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P.O.V. kicked off the discussion by asking
Claire 6 initial questions, the same 6 we are asking all the featured
guests.
P.O.V.: In your work, you consider the notion of 'borders.' What
is a border to you?
Claire: The border that comes to my mind immediately is the US-Mexico
border, which I have been studying for the past ten years. When
I began to work in border studies, I felt that the international
border's defining feature was the presence of the state — namely,
all the authorities and mechanisms for controlling people's movements
on the basis of citizenship and immigration status. But when one
considers how artists and writers represent the experience of living
in the border region or crossing the border, national identity is
only one factor that informs their perspective. Geopolitical borders
also interact with other differences, such as those pertaining to
class, race, religion, gender, sexuality, and language use. In Joyce
Carol Oates' short story about the US-Canada border, "Customs,"
the protagonist notes with growing panic that the age, race, and
gender of would-be border crossers influence who is detained at
the Windsor/Detroit border crossing. Some social scientists argue
that places like airports, hotels, and meat packing plants in the
United States should also be considered border zones, because at
these sites, the state routinely places citizenship and immigration
status under surveillance. There's a chilling moment in Helena María
Viramontes' novel Under the Feet of Jesus, that underscores
the way in which race and class identities can sometimes override
citizenship in those border zones. The protagonist, a Chicana migrant
worker in a California agricultural area, instinctively runs in
fear when she senses that La Migra (I.N.S. agents) is near, even
though she's a U.S. citizen. With the current trend toward delegating
duties formerly carried out by the INS to local police authorities,
I am concerned that scenes like this will begin to occur on a wider
scale than they do already.
P.O.V.: What's an important border that you've crossed in your life?
Claire: Finishing my doctoral degree was the most important border
I've crossed in my own life. During the period that I was writing
my thesis, I was broke. I worked as a temp in a psych ward, and
then, finally, I found a job with insurance, but it had an over
forty-hour work week. I couldn't have finished without the support
of my boyfriend's mom, who sent me home with a bag of leftovers
after every Sunday dinner; my best friend, who lent me the money
to live while I wrote the last two chapters; and my boyfriend (now
husband), who constantly encouraged me to keep at it. As luck would
have it, I got my first job at an elite university where the dean
blithely instructed us new profs to "set the agenda for research
in our field for the next ten years." Anyone familiar with
border studies can get a laugh out of that — it's a pretty
fractious field — but, actually, that's what I like about it.
The U.S.-Mexico border is so complex and multifaceted that I don't
think any single perspective can claim to speak for the border.
P.O.V.: If you could erase any border in your world, what would
it be?
Claire: Well, I support the right of labor to cross borders freely
in search of the best possible wages and living conditions. I do
not think that people who live in extreme poverty or violence should
have to remain where they are. And it seems absurd that residents
on one side of an international border should have to go through
so much red tape in order to work, shop, go to school, or visit
family on the other side. But I'm not sure that heavy construction
equipment is all that would be required to erase a border as fortified
as the U.S.-Mexico border. The rationale for the border blockades
and the militarization of the border that has been escalating since
the Reagan administration lies in policies that criminalize individual
undocumented workers (among other people), rather than policies
that approach immigration in terms of the profound role that the
U.S. plays in the global economy. If NAFTA had included provisions
for the upward harmonization of North American wage scales and the
establishment of a viable Mexican agricultural policy, for example,
Mexican workers might not be obliged to leave their country in order
to earn a living.
P.O.V.: When and how are borders useful?
Claire: Many artists and intellectuals from the mid-1980s on have
called for tearing down the U.S.-Mexico border and other geopolitical
borders, especially in the wake of German reunification. (See, for
example, the Borderhack
website.) I think that they are calling primarily for the demilitarization
of borders and greater freedom of movement across them, rather than
the dissolution of nations per se. How many Canadians and Mexicans
would favor abandoning the nation in order to join the U.S. as part
of some new governmental structure? Although there are many obvious
criticisms of the exclusionary logic of nationalism, the nation
as a thing to be taken for granted remains elusive for many people
around the world. I think that the concept of borders may be useful
in articulating the goals of communal struggles for self-determination
— not necessarily along national lines — especially in
places where current borders are the result of colonial governmental
structures.
P.O.V.: This episode of P.O.V.'s Borders concentrates on borders
as a physical reality, in terms of people moving from one place
to another and having to cross mental and literal borders to do
that. What, in your experience, is the most contested border?
Claire: I'm sure that there are many candidates for the most contested
border, but I don't have the breadth of knowledge to hierarchize
them! The border with which I am the most familiar, the U.S.-Mexico
border, is contested enough.
P.O.V.: Expand our borders. What's a book, movie, piece of music,
website, etc. that challenges or engages with the idea of 'borders'
that we should know about but perhaps don't?
Claire: I have so many favorite authors and artists from the U.S.-Mexico
border region that I could write pages in response to this question.
I'll try to limit my answer to a few books that might not be well-known.
The first is El silencio que la voz de todas quiebra: Mujeres
y víctimas de Ciudad Juárez [Silence Broken by
All Our Voices: Women and Victims of Ciudad Juárez] (Ediciones
del Azar, 1999), authored by a seven-member collective of female
journalists. The book is about the feminicidio, or mass serial murders
of women in the Ciudad Juárez area that began around 1993.
The book commemorates the victims of the feminicidio in life rather
than in death through compilation of moving testimonials by their
family and friends and creative first-person narratives. The same
year El silencio was published, the authors saw portions
of their work plagiarized by a Mexico City-based journalist, Víctor
Ronquillo, for his own "true crime" book Las muertas
de Juárez [The Dead Women of Juárez]. Ronquillo,
an in-house writer for the publishing house Planeta, released his
book after the press had reneged on a contract for the journalists'
collective. Ronquillo's book became a bestseller, while El silencio
remains relatively obscure to binational audiences — so I'd
like to take this opportunity to publicize it and recommend it to
readers.
Another book that I found creative and thought provoking, and that
contributes to the current wave of scholarship on comparative border
studies is the exhibition catalogue Distant Relations/Cercanías
Distantes: Chicano Irish Mexican Art and Critical Writing, edited
by Trisha Ziff (Smart Art Press, 1995). The catalogue looks at cultural
similarities and differences between Chicanos and Mexicans, and
Irish and Irish-Americans. When I was in high school, I read about
Irish history in an effort to supplement my own limited knowledge
about my ethnic heritage. I suspect that in some sense my interest
in borders stems from early reading about the border between the
Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. When I read Distant
Relations I revisited my high school years, as well as my subsequent
scholarly formation, from a critical perspective.
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