Recovering The US Hispanic Literary Heritage, Vol VIII Edited by Clara Lomas and Gabriela Baeza Ventura

Recovering the U.S.
Hispanic Literary
Heritage, Volume VIII
Edited by Gabriela Baeza Ventura
and Clara Lomas
Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage
Board of Editorial Advisors
Jos F. Aranda, Jr.
Rice University
Gabriela Baeza Ventura
University of Houston
Alejandra Balestra
Independent Scholar
Rose Marie Beebee
Santa Clara University
Aviva Ben-Ur
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Antonia Castaeda
St. Marys University
Rodolfo J. Cortina
Kenya C. Dworkin y Mndez
Carnegie Mellon University
Jos B. Fernndez
University of Central Florida
Juan Flores
Hunter College of CUNY
Erlinda Gonzales-Berry
Oregon State University
Jos A. Gurpegui
Universidad de Alcal
Laura Gutirrez-Witt
University of Texas at Austin
Jos M. Irizarry Rodrguez
University of Puerto Rico, Mayagez
Donna M. Kabalen de Bichara
Tecnolgico de Monterrey
Luis Leal
University of California at Santa Barbara
Clara Lomas
The Colorado College
Francisco A. Lomel
University of California at Santa Barbara
Blanca Lpez de Mariscal
Tecnolgico de Monterrey
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz
University of Chicago
A. Gabriel Melndez
University of New Mexico
Genaro Padilla
University of California at Berkeley
Raymund Paredes
Commision of Higher Education, State of
Texas
Nlida Prez
Hunter College of CUNY
Gerald Poyo
St. Marys University
Barbara O. Reyes
University of New Mexico
Antonio Saborit
Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e
Historia
Rosaura Snchez
University of California at San Diego
Virginia Snchez Korrol
Brooklyn College of CUNY
Charles Tatum
University of Arizona
Silvio Torres-Saillant
Syracuse University
Roberto Trujillo
Stanford University
Toms Ybarra-Frausto
Independent Scholar
Arte Pblico Press
Houston, Texas
Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage
Recovering the U.S.
Hispanic Literary
Heritage, Volume VIII
Edited by Gabriela Baeza Ventura
and Clara Lomas
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This volume is made possible through grants from the City of Houston through
the Houston Arts Alliance, the Amricas Research Center of Rice University
and the University of Houston. We are grateful for their support.
Recovering the past, creating the future
Arte Pblico Press
452 Cullen Performance Hall
Houston, Texas 77204-2004
Jacket design by Pilar Espino
The Library of Congress has catalogued Volume I of
Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage as follows:
Recovering the U.S. Hispanic literary heritage / edited by Ramn Gutirrez
and Genaro Padilla
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-55885-063-7 $34.95
ISBN: 978-1-55885-058-3 (trade pbk.) $17.95
1. American literatureHispanic American authorsHistory and
criticism. 2. Hispanic American literature (Spanish)History and
criticism. 3. Hispanic AmericansIntellectual life. 4. Hispanic Americans
in literature. I. Gutirrez, Ramn A., 1951- II. Padilla, Genaro M., 1949-
PS153.H56R43 1993
92-45114
CIP
ISBN: 978-1-55885-139-9 (Volume II)
ISBN: 978-1-55885-251-8 (Volume III)
ISBN: 978-1-55885-361-4 (Volume IV)
ISBN: 978-1-55885-371-3 (Volume V)
ISBN: 978-1-55885-478-9 (Volume VI)
ISBN: 978-1-55885-526-7 (Volume VII)
ISBN: 978-1-55885-604-2 (Volume VIII)
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984
.
2011 by Arte Pblico Press
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Part I
Contesting the Canon
Discourse Production and the Expression of Gender Roles in
the Writings of Mara Cristina Mena
DONNA KABALEN DE BICHARA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Heroic Boys and Good Neighbors: Cold War Discourse and the
Symbolism of Chapultepec in Mara Cristina Menas Boy
Heroes of Chapultepec
BELINDA LINN RINCN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Squatting in Uncle Toms Cabin: Intertextual References and
Literary Tactics of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women Writers
BETH HERNANDEZ-JASON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Part II
Mapping Latino Voices in the United States
Espaa Libre: peridico de exilio espaol en Nueva York
MONTSE FEU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
No Hay Justicia! The Execution of Simplicio Torres
PATRICIA A. BONN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Recovering Spanish-Language Education in Alta California
Ecologies, Ideologies and Intertexualities
ROBERT W. TRAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Part III
Postcoloniality in Autobiography
Autobiographical Politics in the Contact Zone: Miguel Antonio
Oteros My Life on the Frontier
ERIN MURRAH-MANDRIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
The Autobiography of Conversion of Rev. Santiago Tafolla, Sr.,
Runaway, Soldier and Methodist Minister: a Postcolonial
Bildungsroman
NORMA A. MOUTON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
De la experiencia a la enseanza: Contrastes estructurales y
didcticos en El sol de Texas y Macho!
LAURA GARZA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Part IV
Nationalism in Contact Zones
The Mexican-American Novel of the Revolution: Reading
the Immigrant Nationalism of Leonor Villegas de Magnns
The Rebel
YOLANDA PADILLA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
The Return of Jos Castro: The Baja California Correspondence
of Alta Californias Last Commander General
JULIANNE BURTON-CARVAJAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
La figura del sacrificio como expresin nacionalista en las
obras Hatuey y La muerte de Plcido
CECILIA MARRUGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Introduction
GABRIELA BAEZA VENTURA
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON
CLARA LOMAS
COLORADO COLLEGE
T
he 2008 Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage conferences call
for papers highlighted two important events as the topics for that years
meeting: 1) the mapping of contact zones in Nuestra Amrica alluding to
Jos Marts well-known essay on U.S. expansionism and imperialistic ploys
where he expresses a desire for the people of America (Latin America) to stand
united and make America strong by rejecting European and U.S. ideology; and
2) the bicentennial celebration of the first printing of El Misisip, a Hispanic
newspaper published on September 1808 in New Orleans. The conflation of
both topics called for a revision and analysis of how the contact zones that
were initiated and dominated by European travelers, merchants and conquista-
dors produced a multiplicity of diverse cultural clashes and/or syntheses. This is
evident in many printed works, which exist precisely because many Latino
authors had the newspaper as a venue to print their works and share them with
the newspapers readership. These early publications were the means through
which many Latino authors were able to preserve views and to, above all, con-
test and respond to a hegemony that was imposing and limiting. The contact
zones that were generated via the newspaper formulated a decolonized third
space that is now evident to U.S. Latino scholars.
The essays included in this volume span the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
tury, the United States, Mexico and Cuba, female and male writers, and map
cultural, political, linguistic, gender and historical connections/disconnections
vii
between individuals and groups. Each essay attests to the contact zones that are
created and are reproduced in the United States; many also disclose the violence
and displacement that is often present in works within a postcolonial atmos-
phere. The collection is comprised of twelve essays and is divided into four sec-
tions: Contesting the Canon, Mapping Latino Voices in the United States, Post-
coloniality in Autobiography and Nationalism in Contact Zones.
