question archive Vila portrays such shifting identities that develop as a result of conflicting value systems existing across border areas, by detailing the experience of Mexican immigrant women
Vila portrays such shifting identities that develop as a result of conflicting value systems existing across border areas, by detailing the experience of Mexican immigrant women
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Vila portrays such shifting identities that develop as a result of conflicting value systems existing across border areas, by detailing the experience of Mexican immigrant women. While in Mexico, they are taught that their rights need to be subordinated to those of men. as a result, women are forced to bear infidelity in their men without complaint. But on the American side of the border, women are as liberated as the men and are placed on par with them, with equal rights and liberties as the men have. as a result, women are not forced to put up with injustice and can leave their unfaithful husbands in the interest of their own happiness and the happiness of their own children.
(Vila viii). In making the shift from the Mexican identity of women to their American identity as women, these immigrants are thus changing two aspects of their identity (a) the gender identity, which elevates them from the submissive female identity to one on par with men and (b) the religious identity, whereby they reject the proverbial cross they are forced to bear as subordinate citizens to a new identity where they are not obliged to bear the cross of a spouse’s infidelity (Vila, ix).
As Vila points out, the residents of border areas such as El Paso and Ciudad-Juarez area go through a complex process of identity formation, where they are torn between the conflict of their native racial/ethnic identity as Mexicans with their new American identities. Thus, being a Mexican American woman, for example, involves a complex juxtaposition of cultural, ethnic and racial identity which produces an identity that can neither be categorized as Mexican neither can it be classed as American. it’s an identity that contains certain elements of both.
On the one hand, a Mexican American woman is likely to reject the national reference point that links her with her subordinate female identity in Mexico and/or with the poverty that is rife on the Mexican side of the border. She is likely to embrace the American values of liberation and equality, as well as the American dream of material wealth and prosperity. .
