Reaching the Shore

Lavín, Guillermo. "Reaching the Shore" ("Llegar a la orilla"), 1994. Rena Zuidema and Andrea Bell, translators. In Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain. Andrea Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavílan, editors. Middletwon, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2003: 224-34.

Discussed in detail by Lisa Rivera, "Future Histories and Cyborg Labor: Reading Borderlands Science Fiction After NAFTA" (our initial source for this citation) as a combination of cyberpunk, labor-history, and anti-neocolonial SF featuring a maquiladora worker with used as a guinea pig to test virtual reality chips, making him into a variety of cyborg and a kind of symbol for the dehumanizing effects of "capitalist hegemony in the era of free trade" (in Latham, Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings, pp. 534-37).

Note that the protagonist's initial experience with the chip is "enjoying neural teaching" when he "learned in seconds what before had taken many boring hours" (Cosmos Latinos p. 229).

RDE, Initial Compiler, 5July17, 10Sep20