from The 90s Culture of Xenophobia: Beyond the Tortilla Curtain Illegal aliens are a category of criminal, not a category of ethnic group. — Proposition 187 advocate Ron Prince THE BLURRING OF THE BORDER Fear is always at the core of xenophobia. This fear is particularly disturbing when directed at the most vulnerable victims: migrant workers. They become the “invaders” from the South, the human incarnation of the Mexican fly, subhuman “wetbacks,” the “alien” from another (cultural) planet. They are accused of stealing “our jobs,” of shrinking “our budget,” of taking advantage of the welfare system, of not paying taxes, and of bringing disease, drugs, street violence, foreign thoughts, pagan rites, primitive customs, and alien sounds. Their indigenous features and rough clothes conjure images of an unpleasant pre-European American past, and of the mythical lands to the south immersed in poverty and political turmoil, where innocent gringos could be attacked for no apparent reason.

Yet, these invaders no longer inhabit the remote past, some banana republic, or a Hollywood film. They actually live down the block, and their children attend the same schools as the Anglo kids. Nothing is scarier than the blurring of the border between them and us; between the Dantesque South and the prosperous North; between paganism and Christianity. For many Americans, the border has failed to stop chaos and crisis from creeping in (the origin of crisis and chaos is somehow always located outside). Their worst nightmare is finally coming true: The United Scares is no longer a fictional extension of Europe, or the wholesome suburb imagined by the screenwriter of Lassie. It is rapidly becoming a huge border zone, a hybrid society, amestizo race, and worst of all, this process seems to be irreversible. America shrinks day by day, as the pungent smell of enchiladas fills the air and the volume of quebradita music rises. Both the anti-immigration activists and the conservative media have utilized extremely charged metaphors to describe this process of “Mexicanization.”

It is described as a Christian nightmare (“hell at our doorsteps”); a natural disaster (“the brown wave”), a fatal disease or an incurable virus; a form of demographic rape; or the scary beginning of a process of secession or “Quebequization” of the entire Southwest. Paradoxically, the country allegedly responsible for all of these anxieties is now an intimate business partner of the United States. But NAFTA only regulates the exchange of consumer products; human beings are not part of the deal. Our new economic community advocates open markets and closed borders, and as NAFTA goes into effect, the Tortilla Curtain is being replaced by a metallic wall that resembles the one that “fell” in Berlin. “If you catch ’em [Mexicans], skin ’em and fry ’em yourself. Harold Ezell, head of SOS and Western Regional Commissioner of the INS If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then a book about performance art is surely like a sonata about sculpture.

In the case of The New World Border, however, there is little lost in translation; sopers curtains st annesthe force and originality of Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s ideas come across loud and clear. anthropologie shower curtain flamencoBilled as “chicano cyber-punk art,” his work revolves around the disorienting reality of living in a multilingual, multicultural society. grey pencil pleat curtains 90x90To express the inherent confusion of colliding cultures, he creates a fictional nation called Aztlan Liberado, where various identities, races, genders, and languages all blend to create an amalgamated society. 38x45 curtains

In this world, the language is Spanglish, all borders have been removed, and whites are the minority. cafe net curtains dunelmHe writes a series of news reports on this theme that turn clichés inside out and point stereotypes the other way: “In an act of random violence, two unemployed corporate executives walked into a luxurious Taco Bell Bistro and fired upon the peaceful fajita-eating customers. hookless shower curtain 77 longToday’s headline in the minority paper, the New York Times, reads: ‘Blood and guacamole all over walls; idye curtains Another piece uses text and photographs to describe an act performed in Europe and the U.S. Here, Gómez-Peña places himself in a small gilded or bamboo cage in the middle of a busy plaza or shopping mall and presents himself as an “exotic multicultural specimen” who can be “activated” by shoppers who want to witness his “incredible ethnic talents.”

Such talents include modeling traditional Indian garb, doing commercials for organic products, and “posing in attitudes of martyrdom, despair, and poverty”–essentially behaving in any way that spectators expect their “primitives” to act–allowing Gómez-Peña to make a statement about how cultural identities are often presented as commodities. This American Book Award-winning collection of essays, poems, performance texts, photographs, and “prophesies for the coming century” is by turns outlandish, illuminating, wickedly clever, and unabashedly serious. A frenetic artist, satirist, and phrasemaker, Gómez-Peña is able to convey the electricity and inventiveness of his live shows through heavy doses of humor, irony, and word play. Gómez-Peña’s aim is to establish a common middle ground among North Americans; until a seamless North America becomes a reality, however, Gómez-Peña will continue to live on the border–and would like to see us all there. This entry was posted in Books from City Lights Publishers and tagged City Lights Books, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, The New World Border.