ABSTRACT
The Mexico–U.S. border has, for several decades, been the largest and most active border in the world. However, its history makes it a space filled with tensions, contradictions, connections, and diversity. Recent studies have highlighted a sustained occurrence of circular migration movements across the Mexico–U.S. border in both adult and children’s populations over the years. These movements and the contact with diverse languages, cultures, and systems of oppression that they entail have a profound impact on individuals’ identities and levels of agency. The chapter analyzes the life histories of four transnationals who, at different points of their lives, embarked on what Anzaldúa describes as the “return odyssey to the historical/mythological Aztlan.” The participants’ discourses reveal how recalling and verbalizing significant memories of their multiple journeys across borders enable them to connect with their continuously shifting identities. This analysis provides a deeper understanding of how movements across cultural and linguistic borders cause some participants to remain in la resistencia while others embark on la travesía to achieve a mental state of nepantilism in unique ways. Throughout the chapter, the participants’ Mestiza Ways are outlined to witness both stagnation within inherited and learned oppressions and ruptures with old selves that lead to transformed understandings of who they are.
