THE UPSIDE TO NOMADISM? The opportunity to lead many different lives—and, if you’re a writer, to then share them. For nearly twenty years I lived on the go, constantly switching locations. Writing became a privileged form of migrant work, following inspiration instead of crops, stories instead of seasons. But while itinerancy remains my instinctive mode of being, I have concluded that it isn’t the most sustainable of lifestyles long-term, not only because of practical matters like finances and health but also because of the whims of the human heart. Intimately observing so many communities for so many years eventually got me pining to build one of my own. And so, two years into the making of this project, I started playing academic roulette, first with grad school and then with the job market. Since the fall of 2013, I have been happily nesting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The only problem: it is located 800 miles from the northern borderlands and 1,500 miles from the southern. Not only am I nomadic no more, but I have also departed the land of in-between—at least, in the physical sense.
Psychically, the borderlands have left an indelible imprint, and for that I am exceedingly grateful. After a long stretch of insecurity that being only half Mexican made me a “Chicana falsa,”3 I’ve come to see the beauty of hybridity. When you occupy a hyphenated space, you realize that nothing is stone-set. At a time when the world’s radicals have grown so uncompromising in their platforms, so unyielding in their beliefs, the ability to dwell in ambiguity has become an increasingly vital trait.
Borderlands don’t constitute just the edge of a nation but also its frontier. They might be lawless, yes (or worse: militarized), but they are also remarkably innovative. It’s time to stop sending more “boots on the ground” to the periphery and start listening to those who are actually rooted there. Border denizens not only elucidate the world’s colonial pasts but prophesy futures as well.
No reflection of the borderlands is complete without a meditation on the actual lines themselves. They don’t just delineate countries, of course. As we’ve seen time and again in the United States, political parties are highly adept at redrawing the lines of congressional districts with a legal magic that—at the ballot box—brings about “miracles” on par with La Virgen de Guadalupe appearing on a tortilla (only nowhere near as hopeful). In a word, a borderline is an injustice. It is a time-held method of partitioning the planet for the benefit of the elite. Fortunately, we have legions of activists, artists, and faith keepers out there, petitioning on humanity’s behalf, but they need serious reinforcement. For the greatest lesson in nepantla is that many borderlines needn’t exist at all. We operate daily within the confines of myriad lines—class, creed, sexuality, gender—that mainly serve to suppress our quality of life. Spend enough time straddling one, and you can’t help but wonder what bliss might follow if we all just embraced the spaces in between.
NOTES
1. As baskets rated a mention in their creation story as the receptacle holding the food the Sky Chief sent to express his desire to meet Sky Woman, basketry is the Mohawks’ most revered art form. Exchanged at weddings and other key life events, baskets have traditionally been one of women’s primary income sources as well. Yet this sacred art is endangered now because of an invasive beetle from Asia called the emerald ash borer that infests the trees Mohawks strip into splints to make their prized baskets. Without serious intervention, scientists believe the beetle will kill off the bulk of North America’s seven billion ash trees within the next few decades. Already the insect has been spotted in nearby Cornwall. In response, Mohawks have hung beetle traps around their nation and stored several hundred thousand ash tree seeds in a deep freezer in Fort Collins, Colorado.
2. According to Barbara Tarbell, the tribe’s program manager of natural resource damage assessment, Akwesasne envisions a five-year program in which young Mohawks will apprentice with master practitioners to gain threatened skills through mentorship. “At the end, they’ll have the knowledge, pride, and spiritual strength to pass it on,” she told me. “This is what it means to be Mohawk.”
3. I conclude these footnotes as they commenced, with a nod to my friend Michele Serros, who coined this term in her first book, Chicana Falsa. A role model until the very end, she kept her thousands of Facebook fans posted as she battled both Chipotle and cancer with her inimitable humor. She parted for the otherworld at age forty-eight on January 4, 2015, leaving this one a little less luminous, yet ever the better for her influence.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TO ALL THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE WHO SHARED THEIR STORIES WITH me: I thank you to infinity.
John McPhee suggested I write this book a decade ago, and mile by mile Greg Rubio made the first half possible, so the second round of gratitude goes to them. Profound thanks are due to everyone in South Texas who deepened my understanding of the region, especially Santa Barraza and Homero Vera, and to everyone at Akwesasne who welcomed me as a guest in their nation, particularly “Keetah” and my fellow Métis/Mestizo, Bob Stevenson. Niawen’kó:wa.
