Ultimately, the artwork makes a critical commentary on the affective inbetweenness of the gendered Central American diasporic experience in Australia. In the photo, the ruda branch sits within a plastic container cup, which is popular for selling Vietnamese coconut juice, and the machete is contextualized and repurposed within alternative pueblos and tierra.³ In Australia, the machete becomes a part of a different script in relation to land and location. In the case of El Salvador and Australia, the border comes into question differently, particularly around oceans and the complexity of beach-as-border in the case of Australian white colonial imaginary.

The presence of a Spanish-English dictionary, the very one my parents used to learn English, challenges colonially imposed monolingualism and citizenship pathways that perpetuate violence and dispossession on unceded lands. The presence of the dictionary emphasizes the absence of a Spanglish dictionary as a form of communication across generations, a language of adaptability, and generative practices within borderlands (Ardila 2005, Stavans 2003, Anzaldúa 2012).

³ Refugees from Vietnam and the 2nd and 3rd wave of Latin American refugees to Australia occurred within a similar time frame in the 70-80s.

References

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Moreton-Robinson, A (2000), Talkin‘ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism, University of Queensland Press, Aus.  

Stavans, I (2003), Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language, Harper Perennial, New York, USA

Stavans, I (2003), ‘Spanglish, A New American Language,’ National Public Radio, 23rd September 2003.

Quijano, A (2000), ‘Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America,’ International Sociology, vol. 15, no. 2, pp.215-232.

Walia, H (2013), Undoing Border Imperialism, AK press, Oakland, USA.