I am completing a PhD specializing in 20th Century Spanish Literature combined with Transatlantic Studies. I am interested in Spanish writers in exile who came here to America (US and Latin America) during Franco’s dictatorship and in Spanish women’s travel writing, written by women who came here for travelling or other reasons. These topics are dissimilar but they have something in common: both are manners of displacement, both are forms of being away from the place of origin, both are ways of crossing national borders, both imply an encounter with “the other” (other language, other culture) and both entail the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

One of my motivations to focus on that particular field was because I also consider myself a transatlantic product.  The first year I came to the United States was for working and studying because I got a grant. But after my first year, I decided to stay longer. First, because I like teaching and literature and I considered the American Doctoral system much more enriching than the system of my country. Secondly, I am also here because in my country I would not have the same opportunities that I enjoy here: universities have no funding, there are no jobs and the rate of unemployment is rising. Honestly, when some people ask me why I am here, I think more and more about the second reason I have just mentioned. Of course, I am not an exile as one of those writers I am interested in; I am not here due to political reasons and neither am I a woman traveller. However, considering some factors, I could say I am here because I could not live in my country doing what I want, which makes me think it over. There are a lot of people in my country of my generation who are unemployed and they cannot afford to pay for study anymore. They do not seem to  be obliged to run away from the country but they are spreading out to different places, working in whatever they find. Could they be considered immigrants? Or, is this a new era of young “exiled” people? Going abroad and travelling were a privilege which allowed us to enjoy unlimited freedom and more capacity for learning…now, it is different and displacements are part of our daily lives.

After taking this course, I can think about this situation in a different way. I could say that globalization creates a world in which borders are just lines on a map. Going through the contents we have studied, the topic I liked most was the study of transnationalism in exile, travel and migration. Also, these topics would help me to create stronger thoughts and hypothesis about space and displacement, which I am very particularly interested in for my future thesis or projects either in exile or women’s travels. I found very thought-provoking the ideas of “the place in between”, “non-places” and the discussions we had about belonging to a place, not belonging to a place and feeling part of it, and how all of these generates a way of rethinking identity. The limitations of the human in new places different from their places of origin are the “new borders” which lead me to think about the entity of the “hybrid” to redefine the phenomena of travel and displacement in the society of the past century and today. It also provides me a critical and theoretical framework for my future investigations as I would like to focus on spaces, travel and TransAtlantic theories for thinking about a new entity of the “traveller” and/or the “immigrant” and supporting my conclusions with particular examples.

To conclude, “Transnationalism” is a phenomenon that has always existed. From the time of the first travels to the New World to today, it  has been a factor of progress but also a factor very conditioned and manipulated economically and politically. It is difficult to establish a definition of it because this very complex term is determined by many aspects. But theories which enclose this term let us study “through” and to “the other side” of the frontiers. In this course, we have studied contemporary literature and cultural studies from a transnational perspective which make us think beyond the national to understand literature and culture from a more global, international and cosmopolitan perspective. This complements what I learned last semester in the course of “Landscapes, Provinces and Cities: Reflections on Space.” I had previously studied Kaplan’s theory of travel and displacement and I have a broader idea now that I could combine it with Kaplan and Grewal’s theory of “Global Identities and Sexuality” which would also help me to consolidate ideas in feminism as part of “women’s travel.”

After watching the movie and doing the readings for this week, I looked for the trailer of the movie. I wondered how the trailer could show the complexity of this movie in just a couple of minutes. It is very interesting that the trailer has no dialogues, just a sequence of scenes, accompanied by music. The first scene has solemn music; from the second scene until the end,  parts of three songs are played: a Molotov song called “Here comes the mayo” (Molotov is a Mexican rap-rock band very famous up to the present time); an Eagle-eye song: “To love somebody” (This singer is an Sweden- Northamerican singer who took this song from a British-Australian band called the Bee Gees, a very popular band in the sixties); and the third song appeared until the penultimate scene in the trailer that is called: “La Sirenita” by Rigo Tovar (Rigo Tovar is a Mexican singer who creates a musical mix using different kinds of regional music with rock). It shows a mix of international music combined with national music, which also represents national culture and folklore. The last scene finishes with the sound of the sea. Furthermore, a black screen with white letters sometimes appears between the changing of scenes which says: “LIFE has a way of teaching us,” “LIFE has a way of confusing us,” “LIFE has a way of changing us,” “LIFE has a way of surprising us,” “LIFE has a way of hurting us,” “LIFE has a way of healing us,” and “LIFE has a way of inspiring us.”

