John Sayles film, Lone Star, is about crossing borders, challenging the past, and dealing with the burden of history in both the personal and the public sphere. Painted on a very broad canvas, Lone Star is an epic film touching on many themes, including racism, illegal immigration, the corruption of government and law enforcement, racial identity, multicultural education, and the endurance of love.

History casts a very long shadow over the border town of Frontera, and as the characters wrestle with the past and unearth its secrets (both literally and figuratively), the action glides seamlessly between past and present. The past doesn't just haunt the present in this film, it is a vital force shaping identity, both individual and collective. How it represented-in the classroom, in memory, in the history books and in the stories told in the local barroom-has everything to do with the conflicts and power struggles that dominate life in Frontera in the present moment.

These essays address questions of history and narrative, exploring the issue of representation and focusing on the ways in which "official" knowledge can eradicate, distort, deny or suppress other ways of kn

This is not to minimize the importance of race and racial politics or to universalize difference by showing that anyone is capable of being corrupted. There is no question who has held the reins of power in Frontera, and who has been most victimized by the abuse of power. But all the same, race is a less clear-cut issue than it was in the past of Frontera, when all the power was in the hands of the whites. Fiske's comments about race from a poststructuralist perspective are germane:

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As bell hooks tells us, reclaiming this connection would be a radical act allowing both African and Native Americans to reconceptualize a notion of racial identity based on a shared sensibility:

To carry this a step further, movies such as Lone Star, by calling attention to the way in which narratives of the past are constructed, can help us recognize that the binary opposition between the real and the fictional (an opposition rigidly maintained by the positivist, scientific empiricist hierarchy) is a myth that serves the needs of particular groups and power interests, and to understand that non-fictional, "historical" narratives are just as "constructed" as are fictional accounts of historical events.

Mercedes Cruz is the character in Lone Star who most closely embodies this aspect of identity. She appears to have more or less successfully assimilated to the new country. Mercedes runs a successful business and lives in a beautiful hacienda overlooking the Rio Grande. She is a community leader, included in official gatherings and represented as one of town leaders. In her restaurant, she pressures her employees to speak English, impatient that they aren't assimilating quickly enough. She treats them with contempt, calling them "wetbacks" and distancing herself emotionally and politically from them.

e official textbook? When Pilar says that she just wants to tell the whole story, an angry white woman challenges her: If she wants to talk about Mexican food or music, well that's fine, but she shouldn't go around "changing who did what to who."

Identity, Home, the Border and the Frontier

d well-loved figure in the town who is also deceased, quickly emerges as the key suspect in the murder.

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

It is often only by joining in community with others who share a common experience of oppression that marginalized or silenced voices can be heard. Multiculturalism must grapple with notions of inclusion as well as difference, but perhaps there is a way to break down the binary opposition of sameness/difference. Honi Faber argues for a politics of difference which takes into account the reality of conflict:

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