Gloria Anzaldua Gloria anzaldiia is also the co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back la0m把 The New mestiza aunt lute books SAN FRANCISCO
Copyright @1987 by Gloria Anzaldua Acknowledgements To you who walked with me upon my path and who held First Edition a hand when I stumbled; to you who brushed past me at crossroads never to touch me 16-15 Aunt Lute Book Company to you whom I never chanced to meet but who inhabit PO. Box 410687 orderlands similar to mine to you for whom the borderlands is unknown territory Holy Relics"first appeared in Conditions Six, 1980 minist Arts Journal, VoL. 4, #1 to Kit Quan, for feeding me and listening to me rant and Cervicide"first appeared in Labyris, A Fer Winter 1983 to Melanie Kaye/ Kantrowitz, for believing in me and being Ene nombre de todas las madres que han perdido sus hijos en la guerra"first there for me; pearce Joan Pinkvoss, my ditor and publisher, midwife Cover and Text Design: Pamela Wilson Design Studio dinaire, whose understanding, caring, and balanced mixture of gentle prodding and pressure not only helped me bring this Cover Art: Pamela Wilson baby "to term, but helped to create it; these images and words are for you Typesetting: Grace Harwood and Comp-Type, Fort Bragg, CA To the production staff at Spinsters/Aunt Lute who bore Production: Cindy Cleary Lorraine grassano he pressure of impossible deadlines well: Martha Davis whose Martha davis Ambrosia marvin invaluable and excellent copy-editing has made the material Debra Debondt apus molina nore readable and cohesive; Debra De Bondt who worked long osana Francescato Sukey Wilder Amelia gonzalez Kathleen Wilkinson and hard to keep the book on schedule; Pam Wilson and Grace Harwood Printed in the U.S.A to Frances Doughty, Juanita Ramos, Judith Waterman ales, Mandy Covey and Elana Dykewomon for their support and encouragement, as well as feedback, on various pieces; to my San Francisco: Aunt Lute friends, students and colleagues in the ADP program in Vermont p,;prt,122 College, Women's Voices Writing Workshop, UCSC,and writers who participated in my writing workshops in NYC, New Haven, sBN1879960125(pbk):59.95 San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Austin, Texas, in particu lar: Pearl Olson, Paula Ross, Marcy Alancraig, Maya valverde 1. Mexican-American Border Region-Poetry, 2. Mexican-American r Region-Civilization. Ariban, Tirsa Quinones, Beth Brant, Chrystos, Elva Pere Trevino, Victoria Rosales. Christian McEwen. Roz Calvert. Nina PS3551N95B61987 81.54-dc19 入CB760M8 Newington, and Linda Muckle
The homeland. aztlan E l otro mexic et espacio es erritono nacional Este el esfuerzo de todos nuestros berman progress Los Tigres del Norte The Aztecas del norte,,. com pose the largest single trib or nation of Anishinabeg(Indians)found in the United States Some call themselves Chicanos and see themselves homeland is Aztlan the U.S. Southy Wind tugging at my sleeve eet sinking into the sand I stand at the edge where earth touches ocean a gentle comir stark silhouette of houses gutted by waves, lifts crumbling into the se silver waves marbled with spumeorder fence gashing a hole under the
The Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro Mexico The Homeland, Aztlan/ E/ otro Mexico Miro el mar atacar This is my home la cerca en border Field Park his thir con sus buchones de agua, an Easter Sunday resurrection of the brown blood in my veins But the skin of the earth is seamless The sea cannot be fenced Oigo el florido del mar, el respiro del aire, my heart surges to the beat of the sea. To show the white man what she thought of his in the gray haze of the sun I the gulls shrill cry of hunger Yemaya blew that wire fence down. the tangy smell of the sea seeping into me. This land was Mexican once I walk through the hole in the fence Indian to the other side Under my fingers I feel the gritty wire And will be again ted by 139 of the salty breath of the sea del mundo gabacho al del mojado Beneath the iron sky lo pasado me estira patras Mexican children kick their soccer ball across y lo presente pa' 'delante un after it, entering the U.S. Que la virgen de guadalupe me cuide Ay ayay, soy mexicana de este lado I press my hand to the steel he U.S,Mexican border es una berida abierta where the rippling from the sea where Tijuana touches San Diego Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds mergin orm a third country-a border culture. Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from this"Tortilla Curtain" turning into el rio grande them. a border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by flowing down to the flatlands the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a con of the Magic Valley of South Texas stant state of transition, The prohibited and forbidden are its its mouth emptying into the gulf habitants. Los atravesados live here: the se rse,the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the 1, 950 mile-long open wound half-breed, the half dead; in short, those who cross over, pass dividing a pueblo, a culture, ver, or go through the confines of the"normal. "Gringos in the running down the length of my body, U.S. Southwest consider the inhabitants of the borderlands staking fence rods in my fles ors documents or not splits me splits me whether they re Chicanos, Indians or Blacks, Do not enter, tres- passers will be raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot. The only legitimate"inhabitants are those in power, the whites and those
