'RE-BORDERISATION' IN THE SOUTH-WESTERN NOVELS OF ANA CASTILLO AND CORMAC MCCARTHY.

Abstract

Two novels of the US/Mexican borderlands published in the early 1990s achieved notable mainstream success and critical acclaim -So Far From God by Ana Castillo (first published in 1993) and All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (first published 1992).Here were two ostensibly very different South-Western novels which nevertheless managed to achieve a singular effect: in each case it was this novel that thrust an established, but limited-appeal, writer out of the gloom of academic readership and into the glare of mainstream literary celebrity.These texts, then, are crossover novels in two senses.They are of the margins in the sense that as novels of the borderlands they each deal with the interface of Mexican and Anglo cultures but they are also of the centre in that their multicultural narratives have been embraced by the mainstream.This paper argues two main points.The first is that the mainstream consumer-appeal of these novels -their successful commodification of multicultural images-actually relies upon the subtle repetition of myths of the borderlands in ways that that reinforce ethnic and cultural stereotypes.The second argument is that this process in the novels is part of a general mainstream 'reborderization' in the US in the early-to mid-1990s: a reactionary response to the perceived erosion of traditional concepts of national identity in an era dominated by post-modern transboundary forces exemplified by initiatives such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.Historically, ever since the establishment of the Border Patrol in 1924 and the mass deportations of the 1930s and 1950s, the border region has been a focal point for special security measures aimed precisely at preserving a sense of distinct national identity.Spurred on by "sensationalistic portrayals of undocumented immigration, drug trafficking, and occasionally even the threat of terrorism" (Dunn 1), various administrations have happily made political capital through expedient manipulation of the issue of border control.By the time that events such as the Mariel 'invasion' of 1960 had led to the passage in 1986 of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, immigration had long been portrayed in the media as "a growing crisis with national security implications" (Dunn 2).

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