Gloria Anzaldua Gloria anzaldiia is also the co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back la0m把 The New mestiza aunt lute books SAN FRANCISCO
Copyright @1987 by Gloria Anzaldua Acknowledgements To you who walked with me upon my path and who held First Edition a hand when I stumbled; to you who brushed past me at crossroads never to touch me 16-15 Aunt Lute Book Company to you whom I never chanced to meet but who inhabit PO. Box 410687 orderlands similar to mine to you for whom the borderlands is unknown territory Holy Relics"first appeared in Conditions Six, 1980 minist Arts Journal, VoL. 4, #1 to Kit Quan, for feeding me and listening to me rant and Cervicide"first appeared in Labyris, A Fer Winter 1983 to Melanie Kaye/ Kantrowitz, for believing in me and being Ene nombre de todas las madres que han perdido sus hijos en la guerra"first there for me; pearce Joan Pinkvoss, my ditor and publisher, midwife Cover and Text Design: Pamela Wilson Design Studio dinaire, whose understanding, caring, and balanced mixture of gentle prodding and pressure not only helped me bring this Cover Art: Pamela Wilson baby "to term, but helped to create it; these images and words are for you Typesetting: Grace Harwood and Comp-Type, Fort Bragg, CA To the production staff at Spinsters/Aunt Lute who bore Production: Cindy Cleary Lorraine grassano he pressure of impossible deadlines well: Martha Davis whose Martha davis Ambrosia marvin invaluable and excellent copy-editing has made the material Debra Debondt apus molina nore readable and cohesive; Debra De Bondt who worked long osana Francescato Sukey Wilder Amelia gonzalez Kathleen Wilkinson and hard to keep the book on schedule; Pam Wilson and Grace Harwood Printed in the U.S.A to Frances Doughty, Juanita Ramos, Judith Waterman ales, Mandy Covey and Elana Dykewomon for their support and encouragement, as well as feedback, on various pieces; to my San Francisco: Aunt Lute friends, students and colleagues in the ADP program in Vermont p,;prt,122 College, Women's Voices Writing Workshop, UCSC,and writers who participated in my writing workshops in NYC, New Haven, sBN1879960125(pbk):59.95 San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Austin, Texas, in particu lar: Pearl Olson, Paula Ross, Marcy Alancraig, Maya valverde 1. Mexican-American Border Region-Poetry, 2. Mexican-American r Region-Civilization. Ariban, Tirsa Quinones, Beth Brant, Chrystos, Elva Pere Trevino, Victoria Rosales. Christian McEwen. Roz Calvert. Nina PS3551N95B61987 81.54-dc19 入CB760M8 Newington, and Linda Muckle
The homeland. aztlan E l otro mexic et espacio es erritono nacional Este el esfuerzo de todos nuestros berman progress Los Tigres del Norte The Aztecas del norte,,. com pose the largest single trib or nation of Anishinabeg(Indians)found in the United States Some call themselves Chicanos and see themselves homeland is Aztlan the U.S. Southy Wind tugging at my sleeve eet sinking into the sand I stand at the edge where earth touches ocean a gentle comir stark silhouette of houses gutted by waves, lifts crumbling into the se silver waves marbled with spumeorder fence gashing a hole under the
The Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro Mexico The Homeland, Aztlan/ E/ otro Mexico Miro el mar atacar This is my home la cerca en border Field Park his thir con sus buchones de agua, an Easter Sunday resurrection of the brown blood in my veins But the skin of the earth is seamless The sea cannot be fenced Oigo el florido del mar, el respiro del aire, my heart surges to the beat of the sea. To show the white man what she thought of his in the gray haze of the sun I the gulls shrill cry of hunger Yemaya blew that wire fence down. the tangy smell of the sea seeping into me. This land was Mexican once I walk through the hole in the fence Indian to the other side Under my fingers I feel the gritty wire And will be again ted by 139 of the salty breath of the sea del mundo gabacho al del mojado Beneath the iron sky lo pasado me estira patras Mexican children kick their soccer ball across y lo presente pa' 'delante un after it, entering the U.S. Que la virgen de guadalupe me cuide Ay ayay, soy mexicana de este lado I press my hand to the steel he U.S,Mexican border es una berida abierta where the rippling from the sea where Tijuana touches San Diego Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds mergin orm a third country-a border culture. Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from this"Tortilla Curtain" turning into el rio grande them. a border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by flowing down to the flatlands the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a con of the Magic Valley of South Texas stant state of transition, The prohibited and forbidden are its its mouth emptying into the gulf habitants. Los atravesados live here: the se rse,the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the 1, 950 mile-long open wound half-breed, the half dead; in short, those who cross over, pass dividing a pueblo, a culture, ver, or go through the confines of the"normal. "Gringos in the running down the length of my body, U.S. Southwest consider the inhabitants of the borderlands staking fence rods in my fles ors documents or not splits me splits me whether they re Chicanos, Indians or Blacks, Do not enter, tres- passers will be raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot. The only legitimate"inhabitants are those in power, the whites and those
4 The Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro Mexico The Homeland, Aztlan/ El otro Mexico who align themselves with whites. Tension grips the inhabitants on sus ocho tribur salieron of the borderlands like a virus. ambivalence and unrest reside de la"cueva del origen. there and death is no stranger los aztecas siguieron al dios huitzilopochtli In the fields, la migra. My aunt No corr4” don't run. They'll think you,'re del otro lao. "In the confu Huitzilopochtli, the God of War, guided them to the place (that later became Mexico City)wher re an eagle with a writhing English. couldn't tell them he was fifth generation Ameri- serpent in its beak perched on a cactus. The eagle symbolizes the can. Sin papeles--he did not carry his birth certificate to spirit(as the sun, the father); the serpent symbolizes the soul (as he earth, the mother). Together, they symbolize the struggle watched Se lo llevaron. He tried to smile when he looked between the spiritual/celestial/male and the underworld/earth/ back at us. to raise his fist. But I saw the shame pushing his feminine. The symbolic sacrifice of the serpent to the "hi head down, I saw the terrible weight of shame hunch his masculine powers indicates that the patriarchal order had already shoulders. They deported him to Guadalajara by plane. The vanquished the feminine and matriarchal order in pre- furthest he'd ever been to Mexico was Reynosa, a small Columbian America. border town opposite Hidalgo, Texas, not far from McAllen. Pedro walked all the way to the Valley. Se lo At the beginning of the 16th century, the Spaniards and i llevaron sin un centavo al pobre Se vino andando desde Hernan Cortes invaded Mexico and, with the help of tribes that he Aztecs had subjugated, conquered it. Before the Conques there were twenty-five million Indian people in Mexico and the During the original peopling of the Americas, the first Yucatan. Immediately after the Conquest, the Indian population habitants migrated across the Bering Straits and walked south had been reduced to under seven million. By 1650, only one-and across the continent. The oldest evidence of humankind in the a-half-million pure-blooded Indians ained. The mestizos U. s. -the Chicanos' ancient Indian ancestors-was found in who were genetically equipped to survive pox, measles, and Texas and has been dated to 35000 B C a In the South west United typhus(Old World diseases to which the natives had no immun States archeologists have found 20,000-year-old campsites of the D, founded a new hybrid race and inherited Central and South Indians who migrated through, or permanently occupied, the America. En 1521 naco wna nueva raza, el mestizo, el mexicano Southwest, Aztlan-land of the herons land of whiteness the (people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood), a race that had Edenic place of origin of the Azteca never existed before. Chicanos Mexican-Americans, are the In 1000 B. C,, descendants of the original Cochise people ffspring of those first matings grated into what is now Mexico and Our Spanish, Indian, and mestizo ancestors explored and became the direct ancestors of many of the Mexican people. ( The settled parts of the U.S. South west as early as th e sixteen chise culture of the Southwest is the parent culture of the century. For every gold-hungry conquistador and soul-hungry Aztecs. The Uto-Aztecan languages stemmed from the language missionary who came north from Mexico, ten to twenty Indians of the Cochise people. )4 The Aztecs(the Nahuatl word for and mestizos went along as porters or in other capacities. For people of Aztlan) left the Southwest in 1168 AD the Indians. this constituted a return to the place of origin, Aztlan, thus making Chicanos originally and secondarily indi Now let us go genous to the Southwest. Indians and mestizos from central Tibueqrue, Mexico intermarried with North American Indians. The contin- Vamonos, vamonos. ual intermarriage between Mexican and American Indians and paniards formed an even greater mestizaje