THE BORDER is. (A MANIFESTO) Roxper CULTURE tS 4 polysemantie term Stepping onrside of one's culture is equivaler alk Hole culture m iad, clandestnisd, contrabando, transgresién. desobediencia binacional; en orros palabras, £0 smuggle dangerous poetry and utopian visions none culture ro another, desde ali, hasta ac uti alsa means to maintain one’s dignity ont sid the Law Hur it alse means libri ae forms For new eon: rentsin-gestation: spray mural, rechino-altar, po- evryin-tongies, audio grafiti, purkarachi, video (borer Patrol art world, poliee, monocultura; en otras Palabras ytiereas, a art against the monolings er omnia saecula specttorum Io mcans to be Mid in English, Span: h, and Ingle, ‘eause Spa 1 diplomacy real friendship and sks mycany te practice creative apprope Buc it abo means a new ear «a bran zation of the East; the socialization of the West the Third-Worldization of the North and th First-\Worldization othe South Fut it alo means a mukipliity of voices a6 calgural relations fiona the center, dttevent San Digjuana, San Panelo—Nuyorrico, Mi amni—Quebec, San Antonio Berlin, your home among more culturally akin re town and mine Buc i also means regresar y volves partir: ture isa Sisyphean experience and to arrive is just ur it also means a new cerminology for new morphosing: stklacd, nor sudlacas Chiearrican, not Hispanic: mestizsie. not miseegeration: 6 thot bohemian: accionista, HOt per Former: intercultural, noe postiente. Bue ig also means tolevelap mew mod ei tries and Tangwages or, better said, c0 tnd ne _—____—— COPIADORA WINI Bloco B sala 103o express the fluctuating borders. Bur ic also means experimenting with che cand society legalidad and and espatiol, male and female, North and South, ifand other; and subverting, these relationship But i also means to speak from the erevasse, desde acé, este el medio. The border is the june ture, nor the edge, and monoculeuralism has been Bur it also means glasnost, not government censorship, for censorship i the opposite of bor Bur it also means to analyze critical Bur it also means to question and transgres border culture. Whar today is power an essary, tomorrow is arcane and ridiculous; what today isborder culeure, tomorrow is institutional Buc ic also means to escape the curte optation of border culeure Buc also means to look atthe past and the fi the same time. 1493 was the beginning of a ocidal era. 1992 will mark che beginning of new era; America post-Colombina, Arteameética s. Soon, a new internationalism will found the spinal corel of this t Europe, nor just che North, not only you, compariero del otto lado.1987 DOCUMENTED/UNDOCUMENTED LIVE SMACK IN THE FISSURE between ¥o worlds, in the infected wound: halfa block fom the end of V crn civilization and four ils from the beginning of the Mexican/Ameri 1n border, the northernmost point of Latin imerica, Ta my frac red reality, but a reality onetheless, there cohabit two histories, lan uages, cosmologies, artistic traditions, and po: tal systems whic are drastically counterposed. fany “decerritorialized” Latin American artists trope and the United States have opted for internationalism” (a cultural dentity based originating out f New York or Paris). I, on the other hand, opt 1 “most advanced” of the ide “bordemess” and assun my role: my g on, the cilango (slang mn for a Mexico City ive), who came to “El Nort fecing the im ecological and social catastrophe of Mex City heeness, in search of that other Mexico grafted Ho the ally integrated itself into trails of the etcetera .. . became Ch norized. We de-Mexicanized ourselves to + becam pose. And one day, the bor: © out house, aboratony, aid ministry Today, eight years after my departure from ‘Mexico, when they ask me for my nationality or ethnic identity, I can’t respond with one word, since my “identity” now possesses multiple re: percories: I am Mexican but I am also Chicane and La rican, At the border they call me hilango or mesiquillo; in Mexico Ciy it’s pocho or norte; and in Europe i's sudaca. The Anglos call me “Hispanic” or “Latino,” and the Geemans have, on more than one occasion, confused me with Turks or Italians. I walk amid the rubble of the Tower of Babel of my American post modernity The recapitulation of my personal and collec tive topography has become my cultural obses sion since I arrived inthe United States, [look for rneration, whose distance stretches not only from Mexico City to Califor pre-Columbian America to high technology, and from Spanish to English, sing. through “Spanglish.” Asa result of this process I have become a cul tural ropographer, border-crosser, and hunter of myths. And it loesn't matter where ind myse in Califas or Mexico City, in Barcelona or WestBerlins [always have the sensation that I belong to the same species: the migrant tribe of fiery pupils, My comes from two distinee traditions, and because cork, like that of many border artists, of this has dual, or on occasion mulkipl, reeren: ial coves. One strain comes from Mexican popu: the Latin American literary “boom,” and the