Borderlands/La Frontera

Gloria Anzaldúa’s “La Conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness” appears in the groundbreaking Chicana feminist text, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza . In “La Conciencia,” Anzaldúa develops and articulates the positionality of the mestiza, “a product of the transfer of the cultural and spiritual values of one group to another” (78). La mestiza develops “a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (79), finding that the counterstance between oppressor and oppressed brings nothing but violence. Lesbian politics informs the development of la mestiza , as a position which is never wholly one or the other, which defies opposition. With lessons from the borderlands, and from borderland culture, la mestiza rejects a politics of purity, charting new pathways for identity, politics, and meaning.