Ethnographies of transnational migration in Ruben Martinez's Crossing Over.(Critical essay)

"The border is a marketplace. The invisible hand of the powerful governs the crossings."

--Amitava Kumar, Passport Photos (219)

The emphasis on binational and transnational relations in Chicano Studies in the last two decades (1) has coincided with important thematic changes in the post-movement (2) literature by US writers of Mexican origin. In the 1990s and 2000s, autobiographical works by Juan Felipe Herrera, Michele Serros, and Norma E. Cantu, the journalistic chronicles (3) of Ruben Martinez and Luis Alberto Urrea, the fiction of Sandra Cisneros, Paul S. Flores, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and Demetria Martinez, as well as the performances of Guillermo Gomez-Pena have exposed instances of uprooting, intercultural contact, violence, and exploitation in a wide context of trans-American relations. (4) Many of these writers continue to claim the label "Chicano" for themselves as a sign of intellectual commitment to the struggle for social justice of citizens and non-citizens of Mexican origin.

However, for these Chicano or Chicana authors, the relationship between the US and Mexico, between the US and Latin America, is not only part of the past, but also part of the present and the most immediate future of Latinos in the United States. These writers' experiences of physical and cultural mobility as Chicanos and Chicanas certainly constitute a springboard to understand other instances of dislocation that may not be identical to their own, but that are equally rooted in power imbalances between the First and the Third World. We may say, therefore, that these authors partake of a diasporic consciousness, if, following the theoretical work of James Clifford and Stuart Hall, "diaspora" refers to the voluntary and involuntary migrations and movements resulting from shifting power structures and to the new subjectivities and cultural practices within multiple forms of global mobility.

Initially, one feels reluctant to apply the concept of diaspora to a Mexican American experience such as the one narrated in Ruben Martinez's chronicle Crossing Over. Transnational Mexican workers have not definitely abandoned their land, nor is this land distant and remote as the term "diaspora" implies. Since seasonal work causes migrant workers to go back and forth from one country to another, they do return to Mexico, although often not at their own will. Thus, when we apply the notion of diaspora to these migrants' constant contact with the place of origin, we are doing it in a new sense that differs from the one often assigned to the Jewish or African diasporas. (5)

Within the shift from cultural nationalism to American transhemispheric relations, the Chicano "mestizo/a," "migrant," or "diasporic" consciousness necessarily faces the challenge of coming to grips with the disparate nature of transnational conflicts. The socio-economic divisions between the Third and the First World that the border metaphorically represents can be felt both in the North and in the South with different degrees of intensity and with site-specific dynamics that cannot be overlooked. We should consider, quoting Lora Romero, that "the border cuts both ways" (247) and that it cuts differently depending on which side we find ourselves.

Thus, in crossing over into Latin America, the Chicano writer will have to grapple with the representation of those who live south of the border and may want to cross legally or illegally in the opposite direction with purposes and socio-cultural backgrounds that differ considerably from hers or his. A discussion of the representation of turn-of-this-century transnational migration by a second-generation Chicano like Ruben Martinez will always be tied to issues of otherness, for the interaction between the Mexican and the Chicano will bring to the fore responses in accordance with the writer's cultural, gender, class, and racial position north and south of the border. As Amitava Kumar observes, post-colonial writing acquires a preeminent critical potential when an experience of migration and travel is used to dwell on a global condition of displacement, but it is also then that this writing reveals its shortcomings at representing those whose voice is often silenced (10).