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‘I may say wetback but I really mean mojado’: migration and translation in Ramón ‘Tianguis’ Pérez's Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant

Strict divisions in the Mexican and United States nation-state model emphasize the dividing functions rather than connecting purposes of their borders. Similarly, discursive boundaries in mainstream thinking, doing, and reception of translation also conceal continuities between an original and its translation. Each border crossing creates acute divisions of identity for migrating individuals and for translated literary texts. My essay argues that Dick Reavis' translation Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant of Ramón ‘Tianguis’ Pérez's Diario de un mojado enacts an undocumented identity within a transborder nexus of migration and translation. The appellatives ‘mojado’ and ‘wetback’ are my entry points. Each of the essay's four sections foregrounds a facet of the transborder nexus. After discussing the borderland space of Pérez's original and translation at extra-textual dimensions of audience and book-market formats, I offer a socio-etymological biography of the ‘mojado’/‘wetback’ pairing to anchor them in historically located practices of a transborder region. I then explain the power disparity in Reavis and Pérez's relationship. Lastly, my analysis of the primal scene in Diary demonstrates a rupture in the ‘wetback’/‘mojado’ equation that masks linguistic and cultural difference. Ultimately, I argue that Pérez and Reavis reconfigure a transborder, transnational discursive field rooted in migration and translation.