In the first section, Donna Kabalen de Bicharas article Discourse Produc-
tion and the Expression of Gender Roles in the Writing of Mara Cristina Mena
contributes to the critical discussion of Menas works by focusing on lesser-
known narratives that allow for an understanding of [her] work from a femi-
nine perspective by exploring portrayal of male-female power relations, gen-
der issues and the symbolic power of her writing as an author of Mexican origin
in contact with an Anglo culture in the early part of the twentieth century. In a
comparative study of two short stories and two newspaper columns, found in the
Recovery Collection of the Mara Cristina Mena Chambers Papers, Kabalen
shows that Mena artfully uses a contestatory stance to question womens
assigned and limiting position in society. Of particular interest is Kabalens teas-
ing out the symbolic power of Menas authority as a writer capable of challeng-
ing traditional paradigms by handwritten commentary found on an edition of one
of her columns. Belinda Linn Rincn in her essay Heroic Boys and Good
Neighbors: Cold War Discourse and the Symbolism of Chapultepec in Mara
Cristina Menas Boy Heroes of Chapultepec analyzes how early twentieth-
century young adult literature that featured Mexico as its setting frequently
reproduced the tropes of empire to foster U.S. imperialism. Rincn identifies a
powerful voice in Menas young adult literature that predates the Chicano
movement and that offers a subtle critique of U.S. militarism and its cultural
corollaries . . . by presenting forms of Mexican patriotism and heroic sacrifice
in opposition to U.S. cultural military invasions, as well as by resignifying the
historical narrative of the U.S. Mexican War of 1848 within a Cold War context.
In this section, Beth Hernandez-Jasons article Squatting in Uncle Toms Cabin:
Intertextual References and Literary Tactics of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women
Writers explores Mara Amparo Ruiz de Burtons role as a cultural mediador
with cultural authority using Wolfgang Isers concept of repertoire and ngel
Ramas transculturacin to analyze the intertextual and rhetorical parallels and
departures between Harriet Beecher Stowe and Ruiz de Burton. She calls for a
reading of Ruiz de Burtons novels alongside that of her contemporaries, such as
Stowe and Helen Hunt Jackson, for a more profound understanding of Ruiz de
Burtons work within her own historical moment. Moreover, she cautions against
the type of reading and teaching of Ruiz de Burton that seeks to understand
viii !!!!!!!!!! Introduction
difference as a general phenomenon and advises that we constantly fight the
urge to hegemonize an already elitist text within the economics of pedagogy.
Because part of the mission of the Recovery project is to preserve and
recover, the second section includes three articles that analyze the role of the
press and they discuss its significance in regards to the preservation and the way
it provides writers a venue to voice their opinion with regard to the situations
that Latinas and Latinos face in the United States as well as to unite divergent
ideologies within the same source. With her essay, Espaa Libre: peridico de
exilio espaol en Nueva York, Montse Feu examines a newspaper, published in
New York between 1939 and 1977, that served as a propagandist publication for
the Spanish political exiles association, Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas.
Throughout its 38 years, Espaa Libre provided a forum for columnists with
divergent ideological positions and diverse class interestsfrom progressive
bourgeois intellectuals to anarcho-syndicalist leaders and workerswith the
goal of uniting a heterogenic exile community and its international supporters
in their opposition to the Franco regime. Feu points out that they successfully
put aside their differences and came together in the United States to create a
political solidarity that fostered international aid for refugees, political prison-
ers and the Spanish people who survived the totalitarian regime. Patricia A.
Bonn in No Hay Justicia! The Execution of Simplicio Torres describes how,
at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Arizona Spanish-language news-
paper Justicia challenged a criminal judicial system whose systematic discrim-
ination against racial minorities too often lead to unjust executions. Bonn chron-
icles the events surrounding the crime committed by 23-year-old Simplicio
Torres, the legal proceedings of the all-Anglo jury trial that placed him on death
row and the political machinations to deny him an appeal. This initial study of
the case offers further insights into the vital role of the Spanish-language press
not only in providing critical alternative views contesting those of the English-
language press, but also in documenting and preserving them for posterity. In
Recovering Spanish-Language Education in Alta California: Ecologies, Ide-
ologies and Intertextualities Robert W. Train analyzes a small cluster of extant
school texts printed in 1836 and 1843 in Monterey, California. By situating
these textbooks within other texts and contexts of pre-U.S. California, he pro-
vides a glimpse of cultures of print and schooling within a postcolonial ecology
shaped by the intersection of imperial ideologies and intertextualities of peda-
gogies of reduction and violence. A critical understanding of these historical
texts, Train suggests, is germane to present-day policy surrounding Spanish-
language education in California. He recommends the creation of a decolonial
third space in which Spanish and English are reconstituted in language educa-
tion; the validation and fostering of the emergence of complex intercultural
Introduction !!!!!!!!!! ix
spaces for bilingual communicative practices; and the development and appre-
ciation of translingual and transcultural competence as an education goal.
The third cluster of essays shares postcolonial concerns in its relation to
autobiography. Erin Murrah-Mandril in Autobiographical Politics in the Con-
tact Zone: Miguel Antonio Oteros My Life on the Frontier explains how Otero
undermines the dominant concept of a westward-moving frontier that trans-
formed savagery into civilization. In his autobiography, he refuted the most
dominant U.S. interpretation of the frontier by reconstituting the politics of con-
quest in the Southwestern United States and by redrawing the lines of civility
and wildness. Murrah-Mandril maintains that Otero attempted to tame the wild
representations of New Mexico that circulated in popular fiction by recasting his
life as a romantic comedytriumphing over the wilds of the west and draw-
ing on the United States own romantic narrative of Western expansionto
position nuevo mexicanos within the United States formative contact zone as
heroes of progress. In The Autobiography of Conversion of Rev. Santiago
Tafolla, Sr., Runaway, Soldier and Methodist Minister: a Postcolonial Bil-
dungsroman Norma Mouton argues that the unfinished life narrative left by
Tafolla not only combines some fundamental characteristics of both an autobi-
ography of conversion and the traditionally Eurocentric bourgeois literary form
of the bildungsroman, but that it reflects postcolonial theories as well. Her study
posits that Tafollas quest for Truth is two-pronged: at one level is his spiritual
journey and at another is an exploration of his identity as a Mexican American.
Drawing on Jos Santiago Fernndez Vsquezs discussion of postcolonial bil-
dungsroman scriptures, Mouton reveals how Tafolla utilized this genre to evade
hegemonic domination during the late nineteenth century. The essay by Laura
Garza De la experiencia a la enseanza: Contrastes estructurales y didcticos
en El sol de Texas y Macho! is a comparative analysis of the novels of Con-
rado Espinoza and Victor Villaseor as examples of the novela de inmigracin
and the novela nativista as defined by Nicols Kanellos. Garza asserts that
Espinozas El sol de Texas exemplifies the immigration novel marked by nos-
talgia, anti-acculturation sentiment and a longing to return to the country of ori-
gin, while Villaseors Macho! promotes rejection of the values of that old
country and incorporation to the new culture. Despite their differences, what the
two novels published in different historical periods have in common, she argues,
is their portrayal of women as advocates for full assimilation to U.S. culture.
