Newspaper articles, CNN reports, and even political campaigns are now flooded with references to the importance of “securing our borders” from potential “terrorists” and immigrants that are labeled as “invaders.” Post-9/11 America is marked by a growing concern with identifying, labeling, and “deporting” those who do not belong to an ideal of Americanism according to physical characteristics, color, language, or religious preferences. As we speak, the United States frontier mythologies are being rewritten and their boundaries redrawn, separating North and South, English and Spanish languages, and unauthorized and legal residents.
My personal experience of being suddenly labeled, named, and ascribed an imposed identity based on what is unacceptable in the United States awakened in me the urgency to explore and challenge those borders created by discourses that silence and erase the agency of women of color who are seen as illegitimate “undocumented” individuals in the discussion of boundaries. Since I reached these shores, I have not been considered an authorized agent to speak about who I am, to name myself. Discussions of my identity usually set off heated arguments about who I claim to be and who people think I should consider myself, turning people’s suggestions into impositions. The fact that I am a Spanish-speaking and racially mixed individual from a North African island (Tenerife in the Canary Islands) makes me straddle those borderlands between Europe (Spain), Latin America (language and colonial cultural affinity), and Africa, spaces to which I belong to simultaneously. However, my position within identities disrupts United States parameters of belonging and I am generally forced to chose, to pick sides, or be considered a traitor and a liar. Unfortunately, I was forced to take a side and join the cause with Latinos when, coinciding with CNN’s coverage of immigration, I was suddenly and rudely reminded by long time friends that it was time I stop speaking Spanish and assimilate. Yet, you can take the individual out of the border but you cannot take the border out of the individual. I still transgress those frontiers in various ways, such as in my poetry and now my blog.
