What we wanted to do with Border Mythologies was trace the process of border crossing experiences becoming narrativized and then mythologized, and also to see the impacts of that process across the generations. 

When you recall an experience, you are already creating a story out of it. You are the main character, and you’re placing events, obstacles, other characters, in the story in relation to you. This narrativization is a way for you to make sense of your experience. But when the storyteller shares their stories with other, the receivers don’t have the storyteller’s contextual experience to flesh it out, so they fill in the blanks with their own experiences. Here, what once were real people become archetypes that can shift as needed, morals and lessons to be drawn. As these stories circulate within the community and between generations, they take on the qualities of a myth: a heroes journey, an origin story, a warning tale, etc. Through a game of telephone and reproduction, border crossing narratives transform from a simple recounting of experience to a shared story that communities use to construct aspects of their identities. 

What we found really interesting was the difference in how generations of undocumented migrants used these narratives. For the older generations (the border crossers, themselves), these stories were rarely told, and only in sanctioned, excusable circumstances. A retelling would be a solemn, tearful occasion. Moreover, the storytellers of this generation that we spoke to were genuinely surprised that anyone wanted to listen to their story, to say nothing of recording and showcasing it. The most ‘meaning’ they might draw from these stories was generally in line with, ‘that was difficult, so that’s why you have to do good in school’. 

On the other hand, the younger undocumented generation, those who had lived most or all of their lives in the United States, often identify and rally behind these exact stories. To be undocumented carries with it a constant underlying threat from government agents. What’s more, to be Chicanx along the border zone often carries with it a feeling of not wholly fitting in either in Mexico nor in the United States. There is a subtle double antagonism, a separation. These stories circulate within these spaces and give meaning, history, morality, and a feeling of mutual experience to the community. 

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Border Mythologies is a project that studies how the physical border becomes an ethereal presence and a lived experience. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and experimental artistic methods, this study uses multi-modal presentations to unpack the work and purposes of myths as they are being shared. 

We wanted to bring a methodology that we’ve both used in previous work, which is to have the interlocutor illustrate their narrative as they’re sharing it. This usually creates a deeper, more detailed narrative, as they have to take time to sketch out individual details. It also means that they’re creating the story in another medium, visually piecing together the people, places, and encounters that their story-self interacts with. We can tell what was important to them based on what they draw, and, usually more importantly, how they draw it. Then we can go back and ask, “why did you draw the graveyard in such a large area?” Or maybe, “you drew yourself in differently in three places on the picture, how is each picture of ‘you’ different?” Lastly, this gives the storyteller an opportunity to communicate non-verbally, either because they don’t have the tools to verbalize a part of the story, or because it might be too emotionally taxing for them to try—or indeed because they don’t consciously recognize how important some aspect of the story is to them, but illustrate it nonetheless. 

Bringing videography into this process gave us a lot of opportunity to delve deeply into the affective quality of storytelling. Working with a vulnerable population, we obviously didn’t want to show faces or identifying features, so we made the decision early on to focus on the hands. You can see almost as much expression through the hands as if we’d filmed their faces. The conversational gestures, the nervous fidgets, and especially the way the hands convey emotion… how they become soft, hesitant, or agitated when talking about something difficult. One of the core values that we brought to this research was to humanize these narratives and break the preconceived notion of a “monolithic migrant”. I think that video as a medium certainly helped us to achieve that goal.