The final section is dedicated to works that deal with nation-building and
the resignification of symbols. Yolanda Padilla in The Mexican-American
Novel of the Revolution: Reading the Immigrant Nationalism of Leonor Ville-
gas de Magnns The Rebel renders a sophisticated reading of Villegas de
Magnons memoirs identifying an immigrant nationalism with expressions that
x !!!!!!!!!! Introduction
respond to outreaches from the home nation, but which produce activities that
are shaped by the local political situations and affective needs of the immigrants
themselves. The memoirs reveal a transnational understanding of the Mexican
civil war from a borderlands perspective, which also articulates an ethnic iden-
tity for Mexicans in the United States. Padilla submits that the use of an anti-
revolutionary pastoral in Villegas de Magnns narratives works as one of the
authors strategies to rehabilitate the border in Mexican imaginaries, to posi-
tion the border region as central to the Mexican nation through the peacemak-
ing mission of the nursing corps and to make Mexico legible to the United
States through a cross-cultural translation key to ethnic identity of Mexicans in
the United States. Julianne Burton-Carvajals essay The Return of Jos Castro:
The Baja California Correspondence of Alta Californias Last Commander Gen-
eral is a summary of 18 letters recently rediscovered that offer an initial recon-
struction of an important figure in the 1850s during the transition from Mexican
to American California. The correspondence spanning from 1856-1860 docu-
ments Castros final years, his separation from his family and constituents and
the process of change from oligarchic New Spain to Republican Mexico. Burton-
Carvajal presents this overview of apparent miscellany of letters, noting that
they indeed tell a surprisingly coherent and revealing tale, in an attempt to
help us understand this significant figure who was part of an influential trio with
his associates Juan Bautista Alvarado and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, but who
has been negated or misrepresented during the past 150 years. Castros corre-
spondence has the potential of providing valuable insight into the interrelation-
ships between Californios and Mexicans in Baja California during a time of
resistance, alliance-building, betrayal and displacement. In her essay, La figu-
ra del sacrificio como expresin nacionalista en Hatuey y La muerte de Plci-
do Cecilia Marrugo explores the literary recreations of Cuban historical figures
in works of Cuban exiled journalists, poets and translators Diego Tejera and
Francisco Selln. Published in New York at the end of the nineteenth century,
Sellns dramatic poem and Tejeras dramatic plays are nostalgic reminisces of
their native country meant to foment national patriotism and unity. Marrugo
draws on Benedict Andersons and Claudio Lomnitzs postulations on sacrifice
for the nation, to convincingly argue that these Cuban exiles appeal to the
defense of their country by successfully creating a sense of national sacrifice
through the dynamics of racial and social representation.
All of the essays included in this eighth edition of the Recovering the U.S.
Hispanic Literary Heritage Project continue to chronicle how we imagine and
study the Hispanic literary past while critically examining issues of nomen-
clature, periodization, genres, the politics of textual production and reproduc-
tion, the primacy of written over oral forms of literature, and most importantly,
Introduction !!!!!!!!!! xi
the silence and resistance of female and subaltern voices as Gutirrez and
Padilla indicated in the first volume of the series (25). With Recovery entering
new avenues of dissemination with the recent sponsorship of EBSCO publish-
ing, that is now distributing and placing Recovery collections in all major
libraries throughout the United States and abroad, the written and oral legacy of
Latinos will no longer be a thing of the past but an irrefutable present and future.
Works Cited
Gutirrez Ramn, and Genaro Padilla. Introduction. Recovering the U.S. His-
panic Literary Hertiage. Vol. I. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 1993. 17-25. Print.
Kanellos, Nicols with Helvetia Martell. Hispanic Periodicals in the United
States, Origins to 1960. A Brief History and Comprehensive Bibliography.
Houston: Arte Pblico P, 2000. Print.
Mart, Jos. Obras completas. La Habana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1963-
1973. Print.
Prez, Emma. The Decolonial Imaginary Writing Chicanas into History.
Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1999. Print.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Lon-
don. New York: Routledge, 1992. Print.
xii !!!!!!!!!! Introduction
Part I
Contesting the Canon
3
Discourse Production and the Expression of Gender
Roles in the Writings of Mara Cristina Mena
DONNA KABALEN DE BICHARA
TECNOLGICO DE MONTERREY
M
uch has been written about Mara Cristina Menas literature which
reflects her experience of cultural contact as a Mexican-born immi-
grant to the United States. Born in Mexico City in 1893, she was the
daughter of a Spanish mother and her father, who was from Yucatan, was of
European descent. Her life was one of privilege, having been educated at private
convent and boarding schools; yet as a means of escaping the violence of the
Mexican Revolution of 1910, Mena was sent by her family to New York City in
1907. In 1916 she wed Henry K. Chambers, also a writer (Simmen 39). Refer-
ences to her writing tend to focus on the way in which her works fit into the cor-
pus of Mexican-American writing. An often cited source is Raymund Paredes
article of 1978, The Evolution of Chicano Literature, which surveys the devel-
opment of Chicano literature. Although he suggests that Mena is a talented sto-
ryteller, he is critical of her writing as she has not confronted the life of her
culture more forcefully (50). Ernestina Egers discussion of Menas indigenista
perspective focuses on the authors notion of what she calls the Inditos whom
she describes as so intrinsically picturesque (Letter to Robert Sterling Yard in
1913). Menas work along these lines has been critiqued because of her attitude
of condescension with regard to the Indian population of her native country. It
has also been noted, however, that as a Mexican-American writer Mena has def-
initely contributed to the development of Chicano literature especially in terms
of her insertion of Spanish within her fiction. Here it is pertinent to recall
Ramn Saldvars suggestion that Mexican-American literature involves liter-
ary products of a segment of contemporary American society that in many
respects continues to define itself in opposition and resistance to mainstream
social, historical, economic, and cultural modalities (3). This is certainly
applicable to Menas work as evidenced in her letters where we find her argu-
ing with the editors of Century Magazine to maintain certain cultural references
in her stories.
1
Of further importance is that aspect of Menas writing related to topics that
fit her notion of what it means to be a woman in the early part of the twentieth
century. That is, within the discourse production of her texts we find references
to social structures and cultural practice where ideologies that underlie tradi-
tional roles assigned to women and men are evident. Amy Doherty, for exam-
ple, has pointed out that Menas work emphasizes social and political concerns
as well as Mexican social mores and the role of the woman within that society.
As she has suggested, Mena often uses the vehicle of romance to discuss gen-
der roles, colonialism, and immigration (viii). Gloria Louise Velasquez Trevio
has also explained that although Menas stories refer to Mexico, she is also con-
cerned with the female in contact with a masculine world. Ultimately, Tiffany
Ana Lpez has remarked that Mena must not only be seen as a Mexican Amer-
ican, but as a woman; that is, her work is critically instructive for what it can
tell readers about the ways in which early women writers and ethnic American
authors grappled with issues of self-representation in their effort to define a
place for themselves within a distinctly American literary tradition (64). This
sense of Menas writing and its meaning in the area of womens writing is
echoed by Amy Doherty who notes that: Meaning, for her, is signified though
gender, the creativity of women in accomplishing their aim, the increasing
empowerment of women in her work, and her own life as a writer (xlix).
It is precisely an understanding of Menas work from a feminine perspec-
tive that is of interest here, and several questions guide the present discussion:
What type of woman is portrayed in a selection of Menas lesser known works?
In what way is the female figure of the text placed in opposition to male arche-
types? Finally, how do these texts broaden our understanding of this Mexican-
American writer? As a means of approaching answers to these questions I will
focus my discussion on gender issues, particularly male-female power relations
as evidenced in two of her lesser-known texts, Mara de Los Angeles and The
Game of Perdition. I will then look at the ideological contact that is evident
when we compare these texts with a two articles that Mena wrote in 1925 for
The Great Neck News
2
on a page entitled, A Page Dedicated to WomenBy
Maria Cristina Chambers.
3
4 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Donna Kabalen de Bichara
Born at the end of the nineteenth century, Mena developed in a cultural field
and was immersed within a particular habitus
4
where the structuring disposi-
tions of Catholic perspectives dominated. That is her early life experiences
involved sets of expectations and understandings marked by the socio-cultural
atmosphere in Mexico prior to her emigration to the United States. It is precise-
ly her Catholic background and its set of values regarding specific rules, ritu-
als and conventions that marked her early cultural field
5
of experience. These
values or conventions also involve what Gilbert and Gubar define as the eter-
nal feminine or virtues of modesty, gracefulness, purity, delicacy, civility,
compliancy, reticence, chastity, affability, politeness (816) and they underlie
the texts I examine here.
