Lou Dobbs recent rantings have SDSU PRESS Intern Whitney Black holding forth on Nuria Vilanova's BORDER TEXTS: WRITING FICTIONS FROM NORTHERN MEXICO
Previous CNN anchor Lou Dobbs has risen up a controversial opinion on that of immigration. Reports from FAIR: Fairness in reporting and accuracy, " Dobbs' tone on immigration is consistently alarmist; he warns his viewers (3/31/06) of Mexican immigrants who see themselves as an "army of invaders" intent upon reannexing parts of the Southwestern U.S. to Mexico, announces (11/19/03) that "illegal alien smugglers and drug traffickers are on the verge of ruining some of our national treasures," and declares (4/14/05) that "the invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans" through "deadly imports" of diseases like leprosy and malaria. And Dobbs makes no effort to provide a nuanced or balanced picture of the issue; as he told CNN Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz (4/2/06): "I'm not interested—are you interested in six or seven views, or are you interested in the truth? Because that's what I'm interested in; that's what my viewers are interested in." When did we give one man the power to decide our truth? Personally, I AM interested in six or seven views, I AM interested in formulating my own opinion and definition of the truth and I resent his arrogance in assuming that his opinions are "truth".
Nuria Vilanova presents a more compassionate articulation of the issues concerning our borders through her compilation of essays in Border Texts. Vilanova’s experiences living in Mexico City between 1993 and 1998 shaped her examination in creating this novel, she writes, “I have come to realize that my attraction to borders translated into a certain love of the temporality and excitement of living between cultures, peoples, symbols, and territories”. Using fiction produced in the area of Northern Mexico, Vilanova takes a Mexican Point of View in analyzing the relationship between the Mexico-U.S. border. Her scrutinizing the use of the border’s physical entity in works of art and fiction from a society whose cultural perception is profoundly influenced by their associations with borders; Vilanova is able to illustrate how the idea of the border as a barrier influences the themes and work of artists, intellectuals and writers of the region. It is the application of physicality and emotion to the spatial entity of the border, with connotations of distress and violence, that allow Vilanova to uncover the relationship between the physical territory and symbolic representation in her work, Border Texts.
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