Creating an Archive: Froneriza Authors Writing Histories
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CREATING AN ARCHIVE: FRONERIZA AUTHORS WRITING HISTORIES, DOCUMENTING U.S.-MEXICO BORDER MILITARIZATION by Maira Elizabeth Álvarez A dissertation submitted to the Department of Hispanic Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Spanish Chair of Committee: Guillermo De los Reyes, Ph.D. Committee Member: Christina L. Sisk, Ph.D. Committee Member: María Elena Soliño, Ph.D. Committee Member: Lois Parkinson Zamora, Ph.D. University of Houston December 2019 Copyright 2019, Maira Elizabeth Álvarez DEDICATION Para mi madre, Petra Álvarez Carrizales iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My sincere and heartfelt gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Guillermo De Los Reyes, Dr. Christina L. Sisk, Dr. María Elena Soliño, and Dr. Lois Parkinson Zamora for generously offering their time, support, guidance and good will throughout this process. Without them I would not have made headway in the research. I also acknowledge with a deep gratefulness Dr. María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba for the recommendation of readings and border history. I wish to thank as well the Department of Hispanic Studies, the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Program, the Center for Mexican American Studies, and the Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies program at the University of Houston. I extend my thankfulness to my supervisors in the Spanish and Heritage Language Programs: Professor Flavia Belpoliti, Professor Alejandra Balestra, and Professor Marta Fairclough for the support and trust. I am deeply indebted to all my friends who always believed in me: Carolina Alonso, Cristina Campos, Jaime Cano, Rosario Casillas, Aida Durán, Sylvia Fernández, Josué Gutiérrez-González, Devon Jones, Emma López, Carlos Martínez, Gabriela Moreno, Pamela Quiroz, Natalia Rosales-Yeomans, Ana Villarreal, and Laura Zubiate. I sincerely want to give a special thanks to Pamela for the numerous ways she helped me to finish this research, and to Sylvia for the journey we began in digital humanities and for strength and energy to keep going even in the darkest moments. Any omission of friends and colleagues does not reflect a lack of gratitude. Last but not least mi agradecimiento a mi familia por el apoyo incondicional. iv ABSTRACT This research stems from the idea that fronteriza authors, from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, record the development of militarization along the region through their literary production. I argue that their texts are embedded with historical references of policing, surveillance and policies woven either as memories, testimonies, personal and collective accounts, and primary sources that become alternative histories. With this in mind, I propose that the collection of fictional narratives I analyze construct a literary archive from a fronteriza lens that offers an insight into their communities, region, and resilience against border militarization that also contest historical erasure. Chapter One, “Revisiting the Past: Contesting a Mechanism of Militarization,” analyzes mechanisms of militarization performed by Texas Rangers and the Border Patrol to prove the presence of a border militarization during the nineteenth century through the analysis of Shame the Stars by Guadalupe García McCall, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en La Frontera by Norma E. Cantú, and Callejón Sucre y otros relatos by Rosario Sanmiguel. As a result, three historical events emerged: The Plan de San Diego (1915), bath riots (1917), and the Mexican Repatriation (1920- 1939) documented through memories, testimonies, and primary sources. Chapter Two, “Collective Memories: Documenting the Emergence of Militarization,” examines surveillance practices by Border Patrol agents to reveal an escalation of border militarization through the narratives of Norma E. Cantú, Rosario Sanmiguel, and Lucrecia Guerrero’s collection of short stories Chasing Shadows. v Through memories and personal accounts fronterizas reveal the emergence of militarization woven in events such as Bracero Program (1942-1964), Operation Wetback (1954), and Operation Blockade (1993). Chapter Three, “A Record of Defiance: Challenging a Militarization System,” analyzes US policies that transformed the border into a hyper-surveillance region as recorded in the narratives of Delincuentos: historias del narcotráfico by Arminé Arjona. The narratives document through testimony, memory and personal accounts a history of marijuana policies embedded in the United States War on Drugs campaign, mass incarceration, and the beginning of major federal funding on the U.S.-Mexico border militarization. This work began with collections of short stories whose record of historical references confirmed the presence and evolution of a border militarization. As part of the development of this fronteriza literary archive, other fronteriza authors are to be incorporated as I intend to transfer my research into a digital humanities project for multiple publics to engage with the border region through fiction. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ..................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ v I. INTRODUCTION: CREATING AN ARCHIVE: FRONTERIZA AUTHORS WRITING HISTORIES, DOCUMENTING U.S.-MEXICO BORDER MILITARIZATION .............................................................................................. 1 II. CHAPTER ONE: REVISITING THE PAST: CONTESTING A MECHANISM OF MILITARIZATION ........................................................... 20 III. CHAPTER TWO: COLLECTIVE MEMORIES: DOCUMENTING THE EMERGENCE OF MILITARIZATION.……………………………………..67 IV. CHAPTER THREE: A RECORD OF DEFIANCE: CHALLENGING A MILITARIZATION SYSTEM……….……………………………………….118 V. CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF THE FRONTERIZA LITERARY ARCHIVE .......................................................................................................... 142 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................. 148 vii Introduction: Creating an Archive: Fronteriza Authors Writing Histories, Documenting U.S.-Mexico Border Militarization I write fiction not only because I have a passion for literature, but also because I am frustrated with history’s texts and archives. —Emma Pérez, “Queering the Borderlands” As a fronteriza from Laredo, Texas—a border city with a population of ninety-six percent Latinos—I witnessed my city transformed into a hyper-surveillance region and wondered how such militarization came to be. After extensive research I was able to locate a body of work by fronteriza authors1 that not only documented border militarization through historical references woven in narratives either as memories, testimonies, personal and collective accounts or primary sources, but also recorded a fronteriza/o knowledge and resilience against marginalization and historical erasure. I argue that their record of historical events unveils a mechanism of militarization—one that operates through policing, surveillance and policies that target non-Anglo communities in order to control the land and bodies along the border and that these acts of alternative documentation construct a literary archive from a fronteriza lens that offers 1. I will use term to refer to women authors from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and explain the term later in the chapter. 2. For a detail analysis of the emergence of the borderlands see Sonia Hernández, Working Women Into the 1 an insight into their communities and region that contest colonialist practices that privilege a white male history. With this in mind, I built my research from feminist theories mostly by women of color that offer strategies for transformative practices. For my theoretical framework I focus on two theories, the decolonial imaginary proposed by historian Emma Pérez on The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History, and theory in the flesh by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa on This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. I analyze fictional texts by fronteriza authors whose narratives document policing, surveillance, operations and policies linked to the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border described by sociologist Timothy J. Dunn on The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992: Low-intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Primary Texts In accordance with Debra A. Castillo and María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba, when it comes to border studies, it is important to clarify what side of the border is to be analyzed since it is important to recognize the differences and similarities involved in transnational analyses in order to prevent an intellectual colonialism (4). Similar to their work, Border Women: Writing from La Frontera, my research includes fronteriza authors form both sides of the border region. I focus on short stories since the succinctness of the narratives encapsulates references of a mechanism of militarization that facilitates the analysis of documentation of a historical record in the works of Rosario Sanmiguel, Callejón Sucre y otros relatos (1994), Norma Elia Cantú, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera (1995), Lucrecia Guerrero, Chasing Shadows (2000), Arminé Arjona, Delincuentos: historias del 2 narcotráfico (2009), and Guadalupe García