LA REPRESENTACIÓN DE LA“LEYENDA NEGRA” EN LA FRONTERA NORTE DE MÉXICO: GABRIEL TRUJILLO MUÑOZ, LUIS HUMBERTO CROSTHWAITE Y ROSINA CONDE
Open Access
- Author:
- Cota-Torres, Edgar
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 08, 2006
- Committee Members:
- Julia Cuervo Hewitt, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Aída Beaupied, Committee Member
Santiago Vaquera Vásquez, Committee Member
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Committee Member
William Robert Blue, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Mexican-American Culture and Literature
Mexican Northern Border Authors
Mexican-american Border region - Abstract:
- ABSTRACT This dissertation studies the negative discourses associated with cultural and literary representations of Mexico’s northern border. Specific focus is made on principal border cities of Baja California by three contemporary writers from this region: Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz, Luis Humberto Crosthwaite and Rosina Conde. These authors present similar and also distinctive narrative approaches to this border with which they challenge the stereotypical visions of the United States and of Central Mexico. Mexican border cities such as Mexicali and Tijuana are often equated with sin, corruption, political and social negligence, and lawlessness by American media. These images, deeply imprinted in the social imagination of Mexico’s northern neighbor, have created what is known in the border region as the Black Legend, a term associated with a derogatory border perception that usually encompasses, but is not limited to drug dealing, prostitution, alcoholism and betting. At the same time, a similar negative narration arises in Mexico about its northern frontier: the border has been perceived as a weakened first line of defense against the threatening influence of the United States, an idea born out of the Mexican American war, and later reinforced during the Mexican Revolution, and the Prohibition. Chapter one recounts pertinent theoretical approaches applicable to the Mexican border. Historical events as well as the present day perspectives from both countries will be the central topics of the second chapter. Chapter three is dedicated to the analysis of Trujillo Munoz’s detective narrative from El festín de los cuervos. La saga fronteriza de Miguel Ángel Morgado. These stories explore the reencounter of a border native to his native land. It is through the process of the main character’s recuperation of his roots that the author questions and presents another version of the Black Legend. Chapter four concentrates on several short stories written by Luis Humberto Crosthwaite and depicts the complexity of daily life on the border. It is by means of the lives of the fronterizos, the border natives, that this author humanizes the border, thus accepting some of the implications of the Black Legend by simultaneously dispelling border stereotypes. Chapter five explores several short stories written by Rosina Conde. Her stories have a unique quality; the majority of her protagonists are women who are in constant search of an independent voice, and whose images also work as a metaphoric representation of the border. As a result of their struggles the women challenge the exclusionary border stereotypical stigma of the United States and Central Mexico. This dissertation proposes “revolutionary zonkeism” as a metaphor for understanding how these writers construct their border realities to reiterate the negative representations of the border, and how this functions as a resistance culture to combat the history of violence that leads to the leyenda negra of the US/Mexico border.