Paying attention to the scenes selected for the trailer, we can observe that it shows images of some social aspects of Mexico (the traffic jam produced by the death of an immigrant, a scene of a “quinceañera”, the police on one side of the road doing an inspection of settlersm an old woman street vendor of handcrafts, and random people from Mexico villages) as well as landscapes of the country. Principal scenes focus on the friendship of the two main characters: Tenoch and Julio and on some others, like Luisa. It is also interesting that the trailer finishes with an image of Luisa at the sea. The fact that there is no dialogue requires more visual attention and a wider interpretation for the audience. The constant leitmotiv of “LIFE has a way of…” give us an idea that the film could be about learning and experiences of life in general. Taking up the musical aspect again, it also contributes to the idea of life: starting with a solemn music makes me think of a beginning of something like a birth; then, it comes up rap and rock music that make me think of independency, youth and revelry. After that, the love song makes me think of experiences and the necessity of discovering new things about “the other.” In the next sequence there is a mix of national and rock music that makes me think of a lifetime in which we suffer and we mature. This part is accompanied by the crying of Luisa and then it finishes everything with the scene at the sea. Water could be interpreted as a symbol of creation and destruction, birth (as it starts in the swimming pool) and death (at the sea and also because Luisa is also the character who dies in the movie and it appears in this scene of the sea), which makes “life” into something circular as nature. Moreover, the sea is a sign of freedom, a space without borders and it is also one of the aspects that the movie show us with the kind of “life” the two main characters have.

This movie clearly shows a double face and two perspectives in one: the international and the national. According to the film critics, Hollywood cinema is taken as the model of “international and global” movies. They are movies based on cause and effect and the searching for adventure. In contrast, national cinema is more focused on art and culture, as a way of rethinking national society and culture. If we think about the plot of Y tu mamá también there is no more than a trip to a Mexican beach but at the same time it shows us some stereotypical images of settlers living in nearby villages which also represent national culture. At the same time, images of Mexico streets, a traffic accident, and a protest in the center of the city also represent social and national problems. Is it, therefore, a national or a global movie? Based on the plot itself it could be consider as an international movie: two young guys in their age of sexual discovery who enjoy life having sex and taking drugs and who spend several days with an adult woman from Spain who teach them new experiences about sex. At the end, this trip and the relationship that both have with this woman ends up becoming a life lesson and a dilemma for them: love vs. hate, betrayal vs. friendship, heterosexual desire vs. homosexual desire.

However, the extra diegetic voice-over is very important for the representation of the nation. It acts as a narrator in a novel, giving us hidden details which helps to construct the socio-economical context of the plot and contributes to the creation of the national vision: what the protest is about, what happened in some places some years ago or the background and social status of the main characters. These two guys do not represent all the social problems that Mexican society has, but they are an specific part of it: the Mexican upper class. And sex and drugs are political metaphors. These two guys are living in a constant state of “carpe diem” which provokes an escape from reality. There are no boundaries and economical restrictions for them and they are unconscious of the life from outside the bubble that they live in. They live a parallel life to what is actually occurring in Mexico society politically and economically. Tenoch lives in a mansion and his father is involved in the economic corruption of the country, which is paradoxically a problem of the country.

This movie is an adventure that explores the light and the darkness of each of the characters but it also shows that the society they live in is just a game of appearances. In addition, the break of this relationship and the silence at the end are crucial. They leave a feeling of melancholia and emptiness. Mexico is represented as a place of social difference, economic corruption and taboos, and where the claims of middle class society are hidden and ignored. This movie goes from the international interpretations attending to plot, to the national interpretation attending to details.

