Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism
Abstract
In a hidden sweatshop in downtown Los Angeles, Asian and Latino migrants produce automobile parts for a factory in Detroit. As the parts leave the production line, they are stamped “Made in Brazil.” In a small village in the heart of Mexico, a young woman at her father’s wake wears a black T-shirt sent to her by a brother in the United States. The shirt bears a legend that some of the mourners understand but she does not. It reads, “Let’s Have Fun Tonight!” And on the Tijuana-San Diego border, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a writer originally from Mexico City, reflects on the time he has spent in what he calls “the gap between two worlds”: “Today, eight years after my departure, when they ask me for my nationality or ethnic identity, I cannot answer with a single word, for my ‘identity’ now possesses multiple repertoires: I am Mexican but I am also Chicano and Latin American. On the border they call me ‘chilango’ or ‘mexiquillo’; in the capital, ‘pocho’ or ‘norteno,’ and in Spain ‘sudaca.’… My companion Emily is Anglo-Italian but she speaks Spanish with an Argentinian accent. Together we wander through the ruined Babel that is our American postmodemity.”
Cite this
Roger Rouse (1991). Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism. Diaspora A Journal of Transnational Studies. https://doi.org/10.1353/dsp.1991.0011
@article{roger1991mexican,
title = {Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism},
author = {Rouse, Roger},
year = {1991},
journal = {Diaspora A Journal of Transnational Studies},
doi = {10.1353/dsp.1991.0011}
}Citations in this library
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