Mexico City counterculture of the 19 her comes directly from Fluxus (a late 1960s intemational art movement that explored +, and per formance art. These two trad my border experie In my intellec Gabriel Garcia Marquee, renberg, José Agust Rai Vito Acconci, and Jos Beuys. My “artistic space” isthe interseetion where the yew Mexican urban poetry and the colloquial Ar slo poetry’ meets the intermediate stage some where berween Mexican street theatre and ‘multimedia performance; the silence thae snaps d punks the wall that divides (a 1970s Mesico City art movement jon of low-budget book nd graphics) and grafic; the highway that involved in the produ joins Mexico City and Los Angeles; and the mys thought and action that puts Pan-Latin Americanism in touch with the Chi ‘ano movement, andl both of these in touch with 1 ama child of crisis and cultural syncretism, half-hippie and half-punk. My generation grew up wacchi Lares (Mexican cow- boys) and science fiction, listening to cumbias and cunes from the Moody Blues, constructing altars and filming in Super-8, reading El Como Em umado and reforum, traveling to Tepoztl and San Francisco, creating and de-ereatin myths. We went Cuba in search of politi and to the United States in search of t insrantancous musico-sexual paradise. We foun nothing, Our dreams wound up getting caugh in the webs of the border. (Our generation belongs to the world’s bigges floating population: the weary travelers, the dis located, those of us who lefe Because we didn’t fi anymore, those of us who sill haven’ arived be cause we don’t know where to arrive at, or be cause we can't go back anymore. ‘Our deepest loss, which comes from our having left. Our los is total and occurs at multiple levels: loss of out country (culture and national rituals) and our class (the “lluscrious” middle class and upper middle); progressive loss of language and literary culture in our native tongue (hose of us who live innon-Spanish-speaking countries); loss of ideo. logical meta-horizons (the repression against ane division of the left) and of metaphysical certainty, Tn exchange, what we won was a vision of a ‘more experimental culeure, that isto say, a multi focal and tolerant one. Going beyond nationalism, we established cul tural alliances with other places, and we won a ion and true political conscience (declassiciz ‘consequent politicization) as well a new options in social, sexual, spiritual, and aesthetic behavior Our ats and coll product presents hybrid realities ding visions within coalition. We tice the epistemology of multipliciy and a bor: der semiotics. We share certain thematic interests, like the continual clash with cultural otherness, the crisis of identity, or, berter said, access £0 trans- or multiculturalism, and the destruction of borders therefom; the creation of alternative car‘ocious critique of the dominant ate of both countries; and, + sectors, The borders either expand oF are full of holes. Cultures and languages mutu “invade one another. The South rises and its, while the North descends dangerously hits economic and military pincers. The East ily receive uncontainable migratio a majority of whom are bel placed involuntarily. This phenomenon is ultiple factors: region: >yment, overpopulation, an parity in North/South relations. idle East and Black Africa heart now beats in the ‘ed States, New York and Paris increasing Je Mexico City and Si0 Paolo. Cities like and Los Angeles, once socio-urban aber a new hybrid Ti rations, are becoming models culture, ull of uncertainty and vitality. And bor ildren der youth —the Fearsome “cholo-punks,” “ofthe chasm that is opening berween the “First” 4° worlds, become the indisputable sje (the fusion of the and the “Third heirs to a new mest ‘Amerindian and European races), In this context, eo ‘culeual iden ies and anachronisms. Like “high © “ethnic puri y 1g the funeral of moder sion of the we jent. Syncretism, in terdisciplinarianism, andquia ons of contemporary art, And the artist or incllecrual who doesn't comprehend this will be banished! and his or her work will not form part of the great cultural debates of the continent, [Arcs conceptual territory where everything is 7, all the creative possibilities have been explored, and possible, and by the same roken there sor limitations within ie. In thecefore they are all within our reach, hanks to th many’ artists over the last fifteen years, the con- discoveries and advancements of cept of méier is so wide and the parameters of 1 s0 Hlesible that tically every they include ps (Felip Joseph Beuys—Germany), as an instrument of inable alternative: artas political regotiation Ehrenberg—Mexico), as social reform rmulticultueal organization (Judy Baca—United as alter Kit Galloway a sl States). Others conceive of arvasa strategy of intervention aimed at mass me- Seates) ... oF ive communication (Dost Arce—Mesic Sheeti Rabinowirz—U cy, social chronicle, a dia, or as citizen-ipl popular semiotics, or personal anthropology. stic options in terms of the medium, methodology, system of