Bendito Infierno

Abstract

For those who reside along the US/Mexico border, the border means everything and at the same time it means nothing. It is every juxtaposition imaginable: a challenge and an opportunity, a joining and a dividing, a clashing of two worlds and a constant flow of ideas, people, and goods. Bendito Infierno (Holy Hell) is an ethnographic narrative illustrating the complexity of the borderlands as perceived and experienced by migrants. It speaks to the perpetual contradiction of the US/Mexico borderlands as an agonizing terrain juxtaposed by the promise of opportunity. Revealingly, the piece highlights the agency displayed by forcefully displaced migrants amidst an oppressing political structure.

Citation

Abrigu, D. and Silva, M. (2019), "Bendito Infierno ", Conflict and Forced Migration (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 51), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 157-164. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620190000051007