4 The Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro Mexico The Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro Mexico who align themselves with whites. Tension grips the inhabitants on sus ocho tribur salieron of the borderlands like a virus. ambivalence and unrest reside de la"cueva del origen. there and death is no stranger los aztecas siguieron al dios huitzilopochtli In the fields, la migra. My aunt No corr4” don't run. They'll think you,'re del otro lao. "In the confu Huitzilopochtli, the God of War, guided them to the place (that later became Mexico City)wher re an eagle with a writhing English. couldn't tell them he was fifth generation Ameri- serpent in its beak perched on a cactus. The eagle symbolizes the can. Sin papeles--he did not carry his birth certificate to spirit(as the sun, the father); the serpent symbolizes the soul (as he earth, the mother). Together, they symbolize the struggle watched Se lo llevaron. He tried to smile when he looked between the spiritual/celestial/male and the underworld/earth/ back at us. to raise his fist. But I saw the shame pushing his feminine. The symbolic sacrifice of the serpent to the "hi head down, I saw the terrible weight of shame hunch his masculine powers indicates that the patriarchal order had already shoulders. They deported him to Guadalajara by plane. The vanquished the feminine and matriarchal order in pre- furthest he'd ever been to Mexico was Reynosa, a small Columbian America. border town opposite Hidalgo, Texas, not far from McAllen. Pedro walked all the way to the Valley. Se lo At the beginning of the 16th century, the Spaniards and i llevaron sin un centavo al pobre Se vino andando desde Hernan Cortes invaded Mexico and, with the help of tribes that he Aztecs had subjugated, conquered it. Before the Conques there were twenty-five million Indian people in Mexico and the During the original peopling of the Americas, the first Yucatan. Immediately after the Conquest, the Indian population habitants migrated across the Bering Straits and walked south had been reduced to under seven million. By 1650, only one-and across the continent. The oldest evidence of humankind in the a-half-million pure-blooded Indians ained. The mestizos U. s. -the Chicanos' ancient Indian ancestors-was found in who were genetically equipped to survive pox, measles, and Texas and has been dated to 35000 B C a In the South west United typhus(Old World diseases to which the natives had no immun States archeologists have found 20,000-year-old campsites of the D, founded a new hybrid race and inherited Central and South Indians who migrated through, or permanently occupied, the America. En 1521 naco wna nueva raza, el mestizo, el mexicano Southwest, Aztlan-land of the herons land of whiteness the (people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood), a race that had Edenic place of origin of the Azteca never existed before. Chicanos Mexican-Americans, are the In 1000 B. C,, descendants of the original Cochise people ffspring of those first matings grated into what is now Mexico and Our Spanish, Indian, and mestizo ancestors explored and became the direct ancestors of many of the Mexican people. ( The settled parts of the U.S. South west as early as th e sixteen chise culture of the Southwest is the parent culture of the century. For every gold-hungry conquistador and soul-hungry Aztecs. The Uto-Aztecan languages stemmed from the language missionary who came north from Mexico, ten to twenty Indians of the Cochise people. )4 The Aztecs(the Nahuatl word for and mestizos went along as porters or in other capacities. For people of Aztlan) left the Southwest in 1168 AD the Indians. this constituted a return to the place of origin, Aztlan, thus making Chicanos originally and secondarily indi Now let us go genous to the Southwest. Indians and mestizos from central Tibueqrue, Mexico intermarried with North American Indians. The contin- Vamonos, vamonos. ual intermarriage between Mexican and American Indians and paniards formed an even greater mestizaje
