Culture Across Borders: Mexican Immigration and Popular Culture (review)

Paul Burkhardt

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Volume 2, 1998, pp. 305-306 (Article) Published by University of Arizona DOI: 10.1353/hcs.2011.0025

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Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

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Culture Across Borders: Mexican Immigration andPopufar Culture

University of Arizona Press, 1998 Edited by David R. Maciel and Maria Herrera-Sobek

The 1995 Immigration Enforcement Act, the recent doubling of the Border Patrol force, numerous English-Only initiatives, and
California's Proposition 187 all clearly attest that immigrationparticu-

larly immigration from Mexicois once again a politically expedient

issue in the United States. But as David R. Maciel and Maria Herrera-

Sobek note in their introductory review of the growing field of immigration studies, despite the continued impt tance of Mexican immigration to both nations, surprisingly little has been written about the cultural or artistic representations that these immigration processes have inspired.

This volume brings together scholars from the fields of art history and
criticism, cultural studies, film analysis, folklore, cultural history, literary

criticism, and political science for an interdisciplinary exploration of the cultural aspects of Mexican immigration on both sides of the border.
In the first article in the collection, '"What Goes Around Comes

Around': Political Practice and Cultural Response in the Internationalization of Mexican Labor, 1890-1997," Juan Gmez-Quiones and David R. Maciel provide an excellent historical framework through which both

the migratory movements of Mexican immigrants and related political

and cultural practices can be better understood. Gmez-Quiones and Maciel assert that the developing international capitalist system is the

the other articles in the collection.

propelling force that drives immigration, and that it is necessary to understand the connections between changing economic forces and the cultutal and political ideologies that arise in response to Mexican immigration. The authors summarize the historical development of these economic transformations and the resulting waves of Mexican immigration and then connect these changes to particular political, legal, and cultural responses such as the perennial scapegoating of Mexican immigrants for U.S. economic decline despite hard empirical data to the contrary. GmezQuiones and Maciel's article provides a critical historical context for

Although the subject matter investigated in the articles that follow includes a diverse range of popular cultural productions, the authors share a general conceptual approach to the study of culture. Drawing on elements from the writings of Herbett Marcuse, Zygnunt Bauman and Clifford Geertz, Maciel and Herrera-Sobek explain that any genuine culture arises from the marginal or ascending classes and consists of a set of

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Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

ideals that guides and actualizes behavior towards a liberating transformation of society. In the essays, the various cultural texts and genres studied tend to be assigned to one of three cultural groups: North American (Anglo), Mexican, or Chicano. The patterns in the forms, functions, or meanings of the texts are then interpreted and compared within their historical and cultural contexts using a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches.

Alberto Ledesma's article compares Mexican and Chicano literary

narratives involving immigration and explores the problematic relation-

ship between Chicano literature and its representations of undocumented

immigration. Next, Victor Sorrell employs the concept of cultural mestizaje

in a semiotic reading of more than eighty Chicana/o and Latina/o popular artists stressing the myriad ways in which the experience of immigration shapes these artists' work and in which this art works to reshape the meanings of immigration. David R. Macial and Maria Rosa GarciaAcevedo discuss the treatment of Mexican immigration in film and describe the distinct ideological representations of Mexican immigration in Mexican cinema, the Hollywood style, and Chicano cinema. Maria Herrera-Sobek then examines the important aesthetic, emotional, and

ideological functions of corridosand canciones'in Mexican immigrant films.

Finally, Jos Reyna and Maria Herrera-Sobek analyze the thematic, ideo-

logical and linguistic patterns in jokes and jests about immigration collected from Chicana/os.

Well-written, insightful and engaging, these investigations of the cultural representations of the Mexican immigrant experience will prove both useful and enjoyable reading for all students of "border" culture.
But unfortunately, much of the textual analysis fails to fully articulate the connections between the cultural representations and their specific socioeconomic and historical-political contexts. For example, a collection of essays exploring popular cultural productions seems incomplete without critical attention to the differing economic constraints and opportunities for self-representation within the particular cultural industries involved in production. Furthermore, although the combination of a normative definition of culture with rather general cultural groupingsNorth American (Anglo), Mexican and Chicanois certainly justifiable given

the real needs for equal human rights and social justice, the focus and
approach does set certain limits to the descriptive resolution of the project.
Paul Burkhardt Intercultural Research Institute

The University of Arizona