Engaging with contemporary Latinx and
Indigenous border literatures and films, my dissertation considers the tensions
between Latinx migration and Indigenous sovereignty, claiming that their uneasy
relation demands sustained critical and political attention. While Latinx
cross-border migration and Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty struggles share
important connections in the context of a colonial-racial capitalist system of
oppression, they cannot be easily collapsed into each other. Expanding upon
Marisol de la Cadena’s concept of “partial connection,” my dissertation
counters theoretical discourses that insist on commonality as the basis for
Indigenous and Latinx intragroup solidarities. Moving beyond Gloria Anzaldúa’s
borderlands concept with its promise of hybridity, I instead focus on reading
borders as sites of profound tension for Indigenous and Latinx groups. In doing
so, I treat borders not as locations that produce comradeship and mutual
healing automatically, but as a condition that demands a reckoning with what
Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang call the “unfriendliness” between contested
positions. My dissertation proposes that literature, film, and other cultural
forms can assist with the hard work of grappling with these difficult tensions,
working through them instead of wishing them away.