At the University of Iowa, I am indebted to Professors Patricia Foster, Robin Hemley, and Claire Fox for their insight as I commenced this project. Thanks also go to the wise counsel of Professors Bonnie Sunstein, David Hamilton, John D’Agata, Honor Moore, Allan Gurganus, Jeff Porter, and Steve Kuusisto and to the Graduate College for granting the Dean’s Graduate Fellowship that enabled my study. Mil besos a la gente who made three long winters bearable: Sarah Wells, Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, Amy Schleunes, Felicia Rose Chavez, Idris Goodwin, Jen Zoble, and Catina Bacote.
At St. Lawrence University, I give gratitude to the English department for bringing me to the North Country in the first place. My colleagues there—particularly Jill Talbot and Sarah Barber—were marvelously hospitable, as were my dear pals Betsy Kepes and Tom Van de Water. I am especially appreciative of Celia Nyamweru, who introduced me to many people at Akwesasne who became friends (as did Celia).
I am crazy-lucky to have landed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Creative Writing Program. Many thanks are due to Daniel Wallace and Beverly Taylor for extending the invitation and to the Institute for the Arts and Humanities for the Faculty Fellowship that enabled this book’s completion. Thanks also go to my wonderful colleagues—especially Gaby Calvocoressi and Marianne Gingher—and to my brilliant creative nonfiction students, who inspire me daily. Other entities that made this project possible are Lebh Shomea of Sarita, Texas; the Ragdale Foundation of Lake Forest, Illinois; and especially the Sangam House of Nrityagram, India, which granted me time and space to think and create.
Saludos to the friends and family who lift my spirits: Daphne Sorensen, Michael Robertson, Irene Lin, Amy Schapiro, Sonya Tsuchigane, Joy Baker, Tyra Robertson, Sherry Shokouhi, Irene Carranza, Rachél DayStar Payne, Amaya Moro-Martin, Jeff Golden, Kavitha Rao, David Farley, Wendy Call, Sheryl Oring, Laura Halperin, Julia Haslett, Susan Harbage Page, Chuck Whitney, all the Elizondos/Silvas/Quintanillas in South Texas, the Griests in Kansas, and my new Curtis/Biggers/Sauls/Holm clan in Carolina. Gratitude also goes to everyone at the University of North Carolina Press for guiding this book into being and to my insightful readers Daisy Hernández, Celia Nyamweru, and Chief Brian David.
A mighty fist bump goes to all the journalists and scholars who strive to bring justice to the borderlands via the written word, including Gloria Anzaldúa, Alma Guillermoprieto, Cecilia Ballí, Melissa del Bosque, Charles Bowden, Alfredo Corchado, Michelle García, Luís Alberto Urrea, Rubén Martínez, Maria Hinojosa, Maria Sacchetti, Jazmine Ulloa, Dianne Solis, Sonia Nazario, Franc Contreras, John Gibler, Judith Torrea, Mariana Martínez Estens, Julia Preston, Ioan Grillo, Todd Miller, Tom Miller, Cindy Casares, Walter Mignolo, Desirée Martín, John Carlos Frey, Dudley Althaus, Ginger Thompson, Patrick Radden Keefe, John Morán González, Trinidad Gonzales, Sonia Hernández, Benjamin Johnson, Monica Muñoz Martinez, Charlie Ericksen, David Sommerstein, Audra Simpson, John Mohawk, Darren Bonaparte, Doug George-Kanentiio, Bruce Johansen, Ian Kalman, Louellyn Whi
te, and the tenacious staffs of the Texas Observer, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Indian Time, the (sadly defunct) Akwesasne Notes, and the best radio station I know, North Country Public Radio. My heartfelt respects go to the (painfully) many Mexican journalists who have been slain because of their truth-telling.
The final round of gratitude goes to my ancestors, for rooting me in the borderlands, and to my parents, Irene and Dick Griest; my sister, Barbara, and her husband, Alex; and my niece and nephew, Analina and Jordan, for six reasons to always return.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION: THE DESCENDANTS
(Footnote 2) Some scholars trace Dean R. Snow, The Iroquois (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994).
