The Latino Reader and the Southwest

Of all the borders that we have examined this semester, I think the border, physical and cultural, between the U.S. and Mexico has produced some great art. It is interesting and exceptional for several reasons. For one reason, there was not only a clash between Old World and New World, but there was a clash between Old World and Old World. We see this in works such "The Squatter and the Don" and "Blood Meridian." Many of clashes, interestingly enough see to be the opposite, class wise, of what we are use to in terms of who is forced out of a region. Rather than the upper classes forcing the poor and uneducated out of a region, in the Southwest the old Aristocracy of Spain was forced out by the Westward expansion of poor and middle class Northern Europeans. It seems that the literature from the Southwest, much as the literature from the Southeast does, focuses on subjects that often strays into the occult, the strange and the violent. "The Mexican Village" and "The Rebel" hinted at this, as does "Blood Meridian." It seems the Southern clime tends towards expressions of the strange and grotesque.