Las Mujeres Del Otro Lado: a Critique of the Representations of Mexican Women at the U.S.-Mexico Border
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LAS MUJERES DEL OTRO LADO: A CRITIQUE OF THE REPRESENTATIONS OF MEXICAN WOMEN AT THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER By Adriana Martinez-Fernandez A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Hispanic Cultural Studies 2011 ABSTRACT LAS MUJERES DEL OTRO LADO: A CRITIQUE OF THE REPRESENTATIONS OF MEXICAN WOMEN AT THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER By Adriana Martinez-Fernandez This dissertation analyzes cultural representations of Mexican border women and their interactions with their political and social environment. Short stories, novels, documentaries, plays, testimonial literature and films on the Mexican women at the U.S.-Mexico border are crucial to the understanding of gendered constructions at la frontera, as they formulate a metacommentary to a variety of complex issues ‘on the ground.’ That is to say, the portrayals of border women unquestionably attest to often-clashing perspectives on culture, nation, sexuality and class. This dissertation focuses on the following texts: Chapter 1 centers on Ciudad Juárez, examining Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s novel Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (2005) and the documentary film La Batalla de las Cruces (2005), directed by Rafael Bonilla. These texts have been chosen because their portrayals of juarense women address the discourse of victimization from different perspectives within the context of the hundreds of murders of women that have afflicted this city with impunity since 1993. These texts reflect the paradoxes that emerge either from underlining the helpless condition of the victims or from creating a public persona for the activists campaigning against the murders. Chapter 2, which deals with the depictions of women from Tijuana, uses three short stories by Rosina Conde and the documentary Maquilápolis: City of Factories (2006) by directors Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre, Ackowledging that in Tijuana the figure of the prostitute and other “public women” constantly appear as symbolic presences, these texts best address reinterpretations and recreations of the “public woman,” with all of its paradoxical negotiations, from contrasting feminist perspectives. Chapter 3 centers on the feature films Bread and Roses (2000) and La Misma Luna (2007) and the testimonies compiled by Alicia Alarcón La migra me hizo los mandados [The Border Patrol Ate my Dust] (2002) in order to study the portrayals of women migrants, These texts are analyzed through the discussion of the iconic Malinche, as all women represented in them are touched, in one way or another, by the shadow of La Malinche. This Mexican icon symbolically interacts with the female protagonists of these texts as they are also risking being associated with the “treachery” of leaving their own culture and accepting a different culture as migrants. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the representation of the women who stay in Mexico while their loved ones leave to cross la frontera, through the play Mujer on the border (2005), adapted by María Muro and Marta Aura, and the documentary film Letters from the Other Side (2006), by Heather Courtney. These cultural representations are poignant because the women characterized in them present ambivalent responses to traditional roles as mothers and to the forces of globalization. This chapter explores how the antithetical forces of resistance and acquiescence affect the women who stay. The imaginary created by the U.S.-Mexico border generates paradoxical interconnections between the private and the public, between reproductive and productive women’s work, between traditional and non-traditional women’s roles. At the intersection of gender and sexuality, national identity and globalization, this study examines how the representations of Mexican border women paradoxically contribute to both erasing and reifying sexualized and maternal stereotypes while also performing a circumscribed agency, which fits the inherent ambivalence of the border. Copyright by ADRIANA MARTINEZ-FERNANDEZ 2011 A mis dos chicos, motor de este trabajo, el uno aliento desde el principio, el otro mi mayor orgullo. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project could not have been completed without the staunch support of many; particularly those who never failed to provide love, understanding and encouragement throughout my time in Michigan and in Canada. My most sincere gratitude goes to all my teachers in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; each one of them served as a role model for the profession that I cherish; each class and discussion an example of the intellectual honesty and passion that I hope to instill in my students. My heartfelt thanks goes to my directors, Miguel Cabañas and Sheila Contreras, for inspiring, supporting and challenging me throughout this project. I also wish to acknowledge the other members of my committee, Eduardo Guízar and Joseba Gabilondo, for their guidance and shared ideas. Dagmar Herzog and Peter Beattie also contributed to this dissertation by greatly affecting my reflections on feminism and Latin America. I am most grateful to Prof. Douglas Noverr for his interest in my project, for attending my defense and for his useful comments on my dissertation. