Foreword: Frontera Madre(hood) University of Arizona Press, published September 2024.
My daughter was just months old when I saw a video of a woman carrying an infant on her back crossing the Sonoran corridor of the U.S./Mexico border. She and her group had been detained by the Minutemen – a since disbanded vigilante group, founded in 2004, whose self-proclaimed mission was to monitor and protect the border. The incident was being recorded by human rights observers to ensure the safety of the migrants while they waited for the Border Patrol to arrive. As I watched the video I couldn’t keep my eyes off the mother – she looked visibly distressed and frustrated but was taking care of the needs of her child. Our babies must have been around the same age. As a new mother who was exhausted from the sleepless nights and from caring for my daughter alone, I couldn’t imagine how she had traversed hundreds, if not thousands, of miles while carrying her child. I wondered what she had had to endure to only be stopped and deterred from crossing into the United States.
Was someone waiting for them, panicked because they never arrived? Was she sent back to her country of origin? It never occurred to me that the mother might be separated from her baby. In 2007, the USian public was several years away from witnessing the mass family separations that began in 2018. Acts of tremendous violence that have yet been repaired. To date, hundreds of children have not been returned to their families, their mothers.
This short video provided me a glimpse into a reality that I couldn’t possibly begin to comprehend otherwise. What does it mean to mother at the intersections of violence, loss, migration, trauma, separation, militarization, and cultural shock? Indeed, the essays in this outstanding volume begin to paint a picture of “a state of being and a condition of Brown mothering specifically at the U.S-Mexico border that is unique and complex, and a departure from other locations.” What the editors have coined “Frontera Motherhood” - a concept that captures the challenges of mothering for Brown women on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border - will help us, as readers, understand and bear witness to the experiences of mothers as agents of change who fight for the education and healthcare of their families as they survive in the borderlands. It is a project that is both essential and transformative.
In 2006, I started writing about my own encounters as a brown Chicana single mother navigating multiple hetero-patriarchal institutions – the medical system, the family court system, academia - because it was the only way I could both let out my frustrations and name my experiences. I was trying to decipher what it meant to critically navigate carework through the lens of cultural and radical insistence. My contemplations often led me to my own mother, an immigrant woman from a small town in Mexico, and to my childhood of living along the border navigating the cities of San Diego and Tijuana. Grocery runs into pre-NAFTA era Mexico to Comercial Mexicana meant eating Fruti Lupis instead of Fruit Loops cereal as a child and long border waits upon our families’ return, never sure if we would be sent to secondary inspection for saying the wrong thing or looking too suspect.
Nonetheless, divisive border ideology existed beyond the geopolitical demarcation and boundaries between neighborhoods and people was a practice of everyday life. I can still feel the sting of my neighbor words who easily let me know that when my mother spoke English, she sounded like a broken record. Language terrorism was a marker of living in the borderlands.
Writing is cathartic as much as it is an act of resistance – the concept of Chicana m(other)work (Caballero et. al, 2019) emerged from my early writings and then expanded into a powerful conceptual framework and model of collectivity through a group of incredible mother-scholars who were committed to amplifying the experiences of Chicana mothers across multiple spaces and experiences. Our tagline, Porque sin madres no hay revolución, recentered the lifeforce of mothers.
This anthology, on the other hand, recenters the voices who must be most urgently listened to as policies are enacted that affect the life experiences – and possibilities - of those most affected by distant powerholders. Mothers are directly impacted as are those who they care for. As I’ve argued elsewhere (Tellez, 2021), the border is not simply a space of passage but also one of conviviality, of mutuality, and of exchange. It is a place where people live. The essays and testimonios in this volume bring meaning to Frontera Madrehood, stories and theories that allow us to contemplate the role of mothering at this unique location. It is a place where mixed status families figure out pathways to remain connected to their loved ones, where laboring in transitional spaces starts at a young age, where solidarity with mothers across and between borders is enacted.
Mothers endure pain. Mothers endure surveillance. Mothers (and their children, even if they are now adults) are abused while in detention. Mothers also resist. Mothers build networks of support with and through their comadres. Mothers imagine liberation and abolition. Mothers dream.
Frontera motherhood is also about speaking about the borders of class, sexuality, gender, and race. We are reminded that ‘papers please’ does not only signify citizenship but it also marks the exclusionary tactics of the state by defining who gets to be a mother.
This book will change the narrative of how Brown women, migrant women, border crossers and border dwellers are perceived. The authors have authentically spoken and have shaped their own stories to bring their realities to life for those who are so far from the border.
I carry the words of Sagrario’s mother, who has experienced great tragedy and survived unimaginable loss, it through her resilience that I can imagine hope.
The editors of this collection – Cynthia Bejarano and Cristina Morales – have dedicated their lifeswork to uplifiting borderland communities. Through this project they have helped us understand how location shapes experience and how imperative it is to center madres fronterizas. Their collaboration and vision have brought together an authoritative testament that will not be ignored.
I am honored to have been asked to comment on this beautiful offering and I welcome you to this journey. Edith Trevino states, “La Frontera is who I am” and these essays are a visceral reflection of this sentiment.
Michelle Téllez
Tucson, AZ
January, 2023
Frontera Madre(hood): Brown Mothers Challenging Oppression and Transborder Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Border edited by Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales can be purchased here.
Michelle Téllez writes about transnational community formations, mothering, and gendered migration along the U.S./Mexico borderlands. She co-edited The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolución (2019) and is the author of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect (2021), winner of the 2023 National Association of Chicana/o Studies Book of the Year Award.
