ABSTRACT
The Spanish term frontera cannot be easily translated into English. It conveys both the idea of a border (a limit, margin or edge) and a frontier (the malleable ultimate boundaries of understanding, established knowledge or culture).1 The frontera is bilateral or multilateral (it necessarily entails multiple perspectives that transcend the simplicity of a single line), artificial (it denotes separation where one might not otherwise notice it), and regulatory (it embodies norms that define those who are entitled or have prohibited to cross it) though contestable (crossing it may eventually result in its erasure).2 The frontera therefore is, as Gloria Anzaldúa has pointed out, a borderland—that is, both “a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” and “a constant state of transition.”3 This chapter is an attempt at probing two specific fronteras: first, the disciplinary boundaries of jurisprudence by acknowledging law as literature and literature as law—in reference to the discursive structures and interpretive strategies that inform both modes of knowledge—and second, the cultural spaces that define normative experiences across the geopolitical border between Mexico and the United States (US).
