Borderlands
La Frontera
Interesting
enough I was sitting down to write today and I looked at the cover of Gloria
Anazaldia, “Borderlands”. Evening on the cover there is a line that separates English
from Spanish. Just as she separates authority, gender, preference on sexual orientations,
races and last the land. Even the Spanish word for borderlands is female with
the use of ‘la’ and the ending ‘a’ making the English that more dominantly male,
in contrast. Near the beginning of the book she describe the story of,
Huitziloposchtli, the
God of War, guided them to the place (that later became Mexico City) where an
eagle with a writhing serpent in its beak perched on a cactus. The eagle
symbolizes the spirit (as the sun, the father); the serpent symbolizes the soul
(as the earth, the mother). Together, they symbolize the struggle between the
spiritual/celestial/male and the underworld/earth/ feminine. The symbolic sacrifice
of the serpent to the “higher” masculine powers indicates that the patriarchal
order had already vanquished the feminine and matriarchal order in pre-Columbian
America.
(Anazaldia p.27)
In this one quote you get so much of what the writer is
doing. You can feel the divide, the split between the gender, and the power. In
the quote, we can see the struggle between female and male, shown as the female
in the mouth of the dominant male. However, there is a sense of unity, of
coming together as one. There is a balance that has to be in place between the
underworld and heaven for everything to be in order on this plain of earth. That
can also be said as the coming together of genders to create/reproduce the
living.
The same can be seen in the text
itself, the use of both English and Spanish. In the beginning the text is split
with white space and has the feeling like neither belongs together. A sense of
confrontation or segregation can be felt in that space, in that border. But later
she mixes them in the text or repeats them in English or Spanish, so the reader
can understand, and bridges a gap between the two, combining the two to become
one. She even admits she ‘prefers Spanglish’, a creation of both Spanish and English.
“At some point, on our way back to
a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between
the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once
and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to
disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause,
and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or might go
another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.”(p.100-101)
she describe not only gender but land as well. America and Mexico is divided by
a borderland. Gender divided by sex. She point out we can’t continues
eventually we have to stop. Act and not react. Don’t separate but use that
border to come together. Find a way to bridge the gap. The land between the
borders and the land on the pages of this book can build a bridge or at least
start to. She does this by not only using the contradiction, and the lines in between,
in order for the two differences to come together. She uses the separation to combine.
She states “there is something compelling about being both male and female,
about having an entry into both worlds.” Why can’t we be both? She does however
become both the serpent and the eagle, male and female, Spanish and English,
and the land. In the last sentence she says, “The soil prepared again and
again, impregnated worked on.” She compares the women to the soil thereby
comparing her to the land and the serpent. When finishing the book, I feel she
used the power of separation, and the actual power struggle seen in the book, to
change minds. This book has the power to bridge an understanding between cultures,
gender, race, language, preference on sexual orientations, authority and last
the land.