Foucault has suggested that discourse translates struggles or systems of
domination; that is, discursive ensembles (The Order of Discourse 53) or
doctrines are very often represented by the speaking subject within the text. This
is particularly true in Mara de Los Angeles: A Biographical Story of My First
Communion in Mexico at Aged Thirteen Years. The microfilmed copy of this
text includes a handwritten note to Ronnie pointing out that this text was pub-
lished in the magazine, Old Castle Garden (published when she was twenty-one
years of age). At the end of the text is a biographical note by Edward J. OBrian
taken from The Best Short Stories of 1928 in which he tells the reader that
Maria Cristina Chambers is the only Mexican woman to have written fiction in
English. Mrs. Chambers has written perhaps the most comprehensive series of
stories of Mexican life published in English. This narrative is obviously meant
for an American readership, yet, as suggested by Bourdieu, language makes the
world, and I would suggest that this is a text meant to keep Menas experience
of life in Mexico alive in her own mind as well. Indeed, at the end of the copy
of the published text, we find Menas handwritten note: This story is a bio-
graphical memory of my First Communion at the age of 13, a year before I came
from Mexico to the United States. Every detail in the story is exactly as it hap-
pened. Both in the material, as well as the Spiritual experience, I remember as
it might [sic] happened yesterday. Yet, as we shall see, this text presents not
only a cherished memory, but also a picture of her struggle with paternal and
maternal authority. Furthermore, by examining discursive elements in the text
we are able to identify the writers perspective on certain moral virtues.
This narrative then, recounts a life event that took place in Mexico, and it
begins as follows: When Mara de los Angeles was a child, she believed that
every time the carriage of Nuestro Amo (Our Lord) passed under her balcony,
she was in duty bound to prostrate herself and pay homage to the padre sitting
inside, blessing everything and everybody. The narrator further notes that when
she was out on paseo, her Mam guided her young shoulders in the direction
Discourse Production and the Expression of Gender Roles . . . ! ! 5
of the pavement in front of which the carriage of Nuestro Amo chanced to drive
slowly. She recognizes that her mother stands as a guide in her young life,
especially in terms of Mexican Catholic cultural practice, yet she tells the read-
er that On these occasions, although intensely religious, Mara, in the white
and beribboned dress, felt a childish disapproval at the prostration ceremony
over the pavement. Here we find a veiled discourse which we can assume is the
voice of the adult looking back upon her childhood and recognizing what she
sees as a prostration ceremony that is imposed upon her and which she there-
fore disapproves of. At age thirteen, when she is to make her First Communion
she narrates her need to separate herself in spirit from her beloved Pap, an
act that her spiritual advisor says is necessary to save her soul since her father
was a member of the extreme Masonic cult of Don Porfirio Diaz. She tells the
reader her father did not want to give his permission to his daughter to make her
First Communion. Pap is described as a man who exercises power over Mara
and her mother; indeed, they must hide the fact that they are shopping for the
silks and ribbons to be used for her dress. She explains her spiritual conflict over
her fathers mortal sin and her continued prayers for a miracle. This sin of
course involves a deviation from the tradition of Catholic practice and the
fathers desire to prevent his daughter from receiving communion. She further
describes him as the master of his house daring [to use] strong words against
the Church. Here we see a child torn between two powers, that of the Church
and her Pap. She notes as well that her father controlled the money of the
household and she is told by her mother, who is buying material for the dress to
be worn for this special day, not to tell her father of their adventure. We find an
expression of her confusion about having to do things behind her fathers back
as she notes, A Seorita of thirteen must do what God commands her to do.
For this young child obedience to the authority of the Church necessarily takes
precedence over the power her father attempts to wield. Ultimately the narrator
tells the reader about her eventual distanced relation with her father: It was like
going away from her father, far, far, from him on a train, and he not knowing
they were leaving him. She also explains her questioning of paternal authori-
ty and the sorrow it was bringing to her life: that something indefinable [ . . . ]
it wasnt disobedience; something infinitely deeper and like nothing else she
had ever experienced, was this incredible rebellion against the life Pap was
forcing la familia to make behind his back. It all seemed not as God would have
it [ . . . ]. Within these sections of the text where specific life experiences are
narrated, the reader encounters linguistic markers such as, prostration, pow-
ers, controlled, and commands, which clearly point to discourse production
that emphasizes conflict between the power of the Church and that exercised by
her father. The effect of this struggle results in a painful choice, one imposed by
her spiritual advisorthat of distancing herself from her father.
The moment of her Communion, however, brings her to a new realization,
an epiphany of sorts a great illumination, something strengthening, which
had filled her with wisdom beyond her years [ . . . ]. It is through this wisdom
that she comes to understand that both her parents were one, and infinitely
desired and welcomed, without question. Here she explains her decision to
minister love to botheven to her father whom she previously perceived as act-
ing contrary to Gods law. Because this moment of enlightenment provides her
with a sense of her parents oneness, she chooses to comply with the regulatory
process of submission to paternal and therefore familial authority as she decides
to give up pleasant things girls like to do so as to become attentive and obe-
dient to each as she awaits the miracle of unity within what she calls peace-
ful amor de la familia and in the Holy Catholic Church. In the mind of this
thirteen-year-old female child, we discover her choice fits the definition of the
eternal feminine, especially that of choosing to be compliant, attentive and
obedient. She awaits not only unity within her family subject to the authority
of her father as head of la familia; but she also expresses her desire that the
family as a whole be connected properly with the Holy Catholic Church the
supreme authority of her early life experience.
The alternative to the sublime attentiveness and obedience presented in
Maria de Los Angeles stands in stark contrast to acts of disobedience in the
narrative, The Game of Perdition. Within this text the reader encounters male
archetypes who represent good and evil, the patriarch versus the depraved trick-
ster, and we find a young female who dares test the limits of her cultural field
and the expectations it defines for her. As suggested by Bourdieu, culture is a
system of durably acquired schemes of perception, thought and action, engen-
dered by objective conditions but tending to persist even after an alteration of
those conditions (The Inheritors 32). These schemes of perception and the way
in which they persist in the mind of the female character are of particular impor-
tance in this text, which once again presents the reader with a habitus and cer-
tain regulating processes evident within the discourse of the text.
The Game of Perdition begins with the following reflection: I dont
know whether many girls are carried away by vanity as I was. I dont know
whether many girls want to have power and success at any cost: and I dont
know whether many girls reach such a strong determination never to love again
as early in life as I did. A later commentary in the text (one that is crossed out
in the microfilmed text) involves the narrators reflection on the natural but
very strange undefinable [sic] stubbornness that seems to accompany Beauty
and Youth. This then is a story of the fall of a young woman.
