The Borders Within: Encounters Between Mexico and the U.S. (review)

The Borders Within is a book written by a seasoned educator. Monroy has taken a politically and historically controversial subject matter, personalized it, elucidated it using non-academic language, and has offered us a meditation on human misconceptions and compassion. The author's non-linear historical approach underscores the premises that make this publication timely in light of the deaths occurring in the landscape shared by both countries as migrants attempt to cross from south to north. His discussion on "Woodrow Wilson's Guns" and "The Missions of California" sheds light on the intimately interwoven history of both countries. While the chapter on "Ramona, I Love you" emphasizes that this intimacy nuances not only institutional power relations but most importantly the conceptions that the peoples of the two nations have of each other. On the other hand, the chapters, "NAFTA and the New World Border," "Re-creating Californio Rancho Society" and " How the New World Border Changes Us," highlight what the author will come back to throughout the book: "that more and more people, as they are, are worthy of moral consideration." (19)

In chapter one, "NAFTA and the New World Border," the author discusses the capitalist underpinnings of NAFTA by referring to Joseph Schumpeter's notion of "creative destruction," whereby destruction of established economic systems take place from within, giving rise to new ones. Monroy also refers to Andre Gunder Frank who has underscored that capitalism does not have the same effect everywhere; creativity therefore, is not intrinsic to destruction. Andre Gunder Frank has argued that in countries not members of the First World capitalism leads to "developing underdevelopment." In a Latin American scenario, treatises such as NAFTA, where the relations of power are unequal from the ground up, what is a profit opportunity for government subsidized farmers in the U.S. becomes the destruction of local traditional labor-intensive production in Mexico. The irony, underscores Monroy, is that those undercut head north, or (and here he fearlessly steps into a mined field) working the idea of "comparative advantage,' erect an industry to provide that for which there is great demand in the north: illegal drugs.

The effects of institutionally driven history are but the beginning of Monroy's study. Throughout the book his quest for greater understanding of the intimate links between the peoples leads him to interesting findings. He deconstructs the pastoral imagery of Californio society, "Mexican landed elites" (71), which seems intrinsic to the idea of California, in order to reveal the origins of said lifestyle. He intervenes in the identity-building narrative with accounts of the disputed Indians' physical and spiritual abuse, and Indian uprisings that were in part brought about by the "coercive missionization" project of the Catholic Church of the period. This project not only entailed the religious conversion of the Indians but also the imposition of European time and labor regimes (156-158). At first the latter extracted work from the missionized Indian in order to establish and maintain the missions, later it maintained the rancho lifestyle of the Californios. Present day Mexicans continue the work begun by Indians in order to maintain the comfortable lifestyle and cuisine taken for granted by those in the United States. The dark edge of irony is that "California has as many as two hundred thousand Mexican Indians.… They speak Zapoteco, Mixteco and obscure languages like Chatino and Amuzgo" (209). Mexican Indians feel at home worshipping in the missions they have helped revitalize, while for most present day Anglo-Californians these are no more than historical landmarks once used to advance the idea of a utopic California (201).

The above example, although underlined with irony, is but one of the many "stories" the author uses to underscore that the New World Border, both as place and concept, can no longer be circumscribed by binary thought. The New World Border is "ambiguous" and "paradoxical," requiring a step or two away from the comfort zone of prescribed binary thinking, which...