PROLOGUE: NEPANTLA
“America’s fattest city” Jaclyn Colletti and Maria Masters, “America’s 10 Fattest (and Leanest) Cities,” Men’s Health, April 2010.
Dumbest Craig Wilson, “Looking for Signs of Intelligent Life in Fort Wayne,” USA Today, January 19, 2005.
Least literate “America’s Most Literate Cities,” Central Connecticut State University’s Center for Public Policy and Social Research, available at http://web.ccsu.edu/americasmostliteratecities/default.asp.
Worst credit scores “State of Credit,” published annually by Experian at www.experian.com. From 2011 to 2013, Corpus ranked in the top ten worst scores nationwide.
(Footnote 2) the seventh “happiest” city Edward L. Glaeser, Joshua D. Gottlieb, and Oren Ziv, “Unhappy Cities,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 20291, July 2014, available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w20291.
writer Gloria Anzaldúa Gloria Anzaldúa, Interviews: Entrevistas (New York: Routledge, 2000).
CHAPTER 1. THE MIRACLE TREE
(Footnote 4) “spiritual mestizaje” Theresa Delgadillo, Spiritual Mestizaje: Religion, Gender, Race, and Nation in Contemporary Chicana Narrative (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
In 1966, Time wrote “Botany: The Crying Tree,” Time, September 16, 1966.
A matriarch named Leonisia Garcia Macarena Hernandez, “Hundreds Flock to Holy ‘Weeping Tree’ Oddity,” Dallas Morning News, September 19, 2007.
CHAPTER 2. THE REBEL
when developers foisted off Jo Rios and Pamela S. Meyer, “What Do Toilets Have to Do with It? Health, the Environment, and the Working Poor in Rural South Texas Colonias,” Online Journal of Rural Research and Policy 4, no. 2 (2009), available at http://newprairiepress.org/ojrrp/vol4/iss2/2/.
after more than 600 area residents Ann Zimmerman, “Chemical Warrior,” Dallas Observer, September 10, 1998.
release up to 150,000 gallons According to TCEQ spokesman Terry Clawson, with whom I exchanged e-mails in March 2010, LCS Correction Services was issued the permit (TPDES Permit No. WQ0014802001) on October 31, 2008, to discharge wastes under provisions of Section 402 of the Clean Water Act and Chapter 26 of the Texas Water Code.
At Lionel’s urging Geologist Rick Hay of Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi verified these levels during phone call and e-mail exchanges in the spring of 2010.
CHAPTER 3. THE VENERABLE
Growing up the only daughter Quotations and biographical information have been culled from Mother Julia’s autobiography, My Journey: Remembrances of My Life, which was translated to English by Sister Armida Fabela and revised by Janet Niedosik. No other publication information is included inside the copy I obtained from Sister Maximina Cruz.
one-room house in Kingsville Sister Kathleen McDonagh, “Missionary Daughters of the Most Pure Virgin Mary in the Diocese of Corpus Christi,” South Texas Catholic, November 1, 2012.
opening forty-five congregations Staff, “Sainthood Close for Mother Navarrete,” Daily Sun News (Sunnyside, Wash.), June 23, 2004.
However dizzying this collection David Farley, An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town (New York: Gotham Books, 2009).
It can take decades Staff, “How Does Someone Become a Saint?,” BBC.com, April 27, 2014, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27140646.
The first was for her gardener Eric Chapa, “Mother Julia’s Solemn Place of Prayer Becoming a Reality in Kingsville,” South Texas Catholic, August 15, 2008.
CHAPTER 4. THE ACTIVIST AND THE ORDINANCE
race-zoning ordinances Steve Lerner, Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010).
home to six oil refineries Earthjustice, “Community Impact Report Addendum A: The Toll of Refineries on Fenceline Communities,” October 28, 2014, available at http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/10.28.14%20EPA%20Refinery%20Risk%20Review%2003_Addendum%20A%20-%20Community%20Impact%20Report.pdf.
funding for a pilot study “Corpus Christi: Refinery Neighbor Study Shows High Levels of Benzene,” Global Community Monitor, September 8, 2008, available at http://www.gcmonitor.org/corpus-christi-refinery-neighbor-study-shows-high-levels-of-benzene/.
A toxicologist hired by Denise Malan, “Environmentalists Make Latest Move in Benzene Study Dispute,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, July 13, 2009.
