ABSTRACT
This chapter examines hybridity as it relates to borders in North America and focus on southern migrants, particularly from Mexico as they begin to encroach on the north, as but one example of other encroachments from other parts of the world. It begins somewhere within our context, we can trace the idea or concept of the hybrid all the way back to the colonial period: the first and violent confrontation between the European 'adventurer', the Indigenous communities of the Americas, and later the uprooting of African slaves. Hybridity explains the access an individual has to two or more cultures through the negotiation of difference, describing the cultural crossings, interactions, and mixtures existent in today's 'multi-temporal and multi-cultural societies', to borrow a phrase from anthropologist Nestor Garcia Canclini. Hybridity has certainly been used by international multimedia and other conglomerates to sell their products, stripping it away from its socio-historical context and thereby denying its ability to provoke.
