Living On the Border

This past November, the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature (AAR/SBL) annual meeting took place in San Diego. In the wake of that event, I want to reflect with readers of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) on the political-religious situation of the borderlands.¹ The term borderlands not only refers to the liminal areas that mark a divide between nations but has also become a widespread metaphor for doing feminist work. Such symbolic use often overlooks the harsh realities of the former use of the term. Tijuana, Mexico, is across the U.S.–Mexico border just a few miles south of San Diego, where I live and work. Comparing San Diego to Tijuana exposes the many hardships people endure along the border due to poverty and marginalization, not to mention desert conditions and often blazing heat. At the same time the AAR was happening, wildfires had surrounded the San Diego–Tijuana region, leading to the evacuation of over a half-million people, including members of my own family and friends. The firestorms left in their wake vast amounts of property destruction, damaged lands and resources, a toxic breathing environment, hundreds of injured and some dead, and thousands of homeless families. This situation was so alarming that I had wondered if the AAR could even happen in San Diego.

Taking a closer look at the context for this meeting, the San Diego–Tijuana border has developed into a unique, dynamic, and luring geopolitical location in which, literally, one can touch, sense, and experience the deep inequalities between the dominant first world/North and the subordinate two-thirds world/ South. As a distinctive feature of this border region, migration has fashioned bi-national communities that must learn to recognize and integrate the complex dynamics of sociocultural interactions as a means to bettering our shared living conditions. Diverse peoples, cultures, and languages gather together in this border region, but the interdependent and often uneven relationship between the two countries continues to be a predominant issue of concern. The nearly two-thousand-mile-long U.S.–Mexico border has separated people since 1842. Mexicans and U.S. communities have been closely related geographically, economically, linguistically, and even culturally along this border, but operate as divided societies, fostered especially in recent years by the unilateral link the U.S. government has made between controlling migration and U.S. national security. This region includes the desert mountain area known as “the corridor of death,” in which hundreds of undocumented border crossers have died unnecessarily searching for work in el Norte.

Along this bi-national border, the San Diego–Tijuana region has become the largest population center, with an estimated six million inhabitants. The San Ysidro port of entry is the busiest terrestrial border crossing in the world. Located fewer than twenty miles south of downtown San Diego, this border station processes more than 150,000 crossings of people daily, including nearly 50,000 vehicles.² Although U.S. residents travel to Mexico for employment, shopping, and entertainment, Mexican residents traveling for work comprise nearly 60 percent of crossings from Tijuana into the larger San Diego. The constant flow of people and services between the two countries both strengthens borderlands interactions and raises issues that affect the living conditions of those who share this common space.

In addition to migration, other distinctive situations affecting this region include violence related to drug trafficking; smuggling of goods, drugs, and people; and kidnapping for ransom. Tijuana is known for increased levels of human insecurity and for its weak response to the widespread sexual exploitation of women and children. Among the many situations affecting women, I highlight three here to provide a quick look into our particular context: maquiladoras, HIV/AIDS, and women’s work for peace and justice.

Maquiladoras are factories typically but not exclusively located immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. Arguably, the significant growth of maquiladoras in this region stemmed from Canada, Mexico, and the United States’ adoption in 1994 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which created the largest free-trade zone in the world. Largely owned...