Border Real, Border Metaphor: Altering Boundaries in Miguel Méndez and Alejandro Morales

Border Real, Border Metaphor: Altering Boundaries in Miguel Méndez and Alejandro Morales José Pablo Vittakbos is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Lewis and Clark Cottege in Porüand, Oregon . His areas of research interest are contemporary Mexican and Chicano narrative and Border Studies. Recent publications include articks on José Corks Becerra, Silvia Molina, Luis Arturo Ramos, and Manuel EcheverrÃ-a. He is currently working on a project dealing with literary representations ofthe U.S.-Mexico border. This paper explores the different conceptualization of the US-Mexico border region as depicted in Miguel Méndez's Peregrinos de Aztlán (1975) and Alejandro Morales's The Rag Doll Pkgues (1993). While Méndez's text relies on a geographically specific region, the clear demarcation of this same region is set in doubt by Morales's elimination of the US-Mexico border. In doing so, Morales effaces the real-border subject and so strips from him or her the voice and space rendered by Méndez. Méndez and Morales within Critical Border Discourse Both Peregrinos deAztlán {1974) by Miguel Méndez and The Rag Doll Pkgues (1992) by Alejandro Morales stand at opposite ends ofthe current debate over Chicano cultural studies. This recent and still unfolding re-graphing of Chicano cultural identity, as evinced by the title of José David Saldivar's Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies (1997), has disposed ofthe concept of Aztlán1 for a more visibly concrete borderland. Indeed , Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez's Border Visions (1996) makes no formal reference to Aztlán although his area of study is the Southwestern United States, traditionally acknowledged as the location of this mythical place of origin. This movement from a nationalist to a borderlands paradigm is likewise propagated by Saldivar's Border Matters in which Aztlán, though still tecognized as a Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 4, 2000 132 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies potential though problematic symbol for ChÃ-canos, is denounced for the desired homogeneity it represented for die protonationalist Chicano movement (195). In Maria Socorro Tabuenca's assessment—quoting Rolando Romero's "Post-deconstructive Spaces" (230)—: Aztlán has been left behind and the borderlands are now the new metaphor of Chicano theotetical discourse . For the majority of Chicano studies, the botder now 'becomes a Chicano Eden, die original paradise.' (57) Specifically, this same post-national deterritorialization is also a factor apparent in recent Chicano fiction. As Manuel M. Martin-Rodriguez states: Upon reading recent Chicano/a literature , it could be claimed that a growing number of texts (especially narrative texts) are shedding off nationalistic concerns that were so common only a couple of decades ago in favor of transnational, diasporic, or globalized considerations. ("Deterritorialization " 391) Geographically, the border allows for a defined battleground, while metaphorically, the borderland has a fluid quality that permits its usage with regard to language, class, race, sexual identity, and other such distinctions . In die words of Sean de Soto: "By enlarging the frame of Chicano identity, Borderlands has also been a critical model which can better understand and interpret the 'marginalia'" that were often unseen or simply left undisclosed in Chicano cultural studies (401). As Gloria Anzaldúa's case epitomizes, while she is clear to define her status as a border dweller growing up in Texas along the U.S.-Mexico botder, she is quick to point out that there are also psychological , sexual, and spiritual borderlands that are not geographically specific to the political border between these two countries (i).2 In simple socio-historical terms, therefore , Miguel Méndez's Peregrinos de Aztlán highlights the potential horrors ofthe border experience while at the same time acknowledging its position within Aztlán; indeed , the novel situates Aztlán along the border. Based on the plight of Mexicans and ChÃ-canos at the Mexico-U.S. frontier, Méndez's characters are in fact on a pilgrimage that is marked and consistently foiled by the toil of everyday subsistence in a harsh physical, social, and economic border climate . Nonetheless, while clearly establishing a poetics of place, Méndez's focus also engages the occupants of this particular border landscape...