Mga Subtitle (241)
0:00Borders shape our reality. If you're
0:02born on this side, you pay in pesos and
0:04get a passport with an eagle on it. If
0:06you're born on this side, you pay in
0:08dollars and get a passport also with an
0:11eagle on it. But before the US Mexico
0:13border looked like this, it looked like
0:16this. Before that, this. And before
0:20that, the United States and Mexico
0:23didn't exist. So borders aren't exactly
0:25permanent. They can and do change and
0:28get crossed both in life and in
0:31literature. Hi, I'm Curly Velasquez and
0:33this is Crash Course Latin American
0:41Where you are affects who you are. And
0:44for many Latin American authors, moving
0:46across borders has shaped their
0:48identity, sparked their imagination, and
0:51inspired them to push literary borders,
0:53too. Like during the boom era of the
0:551960s and 70s, which we talked about in
0:58a previous episode, many Latin American
1:00writers went into exile in Europe. They
1:03fled dictatorships or political
1:05persecution, either by force or by
1:07choice. One of them was Julio Cortasar.
1:10Frustrated with Argentina's government,
1:12he booked it to Paris and living far
1:15from his home country inspired him to
1:17break the literary mold. Take his 1963
1:20novel Raylla or Hopscotch. It starts out
1:24as a story about an Argentine lost in
1:26Paris and his relationship with Lamaga,
1:30the OG manic pixie dream girl. And it's
1:32divided into three sections. From the
1:35other side takes place in Paris. From
1:38this side is set in Argentina. And from
1:40diverse sides, well, this section he
1:43calls expendable. Just skip it if you
1:45want. But this is not my first literary
1:47mind game, Julio. I know that you know
1:49that I'm going to want to know what
1:50happens there. The novel comes with a
1:52deion table of instructions that gives
1:55us two options. You can read in the
1:58usual linear way, or you can follow the
2:00number chart that will have you hopping
2:02between all 155 chapters out of order.
2:05Except instead of reaching the end,
2:08you'll bounce between chapters 58 and
2:10131 forever and ever and ever and ever
2:20Whoa. Okay. Infinite hopscotch. somehow
2:25both zany and meticulous. It's no wonder
2:27that Rayuella gets described as an anti-
2:30novella, a novel that deliberately
2:32defies our expectations of what a novel
2:35should be or as a book that requires
2:47I love being in cahoots. Not only is the
2:50book's structure super experimental, it
2:53really wilds out with the words, too.
2:56Cortasar leans into an Argentine variant
2:59of Spanish, and he uses an invented
3:01language he calls for a scene where she
3:04toreles her hoggales until they reach
3:07the slobber digging raymouth of the
3:09Orumian. I total my orgales in 1997 and
3:12I have never been the same. But at its
3:13heart, the novel isn't about slobber
3:15digging. It's about the experience of
3:17leaving behind everything you once knew.
3:20If I could sum up the novel in one
3:22scene, it's this one. A character named
3:25Talita living in Argentina gets talked
3:28into walking across a rickety bridge
3:30between two buildings. High above the
3:32street, Talita starts feeling sick and
3:34keeps saying she wants to go back. But
3:36as she's out there in the middle, her
3:38friends are like, "Keep going. You're
3:40almost there." And Talita says,
3:43"Anything is better than being out here
3:45like this in between the two windows."
3:48Which, sure, you could read as a normal
3:50reaction to being 50 ft in the air. But
3:52you could also read it as a metaphor for
3:55the unease of being in between two
3:57places. You can't easily go back there,
4:00but you're not fully here. You're sort
4:02of in the middle. And that's real. I
4:04felt like that myself, like when I'm not
4:07Latino enough for the Latinos but too
4:09ethnic for the white folk and suddenly I
4:11don't fit in anywhere. And for some
4:13carrying around a hyphenated identity
4:15like Salvadorian hyphen American feels
4:18heavy, like being split between two
4:21places, except neither exactly feels
4:23like home. So a number of Latin American
4:25cultures have embraced terms that focus
4:27on who they are rather than the
4:28countries they're supposedly split
4:30between. Like in the 1960s and 70s, some
4:33Americans of Mexican descent started
4:35embracing the term chico, reclaiming a
4:38word for Mexican-American that had
4:40previously been used as an insult. With
4:43that, they flipped the idea of being
4:46divided between two places and said,
4:48"Actually, we belong to both." El
4:51Muimto, also called the Chicano
4:53movement, celebrated Chanismo as an
4:56expression of cultural pride. While
4:59pushing for social change and civil
5:01rights after decades of discrimination,
5:03then in the 1980s through the Chana
5:05literature movement, women started
5:07calling attention to the fact that they
5:09face oppression both as Chicanas and as
5:13women. Take the Chana writer Gloria
5:15Anzaldua. Having grown up in South
5:17Texas, she refers to herself as a border
5:20woman. But when she talks about borders,
5:22she doesn't just mean a line on a map
5:24that separates two countries. She's
5:26talking about the invisible lines of
5:28society's expectations.
