Mestizaje and Intercultural Communication as the Analeptics to the Transhistorical Borderland Crises in Alejandro Morales’s Novel The Rag Doll Plagues (1992)

Abstract

This article focuses on Alejandro Morales’s novel The Rag Doll Plagues (1992) and explores the transhistorical dimensions of the subordination indigenous and mestiza/o identities experience against colonial and postcolonial authoritarian forces in the borderlands between Mexico and the United States. Spanish colonialism, US racism and eco-destruction, each transpiring in different moments of the New World history, are the diverse forms the borderland crises take up in the three Books comprising the novel. Mestizaje and intercultural communication, as well as the retrieval of the indigenous and Mexican cultural traditions, foster the ongoing creation of new hybrid racial, ethnic and cultural identities in all the three Books and, thus, emerge as the analeptics to the diachronically persistent plight of racism.