This Land is our Land – A Blue Beetle Story

By Emiliano Aguilar

Jaime Reyes’ teenage years are spent navigating not the fictionalized spaces like Gotham and Metropolis, but the real-world around us in El Paso, Texas. In Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo’s reimaging of Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle’s origin story in This Land Is Our Land: A Blue Beetle Story, Jaime faces making sense of the extraterrestrial world that a strange artifact opens up to him and the xenophobic concerns around “illegal aliens” in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. The artifact, a scarab that fused to his spine, grants Jaime access to a durable, shape-shifting exosuit. Through the exosuit, Jaime possesses the ability to fly, superhuman strength, accelerated speed, and an exosuit that adapts to threats. As Jaime grows accustomed to these new superpowers, he prepares for his worlds to collide between the looming threat of an extraterrestrial invasion and growing anxieties over immigration of Latin American migrants.

The book, a part of DC Comics’ Graphic Novels for Young Adults line, mediates between a lot of pressing threads while introducing readers to the titular character and his immediate surroundings. From the first few panels, the reader is quickly introduced to the star-gazing Jaime and his father, Alberto, who owns an auto-shop. Anta and Salcedo begin to fold in the hints of a broader, national tension as Alberto laments that “there’s not a whole lot to do anymore” with the border closed and his reliance on parts from Mexico. As Jaime and his father drive home, he narrates that “Here’s the problem with life on Earth… there’s always a crisis” (p. 10). The father-son duo traverses a militarized El Paso as radio programming narrates the current local crisis. At school, Jaime is fascinated by a meteor set to pass over El Paso, while his friends and peers Riley and Brenda discuss the “border invasion.” Riley, a white student, shares his concerns that “… if this border stuff goes on much longer there won’t be any real Americans left here.” In response, Brenda, an indigenous student, exclaims that “… When you talk about ‘real Americans,’ it makes people like me–who are indigenous–and a lot of our classmates–who are Mexican American–feel like you see yourself as superior because you’re white, even though we’ve all been here longer than you!” (emphasis in original, 13-14). For Jaime, he is increasingly conflicted by his past friendship with Riley now that he is embracing elements of the anti-immigrant rhetoric. These difficulties are compounded when Riley joins in on physical violence against the Latino community that destroyed the Reyes’ auto garage (112-113) and a brick through Brenda’s window (133-135).

For the reader, these issues of fictionalized violence contain echoes of the ongoing immigration crisis. The decision to situate the book in El Paso is a bold and worthwhile move by the creative team. Situated within a vital corridor of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, El Paso has assumed a vital space of tension over the perennial immigration crisis. In 2019, the city witnessed a violent case of domestic terrorism when a man entered a Walmart and shot forty-five people, killing twenty-three. According to BBC’s reporting, the actual shooter ‘is believed to have posted an online document: ‘The Hispanic invasion of Texas’ as their rationale for the violent event. This instance, among others globally, invokes the conspiracy of a “great replacement theory,” which according to Professor Rodney Coates (Miami University) has roots to the late nineteenth-century. Jaime and his friends view Riley’s engagement with this propaganda as problematic (p. 27; 33-37; and 81). In the graphic novel, just as troublesome is the association with the fictional Mike Beam, a local white supremacist leader of the Legion of Patriots. Beam, and his cadre of supporters, chant “This Land is My Land” as they lead a countermarch against an immigrants’ welcoming rally (p. 158).

This narrative about a terrestrial conflict between immigrants and the Legion of Patriots is grounded by the extraterrestrial threat of an impending alien invasion. Shortly after fusing with the scarab, Jaime begins to communicate with the Reach, an alien race on their way to Earth. The Reach’s spokesperson, dubbed the Ambassador, decries the “senseless hatred” unleashed by humans against others forced to migrate from their homes (56-61). While the Ambassador claims that the scarab chose Jaime to help prepare Earth for their arrival, Jaime remains doubtful. As the Reach’s promise of peace unravels and the scarab shows Jaime past experiences of the Reach’s first contact with other species, Jaime recognizes the reality that he and the scarab are a weapon to handle any dissent from Earth (107-109). For Jaime, he dreams of stargazing again without the worries of an alien invasion, or white supremacists targeting his loved ones and community. Frustrated by forces that appear out of his control—as the scarab tried to make Jaime preemptively attack the Legion of Patriots (p. 126) to likely cause more tension at the protest—Jaime instead puts his own plan into action to prevent a violent confrontation between immigrant rights protestors and the Legion as the Reach arrived in El Paso.

Racial extremism and these long-debunked ideas of racial superiority of one race over another (or even the definition of race) are the cornerstone to This Land Is Our Land and pressing parallels to the real world. Neighbors’ Consejo, a Washington, DC nonprofit, argues that the psychological toll of xenophobia is pervasive among perpetrator and victims alike. The American Psychiatric Association acknowledged that this social problem does create a marginalization of immigrant communities that not only impact ethnic identity formation among adolescents and children but also contribute to deviant behavior. Normalizing xenophobia has crafted policies that create adverse mental health outcomes for immigrants and their families, such as family separation, detention, and other targeted practices. Anta and Salcedo do not shy away from these mental impacts on his cast of youthful protagonists. These young students vent their frustrations over these comments but are ultimately grounded by a shared humanity against the extraterrestrial threat.

Ultimately, Anta and Salcedo shine in offering an accessible commentary about an ever-too-present reality in our world. Much like other graphic narratives, such as Anta’s Home (Image Comics) or Anta and Salcedo’s Frontera: A Graphic Novel (Harper Collins, 2023), This Land is Our Land delivers an engaging commentary on immigration for readers of all ages. If I have one gripe with the graphic novel it is that it does not include the appendix teaching material like Home did. As this is a graphic novel that could find a home in a variety of classrooms. More importantly, the optimistic message of compassion offers a much-needed lesson for audiences of all ages, but particularly children, today. As Jaime Reyes reminds us, as he reunites with a renewed Riley now concerned with a migrant child stranded in the desert, “Because all it ever takes is one person to break the cycle and transform a community” (183).

References

1. American Psychiatric Association, “Position Statement on Xenophobia, Immigration, and Mental Health,” July 2020.
2. National Immigration Forum, “The ‘Great Replacement’ Theory, Explained,” December 2021.
3. Neighbors Consejo, “Understanding Xenophobia and its Mental Health Impacts,” June 25, 2024.
4. Rodney Coates, “What is the ‘great replacement theory’? A scholar of race relations explains,” The Conversation, March 15, 2024. https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-great-replacement-theory-a-scholar-of-race-relations-explains-224835
5. “Texas Walmart Shooting: El Paso attack ‘domestic terrorism,’” BBC, August 4, 2019.

Further Reading

1. Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. (Harvard University Press, 2019).
2. Leo R. Chavez, The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, Third Edition. (Stanford University Press, 2025).
3. Chris Zepeda-Millan, Latin Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Emiliano Aguilar is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches courses about the Latino experience in the United States, including “Latino History through Comics.”