iMex XVII. Transborder Matters, año 9, n°17 | Romana Radlwimmer(ed.)

The discourse about borders, frontiers and all sorts of liminal phenomena, including transbordering or border-crossing, seems to be older than the current one on globalization and post-colonialism. The idea that globalization will wipe out all borders and limitations is problematic, and the strange, a result of cultural construction, will not disappear. Borders are never only limes, borders, fences, or walls, but at the same time they are also spaces between contact zones. Human space is...

The perspective on the Mexican-US Border is modified when looked at as frontera norte or as Southern Border. Along this enormous division line, the crossing of persons or merchandise between two distinct geopolitical entities becomes possible or is restricted. It is an emblematic zone to conceive the phenomenon of crossing. Contemporary literature, cinema and arts reflect a focus on displacements, a tendency that can be understood as a movement towards a transborder approach. Which phenomena...

This paper is a personal account of the intentions behind our reggaeton ME DUELE LA CARA DE SER TAN GÜERX (MY FACE SO GÜERO IT HURTS), a song that we wrote with the desire to challenge the internal and external güero – in our bodies and our group, and by/in our surrounding/s, respectively –, as well as to thwart the reggaeton genre itself. The paper combines collective narration and analysis of Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept nepantla,...

In this article I focus on a pedagogical notion inspired by Anzaldua’s ‘left hand maneuvers’ as critical thinking, which I call Tilting Pedagogies. Tilting Pedagogies are left hand maneuvers – connecting critical operations – that cross over to meet social urgencies as a way to incarnate theoretical thought inside the classroom. Tilting pedagogies represent those notions, actions and maneuvers that allow us to ‘incline’ – tilt – from academia to social urgencies, from Spanish to...

iMex XVIII. US-MEXICAN ENCOUNTERS IN CONTEMPORARY NORTH AMERICAN FILM / ENCUENTROS ESTADOUNIDENSES-MEXICANOS EN LA OBRA CINEMATOGRÁFICA NORTEAMERICANA CONTEMPORÁNEA, 2020/2, año 9, n° 18, 148 pp.| Guido Rings / Stephen Trinder(ed.)

An archaeology of media approach guides this analysis of the film Coco, a 3D animated fiction movie inspired by the Day of the Dead or Dia de los muertos in Mexico, and released by Pixar Animation Studios, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, in 2017. In particular, I explore the tensions and contradictions within Pixar's most successful movie at the box office in taking a stand against Donald Trump's presentation of Mexicans as "rapists and...

Drawing upon hypermasculine, gun-wielding characteristics associated with the political right and its military industrial complex, this study critiques cinematic representations of the criminal enemy Other in changing political landscapes. Focusing in particular on the filmic representation of Mexicans in recently released US blockbuster film, Rambo: Last Blood (2019), we critique how the current political climate marked by alt-right, ethno-nationalist constructs in the era of Trump has given rise to anti-immigration discourses that reinforce racialised fears...

This essay concentrates on two bilingual immigration films, both of which conclude in a happy ending on the southern side of the border: No se aceptan devoluciones / Instructions not Included (Eugenio Derbez, 2013) and Pulling Strings / Amor a Primer Visa (Pitipol Ybarra, 2013) by the transborder media network Pantelion Films. In the context of cultural and economic politics of Latinx media within media, I examine the production and distribution company Pantelion Films as...

This essay examines the performative power of fiction in J. Cuarón's film Desierto (2015). It seeks to determine if the esthetics of this film make the audience aware of the dangers provoked by the reemergence of the nationalist, racist and supremacist rhetoric during Donald Trump's presidential campaign. This article questions whether or not the artistic choices made by the director merely reinforce immigrant and white American supremacist archetypes. Analyzing the concept of engagement in literature,...

This study examines in how far Ben Masters manages to combine in his nature film The River and the Wall (2017) two goals: to document the borderlands and to explore the potential impact of a future wall on the natural environment. In this context, the study explores in detail how discourses around nature, border fences and immigration are presented in the film and to what extend they are critical of Trump's wall project. The author...

