Previous
Intro
In Borderlands/La Frontera, a book of essays and poetry rooted in her early life and Tejano family’s long history in the Rio Grande Valley, Gloria Anzaldúa explores how the U.S.-Mexico border has shaped the communities living beside and across it. Anzaldúa insists that the world take Chicano people seriously, yet she also critiques Chicano culture from a lesbian feminist perspective by identifying how it has internalized patriarchy and racial hierarchy, subordinating women to men and Indigenous identity to whiteness (both Spanish and Anglo). The first half of the book comprises seven essays on the border, patriarchy, Indigenous religion, the Coatlicue state, language, writing, and mestiza consciousness. The second half consists of 36 poems that develop these concepts, mostly through narratives, some fictional and some from Anzaldúa’s past. Throughout the book, Anzaldúa freely mixes several dialects of English and Spanish, just as she would in her ordinary life, but this guide offers English summaries of the Spanish portions and translates when necessary.
Anzaldúa’s first essay, “The Homeland, Aztlán / El otro México,” focuses on the history of migration, violence, and identity in the Borderlands. Like an “open wound,” the border now draws a false distinction between the U.S. and Mexico, splitting her people in two. The Aztecs famously migrated from their homeland in the present-day U.S. southwest south to central Mexico, only for the Spanish conquest and its aftermath to lead many Mexican mestizos to return north in search of better opportunities in the centuries since. In the mid-1800s, the U.S. invaded and annexed most of northern Mexico—including Texas, where Anzaldúa’s family has lived for six generations, and where Anglo settlers easily swindled them out of their land.
The next essay, “Movimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan [Rebel Movements and the Cultures that Betray],” focuses on patriarchy in Chicano culture, which limits women to three options: mother, nun, or sex worker. This culture simply didn’t make space for Anzaldúa, who is unapologetically lesbian and unwilling to submit to men, so she became the first person in her family to ever leave the Rio Grande Valley and pursue an education instead. The Chicano community’s misogyny is rooted in Spanish and Anglo cultural influence, Anzaldúa argues, so Chicana women should build their own feminist movement around Indigenous traditions of womanhood and gender equality. She develops this thesis in the third essay, “Entering into the Serpent.” Mexican and Chicano culture forgot the serpent creator goddess Tonantsi/Coatlicue, Anzaldúa argues, in favor of figures that denigrate women and Indigenous identity: la Malinche, la Llorona, and la Virgen. Beyond guiding Anzaldúa’s exploration of the supernatural and the human psyche, serpents have helped her develop “la facultad”—an instinct for understanding of the inequalities that lie beneath the surface of everyday life.
Anzaldúa’ fourth essay, “La herencia de Coatlicue / The Coatlicue State,” elaborates on this generative aspect of Borderlands life and identity—the way it teaches people to transform ambiguity into positive change. Anzaldúa does so through what she calls the Coatlicue state: by deliberately giving herself up to the “consuming internal whirlwind” of the unconscious, she confronts, resolves, and finally moves beyond the contradictions that live inside her.
Anzaldúa’s next essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” addresses what it means to speak a native language and live in a community that mix English and Spanish without conforming to the standardized rules of either. Rather than viewing their “orphan tongue” of Chicano Spanish as deficient and inferior, Anzaldúa argues, Chicanas and Chicanos ought to promote and take pride in their language—which is a key marker of their distinct cultural and racial identity. This is what she has done by writing in a mix of dialects, including standard and slang English; standard, northern Mexican, and Chicano Spanish; and Tex-Mex (or Spanglish).
The sixth essay, “Tlilli, Tlapalli / The Path of the Red and Black Ink,” contrasts Western approaches to literature with the Indigenous ones that Anzaldúa tries to channel in her own writing, teaching, and scholarship. Whereas Western culture views texts as objects to probe for meaning, Anzaldúa treats them as rituals that create meaning when performed (read or recited). Similarly, the Aztecs saw tlilli and tlapalli (black and red ink) as tools for communicating with the underworld below and the spirit world above. To write, Anzaldúa enters a trancelike Coatlicue state, then spends hours observing images from her subconscious, until a voice emerges from the “psychic unrest.”
