Latinx Cultural Studies

Once finishing this documentary, the immediate first connection I made was to Anzaldua's borderlands theory (which was likely intentional on your part). I remembered that borderlands are not necessarily physical but can be abstract in nature. The cultural difference (i.e. language, time zones) between undocumented Latinx migrants who are victims of deportation and their children who are permitted to stay in the US on the basis of citizenship, as well as the physical distance between displaced people and their in, is a borderland in it of itself. It is a tool of separation and distinction and a physically violent reinforcement of settler colonialism. It literally makes it harder for the two generations to relate to one another, marking a very significant (though abstract) separation. The documentary also illuminated the reality of the separation of indigenous families being a key factor in settler dominance. Black parents watched their children get sold, Native Americans were f...

This was such a cool reading!! I have never heard the history of Aztlan told from a source I actually trusted. I was telling my friends this week that I want to visit an Indigenous reservation. Then I realized that that's not very cool because it's like spectatorship. I finally decided that I hope I meet an indigenous friend who would take me to their reservation. I felt, while reading this, that Anzaldua was that friend. The oral history is so fascinating and I am so impressed/grateful that this information was preserved for so many years. I enjoyed reading about the Aztec migrants led by the God of War to where would eventually become Mexico City. Anzaldua's poetic style enhances the writing and makes me feel as a reader that I'm receiving the oral history from an elder directly. It is so extremely unfortunate that the Idigenous of what we now know as the Americas had to suffer the genocidal violence of European colonialism.

Today's reading was compelling for a number of reasons, but primarily because of how easy it is to make the historical inference that the devaluing of black women's labor was the predecessor for the discriminatory care work practices that Latinx people, especially women or femme-presenting ones, face. It was also interesting making the connection that the already-low value of black women's labor went down even lower during the Great Migration (to the American North). Latinx women's labor is also valued less once they immigrate. Both experiences reflect the exploitative forces of capitalism that prey on the most vulnerable populations and try to extract labor at the lowest cause. In both migration scenarios, the inhabitants of the destination capitalized off of the women's unfamiliarity with the area ad economy as well as off of ethnic stereotypes in order to extract labor from care workers at a lower rate. It also sucks that in both scenarios, the womens investm...