“Where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds”

Anzaldúa’s passage “The US–Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds” (1999. Borderlands. La Frontera. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. p. 25) is probably the most quoted description of borderlands. Moreover, she calls it a “place of contradictions, [where] hatred, anger and exploitation are the prominent features of this landscape” (ibid, 19). In the American political discourse, “the Border” is often presented as a war zone, immigrants as drug smugglers, and the Border Patrol agents as troops on guard. Hence, the primary role of the border structures is to protect the better “us” from the danger of being overtaken by the lesser “them.” Subsequently, this chapter first depicts the US–Mexico border history up to date and then examines Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), a milestone work in women’s, queer, and border studies. It is very interesting in its form since it combines theoretical and autobiographical essays with poetry and indigenous myths, crossing the linguistic borders with its use of multilingualism or code-switching, and providing a new method of approaching history called autohistoria, which supplements the traditional autobiography with sociocultural background. Therefore, Borderlands/La Frontera has provided a new paradigm to study Borderlands and contributed to the emergence of an original feminist epistemology.