Anzaldúa believes that writing can make her “an agent of transformation,” and in her final essay—“La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness”—she explains how the wisdom of the Borderlands can help transform society. Citing storied Mexican revolutionary leader and educator José Vasconcelos’s vision of a mestizo “cosmic race” bringing together the best of all the world’s cultures, Anzaldúa argues that mestizas and mestizos learn to deal productively with ambiguity, contradiction, and conflict by navigating their own inner “struggle of borders.” And mestiza women and queer Chicanas and Chicanos ought to lead the charge, taking “take inventory” of their communities’ histories and fighting to replace their multiple cultures’ “oppressive traditions” with new ones founded on love, respect, and solidarity. Americans should accept that their country’s fate will always be tied together with Mexico’s, and Chicanas and Chicanos must fight for their “dignity and self-respect” as a community. Returning home to her mother’s rose garden, Anzaldúa affirms that “This land was Mexican once / was Indian always / and is. / And will be again.”
The first of the six poetry sections of Anzaldúa’s book includes poems about white men paying a Chicana woman to hunt doves on her property, a young woman killing the fawn her family keeps as a pet, and a gang of Anglo kids killing a Chicano farmer’s horse and getting away with it. Anzaldúa asks her grandmother questions about sex and cooks nopales (cactus pads) in her family’s yard.
In the second poetry section, Anzaldúa describes her mother working in the fields and explains why burying trash in the back yard was “women’s work.” She imagines a migrant lost in the desert on the perilous trek across the border and a farm owner in Indiana who calls immigration officials on his undocumented workers instead of paying them. She includes an ode to the farmworkers who spend their lives picking vegetables for sub-minimum wage, then imagines a 19th-century Anglo settler speaking proudly about stealing Tejano land, then raping and lynching the members of a family that refused to leave—in the name of civilization, progress, and white racial supremacy. A sick woman covered in blood and filth imagines an Aztec goddess burying her womb.
Similar dreamlike, supernatural imagery pervades the third poetry section. A woman sacrifices a horse, and then herself, atop a cliff that represents an Aztec temple. A group of men assault a gay Chicano sex worker, Anzaldúa compares lovemaking to cannibalism, and a woman speaks of lost love and grief. New York policemen assault a young queer Puerto Rican man in front of a cheering crowd, a woman fondly recalls the early days of her relationship with another Chicana lesbian, and in the poem “Interface,” a spirit (Leyla) living in the narrator’s house becomes her lover, then starts taking on human and then superhuman powers.
The fourth poetry section opens with a long poem about priests robbing Saint Teresa of Ávila’s grave to take her bones as holy relics. The section continues with a haunting portrait of a woman continuing to hold her young son’s body after he is struck by stray bullets while in her arms. Another poem tells the reader to “let go” and give themselves up to darkness, and the following poem describes a woman going to her haunted basement to do laundry. A woman proclaims her love to the abyss, and Anzaldúa tells another woman—likely a student—that she must dig deeper within herself if she wants to grow. Finally, Anzaldúa tells la Raza (the Chicano people) why defining her own personal identity meant temporarily separating from them.
The fifth section starts with “La curandera,” in which a sick woman calls for a healer from Mexico but then learns to heal herself and others instead. The poem “mujer cacto” compares a Borderlands woman to a cactus, and “Cuyamaca” shows how displacement and colonization lurk under the surface of the American suburban dream. The section’s last three poems portray an encounter with la Llorona, a “creature of darkness” meditating on pain and healing, and a woman struggling to please an ancient goddess.
Anzaldúa’s last poetry section comprises four pieces. It starts with a song about rising up to assert Chicano identity. The second piece is an ode to Chicana women who bridge different identities and “live sin fronteras” (without borders). Next, a night-goddess travels to our world in human form to seek redemption, and finally, in the last poem, Anzaldúa tells a young, dark-skinned Chicana girl what awaits her: her life will not be easy, but if she remembers her history—including how the Anglos stole her family land—and takes pride in her Chicana identity and “Indian woman’s spirit,” she can help humankind evolve into a new, better form.