From the very beginning of the text we find references to the innocence of
a young girls early life experience. She tells the reader how she and Dick Arm-
strong spent time alone together, but she emphasizes the innocent aspect of their
young relationship: I was a beautiful princess and he a dashing young prince
and we seemed to live in a poetical world. Once again, we perceive of a world
marked by the traditional female virtues, of purity, chastity and modesty. How-
ever, the narrator then describes a change in this innocent relation when Dick
kisses her: hard and smothering me and messing my lovely curls while trying
to lift my dress. She notes then, I was thrown down from my pedestal in a
cheap, vulgar and never to be forgiven nor forgotten shock. I knew then I didnt
ever want to love again. Dick is seen as responsible for killing an innocent
love, and the narrator speaks of something hard and cold taking over in her
life, a moment that stands as a type of antithesis to the spiritual epiphany
described in Maria de los Angeles. Here we find the negative effect of sexual
discovery in her life as she describes a separation of body and soul; now she
could do what she wished with her body that remained separate from her soul
which would roam as lost. Essentially, then, the narrator presents the reader
with her vision of a young woman whose soul has been marred and therefore
lost because of an experience considered illicit for the virtuous woman.
In spite of this sense of a lost soul, and rather than the negative and sinful
description of the father figure found in Maria de los Angeles, here we find a
young girl in close relation to her father who knew of this strange condition
of his daughters mind. He responds by trying to divert her, or as she suggests,
to cultivate my mind. Indeed, although this young woman refuses to finish
high school, her father promises to teach her himself. She speaks of her fathers
inventions, and the life they had apart from her mother. She then explains that
when her father died, the whole world died for her as well. After this point she
describes herself as continuously dissatisfied with others, and just as she had
relied on her father for support, she will look to his friend, Mr. Coutapalas, for
guidance. She tells the reader that Mr. Coutapalas had often visited her home to
settle business about her fathers invention of a little automaton of a little man
smoking a pipe that gave a red glow over the apparently burning tobacco. She
calls this her fathers little man with a pipe. Evident here is the female char-
acter in need of transferring her hopes to another father figure, Mr. Coutapalas,
the man who will show me the world. She explains that He believed me to
be a very unusual girl and admired my natural golden hair and violet eyes and
she decides to use all of her wiles on him to get what she wants: a chance to
leave home. She looks at him with drooping eyes to compel him to connect
my words with him intimately, and she wants him to stop admiring her in a
paternal way. She speaks to him of her fathers ideas on freedom and advanced
thinking. Outstanding here are the sexual undertones of her actions, actions
which are certainly not to be condoned as acceptable feminine behavior. That
is, she is not demonstrating reticence or chastity. Rather, she refers to herself
as bold and reckless and wants Mr. Coutapalas to fall in love with her, take her
away to far away places. She is astonished at Mr. Coutapalas refusal and sees
this retrospectively as a lesson that life was giving her in that moment.
Of importance here is the use of discourse which represents female charac-
teristics that stand in opposition to the traditional female stereotype. For
instance, we find textual markers that refer to the womans physical charm: her
wiles, and drooping eyes. The narrator describes herself as a good look-
ing girl at a dangerous age and she comments on the fact that men, cast as
tricksters, can lure girls away from the path of virtue. Yet she also notes that
there are girls who are different and determined to see life and who have no
one to blame but themselves for whatever happens to them [ . . . ] We have a
thousand tricks up our sleeves. Again, the reader is presented with a picture of
a girl who demonstrates unacceptable feminine characteristics.
The young woman of this narrative ultimately begs for the opportunity to
make it in New York and she throws herself at the mercy of Mr. Coutapalas who,
in keeping with his paternal role, concedes to settling her in a job at the Hotel
Byzantium where she will take charge of the cigar-counter and go with her
fathers little man with a pipe as a guardian angel. She also speaks of repos-
ing safely in my power to do anything I wished, yet it is precisely her use of
power, which is seemingly misplaced in the female, that results in her fall.
Indeed, she describes the boldness that is growing within her, that fatal desire
to outdo everything and everybody as well as her vanity that deceived her.
Interestingly, the story of this young womans fall is presented in extreme
detail with descriptions of being kept by Mr. Slaughter who tricks her into par-
ticipating in a depraved sexual game in which he gets on all fours and pre-
tends to be a horse while he hands her a small whip.
6
She explains that because
of her youth she was unaware of the meaning of the game, of this mans pecu-
liar degenerate passion, and she tells the reader that the exact horror of my sit-
uation came slowly to my stubborn mind. Ultimately this portion of the text
points to her feelings of being ruined, ashamed, a failure, and of suffering
an overpowering feeling of sadness. She then comments on how she had put
her moral nature to sleep. Just as Maria de Los Angeles presents the reader
with a moment of inner light that will guide the female childs future actions,
we find a parallel in this text as the female narrative voice describes a moment
when she observes a scene in the hotel, that of a father dining with his daugh-
ter: The Father and Daughter were almost through with their dinner and as I
kept on watching them in all the splendour of their perfect peace and well-being,
those strangers became the real images of what I had killed. Once again, the
reader is presented with an epiphany as the narrator recalls her own father and
muses on the fact that life will punish those who trespass against it. She nar-
rates her experience of struggle with alcohol, as one of those unfortunate
wretches who cant take a drink without wanting another one. Liquor is
described as a drug and as poison of the soul. It is at this point that she notes
the beautiful and peaceful eyes of the young girl presented in contrast to the
frivolity of my diamonds now seem as meaningless in light of the perfect
peace that emanates from a young girl accompanied by her father. The narrator
ultimately presents the reader with her decision to return to her family in Chica-
go. She describes becoming ill with appendicitis, a nervous breakdown and a
moment at which she begs God to allow her to recover as she promises to
change her life. After what she calls her spiritual experience of discovering
herself, she becomes humble, and she describes herself as happy but poor as
she cares for her mother until her death. She remains an old maid and seems
to hear her fathers voice telling her all is well, that God has forgiven me.
Both texts can be described as simple narrative forms that focus on lessons
in life with a particular emphasis on moral virtues. Maria de Los Angeles,
which takes place in Mexico, is addressed to an American audience and it pre-
sents the reader with a childhood struggle with two types of authority. Howev-
er, this young girl chooses to follow the path of obedience expected of her, and
lives happily. The second narrative presents the reader with a negative alternative
to the traditional feminine model, the stereotype of the fallen woman in which
a young girl chooses a life of vice, but gives testimony to her regeneration. In
contrast to the first text that is meant to present an American readership with a
picture of cultural practice and linguistic usage in Mexico, The Game of Perdi-
tion seemingly is meant to appeal to a society in the midst of the Prohibition era.
Here we find Menas text is devoid of what Melissa Gonzlez has called local
color. Instead, the writer focuses on the consequences of female deviation from
her assigned role as the obedient daughter. Although her father is dead, she looks
to Mr. Coutapalas for help in achieving her dream of seeing the world. The obvi-
ous lesson evident in the narrative, then, is that female use of power can only
result in her downfall. In contrast, the young girl of Maria de Los Angeles
chooses the correct path, attentiveness and obedience, the prescribed actions for
women. Although, as suggested by Doherty, Mena questioned traditional codes
of gender and class in her later short stories (xiii), The Game of Perdition nar-
rates the life experience of a young woman who must live with the negative con-
sequences of trespassing traditionally assigned gender roles.
Menas Articles for The Great Neck News
It is interesting to note that, although the Recovery copy of The Game of
Perdition is a rough draft of the text, it is addressed to the Authors League of
New York and is signed Maria Cristina Chambers. However, I believe it is
important to point out that the thematic focus of this text in particular coincides
with the newspaper columns written by Mena (as Maria Cristina Chambers) for
The Great Neck News in 1925. The May 30, 1925 column entitled, That Terri-
ble Desire of Ours, focuses on an exchange between two female friends, and
the question of why women run after celebrities. The article begins with refer-
ence to both women, but one is obviously more brilliant: Ive just discovered
the reason for our lion hunting, said the brilliant woman to an admiring friend.
