The Case for a Communal Frontera

Dear Fellow Fronterizos/as,

​

I can’t be the only one who feels like the years since the pandemic have come and gone at dizzying speed. Putting aside the polarized opinions of the pandemic, the events of the last four years have undoubtedly left many of us feeling like we have no agency in the decision-making or outcomes of our lives. The pandemic exposed the inadequacies of our institutions, collective beliefs, and civic society. Our healthcare, housing, education, and economic systems failed to protect many of us from the worst forms of insecurity. Many of us have lost those closest to us because of these failings.

​

And yet, through the pain and precarity, many of us also rose to the occasion to provide loving care to those in our community most at risk. Mutual aid projects were formed, frontline workers sacrificed to provide for their neighbors, volunteers fully committed themselves, and networks of care were created. Writing this now, reflecting on the dark times many of us went through, and thinking about the above examples of care and empathy, it has impressed upon me our vast and profound capacity for love and solidarity.

​

This capacity for us to engage and care for our community calls me to make the case for a communal Frontera. Those I saw brave a deadly pandemic to serve their community have inspired me to do the same. This leads me to ask—why should we wait for the unraveling of collective problems to understand the need for long-term collective, community-based solutions? Surely, a widespread problem felt by an entire community could not be relieved by simply calling upon isolated groups, much less by attempting to go at it alone.

​

We cannot underestimate how many systemic issues worsened by the pandemic existed before. Child poverty is a pervasive issue that was only partially addressed by the emergency funding passed in the COVID-19 relief bills. Yet, that tax credit has since ended by the decision of our lawmakers, causing child poverty to rise once again. A previous self would have pinned the blame on a particular party or their voters, but now I realize, we often don’t stand much of a chance to influence many of the areas of insecurity in our lives. Our institutions, civic culture, and civic society cannot currently address the issues we all feel, because they were not intended to do so. And rather than blame it on those with the least power in our society, we should choose to organize and create solidarity.

​

Many of the values and beliefs we give importance to are powerless without all of us deciding that they matter. Democracy, plurality, and civic society die in the hyper-isolationist individualism that pervades our culture. Values such as these are crucial to the institutions we rely on to organize our society. For instance, a city government that values commercialization will neglect to build the needed social infrastructure to create strong communal bonds. Sure, we must be the change we want to see in the world, but more importantly, we should believe in the values we want to see in the world. Every person in our communities has a shared fate. Thus, it is essential to engage our communities in acts of solidarity.

​

However, whether you find my argument convincing or naive, the question remains: How does one engage with their community? Perhaps, more directly, what is community? The writers, Margaret J. Wheatly and Myron Kellner-Rogers, in their article “The Promise and Paradox of Community,” explore how we might conceive of community. The writers warn that communities are not the fragmented islands of “interest groups and chat rooms.” We do not engage in community to avoid interacting with those in society we disagree with. Instead, community is described as a framework through which individuals, acting with full agency, can engage, in solidarity, to create a more resilient and cooperative society.

​

We as fronterizos/as have a unique predisposition to community. Uniquely, we live with uncertainty in socioeconomic terms and more fundamentally in our identities. We live in the borderland, the land of ni de aquí, ni de allá (not from here, not from there). As Gloria Anzaldúa, a fellow fronteriza, put it, the border is like “two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture.” This characteristic allows us to imagine the potential of the Frontera. Our experience with complexity means we understand living with and embracing uncertainty. This energy is useful for building communities that lead to human social flourishing.

​

Dear fronterizos/as, we all feel the precarity of life, on top of the challenges of our region. However, I feel compelled to look at our insecurity, not as something we are sentenced to, but as an opportunity to return to what makes us, us–our instinct to shape and be shaped by open communities and inhabit spaces of relational equality. So, go out and gather. Start or join book clubs, have frequent dinner parties, support mutual aid groups, host school carpools, protest, and be out in your communities. There is no act of solidarity too small or too inconsequential. Any opportunity to be with your fellow fronterizos/as can be a moment to strengthen our communities. Lobby your city, county, or university to prioritize building social spaces. We are desperate for third places, not the infrastructure that will further drive us away from each other. If we can commit to doing this, we might just find the solutions to our Frontera’s systemic problems in communion with others, or at the very least upend the national discourse that separates us. So that when the next crisis comes, we have formed the networks of solidarity necessary to care for those around us rather than subjecting ourselves to further loneliness, in the most connected time in human history.

​

“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”

-Margaret J. Wheatley