Migration Chronicles: Reporting on the Paradoxes of Migrant Visibility
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: University of KentuckyLa crónica o la novela sin ficción dependen de la noción de "frontera", pero sobre todo, del arte de cruzarla.A medida que la mentalidad de fortaleza se arraiga en los territorios que temen a los bárbaros, pocos estímulos pueden ser tan sugerentes como la mezcla de géneros y culturas. Juan Villoro 1GIVEN the historical role of the Latin American chronicle as a genre that helps both author and reader to make sense of emerging social realities, it is fitting that the chronicle style has been adopted by contemporary journalists who write about Mexican migration to the United States.In the last three decades, journalists from both sides of the border have increasingly drawn on literary traditions first employed by the conquistadores and later used by the American New Journalists of the 1960s and 70s and contemporary Mexican chroniclers of the 70s and 80s, 2 to interpret the dramatic, tragic and at times shocking realities of the U.S.-Mexico border crossing experience for American and Mexican readers.Although journalists have been using the chronicle form to interpret the Mexican migration experience through a creative lens since at least the Bracero period, 3 the publication of book-length migration chronicles increased dramatically since the advent of Operation Gatekeeper and similar border security measures in the early 1990s.4 Migration chronicles 1 "Mexicamérica: La frontera de los ilegales."n.p.2 See C. Monsiváis (A ustedes 76) and J. Villoro ("Mexicamérica" n.p.) for further discussion of the influence of American New Journalism on the contemporary Mexican chronicle.
Author: Ruth Brown
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W80907885