That terrible desire of ours to run after celebrities [ . . . ] To be near or have
something to do with a famous person is one of the symptoms of a very deep-
seated complex all women have hidden somewhere in the depths of their soul.
Here we discover the authors commentary regarding what she perceives as
womens misplaced sense of curiosity which is precisely her diagnosis of this
seeming disease that afflicts all women: This deep-seated and complicated
complex all women seem to suffer from is Curiosity. And Ive also discovered
that men have made women inquisitive. Women have curiosity because they
have been repressed. Too many veils have been thrown over our faces, as well
as our thoughts, and the accumulation of numberless things we have repressed
have formed a gigantic complex called Curiosity. The article goes on to argue
the fact that women have been deprived of knowledge in spite of their longings
to know, and knowledge has been withheld like the box of candy nicely sealed
and beribboned and placed before the child. Although the exchange between
the two women results in the conclusion that running after a famed English
author is simply curiosity, the brilliant woman ultimately notes that someday
women will hunt celebrities for the purpose of better understanding their mis-
sion thereby eventually profiting from what they have to offer and, Then, per-
haps, in their amazement, the celebrities will hunt us. This final statement
points to the authors knowledge of dominant cultural perspectives as she notes
that the celebrity the two women have paid $50 dollars to listen to happens to
be a famed English novelist, yet Mena seems to implicitly suggest that the
Anglo cultural other may eventually pay attention to women such as herself.
In her column entitled Feeling Not Same as Emotion, published on June
6, 1925 Mena points out that: Creatures ruled by emotion, rather than reason,
are ever incalculable in their actions. These are words the modern woman
confided to her chum. Following this introduction, and in keeping with the
didactic mode evident in her May 30th column, she warns women once again
about the importance of being aware of the males role in confining women to
traditional positions: We must be forever on our guard [ . . . ] if we dont wish
to give the men a handle to work with. Here she comments on how she often
digs into her purse to pull out money to give to a beggar. She notes that when
walking down the street with a man of the world: I ventured to stop three
times before three beggars shrines, and deposited my offering with the accus-
tomed piety. The voice of this modern woman critiques her own eternal fem-
inine act of piety and she points out that her male companion laughed at her and
told her that, Its misdirected maternal instinct, thats all [ . . . ] and proceeded
to explain my actions as the feminine urge to rescue or help the battered male.
The remainder of the article questions the female need to come to the battered
males aid, as the speaker tells the reader, if we are not to be called creatures
of emotion, we must reason over those disturbing problems which seem to be in
closer communion with our hearts than our heads. She points out the example
of a legless mendicant who had no doubt [ . . . ] been studying feminine
nature also, and he saw that few women could resist the opportunity of giving
money [ . . . ] it was an emotional trap and the beggar did well with it. Finally,
she notes that truly sublime happiness only comes when our emotional acts
bear the fruit of well directed action.
In both of these articles we continue to see Mena grappling with the tradi-
tional view of woman versus her role in the modern world and the new possi-
bilities it offers. Here we see a definite move away from the sublime obedience
evident in Maria de Los Angeles, and we come into contact once again with
the pedagogic focus of The Game of Perdition which cautions women against
choosing a path of misused freedom that can only lead to failure. However, just
as The Game of Perdition focuses on a womans fall, repentance, and final
choice of the right path, the articles written by Mena in The Great Neck News
also present us with traditional female characteristics such as Curiosity or
being Creatures ruled by emotion who help beggars. Although Menas May
30th article, That Terrible Desire of Ours, states that men are responsible for
repressing women, she suggests that there is a way out of that repressionone
must learn from the celebrity and then use that knowledge as the basis for
growth and eventual recognition by men. In the June 6th article, we also find
that the voice of the modern woman encourages informing traditional female
emotion with reason. It is interesting to note that just as the article That Terri-
ble Desire of Ours refers to a brilliant woman, in Feeling Not Same as Emo-
tion there is a specific reference to the modern woman; that is, Mena explic-
itly presents the voices of a new type of woman, one who is enlightened and
modern, and whose knowledge of how to navigate new possibilities in the mod-
ern age must be heeded. Of further importance, is a hand-written note at the top
of the June 6th edition of A Page Dedicated to Women: Every advertisement
on this page came on the strength of my page: Mara Cristina Chambers. Here
we find Mena expressing her sense of power of convocation of readers and
therefore responsible for each and every advertisement in real estate, the sale of
cars and furniture, dressmaking, instruction and jobs. This type of commentary
clearly demonstrates her own sense of self-knowledge as a community leader,
as a woman able to teach others what she has learned along a difficult road
first, as a Mexican woman in contact with the dominant Anglo culture, and then
as a woman of strength capable of showing others the way toward very new pos-
sibilities that break with traditional paradigms. It is precisely the symbolic
power of her writing that stands out in her column as she chooses to speak about
topics that concern the modern woman.
What becomes evident from this examination of Menas various types of
texts is the way in which she ponders the traditional views regarding the
womans assigned role as hija de familia. In Maria de los Angeles we find
a child confronted with her fathers use of power as he challenges that of the
Catholic Church, yet she is rewarded with a sense of peace as she obediently
awaits the eventual virtuous unity of her familia. In The Game of Perdition we
find a young woman who falls due to her misplaced use of power and capacity
for choice. Although she suffers the consequences of giving in to her baser
nature, and although she ultimately repents, she necessarily spends the rest of
her life as a spinster, her just punishment for trespassing sexual taboos. The
two newspaper articles written by Mena, reveal her contestatory stance as she
continues to question the womans assigned position within society. However,
rather than only offering two alternativesobedience or perditionthese arti-
cles offer us a voice that challenges traditional assumptions about women. Yes,
women are curious creatures, but the article ends by emphasizing the need for
women to transform that trait into curiosity for the sake of knowledge and not
simply for ogling celebrities. The second article further focuses on the need for
valuing reason over emotion. Indeed, on the same page we find a brief article
entitled, Margaret Wilson Very Busy. This article focuses on President Wil-
sons wife Margaret who finds time to do many helpful things. She is
described as a writer of novels, a lecturer and a woman who presides over con-
ferences for the betterment of her fellow beings. Mrs. Wilson is also described
as being involved in the Child Welfare Committee of America. The reader can-
not help but perceive an implicit parallel. Menas page in The Great Neck News
functions as a symbolic space in which a writer of Mexican origin in contact
with an Anglo culture undertakes the task of bringing into existence a new
vision for women. It is through her writing that she speaks to a female reader
who is grappling with change and contact with a different world, one that is just
beginning to open up possibilities for women. Women are able to vote, thus they
must become more aware of their new role in society. Ultimately, this analysis
of two of Menas short stories and newspaper columns further underscores the
broad contribution of her writing which brought to the fore a female voice capa-
ble interpreting life in her home country, but also as a courageous voice deter-
mined to contest traditional gender roles and their limiting effects on women.
Notes
1
For a more detailed examination of these letters, see Dohertys Introduction
in The Collected Stories of Mara Cristina Mena in which we find references
to Menas exchange of letters with the editors of Century Magazine.
2
The Great Neck News was a local newspaper that began publishing in 1925 in
Great Neck, Long Island in the state of New York. See Hofstra University
Library, Special Collections, <http://www.hofstra.edu/PDF/lib_spcol_ncmrlc_
newspapers.pdf>.
3
Copies of these newspaper articles are part of the Recovery collection of the
Maria Cristina Mena Chambers Papers. The articles available are taken from
issues dated May 30, June 6, July 4, 11, 25, August 8, 22, and September, 19,
26, 1925. These articles provide us with some insight into the way in which her
views on gender were translated into newspaper articles for the general Amer-
ican reading public.
