The Border Reader

Gilberto Rosas is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Latina/o Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of Barrio Libre: Criminalizing States and Delinquent Refusals of the New Frontier and Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border. Mireya Loza is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University and author of Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom.

Introduction: On Theories from the Ends / Gilberto Rosas and Mireya Loza  3
Part I: Locating the Border
1. Empire and the Origins of Twentieth-Century Migration from Mexico to the United States / Gilbert G. González and Raúl Fernández  13
2. Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants / Cecilia Menjívar and Leisy J. Abrego  45
3. Necro-Subjection: On Borders, Asylum, and Making Dead to Let Live / Gilberto Rosas  87
4. Reimagining Culture and Power against Late Industrial Capitalism and Other Forms of Conquest through Border Theory and Analysis / Alejandro Lugo  108
5. Tijuana Cuir / Sayak Valencia Triana  136
Part II: Documenting Identities
6. The United States, Mexico and Machismo / Américo Paredes  149
7. The Spanish Settlement of Texas and Arizona / Martha Menchaca  168
8. A Place Called Home: A Queer Political Economy of Mexican Immigrant Men’s Family Experiences / Lionel Cantú  199
9. Migrations / Patricia Zavella  222
Part III: En/Gendering Borders
10. Changing Chicano Narratives / Renato Rosaldo  265
11. Feminism on the Border: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics / Sonia Saldívar-Hull  282
12. Trans-migrations: Agency and Confinement at the Limits of Sovereignty / Martha Balaguera  301
13. Carne, Carnales, and the Carnivalesque / José E. Limón  324
Part IV: Othering Spaces, Othering Bodies
14. The Erotic Zone: Sexual Transgression on the U.S.-Mexican Border / Ramón Gutiérrez  345
15. Medicalizing the Mexican: Immigration, Race, and Disability in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States / Natalia Molina  355
16. “Looking Like a Lesbian”: The Organization of Sexual Monitoring at the U.S.–Mexican Border / Eithne Luibhéid  372
17.  Migrant Melancholia: Emergent Discourses of Mexican Migrant Traffic in Transnational Space / Alicia Schmidt Camacho  402
Part V: Border Crossings
18. “Awakening to a Nightmare”: Abjectivity and Illegality in the Lives of Undocumented 1.5-Generation Latino Immigrants to the United States  / Roberto G. Gonzales and Leo R. Chavez  431
19. Regions of Refuge in the United States: Issues, Problems, and Concerns for the Future of Mexican-Origin Populations in the United States / Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez  466
20. The Battle for the Border: Notes on Autonomous Migration, Transnational Communities, and the State / Néstor Rodríguez  500
21. Yo Era Indígena: Race, Modernity and the Transformational Politics of Transnational Labor / Mireya Loza  518
Part VI: New Border Imaginaries
22. Tijuana: Hybridity and Beyond:  A Conversation with Néstor García Canclini / Fiamma Montezemolo  563
23. The Art of Witness / Rosa-Linda Fregoso  585
24. Amnesty or Abolition? Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement / Kelly Lytle Hernández  608
25. How to Tame a Wild Tongue / Gloria Anzaldúa  628
26. “Wavering on the Horizon of Social Being”: The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the Legacy of Its Radical Character in Ámerico Paredes’s George Washington Gómez / María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo  639
Contributors  671
Credits  673
Index  677