Mixtec Pictography and Immigrant Labor Resistance in the Comic Undocumented: A Worker’s Fight

Abstract

The comic Undocumented: A Worker’s Fight (2018) by Duncan Tonatiuh (pronounced toh-nah-tee-YOU) depicts the fictional narrative of Juan, a Mixtec immigrant from Mexico. My article examines the use of Mixteco in the comic to make apparent how Indigenous Latinx workers in the United States are often left out of the larger narrative of immigration policy and reform. I argue that comics studies scholarship should include more Mesoamerican and Latin American art, history, and writing so that there is no question of image-texts in contemporary western comics as having their own distinct writing system. A Worker’s Fight’s Mixtec style art and lack of borders forces readers to consider an anti-colonial reading practice. Tonatiuh accomplishes this feat by shifting events in the narrative from a linear sequentiality (cause and effect) to make apparent the simultaneous issues of labor and immigration. The temporality and materiality of the comic in Tonatiuh’s rejection of drawn borders is thus also a rejection of the legitimacy of national borders. A Worker’s Fight is a spectacular comic as well as a valuable teaching tool. The feeling of intimacy in Juan’s personal story is significant. The graphic narrative places comics and sequential art in a longer writing tradition that has always included images.