4
I am referring to Bourdieus definition of habitus as, systems of durable, trans-
posable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structur-
ing structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and
representations See The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford:
Stanford UP, 1990, p. 53.
5
See Jenn Webb, Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher. Understanding Bourdieu.
London: Sage Publications, 2002 (21-22) for a more extensive discussion of
Bourdieus notion of the cultural field has to do with series of institutions,
rules, rituals, conventions, categories, desginations, appointments and titles
which constitute an objective hierarchy, and which produce and authorise cer-
tain discourses and activities.
6
Here we are reminded of Dohertys comment concerning Menas openness
about sexuality that she shared with D.H. Lawrence, xv.
Works Cited
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production. Ed. Randal Johnson. New
York: Columbia UP, 1993.
______, and Jean-Claude Passeron. The Inheritors: French Students and Their
Relation to Culture. Chicago. U of Chicago P, 1979.
Chambers, Mara Cristina. Mara de Los Angeles. Mara Cristina Mena
Papers, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, 645-0648.
______. The Game of Perdition. Mara Cristina Mena Papers, Recovering the
U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, 008-0043.
______. That Terrible Desire of Ours. The Great Neck News For Saturday. 30
May 1925: 15-16.
______. Feeling Not Same as Emotion. The Great Neck News For Saturday.
6 June 1925: 15.
Doherty, Amy. Introduction. The Collected Stories of Mara Cristina Mena.
Ed. Amy Doherty. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 1997.
Eger, Ernestina. A Bibliography of Criticism of Contemporary Chicano Litera-
ture. Berkeley: Chicano Studies Library, U of California P, 1982.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Discourse. Untying the Text: A Post-
Structuralist Reader. Ed. Robert Young. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1981.
Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. Literary The-
ory: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Leal, Luis. A Luis Leal Reader: (Latino Voices/Vidas). Ed. Ilan Stevens. Mara
Cristina Mena.
Lpez, Tiffany Ann. A Tolerance for Contradictions: The Short Stories of
Mara Cristina Mena. Nineteenth Century American Women Writers: A
Critical Reader. Ed. Karen L. Kilcup. Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell,
1998.
Paredes, Raymund. The Evolution of Chicano Literature. Three American Lit-
eratures: Essays in Chicano, Native American and Asian American Litera-
ture for Teachers of American Literature. Ed. Houston A. Baker Jr. New
York: MLA, 1982. 33-79.
Saldvar, Ramn. Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference. Madison:
The U of Wisconsin P, 1990.
Simmen, Edward. Ed. North of the Rio Grande: The Mexican-American Expe-
rience in Short Fiction. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Velzquez Trevio, Gloria. Cultural Ambivalence in Early Chicana Prose Fic-
tion. diss. Stanford University. 1985.
17
Heroic Boys and Good Neighbors: Cold War Discourse
and the Symbolism of Chapultepec in Mara Cristina
Menas Boy Heroes of Chapultepec
BELINDA LINN RINCN
JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
I
n 1947, President Harry Truman became the first U.S. president to make an
official visit to Mexico.
1
Much of his public address in Mexico City given on
March 3, 1947, stressed the political creed of neighborliness and friendship
between both nations:
The United States and Mexico are working together for the mutual ben-
efit of their peoples and the peace of the world. You [President Miguel
Alemn of Mexico] have made me feel, [ . . . ] as a trusted friend and a
welcome guest. To you and to the people of Mexico I bring a message
of friendship and trust from the people of the United States. Though the
road be long and wearisome that leads to a good neighborhood as wide
as the world, we shall travel it together. Our two countries will not fail
each other. (Address)
At the end of his three-day visit, President Truman stopped by the main monu-
ment to the fallen group of military cadets called el Altar a la Patria (Altar to
the Country) at Chapultepec Park to lay a wreath at its base. As a symbolic con-
tact zone, Chapultepec is a multivalent site of social and national memory that
many Mexicans held in high regard. On September 13, 1847, U.S. troops led by
General Winfield Scott attacked the castle, which held six young military
cadets, between the ages of 13 and 19, who refused to flee in what they deemed
a dishonorable surrender. In the face of an overwhelming U.S. military force,
the six teens were eventually killed. One of the boys was said to have wrapped
himself in the Mexican flag before jumping to his death. The Mexican state
revered the six young men as patriot martyrs and they were immediately dubbed
Los Nios Hroes. Monuments were erected in their honor and they were also
pictured on Mexican currency. In 1947, Trumans gesture was largely perceived
as a symbolic act of remorse and reconciliation for U.S. aggression during the
U.S.-Mexican War.
The primary purpose of Trumans visit was to fortify U.S.-Mexico relations
and to strengthen Mexicos allegiance to U.S.-led anti-communist efforts. Less
than two weeks after his Mexico City address, Truman delivered another speech
in which he outlined what would come to be known as the Truman Doctrine.
The Doctrine would assert the U.S. prerogative to intervene in and assist nations
threatened by foreign (i.e., Communist) aggression.
2
Truman made a similar
veiled allusion to the Communist threat in his Mexico City speech in which he
emphasized U.S. and Mexican commitment to democracy, universal peace and
security in the Americas. As a symbol of national defense, Chapultepec Castle
served as a seemingly appropriate location from which to promote hemispheric
unity and security against foreign aggressioneven though it was the United
States that had invaded Mexico in 1846.
Maria Cristina Menas Boy Heroes of Chapultepec: A Story of the Mexican
War (1953), published six years after Trumans visit, commemorates his sym-
bolic gesture as a concomitant act within a larger program of the Good Neigh-
bor Policy. However, Boy Heroes replaces Trumans attempt to allegorize Mex-
ican national defense as hemispheric defense with an alternative historical
narrative of U.S. intervention. Truman honored los Nios Hroes for defending
their land against U.S. invasion in 1848, meanwhile, in 1947, U.S. cultural and
economic imperialism and military influence in Latin America continued apace.
This irony was not lost on Mena whose text reflects a critical stance on the tense
ideological context of the early Cold War era.
Written for a young U.S. readership, Boy Heroes exemplifies the ways in
which childrens popular culture and state discourses intersect in an ostensibly
innocuous cultural medium: young adult (YA) literature. Early twentieth-century
YA fiction, in particular, is an understudied field of literature where U.S.-Latin
American relations often provide the setting for fiction about U.S. empire. In this
fiction, the cultural construction of Anglo-American boyhood is figured as an ide-
ological battleground on which state discourses of capitalism and military inter-
vention are fought. Much of this literature outlined expectations for its targeted
18 ! !!!!!!!! Belinda Linn Rincn
readershipAnglo-American teenage boyswho were then trained in the ways
of warfare, capitalism, racial supremacy, and idealized notions of masculinity.
If YA fiction often instructed young readers on how to be Anglo American
and masculine in Mexico, the work of Mara Cristina Mena (b. 18931965) pro-
vided a cultural and critical intervention in imperial childrens fiction.
3
Mena is
known as the first naturalized American from Mexico to write in English and
publish in prestigious American magazines (Simmen 147).
