The United States of In-between

The author concludes her exploration of the U.S. borderlands with a meditation on the concept of borderlines. They don’t just delineate countries. Political parties are highly adept at redrawing the lines of congressional districts with a legal magic that—at the ballot box—brings about “miracles” on par with La Virgen de Guadalupe (only nowhere near as hopeful). For a borderline is an injustice. It is a time-held method of partitioning the planet for the benefit of the elite. Fortunately, there are legions of activists, artists, and faith keepers out there, petitioning on humanity’s behalf, but they need serious reinforcement. For the greatest lesson in nepantla is that many borderlines needn’t exist at all.

The Sort of Homecoming

Part Two of the book commences when, after five years of story-gathering in her native South Texas, the author relocates to the region of upstate New York known as “The North Country” for a year-long professorship at St. Lawrence University. She soon learns that the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne is just a 40 minute drive away. She recognizes this nation as the setting for the haunting 2008 film “Frozen River,” about human trafficking across the St. Lawrence River. After an encounter with the U.S. Border Patrol, the author quickly realizes she is back in nepantla, the land of in-between.

The Venerable

The author travels to Kingsville, Texas to meet Sister Maximina, who has spent 40 years campaigning for the canonization of Mother Julia, the founder of the Missionary Daughters of the Most Pure Virgin Mary. (At present, she is “Venerable,” which is the second of four stages to Sainthood.) In her lifetime, the Mexican nun established dozens of convents and schools in the United States and Mexico that catechized thousands of indigent children throughout the borderlands. Through her meeting with Sister Maximina, the author further meditates on the concept of spiritual mestizaje in the borderlands.

The Activist and the Ordinance

Soon after losing her sister to breast cancer at age 42, activist Suzie Canales discovered that their childhood neighborhood in Corpus Christi, Texas, was adjacent to two oil waste dumps later used as municipal garbage landfills. When she further learned that this area had been designated “reserved for Mexicans” in the 1940s by city officials, she formed Citizens for Environmental Justice, which rallies on behalf of fenceline communities along the city’s waste dumps and refineries. In this chapter, the author visits these communities (which border Citgo, Valero, Flint Hills, and a crumbling ASARCO/Encycle site) and records accounts of the environmental racism experienced by the residents who live among these Superfund sites. Ultimately, Canales takes EPA chief Lisa Jackson to task at the 2010 White House Forum on Environmental Justice in Washington, DC.

The Movement

At the end of 2012, the biggest indigenous rights movements in Canada’s history erupted. Known as Idle No More, it was triggered by legislation to eliminate key protections for water, fish, Aboriginal land, and native sovereignty. On January 5, 2013, six Cree youth left their remote village of Whapmagoostui, Quebec on the shores of Hudson Bay and started snowshoeing across Canada in the name of peace. Hundreds joined them for “The Journey of Nishiyuu,” or the Journey of the People. The author and her Cree/Metis friend Bob drive out to greet the youth on Victoria Island in Ottawa, Canada, and follow along on their march toward Parliament, where a rally is held.

The Activist and the Obelisk

This chapter delves into the environmental assault on Akwesasne as well as the tribe’s resistance. In the 1950s, Canada and the United States started building the St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of canals, locks, and channels that enabled ships to launch in the Great Lakes and sail clear to the Atlantic Ocean. One of its many regional side projects entailed a massive hydroelectric dam that straddled the international borderline. Its construction drowned out six villages and virtually all of the area’s beaver hutches, displacing some 6,500 people—many of whom were Mohawk—and decimating the trapping industry. The dam also lured businesses into the area, including General Motors, Reynolds Metals, and the Aluminum Company of America, all three of which opened factories on the outskirts of Akwesasne and slowly began to poison the area’s air and rivers. The Environmental Protection Agency has done little to help, and many Mohawks resent them for it. The author interviews activists who have taken matters into their own hands with direct action against the corporations—and have been sued as a result.

The Saint

This chapter explores the cult of Kateri Tekakwitha, the Mohawk maiden whose tremendous spiritual discipline (which included daily self-flagellation with tree branches, hot coals, and thorns) convinced Jesuit missionaries that Indians could be “holy” too. Since dying at age 24 in 1680, she—like Mother Julia in South Texas—hasn’t had a moment’s rest: she’s been causing miracles around the St. Lawrence River Valley (and beyond) ever since. In October 2012, she was canonized a Saint by the Vatican—the first Native American ever to be so. More than a thousand Mohawks flew to Rome to bear witness. In this chapter, the author joins the thousand who descended upon Kahnawake, the Mohawk Nation just south of Montreal, Quebec, where Kateri is buried, instead. There, at the Mission of Saint Francis Xavier, she meets an Algonquin woman who graduated from Indian Residential School and learns about the brutal legacies of Catholicism on Mohawk land.

The Chokepoint

The year 2012 broke all records when tiny Brooks County in South Texas recovered the bodies of 129 undocumented immigrants found somewhere along its 942 square miles of ranches and roads. Lead investigator Danny Davila invites the author on the recovery of the 35th body found that year: a woman who had been abandoned by her coyote and left to die three days earlier. Her official cause of death, however, was listed as “hiking through ranch illegally.” In this chapter, the author expands on the history and consequence of U.S. immigration policy.

The Bonder and the Dealer

A chance meeting with a bail bond agent turned French restaurateur in Falfurrias, Texas, turns the author onto the drug economy in South Texas. After an overview of Mexico’s Drug War, which claimed at least 60,000 lives during the presidency of Felipe Calderon, the author investigates the case of a local drug runner who got caught rolling bags of cocaine into the breakfast tacos he sold out of his taqueria in South Texas. She also expands on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s concept of “the danger of a single story.”

The Words That Come Before All Else

The author ends her journey at Akwesasne with a visit to the Longhouse, where she participates in a Strawberry Ceremony celebrating the arrival of summer. There, she learns about the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, the Thanksgiving Address that is given before all events of consequence throughout the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy. In it, all the forces that construct the universe are individually thanked, from the berries to the fish to the birds to the moon.