Abstract Luis Alberto Urrea's Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border (1993) provides a harrowing perspective on the struggles of a group of mainly indigenous refugees and migrants who live in one of Tijuana's many colonias—informal settlements with no utilities or public services—where they barely survive by picking trash. Written from notes that Urrea compiled while he was a translator for Baptist missionaries from 1978 to 1982 and then again in the 1990s, Across the Wire is deeply indebted to colonial modes of representation that have characterised Western anthropological knowledge production, and specifically ethnographic writing, from its inception. The memoir cum ethnographic work cum journalistic account aims to call attention to the hardships that refugees in Tijuana face and elicit sympathy for their plight. Yet, despite Urrea's intention to humanise his subjects, Across the Wire depicts them as helpless, in need of outside deliverance, and ultimately inferior to Urrea and his missionary crew, reproducing a white saviour narrative that reifies the myth of white, Western superiority. In the process, Across the Wire unwittingly reveals the pernicious workings of white saviourism and illustrates how it is contingent on an exploitative relationship in which the purported “helper” is the actual beneficiary.

中文翻译：

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为其他难民说话：传教士、白人救世主主义和路易斯·阿尔贝托·乌雷亚 (Luis Alberto Urrea) 的《穿越电线》(Across the Wire) 中的民族志代表政治

摘要路易斯·阿尔贝托·乌雷亚 (Luis Alberto Urrea) 的《穿越火线：墨西哥边境的生活和艰难时期》（1993 年）提供了一个悲惨的视角，讲述了一群主要是土著难民和移民生活在蒂华纳众多殖民地之一——没有公用设施或公共服务——他们几乎靠捡垃圾生存。写自 Urrea 于 1978 年至 1982 年担任浸信会传教士翻译期间编写的笔记，然后在 1990 年代再次编写，《穿越电线》深深地感谢了以西方人类学知识生产为特征的殖民模式，特别是民族志写作，来自它的成立。回忆录兼民族志工作和新闻报道旨在引起人们对蒂华纳难民面临的困难的关注，并为他们的困境引起同情。然而，尽管乌雷亚打算让他的主题人性化，但《穿越电线》将他们描绘成无助的、需要外界拯救的，最终不如乌雷亚和他的传教士团队，再现了白人救世主的叙述，具体化了白人、西方优越的神话。在这个过程中，穿越电线不知不觉地揭示了白人救世主的有害运作，并说明了它如何取决于一种剥削关系，在这种关系中，所谓的“帮手”是实际的受益者。