| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation, "Border Intimacies: Student Activism, Reproductive Justice, and Queer Rights in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1968-2000," studies the formation of queer and Chicanx identities in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. It explores how these identities formed while combatting racism, sexism, and homophobia along the U.S.-Mexico Border. Even as the goal of the dissertation is to recover voices for queer Chicanxs, it also explores general Chicanx/Latinx history and the contributions made to challenge their racialized positions in the United States. In this dissertation, I argue that Chicanx and queer people organized around their non-normative identities to disrupt Anglo, patriarchal domination in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. It examines how (queer) Chicanx built coalitions with other identity groups while mobilizing for education reform, reproductive justice, and queer rights. Chicanx people needed to mobilize against Anglo domination despite Anglos making up a minority of the Valley’s population, but disproportionality wielded significant political, economic, and social power over Chicanxs in the Valley that left Chicanxs silenced. Therefore, the struggle of Chicanx, queer, and queer Chicanx people in those spaces offer a crucial lens for understanding the operation of Anglo, patriarchal power both in the Valley and along the border. Their resistance to Anglo, patriarchal power best seen through the mistreatment of Chicanx students in the public schools, the exploitation of Chicanx labor, especially Chicanas, and the hostilities queer Chicanx people faced in accessing health care during a public health crisis during the AIDS Epidemic. Also, while these groups initially acted separately from one another, such as Chicanx students only engaging with other Chicanx students. These movements gradually bled into one another as activists participated in multiple groups either through their shared identities or a desire to see an expansion of social justice. | en |
