description: Durng the past 50 years, the US-Mexico border has established itself as one of the fastest growing regions of the Western Hemisphere. On the Mexican side of the 2000-mile border, we have witnessed rapid growth fueled by the maquiladora industry and the movement of people from central and southern Mexico as a stepping-stone to crossing into the United States in search of employment. On the US side, both industry and people have raced to the "Sunbelt" as a means of enhancing their quality of life. All demographic indicators suggest that the border region will continue to grow at an accelerated rate in the coming years. There is little doubt that for both the United States and Mexico, the border region will become even more critical to cultural understanding and cooperation as well as to the exchange of goods and services. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the US-Mexico border is so little understood and appreciated. It is in this context that La Mirada Prodiga...makes an important contribution. Independently, but more so collaboratively, the poems and photographs in this book help us to both better understand and appreciate life along this long and complicated border. In terms of content and quality, both the poems by Mario Martin Flores and photographs by Manlio Cesar Correa and Rodolfo Jacobo could easily stand alone but it is the combination, the intricate weaving of photographs and words, that provides the reader with powerful, moving imagery of life as it is, not as depicted by Hollywood or in the distorted images of marketing firms, but through the photographs of real people and images of everyday life as well as through the exceptionally moving and accurate words of the poet Mario Martin Flores. Undoubtedly, readers will find themselves moving back and forth between the photographs and the poems, as I did, because the words in the poems force us to refocus on the photographs and vice versa.
language: Spanish; Castilian
title: La Mirada Prodiga/The Giving Gaze: Una Topografia Intima de la Frontera/An Intimate Topography Of The Border
titlecomplete: La Mirada Prodiga/The Giving Gaze: Una Topografia Intima de la Frontera/An Intimate Topography Of The Border (Spanish Edition)
ratings_count: 1
publisher: LARC Press