Mestizo Identity Essay

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Anzaldua explains in several different languages, including English, Spanish, Tex-Mex and indigenous languages her concept of the borderlands. She argues that a borderland is “a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is a constant state of transition.” She goes on to state that the mestizos are the inhabitants of such borderlands. While she is making this argument, Anzaldua puts a unique spin on how she perceives the mestizos and the borderlands, which can be supported by other Latin authors such Alcoff. The quote “I am a turtle, where I go I carry home on my back” can be explained by Anzaldua’s concept of the borderlands in regards to what it means to be mestizo. In the beginning of her book “Borderlands”, Anzaldua begins to explain her place is on the edge of a barbed wire, and that her land was Mexican once, and Indian forever. She gives a background of how her culture, the mestizo got to the point to which they are today. The first inhabitants to what it is now Texas, were the Indians. The Spaniards came and conquered Mexico, and the Indian population was reduced to one-and-a-half million pure-blooded Indians. The year of 1521, marked the birth of a new race, the mestizo, mixed Indian and Spanish blood. The mestizo explored parts of what it is now Texas. This move up north created an even stronger blend, the mestizaje, due to a mix of Mexicans, American Indians, and Spaniards. In the 1800s the Anglos took the mestizaje’s land and Mexico was forced to give up what it now is Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California. Some of the native Mexican-Texan now looked at the Southwest as their home, but US built a fence which divided US and Mexico and drove the native Indians and Mexican-Texans off their land. The Americans lynched all the Chicanos and began to work with Mexican landowners to expand in

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