The Fence and the River by Claire F. Fox (review)

Claire F. Fox.The Fence andtheRiver. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1999. 188p. Francisco Manzo-Robledo 1JKuHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY One morning two years ago, I was in the Los Angeles International Airport. That evening, I was sitting on the stairs leading to the doors ofthe EstrelU de Oro's bus station in Acapulco, Mexico. What I experienced in such dissimilar settings made me realize the difficulties associated with creating a fair and accurate representation — "figuration" as Frederic Jameson calls it — ofeach city; focusing on the images and interests of each city's people. A few days ago, the mayor ofJuárez, Mexico, complained to the Mexican Attorney General about the labeling of the Juárez Cartel, asking instead for the alternate name Carrillo Fuentes'Cartel, in order to avoid misrepresentation ofthat city. An attempt to study and comprehend these environments, products of post modernity, would call for a postmodern rationalization. Even when one could find some important elements for representation between Los Angeles and Acapulco, those elements multiply and become much harder to define forcities likeTijuana, Nogales, Juárez, or Laredo, all ofthem located on the U.S.-Mexican border. The Fence andthe River attempts precisely that. It focuses on a collection ofaesthetic productions vying for a share ofrepresenting the border. Fox's book consists ofan introduction and five chapters. According to the author , the study is "about representations of the U.S.-Mexican border that have appeared in literature, art, and mass media in the twentieth century, focusing especially on texts from the past three decades" (1). To do that, Fox "decided to explore three major areas of enquiry: artistic productions about the border; the work of political activists on the border; and the writings of U.S. and Mexican intellectuals about the border" (6). Fox organizes the book's critical essays on creative productions about the U.S.Mexican border according to genre: the novel [Luis Spota's Murieron a mitaddel rio (They Died in the Midle ofthe River), 1948], cinema [Alejandro Galindo's EspaUas mojadas (Wetbacks), 1953; María Novaros Eljardín delEdén (The Garden ofEden), 1994], and performance [Guillermo Gómez-Peñas Border Brujo, 1988-90 and Year ofthe White Bear: The New World (B)order, 1992-94]. Chapters one to three in the book try to establish the context for depicting the border, looking for a relationship between the socio-cultural environment and its representation in the arts, as well as the effect ofimplementing economic strategies dictated by NAFTA and GATT. Although the discussion here attempts to be unbiased, it is noticeable how the author underscores in several occasions the ex132 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * SPRING 2000 ploitation ofnationalism as a last resort for the Mexican intellectuals. The author neglects to point out that nationalism is the only door open to criticism due to the lack ofmore definite proofofthe effect ofNAFTA on the Mexican population (although this is questionable: it is widely known how many Mexican companies have closed their doors due to lack of competitiveness). In addition, the authoritative stance and the unwillingness of President Zedillo's government to correct their course, makes the use ofnationalism, ifnot rational, at least appropriate . Critical essays on aesthetic products selected make up the rest ofthe chapters . These essays attempt to close the gap between images and interests ofpeople at the border. Representation of the "other," be it an individual, gender, city, or region, is always a hard feature to achieve. It does not matter how complete the task is intended to be. Although The Fence and the River intends to provide a complete picture ofthe U.S.-Mexican border and attempts to portray its true essence, there are noticeable holes. For the cities in question, there is no discussion of recent socio-cultural factors that have strongly influenced not only — but mainly— the border, but the rest ofthe Mexican Republic, from the border to the peoples in the high sierras: the culture ofdrug trafficking, or narcotráfico, eulogized in the popular narcocorridos. Otherwise, The Fence and the River, achieves the author's stated goal. Myonly othercriticismwould be the "desecration" ofthe popularsong "Canción Mixteca," a kind ofhymn for the lonely Mexican away from home. The book includes...