Mexican Voices of the Border Region: Mexicans and Mexican Americans Speak about Living along the Wall

by Laura Velasco Ortiz, Oscar F. Contreras, Sandra del Castillo (Translator)

Overview

Every day, 40,000 commuters cross the U.S. Mexico border at Tijuana San Diego to go to work. Untold numbers cross illegally. Since NAFTA was signed into law, the border has become a greater obstacle for people moving between countries. Transnational powers have exerted greater control over the flow of goods, services, information, and people.

Mexican Voices of the Border Region examines the flow of people, commercial traffic, and the development of relationships across this border. Through first-person narratives, Laura Velasco Ortiz and Oscar F. Contreras show that since NAFTA, Tijuana has become a dynamic and significant place for both nations in terms of jobs and residents. The authors emphasize that the border itself has different meanings whether one crosses it frequently or not at all. The interviews probe into matters of race, class, gender, ethnicity, place, violence, and political economy as well as the individual's sense of agency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592139101
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	03/18/2011
Series:	Voices of Latin American Life
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	365,468
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Laura Velasco Ortiz is Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. She is the author of Mixtec Transnational Identity, an updated translation of her book El regreso de la comunidad: Migración indígena y agentes étnicos. Los mixtecos en la frontera México–Estados Unidos.

Oscar F. Contreras is a Professor in the Department of Social Studies at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. He is the author of many articles and books, most recently Aprendizaje tecnológico y desarrollo local: La industria automotriz en el norte de México.

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword, by Arthur Schmidt
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Lived Borders
1. Living on the Agricultural Frontier
2. Home, Sweet Industrial Home
3. Sex without Kisses, Love with Abuse
4. A Straight-Dealing Drug Trafficker
5. An Indigenous Woman Street Vendor
6. A Caregiver Commuter
7. A Border Acrobat
8. The Mexicali Panther
9. A Young Mexican American
10. Guarding the American Dream
Conclusion: Opportunity and Uncertainty
Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Nowhere is the disparity between the wealth of America and the poverty of Mexico more apparent than along the border, and Ortiz and Contreras's interviews and narratives examine the experiences of people from a variety of perspectives. The book is organized around four major themes: the Border Never Crossed; The Border as Backdrop; the Everyday Border; and the Border Traversed. In the first, we meet Rosa, a 47-year-old woman who worked for 20 years as a prostitute in Tijuana, raising and educating three daughters (one of whom is now in college in Baja California). Contributions in "The Everyday Border" section shed light on smugglers (of drugs and people both), and on the other side of the fence, we meet American citizens of Mexican origin, including Julius Alatorre, a Border Patrol official whose conflicted relationship with Mexico shows how complicated this issues is. These stories, unfolding in interview form, paint a portrait of an infamous region almost synonymous with drugs and violence. While the narratives themselves are intensely personal, the framework is Academic; Ortiz and Contreras do an excellent job of grounding these narratives in a spirit of intellectual inquiry without draining the emotional impact. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly