By Tanner Langford
Borders, power, and transgression concern not only the United States but also other parts of the world, where borders have been both created and inevitably transgressed by undocumented migration across them.
Cecilia Méndez, director of the Latin American and Iberian Studies program at UC Santa Barbara.
Cecilia Méndez is the director of the Latin American and Iberian Studies (LAIS) program at UC Santa Barbara and specializes in Andean history. Mendez along with Spanish and Portuguese Professor Juan Pablo Lupi organized the second UCSB Latin American and Iberian Studies graduate student conference last month on the topic of Borders, Power, and Transgression.
The conference featured panelists from universities across the world. In an interview, Mendez discussed the importance of the virtual conference and its focus on borders across Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula, and beyond. Recordings of the keynote speakers can be found here.
Q: What were some of the major takeaways from the conference?
A: My first takeaway was that the concept of borders was very appealing for a number of disciplines and a number of approaches. It is not only the US border, which is why we thought that it was appealing, because for us in the US we see the immediate political concern for what was occurring at the borders during the Trump administration. It is also relevant throughout the world.
It is a topic that needs to be discussed within LAIS because we are an interdisciplinary department. The conference dealt not only with Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula because the LAIS department has a global focus, as Portugal and Spain were empires and had territories across the world, and people have a fairly narrow view of Latin America. It was very global, as there was a discussion on the border between France and Portugal and how it affected Guyana.
Q: How do you view the connection between borders, power, and transgression, especially from the lens of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula?
Christine Hünefeldt, history professor at UC San Diego, speaking during the second UCSB Latin American and Iberian Studies graduate student conference on the topic of Borders, Power, and Transgression
A: The moment you create a border, because it is not natural, you will have some people physically migrating across that border. The border being artificial means that it is something that will naturally be transgressed. You are putting up a wall, whether it be physical or legal, that creates division and disrupts fluidity. The border creates a “no.” It creates a boundary where there is none, and the law itself also creates a “no,” but migration across these borders creates a “yes.”
Q: We have a current crisis at our border regarding undocumented immigration and the treatment of migrants in detention centers. What change do you hope to see as we move forward, either legislative or regarding society’s views on immigration?
A: I hope that people learn to see others that don’t look like them with empathy because people that speak other languages and look different have the same problems. The law itself can help, although it may not change things because a lot of things at different levels have to happen. The role of the press and the media are extremely important and more voices and lives need to be represented in the media to understand empathy. People must stop criminalizing people who are actually victims.
Q: What role do you think social borders play within our society and how do you see this role shifting in the future?
A: As a historian, I don’t think that history just goes in one direction. People think that the future will be more advanced and the past will be more backward and the critical lens of history works to deconstruct that idea. Whenever there is access, in gaining rights and a change in legislation, there is an immediate challenge that follows. The more you open up a society to democracy the more you see a rise of conservatism as a reaction, so it truly depends on how you look at history.
Tanner Langford is a second-year sociology student at UC Santa Barbara. He wrote this story for his Writing Program class, Journalism for Web and Social Media.