The future is la conciencia de la mestiza.

Being mixed breed is not easy. But it is less easy to live in a place where your own identity

is adamantly denied, swinging constantly between two different cultures. Even so, it is even

less easy to be latina, chicana, lesbian, and to live in the borderlands.

Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands shows us the importance of intersectionality: the way in

which sex, gender, ethnicity, class, or sexual orientation are interrelated and together

determine how our society perceives us. That you can be a part of more than one minority

and that condemns you to be seen in one way or another, to a greater or a lesser extent. She

tells us that throughout her life she was rejected by both Anglo and Latino. She was in the

middle. Her teachers punished her if she gave a hint that she was showing her latino roots;

“I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess—that was good for three licks on the

knuckles with a sharp ruler.” (p. 75). And then mexican people discriminated her if she was

too close to the Anglo culture; “Pocho, cultural traitor, you’re speaking the oppressor’s

language by speaking English, you’re ruining the Spanish language” (p.77). Things like her

identity and language were continually intertwined with each other.

She claims that our beliefs and our perception of things depend on our culture. “We

perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms […] are

transmitted to us through the culture” (p. 38). And she thinks that traditional societies do

not care for people as individuals but more as communities. “The welfare of the family, the

community, and the tribe is more important than the welfare of the individual. (…)

Selfishness is condemned. (…) The chicano culture have no tolerance for deviance.” (p.40).

But what does she mean by “deviance”? On one hand, it means to betray the duty that has

been presented to her as a woman. To be a mother, a wife. To obey a man for the rest of her
life. Not taking care of the family's reputation. Going against tradition, against "what she is

meant to be". She declares that her culture cares more about the people as a group than as

individual beings. Therefore, individual needs are not important compared to family

welfare. People from her culture are immersed in a dogma since their beliefs are

unquestionable and must be accepted without hesitation. At least, that is what it is expected.

The beliefs in which she was raised were extremely misogynistic: “According to

Christianity and most other major religions, woman is carnal, animal, and closer to the

undivine” (p. 39). The church says that we are carnal, but why do women say that men are

always thinking about sex? “Los hombres nomás quieren una cosa” (p. 39). They say that

we as women are those who are the furthest from the divine, but why do other women

protect us from men especially when we are little? I was in ninth grade when I was

harassed on the street for the first time. I was on my way home after a day of training my

favorite sport at the time. I was sweating still, so I was wearing shorts as any person would

do if they were in my place. As I waited for the traffic light to turn green, a car passed

alongside me too slowly. It was not normal. I looked up and met the eyes of an older man

staring at me with a strange face I cannot describe. It was not good for an older man to look

at a 13-year-old girl like that. Why are we the impure ones then?

When I was thirteen years old, my mother said to me that I was being disrespectful by

wearing too revealing clothing. I had never felt bad about my body before that happened,

and I had never even sexualized my body until then. But the simple act of her saying that I

was being naughty by wearing a shirt that slightly showed part of my back changed my

mindset forever. And I felt guilty of something I did not have to feel guilty of. “Men make
the rules and laws; women transmit them” (p.38). Indeed. As far as I can recall, my father

never told me something similar. Or he did, but very few times compared to my mom.

All the responsibility lies with the woman and her role in society. Anzaldúa said: “For a

woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she could turn: to the Church as

a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother” (p. 39). I myself was raised

to be a mother and a homemaker. I never had brothers, but I am pretty sure that if I had had

ones, I would have probably been the one responsible in taking care of them like most of

my girlfriends who have them. “The culture and the Church insist that women are

subservient to males”. (p. 39). The role of women in society is very specific. If it is not

fulfilled, it would probably give way to rumors of all kinds. For example, being "half and

half" or "mitá y mitá" as Anzaldúa states. “They called her half and half (…) a deviation of

nature that horrified, a work of nature inverted” (p. 41).

Anzaldúa says that we are suffering from an absolute despot duality that says we are able to

be only one or the other. Being in touch with your masculine side as a woman brought

rejection from their Chicano culture. “Nothing in my culture approved of me. Había

agarrado malos pasos. Something was ‘wrong’ with me. Estaba más allá de la tradición”

(p. 38). But that did not stop her. “I, like other queer people, am two in one body, both

male and female. I am the embodiment of the hieros gamos: the coming together of

opposite qualities within” (p. 41). She is in touch with her masculine side and her feminine

side. She is the incarnation of a new way of being a woman.

