Sketching the U.S.-Mexico border Five approaches through graphic narrative and comics

Abstract

In the current context of deep polarization and politicization over migration issues, we propose to analyze five comics and graphic narratives that contribute to make visible the forgotten voices and spaces regarding Latin American migration to the United States. Emphasis is placed on the role of generic hybridity in granting and reinforcing the legitimacy of the telling of personal and collective stories through the insertion of autobiography, testimony, documentary, western or science fiction, among others. The chosen corpus: Migrar (Mateo & Martínez, 2011), Cita en Phoenix (Sandoval, 2016), La cicatriz. En la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos (Ferraris & Chiocca, 2019), Barrera (Vaughan, Martín & Vicente, 2019) and Ana (Arriaga & Ramos, 2021), shows the multiple possibilities offered by these graphic narratives, which are no longer created purely for entertainment, but to contribute significantly to the configuration of a socially committed discourse.