After months of getting bombarded “Bombarded” is how Dr. Donnelly described his treatment in an e-mail to Suzie Canales on December 9, 2008, according to the report “Risk Assessment or Risk Acceptance: Why the EPA’s Attempts to Achieve Environmental Justice Have Failed and What They Can Do About It” by Suzie Canales, October 2010, available at http://cla.tamucc.edu/english/techwrit/EJ%20report-2%202010.pdf.
A 2011 federal study Rick Spruill, “Neighborhood Blood Studies Conflict,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, January 6, 2011.
Citgo alone has a $345 million annual impact Citgo News Release, April 16, 2015, available at http://media.citgo.com/CITGO-Corpus-Christi-Refinery-Celebrates-80-Years-of-Fueling-Good-in-the-State-of-Texas.
Flint Hills, meanwhile, is owned by Ashley Alman, “Koch Brothers Net Worth Soars Past $100 Billion,” Huffington Post, April 16, 2014.
Koch Industries contributed hundreds of thousands Andy Kroll, “Will Perry Return Koch Campaign Cash?,” Mother Jones, October 10, 2011.
Perry in turn repeatedly challenged John M. Broder and Kate Galbraith, “E.P.A. Is Longtime Favorite Target for Perry,” New York Times, September 29, 2011.
climate change skeptic Andy Kroll, “Who Did Rick Perry Pick as His Top Environmental Cop?,” Mother Jones, September 22, 2011.
In 2007, Citgo became the first Priscilla Mosqueda, “Victims Disappointed by Small Penalty in Citgo Criminal Case,” Texas Observer, February 6, 2014.
refines upward of 165,000 barrels Citgo News Release, http://media.citgo.com.
The front page Nancy Martinez, “Activist No Terror Threat, FBI Says,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, May 17, 2006.
Soon after, Suzie generated yet another John McArdle and Gabriel Nelson, “Environmental Justice Activist Urges EPA Chief ‘To Roll Up Your Sleeves’ at Tense W. H. Forum,” New York Times, December 16, 2010.
When the company finally filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy Mara Kardas-Nelson, Lin Nelson, and Anne Fischel, “Bankruptcy as Corporate Makeover,” Dollars & Sense, May/June 2010.
A U.S. bankruptcy court and the TCEQ Rick Spruill, “Encycle Plant Set for Demolition,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, January 22, 2011.
The EPA has documented asbestos Report available at http://www.tceq.texas.gov/assets/public/remediation/variousremediationsites/encycle/swr3003.pdf.
and the whistleblower report Report available at https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2011/11/25/a-whistle-blowers-report-on-hazardous-waste-in-corpus-christi/.
former mining boomtown of Pincher, Oklahoma Dan Shepherd, “Last Residents of Pincher, Oklahoma Won’t Give Up the Ghost (Town),” NBCNews.com, April 28, 2014, available at http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/last-residents-picher-oklahoma-wont-give-ghost-town-n89611.
By challenging the companies’ permits Bart Bedsole, “Anonymous $2M Donation Will Buy Out Dona Park Families,” KRISTV.com, February 20, 2015, availab
le at http://www.kristv.com/story/28164064/anonymous-2m-donation-will-buy-out-dona-park-families.
CHAPTER 5. THE BONDER AND THE DEALER
(Footnote 3) Sophie wasn’t the first Jeff Winkler, “Amor Prohibido,” Texas Monthly, September 2015.
One balmy night in September 2006 See Ed Vulliamy, Amexica: War along the Borderline (New York: Picador, 2011).
In August 2010, a cartel executed Associated Press, “Mexican Police Helped Cartel Massacre 193 Migrants, Documents Show,” December 22, 2014, available at http://www.npr.org/2014/12/22/372579429/mexican-police-helped-cartel-massacre-193-migrants-documents-show.
forty-three college students in Guerrero Alma Guillermoprieto, “Mexico: The Murder of the Young,” New York Review of Books, January 8, 2015.
At least 60,000 people have died “Mexico’s Disappeared: The Enduring Cost of a Crisis Ignored,” Human Rights Watch, February 20, 2013, available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2013/02/20/mexicos-disappeared.
mayor from Michoacan who got stoned Mariano Castillo, “Increasingly, Mayors Become Targets in Mexico,” CNN.com, October 29, 2010, available at http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/26/mexico.mayors.killed/.
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