I have always heard that history progresses slowly, taking two steps forward and one step back. I have also heard that history can vary depending on which voice is speaking; each country in this world has its own version of official history and true history. Even though we still question what history is and what it is not, or how history is and how it was and how past events have repercussions today, in order to make collective decisions we need to create memory and know what we were in the past, what we are now and what we could be in the future. “World history” is a transnational term itself: it encloses borders and cultures and it seems to be the product of events, wars, rebellions and political forces across the cultures that compound the world’s space and time. All of these ideas came to my mind while I was reading the articles for this week. But how did the past determine the present? How is it that a single event in one place could be spread and determine a decade? And how could it change the world order?

According to the readings assigned, we move back to a particular year in a “recent” past in a postwar context to 1968, considered to be the first global and transnational rebellion which revealed itself in several places (such as in Mexico and Europe) and that continues to have relevance in a closed present time. But the results of 1968 are also a construction of imaginary spaces that embrace contradictions and complexities even today. Studies of memory, history and identity such as “Introduction: 1968 Memory and Place” claim a lack of attention to this year and how societies have constructed different ideas and interpretations of it–sometimes it was sold as a myth and an utopia– and also how it has been used and manipulated by political interests. Waters and Cornils emphasize the importance of this year, a rebellion year that was also focused on equality, and they pose a reconstruction of this year as memory through a collective consciousness and the creation of a transnational memory. In addition, the memory of 1968 could provoke a broader questioning that would redefine national and historical experience, locating the threads of a common national identity or opening it as an international movement.

In “Revisiting the Revolution: 1968 in Transnational Cultural memory”, Klimke  focuses more on the different levels of 1968 and how individual acts differed from country to country but at the same time was part of a larger social framework that constitutes memory, a social memory. The year 1968 created national recollections and transnational memories such as icons, images, references and experiences. The ‘sixties’ was an important decade for liberal ideas and the development of new trends in academic disciplines. The year 1968 was a transnationalist year that echoes other countries, a year that cross borders. Klimke describes “1968” as a central part of globalization.

There is no doubt that 1968 was a highly remarkable year. It encapsulated a phenomenon that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. The introduction to the article “1968 in Europe A History of Protest and Activism, 1956- 1977” Klimke and Scharloth state that 1968 constituted a protest movement that had transcended national borders in its attempts to realize an alternative society and world order. 1968 was as a “transnational moment of crisis and opportunity.” It provided a window to the panorama of European experiences during and after this year. Protest techniques were a widespread resource for mobilization and were only selectively adopted according to to structural opportunities available in each country. The movements of 1968 influenced others and have been the foundation, icon and model for others today that call for rights and equality.

However, political forces tried to “forget 1968”. Others have seen the year as one of modernization and prosperity; a year with benefits and limitations depending on the voice who speaks, on who experienced it or not. Every event tries to find a place and space in history and even its reflection in our days. Today we have twenty-five years distance in time from the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event which also has limitations and benefits but that changed our civilization. It was also emblematic of the physical removal of a city and a distinguished date in the calendar of 1989 that chained other events and became a transnational event due its consequences.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union are facts that changed the world order. When the political leadership of the Soviet Union was renewed and Gorbatshov came to power, an economic system reform was carried out. The reforms in the Soviet Union, the division and the emergence of countries like Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia contributed to the end of the communist system.
The fall of the Berlin Wall led to the unification of the “two Germanies” physically separated by a “frontier”, and in the Gorbatshov reform it joined two systems clearly dividing the world: the communist and the capitalist. Later, these facts influenced internationally crossing borders reaching even the Chinese communist regime that even now is still “communist”, yet has adopted a market economy, a capitalist system.

The fall of communism and the access of communist countries to the capitalist economy make the world change economic structures and their functions according to a more globalized world order. However, a paradox emerges today: on one hand, a globalized world with its economic and financial integration, trade liberalization and the revolution of knowledge appeared –also called the technological revolution– with its icon: the Internet. On the other, more social divisions have emerged from this revolutionary period.

