The Borderlands
	Before moving to Mexico City, I lived in Silver Lake, the Los Angeles neighborhood where I grew up and which today is a curious mix of gays, Mexicans, Asians of various nationalities, young white yuppie families and the Twentysomething crowd that is pierced, tatooed, bisexual, and generally infatuated with anything exotic, primitive, or both. If I feel at home anywhere, it's probably there. But I also find that I feel at home in Mexico City, so perfectly described by master photographer Pablo Ortíz Monasterio as La última ciudad, The Last City, where I live in what is akin to the Silver Lake district of the biggest urban conglomeration on earth, on Avenida Veracruz in Colonia Condesa, which is home to a curious mix of gays, Jews and other assorted light-skinned Mexicans, young yuppie couples, and the Twentysomething crowd that is pierced, tattooed, bisexual and generally infatuated with anything primitive, exotic, or both (to the list I must also add that, on the weekends, because I live within walking distance of three of Mexico City's most beautiful parks, there cruises along Veracruz a crowd of young, poor, mostly Indian families­­grandparents, mom and dad, seven kids to a brood­­and bands of equally poor, mostly Indian teenagers in various stages of rebellion (heavy metal, post-punk, late hippie, etc.).
	It is in such places that I feel at home and there are many such places in the borderlands these days. And by "borderlands," I mean the region within which I have travelled for the last year and a half: the better part of the United States and Mexico, as far south as Chiapas and as far north as Wisconsin.
	The book that I am writing is about Indians, Pentecostals, Sexual Outlaws of various proclivities, Street Kids, Witches and other assorted Rebels. I am not really any of these things, though I've hung around people like this long enough to know that I prefer their company over yuppie couples and that this says something about who I am. These people, all of them, in the broadest sense, are migrants: they have packed up and left one home for another­­physically, sexually, politically, culturally, spiritually­­or are still in transit.
	People who migrate often develop a multiple, syncretic consciousness, and as such often have very dynamic personalities; they are capable of great, and sometimes terrible, things. The "natives" in the United States dwell on the negative; they see the migrants in their midst as usurpers at best ("they're stealing our jobs!") or, at worst, as just plain criminal types. And indeed, they are illegals, or outlaws­­they have, after all, broken various legal and moral codes, at least those put in place by the "legal" culture. To me they are outlaws in the heroic sense, since the laws they have broken are, in my opinion, hypocritical and corrupt to the core.
	I write about them because I want you, wherever and whoever you are, whatever your opinion about "illegals" is, to meet these people. I believe they have something to say to all of us. They rarely have a voice in our media, in our political or cultural debates. This seems very strange to me, because they have been, for some time now, at the very center of our political and cultural debates. Yes, the debates rage, in Mexico and the United States, about the "migrants" I write about. I do not claim to own a "truth" about the political nature of the argument. And I do not propose that this project to serve as a rallying point for any particular political program, other than, of course, the immediate dismantling of all borders, everywhere.
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