Anzaldúa opens her text with contradictions, describing the borderland as an “open wound” and “thin edge of barbwire” that is her home (24-25). The borderland is a place defined by strict borders, but it is also vague, fluid, and evolving: Whether one is on the Mexican or US side of it has dramatic material repercussions, and yet this distinction is largely arbitrary in terms of Chicano or mestizo identity. As Anzaldúa delves into the history of the region, similar paradoxes emerge. Coatlapueh, the Indigenous precursor to Guadalupe, is the product of multiplicity, with the serpent, the eagle, and the human infusing her with meaning; Anzaldúa describes the dual dark and light, masculine and feminine energies residing in the Indigenous goddess, emphasizing that the goddess’s power comes from her contradictory energy. Those tensions and ambiguities only multiplied as Coatlicue fused with the Virgin de Guadalupe, despite (if not because of) colonialism’s attempts to erase all traces of the Indigenous goddess. Language, too, becomes a source of contradictory information, as Chicano people meld English and Spanish, crafting a patois of “Tex-Mex.”

Anzaldúa suggests that this cultural, political, and geographical landscape necessarily imprints on the psyche.