The Homeland, Aztlan/El otro Mexico The Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro MExico El destierro/The Lost Land In 1846, the U.S. incited Mexico to war. U.S. troops invaded and occupied Mexico, forcing her to give up almost half of her no sabe el indio que bacer nation, what is now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California la tieme que defender, With the victory of the U.S. forces over the Mexican in the el indio se cae muerto U.S.Mexican War, los norteamericanos pushed the Texas yel afuerino de pie. border down 100 miles, from el ro nueces to el rio grande South Texas ceased to be part of the mexican state of Tamauli- pas. Separated from Mexico, the Native Mexican-Texan no Arauco tiene un4 pena longer looked toward Mexico as home; the Southwest became mas negra que su che our homeland once more. The border fence that divides th y4 no son los espaiole Mexican people was born on February 2, 1848 with the signing of los que les bacen llorar, the Treaty of Guadalupe- Hidalgo. It left 100,000 Mexican citi boy son los propios chilenos zens on this side, annexed by conquest along with the land. The and established by the treaty as belonging to Mexicans was soon swindled away from its owners. The treaty was never honored violeta parra, "Arauco tiene una per and restitution, to this day, has never been made In the 1800s, Anglos migrated illegally into Texas, which The justice and benevolence of God was then part of Mexico, in greater and greater numbers and will forbid that . Texas should again gradually drove the tejanos(native Texans of Mexican descent) become a howling wilderness from their lands, committing all manner of atrocities against trod only by savages, or.. benighted them. Their illegal invasion forced Mexico to fight a war to keep its Texas territory. The Battle of the Alamo, in which the mexi- by the ignorance and superstition the anarchy and rapine of Mexican misrul can forces vanquished the whites, became for the whites, the The Anglo-American race are destined symbol for the cowardly and villainous character of the Mexicans rever the proprietors It became (and still is)a symbol that legitimized the white this land of promise and fulfillment imperialist takeover. With the capture of Santa Anna later in Their laws will govern it 1836, Texas became a republic. Tejanos lost their land and their learning will enlighten it overnight, became the foreigners heir enterprise will improve it. ge its boundless pastures Ya la mitad del terreno for them its fertile lands will yield les vendio el traidor santa luxuriant harvests lo ha becho muy m The wilderness of Texas has been redeem la nacion americana by Anglo-American blood enterprise Que acaso no se conforman -William H. Wharton' on el oro de las minas? Ustedes muy elegante The gi locked into the fiction of white si y4q4〃0『 otros en rune5, ed complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexica their land while their feet were still rooted in it. Con el Del peligro de la Intervention destierro y el exilo fuimos deswnados, destroncados, destri
The Homeland, Aztlan/El otro Mexico The Homeland, Aztlan/EI otro Mexic re were jerked out by the roots, truncated, disembo- In the 1930s, after Anglo agribusiness corporations cheated nd se om our identity and the small Chicano landowners of their land, the corporations history. Many, under the threat of Anglo terrorism, abandoned hired gangs of mexicanos to pull out the brush, chaparral and cactus and to irrigate the desert. The land they toiled over had tested. But as the courts, law enforcement officials, and govern- once belonged to many of them, or had been used communally by ly ignored their pleas but penalize eir efforts, tejanos had no other recourse but armed retaliation and had the Mexicans scrape the land clean of natural vegetation robbed a train Brownsville, Texas on October 18, 1915, Anglo vigilante groups land cleared; saw the huge pipes connected to underwater sources the brush and shoot them. One hundred Chicanos were killed in ai those canals when they were full and hunt for e g in some of when they were dry. In the 1950s I saw the land, cut up into to Mexico, leaving their small ranches and farms. The anglos, thousands of neat rectangles and squares, constantly being irri- fraid that the mexicanos would seek independence from the gated In the 340-day growth season, the seeds of any kind of fruit U.S., brought in 20,000 army troops to put an end to the social or vegetable had only to be stuck in the ground in order to grow protest movement in South Texas. Race hatred had finally More big land corporations came in and bought up the remaining fomented into an all out war. 11 My grandmother lost all her cattle, To make a living my father became a sharecropper. Rio they stole her land. Farms