To live in the Borderlands means you

Frontiers, 1996 by Gloria Anzaldua

Gloria Anzaldua is author of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, I987) and Making Face, Making Soul/ Hacienda Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, I99o); she is also coeditor, with Cherrie Moraga, of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, I98I).

To live in the Borderlands means you

are neither hispana india negra espanola ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed caught in the crossfire between camps while carrying all five races on your back not knowing which side to turn to, run from;

To live in the Borderlands means knowing that the india in you, betrayed for Soo years, is no longer speaking to you, that mexicanas call you rajetas, that denying the Anglo inside you is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black;

Cuando vives en la frontera

people walk through you, the wind steals your voice, you're a burra, buey, scapegoat, forerunner of a new race, half and half-both woman and man, neithera new gender;

To live in the Borderlands means to put chile in the borscht, eat whole wheat tortillas, speak Tex-Mex with a Brooklyn accent; be stopped by la migra at the border checkpoints;

Living in the Borderlands means you fight hard to resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle, the pull of the gun barrel, the rope crushing the hollow of your throat;

In the Borderlands you are the battleground where enemies are kin to each other; you are at home, a stranger, the border disputes have been settled the volley of shots have shattered the truce you are wounded, lost in action dead, fighting back;

To live in the Borderlands means the mill with the razor white teeth wants to shred off your olive-red skin, crush out the kernel, your heart pound you pinch you roll you out smelling like white bread but dead;

To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras be a crossroads.

Reprinted from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Copyright I987 by Gloria Anzaldua

gabacha-a Chicano term for a white woman rajetas-literally, "split," that is, having betrayed your word burra-donkey buey-oxen

sin fronteras-without borders