Everything in history is interconnected and defines the present. Everything that supposed a change in the world order remained relevant and became a symbol, an icon, a set of principles and archetypes. Images and symbols of Che Guevara and Communism or flags with the hammer and sickle could be seen in contemporary protests. They are a decoy of ideals, freedom of speech and reminiscences of world changing events and (trans)national forces.

“We want to end gender inequality and to do this, we need everyone involved. […] feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify as feminists. […] (Their) expressions are seen as too strong, ‘too aggressive,’ isolating and anti-men, unattractive, even. Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one? […] inadvertent feminists […] are changing the world today. We need more of those and if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is important. It’s the idea and the ambition behind it. […] Men […] Gender equality is your issue too […] It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals. We should stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.”

Emma Watson’s United Nations Speech on Gender, Women’s Rights. 21 Sept 2014.

Emma Watson’s speech is the most recent, powerful, current and innovative proposal addressing feminist issues and calling for gender equality. It has inevitably come to mind during my reading of Borderlands / La frontera, and made me think to compare it with Anzaldúa’s proposal which was equally important and innovative in the social context of almost 30 years ago, when gender studies began to be relevant and when the struggle for social equality and race started. Anzaldúa created her proposal regarding the feminine; she proposed a transformation of the miscegenation discourse into a new mestizo subject of the woman. She raises awareness for the new mestiza fight against sexism and she suggests the breakdown of sexual binaries, racial differences and exclusionary definitions that restrict women, their identities and their sexualities. She calls for a collective consciousness in which the Chicano culture and border subjectivities can be identified. She emphasizes that the Chicano woman was subjected to man’s superiority. In this sense, she thinks of men as an enemy figure and she calls for a new masculinity. Anzaldúa considers herself to be the voice and the way of progress and in writing her own autobiography and testimony, wanted to achieve recognition of equality. These ideas have been developed by other women writers in the last decades but Anzaldúa was also a case of intersectionality: a female writer oppressed not only by her race and gender but also by her sexual orientation. Even now, Emma Watson reminds us that equality is still not achieved, and proposes a step further: a total involvement that avoids gender binary divisions and transmits the message that equality is something that concerns all of us, both women and men, claiming a collective social consciousness.
On the other hand, Borderlands / La Frontera is not only a feminist proposal, it is also the basis on which Anzaldúa talks about the concept of borders. She proposed the border as geographical space and as a place of identity resistance and political positioning; the border as a place of negotiation and congregation of marginal and alternative subjectivities and sexualities, a geographic boundary that limits and excludes.  This raises the moral of the “new mestiza” which comes from feminism to reflect on categories that define and constrain their culture. Anzaldúa refers to the spaces silenced by history featuring Chicana women and emphasizes difference, questions of belonging and identity and she creates a different way of thinking about history and identity of the border.
Regarding the border as margin, limited space and land transition, Anzaldúa clasifies it as a “third” space that separates Mexico from the US, where Chicana race is also suppressed by the racially white subject. One alternative is crossing the border. Border crossing creates a culture shock separated from identity and history. This produces a case of transnationalism which inevitably leads me to a comparison with Bhabha’s theory… is it therefore, a place in between? In my opinion, it is a space that brings the subject to belong to a place that it does not feel part of which supposes a questioning and a redefinition of its identity. This subject is a product of its origins; and as an immigrant or foreigner in another space, there is a necessity to search for and claim her own place as well as adapting herself to the new reality, culture and language.
Despite the issues of identity, race, gender, transnationalism and movement, a collective consciousness becomes indispensable. Anzaldúa, in her claim to recognition and acceptance of her proposal based on Chicano race gender equality, concludes that it would be accepted “when we accept ourselves as we are and where we are going and why.” To conclude this post, I find it is particularly interesting that we are still calling for a collective consciousness for every social movement to be effective. Issues of race or gender equality need to take a step further: fight the binaries and achieve a collective consciousness involving men and women. As Emma Watson said a few days ago, “We are struggling for a word uniting but the good news is we have a uniting movement. […] I am inviting you to step forward to be seen and to ask yourself, ‘If not me, who? If not now, when? “