Incorporated loaned him seed money and living expenses At harvest time, my father repaid the loan and forked over 40% Drought hir South Texas, "my mother tells me."La of the earnings. Sometimes we earned less than we owed, but se puso bien seca y los animales comenzdron a morrirse de se, M always the corporations fared well. Some had major holdings in ocbo bwercos, with eight kids and one on the way. Yo fui la gether ole trucking, livestock auctions and cotton gins. Alto- papa se mario de un heart attack dejando a mama pregnant y con lived on three successive Rio farms: the second was mayor, tenia diez anos. The next year the drought continued el adjacent to the King Ranch and included a dairy farm; the third ganado got hoof and mouth. Se calleron in droves en las pastas y was a chicken farm. I remember the white feathers of three el brushland, pe blancas ballooning to the skies. El siguient thousand Leghorn chickens blanketing the land for acres around. afo still no rain, Mi pobre madre viuda perdio two-thirds of her My sister, mother and I cleaned, weighed and packaged eggs. (For ganado. A smart gabacbo lawyer took the land away mamahadn't years afterwards I couldn,'t stomach the sight of an egg. )I paid taxes. No hablaba ingles, she didn't know how to ask for remember my mother attending some of the meetings sponsored time to raise the money. "My father's mother, Mama Locha, also by well-meaning whites from Rio Farms. They talked about good lost her terreno. For a while we got $12.50 a year for the"mineral nutrition, health, and held huge barbeques. The only thing rights"of six acres of cemetery, all that was left of the ancestral lands. Mama Locha had asked that we bury her there beside her food canning and a food-stained book they printed made up of husband. EL cemeterio estaba cercado. But there was a fence recipes from Rio Farms' Mexican women. How proud my around the cemetery, chained and padlocked by the ranch owners mother was to have her recipe for enchiladas coloradas in a book. f the surrounding land. We couldn 't even get in to visit the ch less bury her there. Today, it is sti E l adlocke sign reads: Keep out. Trespassers will be shot ' Abora si ya tengo un tumba para llora upon being reu with
The Homeland, Aztlan/El otro Mexico he Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro Mexico -from Ismael Rodriguez'filmn mother dies her unknown mother just before the South of the border, called North America's rubbish dump by Chicanos, mexicanos congregate in the plazas to talk about the best way to cross. Smugglers, coyotes, pasadores, enganchadore approach these people or are sought out by them. "Que dicen La crisis, Los gringos had not stopped at the border. By the muchachos a echarsela de moja end of the nineteenth century, powerful landowners in Mexico, in partnership with U.S. colonizing comp had dispossess "Now among the alien gods with millions of Indians of their lands. Currently, Mexico and her weapons of magic am I eighty million citizens are almost completely dependent on the Navajo protection song, U.S.market. The Mexican government and wealthy growers are sung when going into battle in partnership with such American conglomerates as American Motors. IT&T and Du Pont which own factories called We have a tradition of migration, a tradition of long walks aquiladoras. One-fourth of all Mexicans work at ma oday we are witnessing la migracion de los pueblos mexicanos most are young women. Next to oil, maquiladoras are Mexico s the return odyssey to the historical/mythological Aztlan. This second greatest source of U.S. dollars. Working eight to]twelve time. the traffic is from south to north ours a day to wire in backup lights of U.S. autos or solder Elretorno to the promised land first began with the Indians miniscule wires in TV sets is not the Mexican way. While the from the interior of Mexico and the mestizos that came with the women are in the ladoras, the children are left on their conquistadores in the 1500s. Immigration continued in the next own. Many roam the street, become part of cholo gangs. The three centuries, and, in this century, it continued with the brace nfusion of the values of the white culture, coupled with the ros who helped to build our railroads and who picked our fruit exploitation by that culture, is changing the Mexican way of life Today thousands of Mexicans are crossing the border legally and he devaluation of the peso and Mexico's dependency on illegally; ten million people without documents have returned to the U.S. have brought on what the Mexicans call la crisis. No bay the Southwe trabajo. Half of the Mexican people are unemployed. In the U.S.a Faceless, nameless, invisible, taunted with"Hey cucarach nan or woman can make eight times what they can in Mexico. By (cockroach). Trembling with fear, yet filled with courage, a March, 1987, 1,088 pesos were worth one U.S. dollar. I remember courage born of desperation. Barefoot and uneducated, Mexicans hen I was growing up in Texas how we'd cross the border at with hands like boot soles gather at night by the river where two Reynosa or Progreso to buy sugar or medicines when the dollar worlds merge creating what Reagan calls a frontline, a war zone orth eight pe The convergence has created a shock culture, a border culture,a third country, a closed country. La traveria For many mexicanos del otro lado, the choice without benefit of bridges, the"mojados"(wetbacks )float to stay in Mexico and starve or move north and live. Dicen que on inflatable rafts across el rio Grande, or wade or swim acros cada mexicano siempre fuera de la conquista en los brazos de aked, clutching their clothes over their heads. Holding onto the cuatro gringas rubias, la conquista del pais poderoso del norte, los grass, they pull themselves along the banks with a prayer to Estados Unidos. En cada Chicano y mexicano vive el mito del Virgen de Guadalupe on their lips: Ay virgencita morena ms tesoro territorial perdido. North Americans call this return to madrecita, dame tu bendicion the homeland the silent invasion The border Patrol hides behind the local McDonalds on the outskirts of Brownsville, Texas or some other border town.T ra la cueva volveran et traps around the river beds beneath the bridge. 14 Hunters in El Puma en l a cancion"Amalia rmy.green uniforms stalk and track these eco the powerful nightvision of electronic sensing devices planted in
The Homeland, Aztian/ El otro Mexico The Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro Mexico the ground or mounted on Border Patrol vans, Cornered by flashlights, frisked while their arms stretch over their heads, los homeground to venture into unknown and possibly dangerous mojados are handcuffed, locked in jee eeps, and then kicked back across the border This is her home One out of every three is caught. Some return to enact their rite of passage as many as three times a day. Some of those who nake it across undetected fall prey to Mexican robbers such as those in Smugglers' Canyon on the American side of the border eland that them, many find a welcome hand holding out only suffering, Those who make it past the checking points of the Border Patrol find themselves in the midst of 150 years of racism in Chicano barrios in the Southwest and in big northern cities as criminals and being able to eat, between resistance and depor the illegal refugees are some of the poorest and the most exploited of any people in the U.S. It is illegal for Mexicans to cards. But big fa bosses and smugglers who bring them in make money off the wetbacks"labor-they don' t have to pay federal minimum wages, or ensure adequate housing or sanitary conditions at (smuggler)doesnt feed her for days or let her go to the bathroom. Often he rapes her or sells her into prostitution.She cannot call on county or state health or economic resources nt know English and she fears deport American employers are quick to take advantage of her helpless ess.She cant go home. She's sold her house, her furniture borrowed from friends in order to pay the coyote who charges may work as a live-in maid for white, Chicano or Latino house- holds for as little as $15 a week, Or work in the garment industry, do hotel work. Isolated and worried abou afraid of fifteen people in one room, the mexicana suffers serious health problems. Se enferma de los nervios, de alta presion. 15 a majada, la mayer indocumentada, is doubly threatened in have to cor d with sexual violence, but like all women, she is prey to a sense of physical helplessness. As a refugee, she leaves the familiar and safe
Movimientos de rebeldio y las culturas que traicionan Esos mowimientos de rebeldia que tenemos en la san gre nosotros los mexicanos surgen como rios desbocanados en mis venas. Y como miraz que cada en cuando deja caer esclavitud de obedecer, de callarse y aceptar, en mesta la rebeldia encimita de rne. Debajo de mi bumillada mirada estd una cara insolent lista muy caro mi rebeldia-acalambrada con desvelos y dudas ti estipida, e impotent. Me entra una rabia cuando alguien-red mi mama, la igle de lo nglos-me dice baz esto, ha eso sin considerar mis deseo Repele. Hable pa''tras Fuimay bocicon. Era indite No fui buena ni obedient Pero be crecido. Ya no solo paso toda mi vida botando las Tambien recojo las costumbres que por el tiempo se ban provado y la despite my growing tolerance, for this Chicana la guerra de independencia is a co The Strength of My Rebellion id me old. I etween my father and mother, head cocked to the righ of my flat feet gripping the ground. I hold my other's hand