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the College of Arts and Letters gave me much support and encouragement when I was a graduate student at Michigan State University, contributing greatly to my academic development and to the research this dissertation is based on. Particularly, I wish to mention the 2006 Johannes Sachse Memorial Award and the 2004 Departmental Retention Award for academic excellence that my department granted me when I was beginning my doctoral studies, as their belief in my potential motivated me immeasurably. Research awards received from this unit and from the College of Arts and Letters also allowed me to visit Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana and Austin, Texas in 2007 in order to conduct research and vi attain an invaluable experiential feel for la frontera. In this trip, the generous help of Rosario San Miguel, Socorro Tabuenca, Julia Monárrez and José Manuel Valenzuela was priceless! From picking us up at the airport to agreeing to interviews to helping us cross the border, their assistance will always be appreciated and remembered. I also wish to profusely thank the talented Marta Aura, who so kindly sent me the script of Mujer on the border without even knowing me, thus allowing me to have access to this pivotal text. Finally, without the fellowships granted to me by the College of Arts and Letters, I simply would not have been able to finish this project. I am so grateful that they chose to present me with the 2008 Merit Fellowship Award, the 2009 Dissertation Completion Fellowship and the Summer Support Fellowship that same year, not only because of the funding but also because of the faith in this project evinced by their generous support. I also wish to thank Pearson College, my alma mater and current employer, for the monies provided as professional development to continue writing through the summer of 2010. Many friends, colleagues and family stood by me and motivated my writing in ways too numerous to count: from offering advice and reading parts of the manuscript, to being example of professionalism and showing me that ¡sí se puede!, to having coffee, great food, beer or a swim, to helping me move and simply by cheering me on and growing up with me. Carmen Albaladejo, Natalia Ruiz, Isabel Álvarez, Gustavo Rodríguez, Bicho Azevedo, Amanda Smith, María Teresa Beltrán, Steve and Alana Tuckey, Tim Ball, Deb Stetler, Jane E. Freer and Christian Bock: mil gracias, por todo. I also want to thank profoundly my family in Mexico for their unconditional love, their visits and their sharing of adventures since I moved al Norte. To all mis tías, my mom, my dad, my brother Andrés and his about-to-expand family, there are not enough words to thank you. Abuelita, gracias por cuidarme y cuidarnos. Te extraño mucho. vii This day would not have come without my husband and the love of my life, Jim Freer, who believed in my abilities when I wouldn’t and has been my rock y mi faro since we met. I couldn’t have hoped for a better life partner and I look forward to many more years together and to sitting at his graduation one day. This dissertation is dedicated to him and to our son Aidan Marcos, may he read it one day as I remember our first real summer together, me typing these pages as he napped, hoping that the inequities that so incensed me with regards to la frontera y mi México have either vanished as a bad dream or are battles he will choose to successfully fight. viii PREFACE The process that originally encouraged my critical thinking around the topic of textual representations of Mexican border women holds important parallelisms with the notions that are central to this study. I had been living in the United States for several years as a graduate student, mostly focusing my academic interests in the portrayal of women in literature, with a particular interest in the textual subversions hidden in these depictions, when I took a course in Border Literatures with Prof. Sheila Contreras which made me question my own locus of representation. For the first time I realized that my position as a Spanish-speaking Mexicana, from Mexico City, was not exactly subversive in comparison to other identities. In fact, in some Chicana narratives, such as Michele Serros’s How to Be a Chicana Role Model, Mexicanas like me were almost hegemonic, reacting disparagingly to the protagonist’s attempts to learn Spanish in a study abroad program in Mexico. The further understanding of the complexities of border characterizations made me appreciate the centralization prevalent in the views of non-border Mexicans, including my own at that point, and how these views help maintain bias in relation to the borderlands.