5:31Dividing people by class, gender,
5:33sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Her 1987
5:37book, Borderlands, La Fronta, the new
5:39mestisa, explores those borders through
5:42her own identity. She's mestisa or mixed
5:46with both indigenous and European
5:48ancestry. But her identity is also
5:51informed by identifying as queer and by
5:54being a woman of Mexican descent living
5:56in Texas, a distinct community all its
5:59own. To describe all these
6:00intersections, she uses the natan word
6:03nepantla, an indigenous concept meaning
6:06the in between. She compares nepantla to
6:09the stage of writing where you have all
6:11these ideas, all these images,
6:13sentences, and paragraphs. And when
6:15you're trying to make them into one
6:17piece, in other words, rather than
6:20thinking of identity in terms of hyphens
6:22or divided parts, she's thinking about
6:24identity and writing as an act of
6:27creative combination. Like, I'm not half
6:30of this and half of that. I'm a whole
6:32lot of all of it. and Anzaldua goes all
6:35in on exploring the in between. She
6:37writes in what she calls cho Spanish,
6:40slipping between English, nawat, and
6:42different variants of Spanish. On top of
6:44that, Borderlands blends multiple
6:47genres. Is it a novel, a memoir, a book
6:50of poems, essays? Yes, all of the above.
6:54See, it's these in between spaces where
6:56literary innovation so often happens.
6:59And along borders in the real world, we
7:01also find a kind of cultural innovation
7:04as peoples blend and merge to create
7:07something new. Let me show you what I
7:08mean. Over in the curly notes,
7:11Mexican writer Yuri's 2009 novel Seales
7:14Depressed Alfindel Mundo, Signs
7:17Preceding the End of the World, follows
7:19Machina, a young woman working as a
7:22switchboard operator in rural Mexico,
7:24connecting people and information across
7:27three languages. She's a girl between
7:29worlds, mediating across borders. And
7:31she takes that role seriously, telling
7:33herself, "You are the door, not the one
7:36who walks through it." But Machina's
7:38brother is so gullible and has crossed
7:41the border after falling for false
7:42promises of free land. So Machina heads
7:45north to try to bring him home. Along
7:47the way, she faces the very real trials
7:49and dangers that Mexican migrants face.
7:52Among them, she's sexually harassed and
7:54shot at. At the same time, her story
7:56echoes Greek and Mesoamerican myths of
7:58the underworld, where the soul must move
8:01through several levels of challenges.
8:03Machina has to cross a river filled with
8:05invisible water monsters and pass by the
8:08remains of those who didn't make it,
8:10which starts to blur the lines between
8:12myth and reality. And like any hero,
8:15Machina is changed by her journey. She
8:18starts out sure that she'll leave the US
8:20as soon as her mission's complete. But
8:22then she's fascinated by the people she
8:24meets just beyond the border. They're
8:27speaking an intermediary tongue that
8:29Machina instantly warms to because it's
8:31like her, malleable, erasable,
8:35permeable, a hinge pivoting between two
8:38like but distant souls. In this blend of
8:41cultures and languages, she finds a
8:43nebulous territory between what is dying
8:46out and what is not yet born. In other
8:49words, there's something exciting and
8:51new happening here. The borderlands draw
8:53her in that space where people,
8:56languages, and cultures blend. You might
8:59say it's the nepantla that she's
9:01enchanted by, that in between where new
9:04meanings and possibilities meet. Where
9:07we are affects who we are, but that
9:09where isn't always stable. For many
9:13Latin American writers, crossing borders
9:15inspires new ways of telling stories.
9:18And through their work, they challenge
9:20us to look at borders themselves, seeing
9:23them as more than just man-made lines.
9:26They're also spaces of interaction,
9:28creativity, and possibility. And they're
9:31more fluid than they seem. Next time,
9:33we're talking about another kind of
9:34space, houses and homes. So, Pont
9:36Olympiad, get to cleaning because you
9:38have visitors soon. See you then. Thanks
9:41for watching this episode of Crash
9:43Course Latin American Literature, which
9:45was filmed at the Gloss Fernandez Studio
9:47in Indianapolis and was made with the
9:49help of all these innovative people. If
9:52you want to keep Crash Course free for
9:54everyone forever, you can join our
9:56community on Patreon. Oh, and if you're
9:58interested in learning about some of the
9:59topics covered in this episode, we
10:01pulled together a playlist you can dig
