Ewa Antoszek
When Personal Becomes Political: M. Jenea Sanchez Documenting Migration from Mexico
Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 13 (Spring 2019), pp. 91-100

Abstract: Even though “migration, immigration, and relocation is normative human behavior” (Blommaert and Verschueren in Byczkiewicz 5), migration across the U.S.-Mexico border has
always been a controversial issue, raising incessant debates that have become even more acrimonious in the aftermath of the recent political debate on the immigration in the U.S. Owing to that, the stories of Latinx in the U.S. that should be read through both indigenous and immigrant paradigms have been reinterpreted through the latter one solely. The resulting borderlands tales illustrate “similar sentiments of nationalism, racism and nativism” (Byczkiewicz 5), while attempting at the more complex depiction of this conflicted and striated space. The purpose of this article is to analyze border stories depicted in Historias en la Camioneta and examine how M. Jenea Sanchez documents the journeys of those who want to get al otro lado, combining personal accounts and documentary footage, thus contributing to the ongoing discussion on the U.S.-Mexico border and borderlands.

Keywords: U.S.-Mexico border, borderlands, migration, documentary film, M. Jenea Sanchez

DOI: 10.7311/PJAS.13/1/2019.08

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