Mexico and the United States: Ambivalent Vistas

9. Mexamerica

185 9 Mexamerica The cities [such as El Paso and Ciudad Juárez or Calexico and Mexicali] couple like reluctant lovers in the night, embracing for fear that letting go could only be worse. Tom Miller, On the Border That region of North America where the two societies of Mexico and the United States come together and overlap is known as Mexamerica. Historically, it has been a shifting cultural zone, known to the Aztecs as the “land of the uncivilized dogs,” or what the Spaniards called the Gran Chichimeca. That area has been called the Spanish borderlands during the later colonial period, El Norte and La Frontera during the days it belonged to Mexico, and the Greater Southwest (from a U.S. perspective) or Greater Northwest (from the Mexican view) in more recent history. The last terms attempt at least to express the notion that this is a geographic region with some unity and reflect traits of both parent cultures. These traits are collectively known as “border culture,” a reference to the twin societies that have developed along the 1,952-mile international boundary legally separating the United States from Mexico.1 As a geographic zone, Mexamerica defies precise definition. If one considers demography, then Mexamerica is much more than the series of twin cities that dot the border; much more than the populations that are found on both sides of the barbed wire and wall dividing Sonora from Arizona, or along the Rio Grande (or Río Bravo as the Mexicans know it) boundary. If Mexico City is the civic center of the populated heart of central Mexico, then Los Angeles (along with the Tijuana–San Diego corridor), with the second largest population of Mexicans outside of Mexico City, is the urban nucleus of Mexamerica. As historian Lester Langley notes, the northern limits of Mexamerica can be delineated with a “swathlike brushstroke” that meanders 186 mexico and the united states “across southern California, through central Arizona and New Mexico ” and then plunges “across the arid Texas west toward San Antonio on to the Gulf,” with its southern boundary the populated regions of central Mexico. Again, and no more precisely, it is the borderlands of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas in the United States, and the six Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. Indian Mexico presses from the south to remind Mexamerica of its cultural and historical roots; the industrial United States pushes from the north to shape its economic realities ; and migrant workers from every corner of Mexico head north for a small share of the material wealth generated by the U.S. economy. The result has been the emergence of conflicting forces that have collided in the state of mind known as Mexamerica, a cultural reality that harbors psychological and material components best reflected in the self-portrait by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in her 1932 depiction of the borderlands (see figure 13).2 The popular culture of Mexamerica reflects this blending of Mexico and the United States. Old Spanish architecture is an important part of the heritage, mythology, and tourist industries of the southwestern United States. Anglo-Americans enjoy the chimichangas and gorditas offered by Taco Bell and other “Mexican” restaurants (such as the fast food restaurants in southern California called Macheezmo Mouse— trendy places that merge fitness madness with a “Disneyesque” atmosphere to serve low-fat, low-cholesterol fajitas and burritos). Mexamerica is a culinary region based on the beef culture of Mexico’s northern plains, from carne asada and wheat tortillas in Sonora, to the green and red chiles of New Mexico, to the tacos de camarrón of Baja California , to the new Mexican bistro scene in Tucson, Arizona, which offers fusion dishes that include a burrito stuffed with mole poblano. In terms of other forms of popular culture, the cowboy as a U.S. icon has deep roots in the ranching traditions of the Spanish borderlands. The cowboy is a combination of the ranchero and vaquero of northern Mexico with the six-shooter and Stetson hat of Texas fame. Together they have provided a gendered tradition of the frontier for both societies. The Texas Tornados, a pop-rock-country group of Texan and Mexican musicians , put Tex-Mex music on the map in the 1990s.3 187 Mexamerica Although the term Mexamerica suggests an area that has undergone an organic process of bilingualism...