What separates all the states from each other? What separates North America from Mexico below it or Canada above it? To answer those questions, borders. But what is a border? According to Gloria Anzaldua, a border is what defines the places that are safe and unsafe and distinguish us from them. Borders are not usually a problem but there is only one that is... the border that separates North America from Mexico. At the time this was written, the "Tortilla Curtain" was 1,950 miles long and divided a pueblo and culture. Not only was it long and unfair but it kept people from reaching a "place of prosperity", which is the United States. Sometimes these borders create was is called a borderland, which is made by emotional residue of an unnatural border that is always changing. What made me angry about people talking about a borderland was who they considered to be living there. Anzaldua pointed out that the inhabitants of a borderland are the prohibited and forbidden, such as those who are squinted-eyed, perverse, queer, troublesome, mongrel, mulato, half-breed, and half-dead. Also the "legitimate inhabitants" are those in power and whites, and those who align themselves with whites. Why is there even a division between those who live in the borderlands? There should not be at all because people are who they are because that is who they choose to be and everyone else should accept others choices.
Later on in the text, Anzaldua mentioned what happened to the land that originally belong to those Chicanos and Indian landowners. The fact that people had their land was taken away without a chance of trying to raise the money to keep it made me extremely angry. Even Mama Locha was not able to be buried next to her husband because her land was taken and the cemetery was locked and trespassers would be shot. To me that is just sad that they could not even return to their homeland to be buried with their loved ones. Lands that have been in their families for long periods of time were just gone. What happened to those landowners after they were taken was even worse in my eyes. Her father after became a sharecropper that had to give over 40% of his earnings along with the compensation for his loans. He even had to watch the land that was taken be turned up by fellow Mexicans just to be made into fields for growing a profit. To me and most definitely for them just watching that must have been heart wrenching. At this rate, Mexicans had returned home because of no employment but they quickly learned that they had to chose between staying in Mexico and starving or going up North and living. The result was that they all traveled North but it was not easy. Sometimes Border Patrol would take those that they found into the woods and shoot them right there. Those people give up everything to come to the US and lose their lives looking for a chance of a better life. Those who even do make it do not a better life but they are still living. All they wanted to do was try to have a better life or provide a better life for their family why would you kill them?!?
What made me feel worse was the treatment of women who wanted to enter the US and did it through a smuggler. These women were trying to provide for their families but met difficult times where sometimes she would be starved for days and was not even allowed to go to the bathroom and even worse she was raped or sold into prostitution. She did all this to get to to the US and suffered just horrifying experiences. What this means is a perfect chance for PTSD. They achieved what they wanted but at such a horrifying price. I feel that the US should do everything in their power to try and prevent such experiences for those trying to come in.
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