Borderlands La Frontera Sparknotes

In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua recalls lived experiences of oppression and the matric of domination. She uses her writing as an act of rebellion from her culture that outcast her. It entails Anzaldua and her family’s history of oppression, her memories of their hard work and contradictions, and her knowledge of her ancestry in the borderlands. She calls out two contrary frames of reference, the Mexican and the American, which depend on the dualities of the racist, the sexist, and the homophobic. These two frames of reference are riddled with rigidity and dichotomies that limit Anzaldua's identity. But as each side of the dualities continuously clashes, the line in between where they converge is the existence of

the mestiza. This mestiza is a rebellion from the divergent cultures, paradigms, and worlds. Through the analysis of her culture and the Anglo culture, Anzaldua rejects the dualities, but she proves the necessity of their existence to the mestiza consciousness of any handicapped minority.
Stories of European invasion and the systematic domination and suppression of non-Europeans make up history. Systematic domination of social, economic, and political power through the advancement technology and firepower created European privilege, and so begins Anzaldua’s introduction of the domination of her ancestors, Aztecs and the Native Indians. Anzaldua feels more threaten and pejorative towards America’s influence of Mexican culture; more so she blames ‘white superiority’ for the destruction of the Mexican history and people. Anzaldua begins with the history of the Southwest United States—Aztlan. Within this history, she explores the effects of conquering lands and exploitation of the conquered people. Most importantly, she explains that the US-Mexican border created a border culture that in turn puts her culture in danger because they belong in no mans land. It was created from the “emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (2012). These Chicanos are the outsiders, belonging nowhere, but belonging everywhere. This border culture itself seems to impose an identity crisis for the inhabitants. Gloria strives to inform us of the true identity of her people and how it was taken away through the Spaniard’s conquest, the 19th century Anglo migration, and the 1846 war against the Americans (2012). By doing this, the Chicanos are constantly in fear of being mistaken for Mexican inhabitants regardless of their belonging to the United States, which is seen in Pedro's case (2012). It now becomes a racial issue and calls into question the options in their identity. They can either be Mexican or American, but not both because the border patrols have a binary mindset; they are indeed racist because an American cannot look like a Mexican. The racism continued with the political and economic take over of Mexico and Texas.
A seize of political power further marginalized and devastated the Indians and Mexicans.

Tensions led to racial friction which caused lynches and the death of multiple Chicano. Uprooted from what was once theirs, they now have to toil on the land they rightfully own (2012). There was no distinction between Mexican, Mexican American, or African American. Even more so, they are locked out of their lands and suffer under corporate owners from the further crippling of the Mexican monetary system and the country’s autonomy. Their land, their labor, their history exploited and devalued, which is pacified by frivolous rewards. Then came the infusion of the white culture change in the Mexican way of life. They are forced to “speak American,” forcing the Chicanos to deny parts of themselves, to acculturate (2012). By forcing the acculturation, it forces their Spanish tongue to change and to eventually be forgotten. Language is part of one’s identity, so to lose your language is to lose part of oneself. When they cross the border, it becomes no a celebration to their homeland but an invasion. To Gloria, these events are American democracy, globalization, tyranny, exploitation, and force assimilation. These individuals live at an impasse depicted through many of their harrowing trials of being conquered; Gloria speaks to empower, yet to shame those who disregard history and leave behind a residue of shame and exploitation. The people of power, the Whites, have established a dissonance

from these peoples’ identity and culture, which perpetuates the devastation to Mexico. The continuation is seen in the Mexican culture understanding of gender, race, and sexuality.
Anzaldua exposes the universal patriarchal and even misogynist culture in her Mexican culture, which also from Anglo domination. She learned early that Chicano culture has rigid gender roles where "males make up the rules and laws" and "women transmit them" (2012). The Catholic Church further pushes the ideal of subservient women by claiming that women who do not marry and have children are bad women. The culture only consisted of a few directions for women to turn to: "the church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, the home as a mother," and for a very few women, there was "entering the world by way of education and career and becoming self- autonomous persons" (2012). The culture and church spread the belief that women were wanton and inherently evil and they needed protection especially from themselves. Women became a man's "shadow-beast" (2012). The women especially mothers were contradictory in their ideals: selfishness or selflessness, strong or submissive, rebellious or conforming. It was one or the other, a disjunctive syllogism. So imagine the confusion that lies in being a "muchacha" (2012). Being half and half is being a lesbian. They were seen as suffering from a confusion of sexuality, namely six months they are men and the other six they are women (2012). Confusion of sexuality or gender was not the problem; the problem was the oppressor duality that forces one to choose. Either someone is a woman or a man, or a woman could only be with a man or a man only with a woman. To diverge from this duality was wrong. Humanity is limited and lack the ability to evolve, so there is nothing better. Anzaldua rejects this duality.
Her culture is further split when the introduction of the Guadalupe on December 9, 1531 and further on in 1660 when the Roman Catholic Church introduced her (2012).

It was meant to unify people of different races, religions, and languages, but the church used her for institutionalized oppression, giving way to the "virgen/puta” dichotomy (2012). Guadalupe was the symbol for the dos and don’ts for women in the Mexican culture, but it was a destruction of Coatalopeuh, the Indian name for La Virgen de Guadalupe. She consisted of the Earth and fertility goddesses. To the Mesoamericans, she was a creator of the celestial deities (Anzaldua, 2012). The earliest goddess was Coatlicue or “serpent skirt”, who was portrayed as having a “serpent for a head” and “a skirt of twisted serpents” (2012). She embodied a serpent, which consumes it pray much like a woman, and penetrative much like a man. However her destruction did not begin with the colonization, it began with Anzaldua’s Azteca-Mexica culture. According to Anzaldua, the Azteca-Mexica’s male dominated culture gave Coatlicue and other female gods “monstrous” features and “substituting male deities in their place,” which she refers to as the “splitting the female self and the female deities” (2012). She became a dichotomy, a light and a dark side, no in-between; her darker side stripped and disempowered. Stripping away her dark side meant taking away the serpent, which embodied her sexuality. By doing so, it forces a dichotomy

on women of the Mexican culture. These women now feel shame for sexual aggression. They are seen only through two ways: the virgin or the whore. It fractured the feminine deities and caused rigid gender roles. The church and Spaniards continued the division and “desexed Guadalupe, taking Coatlalopeuh, the serpent/sexuality out of her” (2012). Anzaldua contends Guadalupe was meant to make the women passive, la Chingada to shame their Indian side, and la Llorona to make us selfless people (2012). It created strains and violence towards women, where they can be raped while crossing the border and chased by men within the Mexican and American society (2012).
To combat all these dualities and collisions, there is La facultad. La facultad is the ability to see deeper realities within the surface. It is a perception arrived at without conscious reasoning. It is part of the mind communicated through images and symbols from people casted out for being different in a group, and those people who do not feel physically or mentally safe within their world (2012). Anzaldua claims the ones who have it are “females, the homosexuals of all races, the darkskinned, the outcast, the persecuted, the marginalized, the foreign” (2012). It is their fear; they are forced, plunged into this mode and they lose their innocence (2012). It is a break or tear in the everyday consciousness. Where we were forced to see only the body and the soul, they now see more realities. It is no longer reality and non-reality. There are degrees between reality and non-reality. Anzaldua see this within the borderlands and so emerges the mestiza consciousness. The oppression helped to develop a new and unique capacity for understanding the world and one’s place in it. The Mestiza is a new world that can be travelled by anyone. Anyone can travel and speak the language. There is no need to step away from the world because they belong there. The mestiza is a consciousness that protects all from the constant collisions and violence of dualities. Anzaldua now has a new race and a new way of though that is a combination of everything she is—White, Indian, and Mexican. Understand that without these dualities, there is no mestiza because there is no break from the everyday conscious; there is no innocence lost. The mestiza exposes the racism, sexism, and heterosexism. The mestiza is the source of her great power and where she resides. The mestiza is multiple views, voices, and paradigms; there is no reason to choose a side anymore because they do not exist in this consciousness. Because the mestiza is inclusive, men are also included and protected from their confined gender roles. The mestiza affirms all humanity.
Thus when perpetrators of Eurocentric masculinity create and continues binary thinking—White or Black, man or woman, strong or weak, the mestiza consciousness is there. It breaks down the dichotomous thinking. It is where all collisions converge and where nothing is rejected and everything is accepted. For Anzaldua, her history is riddled with dualities of domination: race, gender, and sexuality. She discusses the U.S.-Mexican border, the conquering Spaniards, and forced acculturation. Understand then, Anzaldua’s need for the dominant race’s participation, the Whites, helps in enabling everyone to gain this mestiza consciousness. Rigidity means death, death of any who chooses to live in these two-sided roles. By acknowledging their wrong and handicapped minorities demanding their needs, the mestiza consciousness can flourish, out with the parochialism and chauvinism and in with the mature tolerance of differences. Anzaldua’s mestiza consciousness draws similarity with W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness, showing the interlocking system of oppression for both African Americans and Latinos in America. Given that the world is becoming more culturally diverse, it is interesting to note that sociologists have had minimal focus on the relationship between the commonality of oppression and culture between the Latinos and African Americans.