communica tion, and channels of distribution for our ideas and im: more diverse than this fee dom implies operating outside of history, or, ges are greate! ever, Not underst iding and practci worse yet, blindly accepting the restrictions im: posed by cultural bureaucracies. (Que experience as Latino border artists and in tellectuls in the United States fluctuates benween, legality and ilegality, benween partial citizenship andi full. For the Anglo communi y we are simply “an ethnic minority,” a subculture, that is to say, some kind of pre-industrial tribe with a good , For the art world, we are consumerist app practitioners of distant languages that, in the best of eases are perceived as exoti ln general, we are perceived through the folk loric prisms of Hollywood, fad literature, publicity; or through the ideological filters ¢ ge Anglo, we are nach ” “metaphors.” W mass media, For the aver ing but “images, lack ontological existence and anthropologic: symbols concreteness, We are perceived indiscriminatel as magic creatures with shamanistic powers happy bohemians with prerechnological sensibil ities, oF as romantic revolutionaries born in Cuban poster from the 1970s. All this withou mentioning the more ordinary myths, which link us with drugs, supersexuality, gratuitous vio lence, and terrorism; myths that serve to justifi nd disguise the fear of euleural otherness These mechanisms of mythil generate obstruct true intercul: semantic interference an tural dialogue. To make border art implies to re veal and subvert said mechanisms. ‘The term Hispanic, coined by techno-markee rs of political cans ing experts and by the desig paigas, homogenizes our cultural diversity (Chi ‘canos, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans tinguishable), avoids our indigenous eulcural her itage, and links us directly with Spain, Worse y me ins: itpossesses connotations of upward mobility and political obedience. ‘The serms Thied World culture, ethnie art, and minority art are openly ethnocentric and neces sarily imply an axiological vision of the world at the service of Anglo-European culture, Con fronted with them, one cant avoid asking the fol lowing questions: Besides possessing more ‘money and arms, is the “Firse World” qualita tively better in any other way than our “under: developed” count selves also an “ethnic group,” one of the most vi ‘lent and antisocial tribes on this planet? Aren't the soo million Latin American mestizos that in 2? Aren't the Anglos them. habie the Americas a“minority”? Among Chicanos, Mexicans, and Anglos, there is a heritage of relations poisoned by distrust andresentment. For this reason, my cultural work (especially in the camps of performance art, radio art, and journalism) has concentrated upon the destruction of the myths and the stereotypes that each group has invented to rationalize the other nwo. With the dismantling of this mythology, I look, if not to create an instantaneous space for intercultural communication, at least to con: tribute to the ereation of the groundwork and theoretical principles fora future dialogue that is capable of transcending the profound historic resentments that exist berween the communities on cithe Wit! the Immige ¢ ofthe border. he framework of the false amnesty of 11 Reform and Control Act and the {growing influence of the North American ultra right, which seeks to close (miltarize) because of supposed motives of “national secu: rity,” the collabor ation among Chicano, Mexican, and Anglo artists has become indispensable. Anglo artists can contribut ability, their comps their technical hension of the new media of mation (video an and their aleruist/internationalist expression and infe audio), indencies, In ether Mexican, Chi ‘or South American) ean tribute the originality of their cultural models, their spiritual strength, and their political under standing of the wor Together, we can collaborate in surprising cul: ‘ural projects without forgetting that both should retain control of the product, from the pl ing stages up through distribution. Ifthis doesnt oc ‘cur, then intercultural collaboration isn’t authen tic, We shouldn't confuse true collaboration with political paternalism, culeural vampirism, voveue ism, economic opportunism, and demo rmuleiculeuralism, We should ck ice and forall: We (Latinos inthe United States) don'ewant to bea mere ingredient of the melting por. What we \antis to participate actively ina humanistic, plu ralistic, and politicized dialogue, continuous and ‘ot sporadic, and we want this to occur berween up this matter equals who enjoy the same power of negotiation. For this “intermediate space” to open, first there has to be a pact of mutual culeural under: standin that the border artist can ¢ e. In this very delicate historical moment, Mexican artists and lectuals as well as Chicanos and Anglos should try tb “recontextualize” ourselves, tha is to say, search for a “common culeural territory,” and within it put into actice new models of communication and association. ‘Translated by Ruben Martines