Ink and Identities: The Politics of Bodies and Borders in Sin nombre

Abstract

Sin nombre, released in 2009, was the debut feature film by its director Cary Fukunaga. The film presents Fukunaga’s view of the migrant experience, taking the viewer on a journey from Honduras through Mexico and finally to the Mexico–US border. Against this backdrop, the human drama of an unrequited love story unfolds between the two protagonists around whom the film’s plot revolves. The questions of migration and of the crossing of cartographical and territorial borders, in this case those that mark the boundaries between Guatemala and Mexico, and Mexico and the US, are unavoidably prominent given the film’s subject matter, but there are other borders and boundaries of interest in this text that have not received so much attention. Whilst the migrant journey primarily concerns the movement of bodies across and between contested national territories, these liminal border zones also bear witness to changes in the bodies themselves: boundaries are crossed in this film not only in political but also bodily terms. The main expression of this in Sin nombre is the high visibility of tattooed bodies. They display signs of belonging and apartness, depending on which side of the border between social groups an individual is located. Bodies, as well as borders, are marked and regulated; the violation of codes and territories has potentially fatal consequences.