This study investigates the ways in which the Netflix Narcos television series reinforces negative images of Latinos as dangerous drug dealers who threaten the safety and sanctity of U.S. citizens. It also explores how it both reflects and supports President Trump's politics of fear that not only got him elected, but has broadened and strengthened his support from conservatives since. An in-depth exploration of selected scenes from episodes of three Netflix series: Narcos, Narcos: Mexico,...

El Paso Native Laura Varela discusses her work as a filmmaker and artist. Her first person essay examines the influences and awareness of the world when growing up on the U.S.-Mexican border. Segundo de Febrero is a short documentary she directed from her home base in San Antonio, TX. It was filmed in 2017 at Christ the King Church, a historic Catholic parish deep in the West Side of San Antonio, a historic and predominantly...

This article understands the US-Mexican border not only as a border between nations, but as a border between denominations. Chicano literary texts show how (mostly) Mexican Catholicism and (mostly) US-Protestantism are both transcended into a third, unique religiousness that does not completely reject neither old nor new, but constructs an identity of one’s own – a transborder and transdenominational identity. Various denominational and religious references on different narrative levels serve the authors as literary means...

The photographs shown present the outcome of the workshop Nepantleras fotografiando. Exploring identities through the camera that was held in 2016 as part of the exhibition project A(r)mando Vo(i)ces in the Vienna Central Library. During the workshop, Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s drawings formed a starting point to understand some of her concepts that each participant was invited to connect to through a series of photographs. These outcomes focused on the search for visual representations which would...

The purpose of this manuscript is to reflect and to contribute to the debates on the issue of transborder relations, its definitions, border knowledge, the daily life on the border, and the relations between scholars on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. I take as a starting point the discussions of one of the panels of the LASA 2016 Congress in Puerto Rico. From there I consider and elaborate on a transborder definition, then I...

This article discusses Mexican literary interventions on the Mexican-US-border, during the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. Linked to the question what qualifies today’s literature written in the border region on the border as subject matter, it revisits the depiction of transfronterizo culture and borderlands in three novels written by Mexican authors of two generations: Luis Humberto Crostwaite’s La luna siempre será un amor difícil (1994), Heriberto Yépez’ A.B.U.R.T.O. (2005) and Yuri...

One would consider Chicano literary figures Luis J. Rodriguez and Richard Rodriguez to be very different writers and from the opposite political spectrum. But there is common ground, too. For myresearch on Turkish-German and Mexican-American literature in comparison, I visited various authors and activists to tell a story of belonging and participation in contexts of migration. The essay Between Chicano Marxist and Catholic Thought is based on meetings and interviews with the Chicano veteran Luis...

This article draws on US president Donald Trump's assertions about Mexican culture and migration from Latin America to explore how far his hegemonic rhetoric has contributed to shaping images of Mexico in Hollywood film production. Informed by Van Dijk's concept of political discourse and Fairclough's notion of media discourse, this study proposes a qualitative film analysis to approach the research objective. In particular, it examines continuites and discontinuities in two key films produced during two...

In the last decade, Hollywood studios have produced two feature length animations centering on Mexico's Dia de los muertos: Reel FX Creative Studios' The Book of Life (2014) and Disney Pixar's Coco (2017). Through their differing exploration of Mexican cultural heritage onscreen, both animations serve contrasting ideological functions that contribute to larger cultural discourse about the relationship between Mexico and the US. The Book of Life was released two years prior to the controversial presidential...

This essay examines the performative power of fiction in J. Cuarón's film Desierto (2015). It seeks to determine if the esthetics of this film make the audience aware of the dangers provoked by the reemergence of the nationalist, racist and supremacist rhetoric during Donald Trump's presidential campaign. This article questions whether or not the artistic choices made by the director merely reinforce immigrant and white American supremacist archetypes. Analyzing the concept of engagement in literature,...

This article analyses ideas of retributive justice and US interventionism through the Sicario films. By identifying cross-border interventions into Mexico by the US as retributive justice in the form of nemesis, this article highlights the problematic representation of Mexico in North American cinema. It brings together discussion of equilibrium – as a structuralist narrative feature highlighted by Todorov (1969) – with the socio-political analysis of Ronfeldt (1994) to demonstrate how the representation of US interventions...