 | Mexican Voices of the Border Region: Mexicans and Mexican Americans Speak about Living along the Wall Subjects: Mexican-American Border Region -- Social conditions; Mexican-American Border Region -- Emigration and immigration -- Social aspects; Mexicans -- Mexican-American Border Region -- Social conditions; Mexican Americans -- Mexican-American Border Region -- So; 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.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. 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 . |
