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BORDER/TRANSFORMATIVE PEDAGOGIES AT THE END 13 OF THE MILLENNIUM: CHICANA/O CULTURAL STUDIES AND EDUCATION Alejandra Elenes In July 1997 the police of Chandler, Arizona, assisted the INS in a sweep of undocumented immigrants. The main criterion for stopping, questioning and eventually arresting “undocumented” individuals was the color of their skin; legal immigrants and US citizens were questioned. Many of those harassed by the Chandler police, and their supporters in the larger Phoenix metropolitan area, organized the Chandler Coalition for Civil Rights and sued the City. The case was settled for $400,000. —Jim Walsh, “Illegals Target of Crackdown by Chandler Police,” Arizona Republic, July 31, 1997. During the spring of 1999 in the Sunny Slope district in Phoenix, Arizona , the INS arrested undocumented workers in the neighborhood grocery store near an elementary school. Parents, fearful that their children might be deported, or just simply harassed by the INS, kept them out of school for a few days. —Julie Amparano and Becky Ramsdell, “Border Patrol Sweep Angers Parents,” The Arizona Republic, March 3, 1999. Recently, Ray Borane, Mayor of Douglas, Arizona, in an op-ed piece in the Arizona Republic expressed his views on the undocumented thusly, that those who hire “illegal immigrants” force the elderly “to live in constant fear because of the marauding hordes who trespass their homes and properties every night, all night, and who are growing more aggressive in creating more disturbances.” —Ray Borane, “Immigrant Supply, Demand Create Unbearable Situation ,” The Arizona Republic, July 27, 1999. 1 IN THEIR introduction to Border Theory (1997), David E. Johnson and Scott Michaelsen propose that border theories elaborated by Gloria Anzald úa, Emily Hicks, and Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar offer “essentialist” constructions of Chicana/o identity based on exclusionary, “stereotypical,” repressive, and even colonial mores. By negating or vehemently arguing against the political constitution of Chicana/o identity, Johnson and Michaelsen foreclose the possibility of engaging in any project 245 based on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation identities. Instead they endorse the suggestion that Benjamin Alire Sáenz makes in his contribution to their volume to rethink Chicano identity as “an identity that waits for the day that it is no longer necessary” (20). Chicana/o identity, like all identities, is co-constructed and re®ects a multiplicity of layers and tensions . By claiming that the struggle for Chicana/o identity should focus on an utopian future when it would no longer be necessary, Johnson and Michaelsen are proposing the same type of ahistorical politics that has given way to the above quoted events and anti-immigrant sentiments, and to the passage of Propositions 187, 209, and 227 in California. Their ultimate goal will maintain whiteness as the universal model and basis of a homogenous identity. For many years, Chicana/o and other people of color have called this process “assimilation.” Moreover, this construction of Chicana/o identity would only claim an identity that is always already de¤ned in opposition to the normative. Ultimately, this notion of identity denies Chicanas/os any sense of agency and undermines the political struggles of the Chicana/o Movement. California’s propositions, based on the hysteria manifested by constructions of immigrants, Chicanas/os, and other minorities as criminals and/or as undeserving of certain rights, are manifestations of anxieties over the “browning of America.” The policies advocated through these ballot initiatives deny some of the most basic rights of modern civil societies: access to education and health care. Indeed, Chicana education scholar Dolores Delgado Bernal states in her essay “Chicana/o Education from the Civil Rights Era to the Present” (1999) that “[m]any of today’s most important educational issues are similar to those voiced in Mexican communities before the 1950s” (101). If we are to scrutinize essentialist tendencies , then, I propose that we look at those that are constructing static images of Latina/o communities. What is at stake here are not only philosophical and theoretical arguments (as interesting and intellectually stimulating as they are), but access to basic material human needs such as health care and education. Much of the so-called women of color identity politics movements based on feminist ideals are struggles against policies that affect the material well-being of the communities of women of color, as well as their own experiences of oppression and marginalization. In this chapter, I am proposing that border/transformative pedagogies informed by Chicana/o cultural studies and feminist theory can serve as a...

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