Performance Activism at the Borderlands: Minutemen, Anzaldúa, Gómez-Peña

Resumen

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Las tierras fronterizas compartidas por los Estados Unidos y México son un depósito de signos de diversas culturas que han pasado por ellas: indígena, española, mexicana y anglosajona. Tres tipos de activismo político o artístico se apropian selectivamente de algunos de esos signos para proclamar identidades propias. Mediante acciones de patrullaje fronterizo, los Minutemen salvaguardan la pureza del proyecto de identidad nativista basado en la doctrina de Destino Manifiesto. Anzaldúa (ensayo) y Gómez-Peña (arte de acción), en cambio, estimulan la proliferación de combinaciones de signos que dan lugar a nuevas identidades y mestizajes.

Palabras clave: Frontera, Identidad, Destino Manifiesto, Minutemen, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Gloria Anzaldúa

The borderlands shared by the United States and Mexico are a deposit of signs of diverse cultures that have crossed through them: Native, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo-Saxon. Three types of political or artistic activism take control selectively of some of those signs to proclaim own identities. By means of the action of border patrolling, the Minutemen safeguard the purity of the project of nativist identity based on the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Anzaldúa (test) and Gómez-Peña (action art), however, stimulate the proliferation of combinations of signs that give rise to new identities and mestizations.

Keywords: Frontier, Identity, Manifest Destiny, Minutemen, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Gloria Anzaldía

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Extracto

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Performance Activism at the Borderlands: Minutemen, Anzaldúa, Gómez-Peña

Alberto Hernández-Lemus. Profesor de Filosofía (Estética), Colorado College, Dirección electrónica: ahernande z@coloradocollege.edu

Topos Topoi, Site and Topics

Once again, the vast unitary ecological system known as the borderlands of the Río Grande and the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts constitute a privileged topos (as site and topic) for activist performances. The area has been symbolically charged since the early 1800s, when U.S. settlers performatively put a stake on Mexican territory, eliciting the defensive performances of Mexico’s government and transforming what had been the free movement of people into codified discourses and policies regulating migration. A short list of noteworthy performances of the last two decades may include the performance writing of Gloria Anzaldúa, the showdown of Minutemen at the border, the “Temple of Confessions” of two Mexican (?), American (?) men of questionable legal and identity status, and the distribution of designer sneakers to facilitate the desert dash of “illegal” border crossers.1 Rather than attempting to split hairs in defining the differentia specifica dividing performance art from highly symbolical political activism, I will focus on these performances as acts aimed at producing effects in their audience by dramatizing certain features of a given historical context in a given physical site. Thus, it is the “performative” nature of these acts that will be the common denominator of this otherwise disparate collection of political activists (the Minutemen) and political artists (Anzaldúa, Gómez-Peña).

Before plunging into an analysis of the differences among these performance activists, I will briefly reflect on the border as a collection of signs that the performances articulate in their aesthetic messages. I will argue that the border with Mexico has played a defining role in constituting the foundational myth of the people of the U.S. conceived as the people of Manifest Destiny. I will claim, furthermore, that the national project that gives rise to U.S. American identity is a profoundly nativist one, one in which the fear of the excluded Other is not merely entrenched but even constitutive and vital.

According to John Austin, performative speech acts are those that, by virtue of the very words uttered, accomplish an action rather than merely reporting information: a priest declaring a couple husband and wife. In looking at these actions as performative, I will focus on what these acts accomplish as effects in the world. I contend that what gives coherence to these actions is a kind of aesthetic “signature,” a way of interpreting and...

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