By: Corina Wieser-Cox
The borderlands, termed by Gloria Anzaldua, refers specifically to existence as Mestizaje within the context of living on the border between Mexico and the United States. Anzaldua believes that, “The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta [an open wound] where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms, it haemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture” (25). For those existences that stem from the southernmost US border, whether it’s by crossing or living there, the state of identity is one of ambiguity and liminality. There is not one specific cultural reality that resides or is privileged in these existences, because there is not one particular culture that a Latinx identity can resonate wholly with due to the nature of migration, integration, and the interplay of cultures clashing.
In relation to the 1997 film Selena directed by Gregory Nava which stars Jennifer Lopez as Selena Quintanilla, this presentation focuses on the representation and effects of the borderlands within a Latinx person residing in that space, as well as how that space is constructed within a film. Selena is a biographical film that follows the life and rising fame of Tejano (Texan country music combined with traditional Mexican Conjunto music) star Selena Quintanilla before her murder by Yolanda Salazar in March 1995 in which she was only 23 years old. The movie showcases how Selena was born and raised in South-Texas to a Mexican-American family and how that affected her life as a person residing in the borderlands because of the ambivalence that arose from residing in that space. Her fame and ultimately her death are also other factors that add to this story of ambivalence, in which this presentation plans to explore and exemplify this liminality.
Gloria Anzaldua claims that by confronting the negative aspects of all the clashing cultures that come to head within this liminal space and “drawing upon these forms of exclusion to develop a hybrid sense of self” one can become “a woman of the borderlands” (40). In this sense, the purpose of this presentation is to showcase how Latinx identities such as Selena's, can prosper through the creativity that is produced from within this liminality, in which case the film accurately portrays the success (and demise) of Selena throughout her life as a woman of the borderlands.
Reference:
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books, 1987.
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