The U. S.-Mexico Border-crossing Chicana Researcher: Theory in the Flesh and the Politics of Identity in Critical Ethnography

Grounded in Chicana feminist perspectives (Delgado Bernal, 1998; Sandoval, 1998; Villenas, 1996) that situate the Chicana researcher as a political self, and building on the concepts of cultural intuition (Delgado Bernal, 1998) and theory in the flesh (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981), this article examines issues of power and identity that emerged from a yearlong ethnography in the city of Juarez, Mexico during the most violent drug-war era in its history. Focusing on the role of the border-crosser researcher who returns home to do fieldwork south of the U. S.-Mexico border, the article exposes the researcher's intimate struggles in negotiating the emotional distress involved in returning to one's own devastated community, the multiple identities that were perceived and produced during the data collection process, and the transformations and lessons learned from these experiences. The article examines the role of power inherent in the researcher's ability to control how data are interpreted and reported and th...