So Close and Yet so Foreign: Trans-Border relations in Paul S. Flores’ Along the Border Lies (2001)

Abstract

Partially based on autobiographical experience, Paul S. Flores’ Along the Border Lies looks at the northern and southern sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border region from a Chicano, postcolonial, postmodern perspective that considers class, status, and national origin as factors determining the way one relates to this place, the extent to which the border can be crossed in one direction or another, and the chances one has on the U.S and Mexican sides respectively. The discussion contextualizes Flores’ critique of trans-border socio-economic interactions in the region in the context of the 1990s anti-immigrant legislation in the United States, the militarization of the border, the freer circulation of goods across from the South, and the impact of the increase of drug consumption in the United States on both sides of the border. In Flores’ novel, the San Diego-Tijuana area is rendered as a war and illegal trade zone that has a psychological impact upon its inhabitants and determines the power imbalances between people of Mexican and Mexican American origin who interact across borders. Overall, Along the Border Lies offers a critique of the spaces Mexicans and Mexican Americans call home and of the values of the communities inhabiting them.

Keywords

• Mexicans
• Mexican Americans
• Narconovela
• trans-border relations