Mestiza Consciousness

Borderlands

Anzaldúa defines border space as “a third country” of psychological, sexual, and spiritual terrain that occurs wherever two or more cultures edge each other; where people of different races occupy the same territory; where under, lower, middle and upper classes intersect; and where the space between two individuals shrinks through intimacy. These border spaces disrupt the rigid divisions that shape and perpetuate hierarchies of power as represented by divisive borders (geographic, national, social, racial, gendered) that foreclose the empowerment of Chicana women and other socially marginalized people. While rejecting the melting-pot myth of American culture, Anzaldúa calls for mutual understanding of an Indian lineage, an Afro-mestizaje, and a history of resistance. For Anzaldúa, the psyches of the Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working-class Anglo, black, and Asian resemble the border towns that are populated by the same people and reflect a struggle that has always been inner but is played out in the outer terrains. The mestiza is the definitive border resident, whose presence enables Anzaldúa to examine the idea of the border in depth. In the process of reinstating her own mestiza heritage as a basis for imagining a self-determined future sin fronteras, without borders, [Page 558]Anzaldúa envisions the pre-European contact indi-geneity of the India-Mestiza, whose home is “this thin edge/of barbwire,” as a source of resilience, critical insight, and transformative power.

The multiplicity of identities embodied by the mestiza, or multiracial woman, becomes a means of breaking free of dualisms that revolve around simplistic oppositions, such as white/other, civilized/savage, and virgin/whore motifs that have been controlling themes in U.S. colonialism. Mestiza consciousness positions Chicanas at the center of their own narratives of history and culture; in the context of borders literal and imaginary; and by reengaging indigenous thought, language and archetypes. Mestiza consciousness then becomes an instrument of critical inquiry that can dissect and overcome confining structures of knowledge, memory, and imagination.

In her theorizing of New Mestiza identity, Anzaldúa overturns pejorative connotations of the Spanish term mestiza that originated in the time of conquest and enslavement. Under Spanish colonial regimes in Mexico, mestiza, meaning “half-breed,” “mixed-breed” or “mongrel,” was used to identify racially mixed women who had some combination of European, indigenous, and African “blood,” or ancestry. As English translations of the word attest, the European colonizer's interest in maintaining white racial purity as human ideal stipulated that the humanity of mestizo/a individuals was subject to question, implying they were less human than animal. The mestiza was targeted in a Christian racial and gender hierarchy that defined her as racially impure, morally tainted by indigenous ties to paganism, and sexually outcast. But this past is also one of survival against all odds, which leads Anzaldúa to assert that her Chicana identity is grounded in the Indian woman's history of resistance. For Anzaldúa, reclaiming the mestiza exposes the lies of colonialism and provides a method of reinterpreting identity and culture through gender, sexuality, and memory.

...