ABSTRACT
From the perspective of an outsider or distant observer, this chapter describes a selection of works as aesthetic carriers of a regional singularity predicated on decoloniality and its consequences. It analyses the potential of regional singularity as a tool of analysis, tuning an appropriate understanding of region as well as singularity in their exchange with the traces of coloniality/decoloniality as they appear, disappear, and reappear. It brings the methodological framework to bear on a selection of case studies, starting with María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don. That novel brings out an early representation of a regional singularity resting on certain master tropes to do with displacement and race, an enunciation from under the colonial shadow that compellingly echoes Americanity's fourfold vectors of colonialism, ethnicity, racism and newness. The movie projects Tijuana as "City of the Future," where poor people come to seek employment as "cybraceros" in the sleep dealer factories that gives movie its title.
