The Open Graves of Latina/os: Representations of a Latinx Horror in Pinto Poetics, Border Gothic, and Homeless Encampments in Los Angeles

This work centers on the necropolitical lived reality of Latinx people within the United States. Specifically, this work explores the conditions of death present at the US-Mexico border which migrants encounter, as well as the condition of social death that those undocumented migrants inhabit once within the United States. In this project, we examine the haunting voice that is encapsulated within literary texts emerging from or representative of necropolitical geographies; particularly, the US-Mexico border, the prison, and Los Angeles. Through a close reading of the literary texts, in conjunction with historical data which corresponds to the atrocities documented within the literature, this project focuses on the haunting present within Latinx texts concerned with the migrant, prisoner, and homeless experience. Ultimately, I argue that the work of Tobar, Salinas, Baca, Lucero, and Limón, demand a new reading practice and a new kind of reader; one attuned to the necropolitical realities experienced by Latinx people. What the new reader must understand, is that these necropolitical encounters are sanctioned and absolved by American Imperialism and unfettered racialized capitalism