U.S./Mexico Cultural Hybridization: The Emergence of a New Culture as Seen through the Directors Lens

Abstract

The U.S./Mexico border has long been a cultural, economic and linguistic divide and the disjunction between the two worlds has been a source of literary inspiration to many artists on both sides of the border. An ongoing literary and cinematic tradition from both sides of the cultural divide has presented the political, economic, and cultural changes occurring in the U.S./Mexico border region and the resultant immigrant life. This cinematographic documentation of border issues provides us with a window into cultural processes in a region that is politically and economically divided, and yet has a cultural coherence that ignores these borders. In analyzing the dramatic production on both sides of the border political, social, psychological, religious, and linguistic boundaries will be crossed and interwoven to approximate the hybridized tapestry envisioned by the directors of the various movies.