"Border films are not benign. They affect attitudes and ideas about immigrants and immigration. They shape perceptions and they transmit erroneous information about immigration origin nations such as Mexico....These various texts might fall into other generic categories, particularly comedy, police drama, reality television, and action film, but there is no denying that there shared provenance puts them into an inter-textual alliance and make them part of the larger cultural discourse about immigration and national security." (Fojas, 47)
The United States and Mexico share a nearly 2,000 mile border, which is the most frequently crossed international border in the world (about 350 million crossings per year), and for hundreds of years Mexicans and Americans (from the U.S.) have migrated back and forth across a contested border (or the border itself has moved). In more recent years, there have also been large numbers of Central Americans and people from other countries who have migrated "pa'al Norte." What stood out for you in the discussions of the films that you and your classmates presented? What are you going to write about regarding the U.S.- Mexico border for the LATS 41 WordPress website? Write a paragraph or two about what you will explore for "The Contested Border" web page in Assignment 6 and consider how that fits in with the LATS 41 WordPress website (see Assignment 2). Use this Discussion post as a preliminary writing exercise to get you thinking about the web page(s) you will create for the LATS 41 WordPress website
Choose one aspect of "the Contested Border" that strikes you as interesting, problematic, surprising, or confusing and write about why you think this is particularly relevant to some of the issues we have been exploring in our class. Consider the media and the arts we have been looking at and how they manifest and interact with the border. Perhaps you have read or viewed something in the news that has inspired your thinking about this subject. When you see, hear, or read some interesting news item that is relevant to this topic, be sure to make note of that website and the URL so then you will be able to add those links to the web page that you will create in our LATS 41 WordPress website.
Here are some examples of websites that are the kinds of links you might add to your web page on the Contested Border:
https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568546381/arrests-for-illegal-border-crossings-hit-46-year-low
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-mexican-artists-threat-trumps-wall-fuel-inspiration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIY0FF3TE_E
There are many, many more possibilities...