33 pages 1 hour read

Gloria E. Anzaldua

Borderlands La Frontera

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1987

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Part 1, Chapter 7

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Atravesando Fronteras/Crossing Borders”

Chapter 7 Summary: “La consciencia de la mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness”

For the opening of Anzaldúa’s final chapter, she cites José Vasconcelos and his vision of “una Raza mestiza…a cosmic race” (99). From this, the new mestiza consciousness arises, a consciousness of the borderlands. Chicanos, Anzaldúa argues, embody psychic restlessness and cultural collision; therefore, they have the potential to look beyond the duality of the present world. This mestiza must then be fluid; she must embrace ambiguity and contradiction. According to Anzaldúa, “the work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner” (102). Only then will violence end.

As a lesbian and Chicana, Anzaldúa pushes back on the notion that she is raceless and cultureless; instead, she argues she is all races and all cultures. She is the act of kneading, always questioning reality as it is. She draws an analogy between the mestiza and corn: both are the product of cross-breeding. As a mestiza, her first step is to take inventory of what she has inherited, choosing to rupture with those histories. She shapes new myths, deconstructing herself, becoming a nahual (in Mexican folk religion, a human who can transform into an animal).

Anzaldúa then parses apart the meaning of machismo, indicating it reveals a sense of racial shame for Chicano men.