberation struggles are inevitably connected—and when women believe they have to choose between defending their race or their gender, this prevents them from becoming effective advocates for either.
Themes
Somos una gente. In a short Spanish-language poem, Chicana writer Gina Valdés says that for every border that divides people, there is also a bridge. Anzaldúa explains that many people of color find dealing with white people too draining and time-consuming, so they decide not to do it. But she believes in making an effort to mediate and build relationships with white people, who can be important and powerful allies in the struggle for justice. Anzaldúa wants white people to acknowledge what they have imposed on Chicanos, Latinos, and Mexicans—including land theft, violence, dehumanization—and what this has done to their own psyches. To enable healing, white Americans must “admit that Mexico is [their country’s] double, that she exists in the shadow of this country, that we are irrevocably tied to her.”
Another powerful formulation of Anzaldúa’s message is that people can choose whether to enforce borders or build bridges across them. She makes it clear that women and people of color have no obligation to build bridges, but given their special insight into the Borderlands of identity, they do have a relatively unique opportunity to do so. If they manage to liberate their minds from oppression and develop the mestiza consciousness that she describes in this section, they can then apply that consciousness to helping heal the border’s “open wound.” As Anzaldúa emphasizes here, above all, Chicanas like her can help white people—who still hold most political and economic power in the United States—understand Mexico, its history, its people, and their descendants.
Themes
By Your True Faces We Will Know You. Anzaldúa feels both visible, because of her brown skin, and invisible, because the US demands that everyone abandon their native culture and “melt[] in the pot.” Through ignorance, forgetting, and prejudice, white culture has prevented other groups from flourishing. People of color need to learn history—the history of their own groups and countries, as well as that of others. The first step to change is awareness, the second is inner work, and the third and final is action to change society.
Ignorance enables white people avoid acknowledging or acting to address the violence that they have caused. After all, white people who have grown up and lived their whole lives “in the [melting] pot” often see that white culture’s norms as natural or neutral. As a result, they do not understand the cultural, linguistic, and family sacrifices that people of color must make in order to get by in the United States. That said, Anzaldúa also stresses that many people of color grow up with racist prejudices, too, and so they have to do the necessary inner work to liberate their minds from oppression before they can start to help others do the same.
Themes
El día de la Chicana. “I will not be shamed again,” Anzaldúa writes, “Nor will I shame myself.” She envisions all Chicanos and Chicanas regaining their “dignity and self-respect,” learning to define their identity and worth on their own terms instead of accepting the lies white supremacy tells about them. The day they succeed will be “el día de la Raza” (Raza Day) or “el día de la Chicana y el Chicano” (Chicanas’ and Chicanos’ Day). Anzaldúa has already started celebrating this new holiday on December 2nd. She cleanses her house, analyzes her people’s racial conflicts and wounds, and affirms that she will neither wait for white people’s approval nor resent them.
Just as individuals must heal themselves before they can hope to heal others, marginalized groups like Chicanos and lesbian feminists must learn to respect themselves. This can be difficult, as society often teaches such people to maintain a subservient position and seek approval from dominant groups. Notably, Anzaldúa’s “dia de la Raza”—her attempt to tell a new story about Chicana/o identity and culture—is now widely celebrated across the United States, most of all in the Borderlands.
Themes
El retorno. Anzaldúa gazes at “the curving, twisting serpent” of the Rio Grande as it meets the Gulf of Mexico. She is back home, and images of the place fill her mind—the wind in the desert, the modest houses with chicken and goats, the cemeteries and cornfields and home-cooked flavors. The Rio Grande Valley is one of the US’s poorest places, and after centuries of conflict and bloodshed, it faces another economic crisis. (Anzaldúa is writing in the 1980s.) The valley depends on agriculture, but rain isn’t coming, and corn prices have plummeted.
It's fitting that, after spending her career (and most of the book) living away from home, Anzaldúa ends by returning to the Rio Grande Valley and taking stock of what home means to her. She emphasizes that the region’s legacy of dispossession and conflict continues today, and so the theory of mestiza consciousness and resistance that she has developed in this section is still an urgent solution to urgent problems.
Themes
Looking at her mother’s rose garden, Anzaldúa notes that Chicanos and Chicanas always grow things. She remembers planting, harvesting, and replanting watermelons in the yard, in a constant cycle of death and rebirth. She concludes with part of the poem that opened her book: “This land was Mexican once / was Indian always / and is. / And will be again.”
Anzaldúa ends on a solemn but optimistic note: she invokes the weight of history but also affirms the human power to reshape the future—and specifically her people’s opportunity to finally assert themselves before a country that has long ignored them.
Themes
