Published 2025-11-10
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Abstract
Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol (2000) enacts a particular aesthetic of contestation. This aesthetic is performed through a calling together of references potentially damaging to dominant schemes from both the sides of the USA-Mexico border, material and discursive homeland, as it were, of the text. This calling together extends and is addressed well beyond the border to the geo-historic terrain of what is known as Latin America or even the Americas. Far from being accidental or merely meant to add some retro or ethnic style this symbolic extension corresponds to some underlying realities of this terrain. “Border thinking” as envisioned and proposed by Walter D. Mignolo, discussed in detail in chapter one, then becomes a whole alternative perspective to appreciate the multi-referential and territory-crossing play of this contestory aesthetic (Mignolo 2005 10).