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Border Manifesto - Massa Mare Fronteres

The "Border Manifesto" was the performative act that opened Massa Mare - Fronteres, presented on October 5, 2025 at the Teatre Lliure Montjuïc, within the framework of the Viu Montjuïc festival. Written and performed by Sara Guerrero (writer) and Belén López Peiró (writer and in charge of the Cultural Producer of Mescladís), the piece was part of Massa Mare Fronteres, an installation and performance that intertwined art, words and gastronomy, co-produced by La Otra Orilla, Mescladís and the Teatre Lliure.

The piece emerges as a choral rewriting inspired by the poem Living on the Border by Gloria Anzaldúa. From the voice, the body and the shared word, both authors explore the migrant experience as a territory of resistance and creation: a space where memory, language and identity are mixed to challenge the imposed limits and claim the right to live without borders.

SARA

Living on the Border means that you
are neither Indian nor Spanish nor Latina,
you are a mixture, mestiza, mezcolanza,
announcer of danger, of a new race
composed of fragments,
a new genre, a new identity.

The Mexicans call you rajada, traitor.
But denying the Castilian language that raised you
is as bad as denying the Nahuatl in your prosody.
You carry the memory of Abya Yala on your back
while you walk through the dreary streets of Europe
not knowing which way to turn, which way to run.

BELEN

Living on the Border means that you
are neither here nor there:
nor pampas plains, La Plata River, heart of the Andes, land of fires;
nor Pyrenean massif, Mediterranean Sea, island in the middle of the ocean.
Caught between the tug of two sides,
without knowing why you came, where you are going,
what you call home,
which is the refuge.

Living in the Frontier means knowing
that the Indians in you are no longer discovering:
are now talking to you,
even if Cristobal is still standing there in the port, still pointing.

We did not arrive by boat, President.
We were not born in 1500, Don Rey.
We existed, we existed, we existed.
Even though they have plundered our silver, our language, imposed our religion,
the blood of our ancestors runs, it continues to run.
And now they are talking to you, I am talking to you.

SARA

Living on the Border means
putting chile on fruit,
eating with tortillas instead of bread,
speaking Catalan with a Chilango accent,
being stopped by the police if they see you running down the street.

Living on the Border means you struggle hard to
resist the white man's despotic violence,
the famine of the undocumented years,
the noose of nostalgia crushing the hollow of your throat.

BELEN

Living on the Border means
having three months of changüí, juggling, asking for:
study visa, work visa, self-employed, employed.
Applying for residency, the world is divided:
regular / irregular.

To take a cultural exam,
to be asked about Alejandro Sanz
or Cervantes' Don Quixote.
To swear allegiance, to wait for citizenship,
that time passes
and my baby is born stateless,
not recognized by the State,
neither rights nor obligations.

The reason, they asked me:
to be a child of the two of us,
to be a child of migrant love.

SARA

Living in the Frontier means
that the provincial intellect of the West wants to tear your gaze into strips
, squeeze your spirit, your heart,
pulverize you, squeeze you, isolate you,
leave you smelling like a loaf of white bread
but dead, bland.

BELEN

Living on the Border means
resisting your words, not losing your accent,
having a better life that is worth the effort,
saving the money just in case,
being away for birthdays, holidays,
that someday someone you love will die,
the lump in your throat when you cut the phone.

SARA

To live in the Frontier means
to go out into the bush,
to get lost, to keep to oneself, to make the house an island.
Never go out and sing quietly
so that the neighbors do not hear, so as not to disturb.

It means to protect yourself, to build a shelter,
and wait for the call:
the sun warming the windows,
the landscape melting with your presence,
your firm voice in the new trained language,
someone at the door, looking you in the eyes,
taking care of your silences.

BELEN

In the Frontier
you are the battlefield,
wounded land where someday,
after many years,
when the fire ceases,

you dig a little bit, a little piece is planted,
you fertilize the soil, the storm falls,
spring arrives.
A lot of water, a little leaf appears, something grows.
Inside, outside,
a little bit of spring in the devastation.
Nature insists.