JE #9 How Border Conscious Am I?

1. From the course, I've gotten a better understanding about the land dispute between Mexico and the US. The 1848 treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo really wasn't a peaceful negotiation but rather a coerced agreement and a form for the US to save face. It was a "gentleman's agreement" on behalf of the reigning power of the US. Although we did discuss the problematic aspects, I know now that even before the land disputes the lands were maintained by indigenous ancestors that no colonizing power deserves the right to claim. Neither Mexico nor the US, the lands belong to those that tend to them and take care of them. 


2. I feel like I still need to re-read Borderlands numerous more times to try to fully grasp what she intended to deliver with her published work. But out of her many theories, I've most understood what her Theories in the power of telling our stories. Transferring the red ink to black, really has meant that I have to translate the wounds, traumas, and ongoing blood-spill so that we can relay our stories to the divine. Not for the sake of being understood by hegemonic oppressor but more so that our stories live on and so that we can heal through that process of writing. I find that the theory in writing can very well apply to my own life. That no matter how I choose to write my story it's always going to be connected to my ancestry and that it should be written for that same divine connection.

3. I still have a hard time understanding the difference between the stages where we face our shadow beast and the stage where we enter the serpent. I feel that in both stages we knowingly face what we strongly fear but I can't really differentiate between our fears and our own poisons. 


5. I have a hard time figuring out in which state I'm in. I want to say I'm at the brink of Mestiza Consciousness but as I grasp this process as a cycle that can repeat after achieving Mestiza Consciousness I know that my own forms of knowledge have been attained that align to being comfortable with contradiction. More so I realize that my own process of challenging my internalized forms of hate put me in the stage where I still have yet to face my Shadow-Beast. I've been able to strike fear in other with the rebel but I still have yet to face the monster in the mirror. But if anything I'm glad that I have an understanding of what this process looks like to be able to achieve consciousness alone. It's been a privilege.