I myself am proudly a queer person. However, that was not always the case. Discovering

my masculine side was difficult. And so was accepting my femininity and my attraction to

only women. But now I can say that I am a man and a woman at the same time, and that I
cannot feel more fulfilled. Flourished. When I cut my hair, I received glazes of

astonishment from my family. Even worried ones. What people do not know is that the

simple act of cutting my hair “as men do” was more liberating than anything else, and so

was dressing in men's clothing and giving my own touch of femininity to everything

initially thought for the masculine gender.

Anzaldúa refers to queer people as “the mirror reflecting the heterosexual tribe’s fear: being

different, being other and therefore lesser, therefore sub-human, in-human, non-human.” (p.

40). Being queer is being divergent, is having a restless strife with yourself and the world

around you. Being sexually different, not only involving your sexual orientation but your

identity, is to watch everything you know falling apart, not knowing who to count on nor

what to do about your internal falling-out. Being constantly doubting what you are and

who you are. Being afraid of rejection, of not belonging anywhere. We tend to impose

things on ourselves in order to fit into society. We tend to suppress ourselves. Most queer

people have gone through self-imposed limits and obligations. Closeted people mostly,

were limited to duality. You are one or the other, but you cannot be both. And if you think

you belong to the opposite gender you were assigned when you were born, you are wrong

and possibly sick. Because of this, we begin to hide ourselves as much as we can until we

cannot take it anymore. Until our Shadow Beast loosens his chains and wants to be free,

destroying all that is feared and then flourishing by itself. Anzaldúa tells us about his

Shadow Beast and how it is part of his spirit to not want to obey and accept dogmas.

So, what is the Shadow Beast to her? Her soul, her desire to be free, her true self. The

Shadow Beast is her inner self, which is opposed to the unquestionable, to the limits, to

what other people will say. “It refuses to take orders from my conscious will, it threatens
the sovereignty of my rulership. It is a part of me that hates constraints of any kind, even

those self-imposed” (p. 40). Discovering our feminine side and our masculine side is part of

reaching an awareness that is empty of prejudice and full of freedom. That is the

consciousness of the mestiza.

‘What is this new consciousness about?’ you may ask. It is a woman's consciousness. A

consciousness of the borderlands. Tolerance for ambiguity. There are many contradictory

ideas in the world but being able to understand them is part of being mestiza. To accept us

all as one and to remain flexible in the face of any type of information. “Rigidity means

death. Only by remaining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche horizontally and

vertically.” (p. 101). Having contradictory ideas or opinions makes us human. Breaking

paradigms makes us smart. Thinking for ourselves, being a part of everything and a part of

nothing, accepting our roots and learning from the past makes us one step further to have

this new consciousness.

Anzaldúa claims; as a mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all

countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister or potential lover. […] I am

cultureless because, as a feminist, I challenge the collective cultural/religious mal-

derived beliefs of Indo Hispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am

participating in the creation of yet another culture […]. (p. 102-103)

“Soy un amasamiento” (p. 103). This means that she is in the process of constant learning.

You never get to finish kneading. You are constantly becoming new forms, acquiring new

knowledge, defining new concepts, deconstructing all dogma ingrained in you for as long

as you can remember. Some people decide to stay as they are, just to be baked as they are,

while other people are constantly changing. Ser un amasamiento is to study, to understand,
to empathize with others, to rebuild ourselves and if necessary, deconstruct ourselves all

over again.

But is it necessary to define your identity? Is it necessary to talk about identity? I believe it

is. That is the only way to evolve. To talk about things, to question them. Realizing that the

world we live in was built by us, and that it is not an absolute truth. Everything evolves, but

for it to do so, we need to talk about certain things as crucial as identity is. What are we

without our identity? ‘Nobody’, someone will say. And it is true. Our identity is what we

are, what defines us. If we do not know what we are (or what we think we are) how can we

evolve into something better? Being in contact with all our edges, to find out and accept

everything that we are and what we can become is enough to reach this new consciousness.

At the end, why is this new consciousness so important to reach? Well, the answer is very

simple. We need to reach this new consciousness to accept others and accept ourselves. To

understand what we don't understand, to learn what we don't know and to teach what we

learn. But above all, we need to achieve the consciousness of the mestiza to build a future

in which there are no longer any fronteras.