Borderland Rhetorics

The histories represented in this collaborative project reflect the dynamic, nonlinear, sometimes porous, sometimes bridged, sometimes fenced people and rhetorics of the El Paso border. In our attempt to uncover, or recover, texts, images, voices, and rhetorics, we don't intend to merely add to the landscape of the "rhetorical tradition," for an addition can connote the filling of an absence, but to highlight forgotten and historically silenced pieces of that rhetorical landscape. These traditions have never been absent, they have simply been ignored by traditionally traditional historiography.

Lucia Dura's Zones of Tolerance Bodies of Tolerance focuses on the significance of physical space and physicality for sex workers in El Paso between 1880 and 1920.

Hector Carbajal's Religion, Rhetoric, and Political Activism: Remembering the Farah Strike (1972-1974) examines how religion and politics became intertwined in the rhetoric produced during the Farah Strike in El Paso, Texas. Brian McNely, in Liminal Zones,

discusses histories and historiographies related to the 1963 Chamizal Convention, and the ways

in which territorial spaces embody and reflect rhetorics of dominance and resistance.

Cristina Ramirez, in Sites of Resistance: Tiendas of the El Paso / Juarez Border considers the spaces of resistance created by tienditas (small stores) that dot the segundo barrio and surrounding border region. Robert Tinajero, in Borderland Hip Hop,looks at Hip Hop in the El Paso and Borderland region,with a focus on lyrics, graffiti, and vehicles as pieces of the counter-hegemonic discourse that make up the ethos of Borderland Hip Hop.

Please click on the links above or in the sidebar to go to our separate projects.  There is also a link with our short biographies.

Aoy School in El Paso, Texas 

We hope you enjoy the site and that it serves as a catalyst for future work in Borderland Rhetorics.

Images of La Fe Mural and Aoy School borrowed from the Paso Del Sur historians.