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Centre and Edge: Pilgrimage and the Moral Geography of the US/Mexico Border

2007; Routledge; Volume: 2; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17450100701597400

1745-011X

Lawrence J. Taylor,

Travel Writing and Literature

Abstract This essay posits two forms of pilgrimage – to the centre and to the edge – as forms of meaningful movement that contribute to the moral geography of peoples and nations. This model is applied to a variety of disparate, current movements through the desert borderlands of the United States and Mexico, all of which can be read as employing pilgrimage in the task of inscribing versions of America on a highly contested landscape. Keywords: PilgrimagebordersUS/Mexico BorderAmericamoral geography Notes 1. The O'odham, also known as the Papago, have been the subject of scholarly attention for a century. See Dobyns, Citation1978, for a useful beginning. 2. This pilgrimage is the subject of a detailed analysis in process. Suffice to say here that it attracts tens of thousands from various constituencies including indigenous groups from both sides of the border, working‐ and middle‐class Mexicans and Mexican Americans. To a certain extent the devotional agendas of these groups overlap and vary in a way that suggests much about the labile potential of pilgrimage sites. 3. The border is the subject of a very extensive literature in all the social sciences and humanities. In anthropology there is a persistent tension between structural, political‐economy views and 'post‐modern' attention to 'hybridity' and cultural creativity along the border (see Donnan & Wilson, Citation1999; Alvarez, Citation1995; Bhabha, Citation1997; Anzaldúa, 1987). In fact, both approaches capture important elements of the borderland phenomenon, where creative response to market and state forces are striking (see Taylor & Hickey, Citation2001, Citation2002). 4. Gellner's (Citation1983) pendulum theory of Islam has a similar basis in Weberian notions. 5. Rebecca Bowman Woods. Available at: http://www.ucc.org/ucnews/aprmay2006/as‐immigration‐debate‐heats.html. 6. There is a great deal of scholarship on the question of 'wilderness' as a sacred category in America. Nash (Citation1967) is the seminal and still very useful text. A recent critical view that takes a more constructivist approach is Cronon, Citation1995 (See also Benton & Short, Citation1999). A good example of a group whose contradictory sense of the problem of pilgrimage to such sacred ground is captured in its name, is the national organisation called 'Leave no Trace'. This group and the wilderness movement and idea in general are treated by the author in more detail in Taylor, Citation2007a. 7. The subject of the Minutemen is dealt with at length in Taylor, Citation2007b. 8. Gilchrist is a former journalist and CPA who co‐founded the Minuteman Project with ex‐Kindergarten teacher and latterday journalist Chris Simcox. They split soon after the founding of the project, with Simcox re‐naming his wing the 'Minuteman Civil Defence Corps'. Gilchrist has been involved in a major conflict within his organisation that included accusations of mishandling funds and an attempt to unseat him as leader.