4
She published
eleven short stories between 1913 and 1916 for the elite Century magazine and
was known for her attempt to change U.S. misperceptions of Mexicans through
her stories about life in Mexico. After a long hiatus, she published The Water-
Carriers Secrets (1942), which would become the first of her five childrens
books. No research has been done on her childrens literature perhaps because
childrens popular culture is neglected within the field of Chicana/o Studies in
general. Because childrens literature focuses on young audiences, many schol-
ars might assume that it has little to say about more sophisticated issues such as
U.S. hegemony and imperialism. However, Menas choice of subject matter for
her YA fiction often reveals her keen awareness of complex inter-cultural rela-
tions between the United States. and Mexico. In her YA fiction, we can detect a
powerful voice that anticipates Chicana/o Movement writers and expands the
current boundaries of Chicana/o literary studies. Boy Heroes focuses on Mexi-
can boyhood and poses an important yet subtle critique of U.S. intervention by
depicting examples of Mexican patriotism and heroic sacrifice. However, it also
challenges simplistic Mexican nationalist narratives that memorialize such sac-
rifices. That is, Boy Heroes launches an equally critical view of the Mexican
elite and their complicity with U.S. forms of economic and cultural imperialism.
Menas rendering of los Nios Hroes provides a nuanced reading of compet-
ing U.S. and Mexican nationalisms that converge in the most unlikely of
placeschildrens literature.
Bellicose Boys and the Fiction of U.S. Empire (18981945)
U.S. military intervention and economic imperialism have long been the
subjects of much YA fiction published in the United States. I use the term impe-
rialist YA fiction to characterize YA literature from the first half of the twentieth
century in which a significant number of publications written for juvenile read-
erships depict the armed struggles and political turmoil that defined U.S.-Latin
American relations. Imperialist YA fiction written in the post-1898 context
implicitly and, often times explicitly, refers to U.S. aggressions in the hemi-
sphere. As Peter Hugill argues, the U.S. victory in the Spanish-Cuban-American
War of 1898 helped foment a cultural and political embrace of external impe-
Heroic Boys and Good Neighbors: Cold War Discourse . . . !!!19
rialism in the United States (327). This external imperialism was further
characterized by a robust U.S. foreign policy stance which included Theodore
Roosevelts 1904 Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and Gunboat Diplomacy.
Examples of U.S. hemispheric dominance included the construction of the
Panama Canal and over 35 armed U.S. interventions not only in Cuba, Haiti,
and the Dominican Republic but also in Costa Rica (1921), Guatemala (1920),
Honduras (1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1917-22), Panama (1903-14, 1921, and
1925), Mexico (1913, 1914, 1916-17, 1918-19), and Nicaragua (1909-10, 1912-
25, and 1926-33) (McPherson 10). The U.S. entry into World War I further
shaped imperialist YA fiction as the American generation that came of age in
the first 15 years of the century would see themselves as ready to assume their
rightful role as a global power (Hugill 319). Accompanying this series of
events was the proliferation of juvenile literature in the 1890s due to improve-
ments in the publishing industry and to the lucrative success of the genre (320).
My focus here is on a series of juvenile weeklies and other forms of serial
fiction published in the United States that featured Mexico as the background in
which Anglo-American boys performed imperial fantasies. During the nine-
teenth-century, YA stories often involved hidden Aztec treasure awaiting discov-
ery, but after the Mexican revolution broke out in 1910, writers emphasized mil-
itary confrontations. For example, the Happy Days series featured titles such as
A Forced Fight with Villa; or, An American Boy in Mexico. Dime novels for
young adult readers in the United States were accompanied by serial fiction such
as Frank Fowlers The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz (1916)
which featured brave and patriotic youth who, despite their age, were responsi-
ble for enforcing U.S. foreign policy in Mexico. These texts not only draw our
attention to the militarization of young U.S. readers, but also the early appropri-
ation of Mexico as a site of adolescent gender and racial construction. They also
depicted the Mexican revolution as an event used to justify U.S. intervention.
H. Irving Hancocks Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz: Fighting with the U.S.
Navy in Mexico (1914) fictionalizes the 1914 U.S. armed invasion of Veracruz,
Mexico, and positions teen boys directly within the theater of war. Dave Darrin
is a young naval ensign from the Annapolis Academy who is sent to Veracruz to
await possible military engagement with Mexican rebels. President Woodrow
Wilsons policy of watchful waiting is explicitly critiqued by the narrator and
the protagonists who view U.S. intervention as necessary: Lives and property
of citizens of European governments had been sacrificed, [ . . . ] looked askance
at by the Washington government, which was expected to safeguard the rights
of foreigners in Mexico (19). Darrin is among the Americans [who] demand-
ed a policy of active intervention in Mexico to end the uncertainty and misery
[ . . . ]. Although the text advocates intervention, it stops short of calling for
annexation that some U.S. investors at the time favored in order to protect their
property. Darrin reveals his views on annexation by replying: I hope our coun-
try wont go that far. [ . . . ] I should hate to think of having to welcome the Mex-
icans as fellow citizens of the great republic (145). Intervention apparently has
its limits. Meanwhile Darrins racist and interventionist attitude exemplify the
form imperialist discourse takes in some YA serials.
The U.S. military was often deployed to countries deemed underdeveloped
and in need of U.S. technical and scientific knowledge in order to benefit from
vast natural resources untapped by native governments. Thus, YA fiction repre-
sented a different form of intervention, one in which young male protagonists
bring their superior and advanced technical knowledge to supposedly pre-modern
countries. For example, Hancocks 1913 book The Young Engineers in Mexico; or,
Fighting the Mine Swindlers endows its protagonists with advanced technological
skill rather than with military prowess, yet the message remains the same: Mexi-
co is the proving ground for the development of young Anglo-American mas-
culinity in the service of U.S. capitalism. G. Harvey Ralphsons Boy Scouts in
Mexico; or, On Guard with Uncle Sam (1911) follows a similar plot in which a
group of wealthy boys from New York City practice their scouting skills in Mex-
ico by finding a lost mine.
In much imperialist YA literature, Anglo-American boyhood masculinity is
defined vis--vis Mexican men. In physical encounters with racialized natives
(which usually includes Mexican creole, mestizo, or indigenous men), white-
ness trumps age. Mary Pat Bradys analysis of YA fiction reveals how Anglo-
American juvenile masculinity is constructed in fiction about the U.S.-Mexico
borderlands. Freemont B. Deerings The Border Boys across the Frontier (1911),
Gerald Breckenridges The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border (1922), and Stern-
er St. Paul Meeks Pagan: A Border Patrol Horse (1952) stage scenes in which
Mexican masculinity is declared inept in this border regionyoung, inexperi-
enced white boys successfully tackle smugglers and revolutionaries (75). Like
the previously mentioned Boy Scouts in Mexico, the protagonists in these books
are the sons of scions of industry which further suggests the ideological link
between narratives of masculinity, race, and economy, between the nation as
imperialist economic power and young men as its allegorical embodiment.
The unnatural and improbable scenario of white boys overpowering
Mexican men continues into the 1930s and beyond as the aptly named Hardy
Boys further naturalized U.S. intervention in Latin America for young readers.
For example, Franklin W. Dixons The Mark on the Door (1934) sent the Hardy
Boys (two brothers who inherited their sleuthing acumen from their father, Fen-
ton Hardy, a famous detective) to Mexico to investigate fraud. They discover
that Pedro Vincenzo, a swarthy Mexican (3), had swindled money from
unwitting U.S. investors by tricking them into buying stock in the non-existent
Rio Oil Company. Joe and Frank Hardy refuse to stand for the theft of U.S. cap-
ital investment; they go to Mexico with their father, who remains mostly absent
throughout the book, and retrieve the money before having Vincenzo arrested.
5
Throughout the duration of the series, the Hardy brothers make various trips to
Latin America including Guatemala (The Clue in the Embers [1955]) and Brazil
(The Masked Monkey [1972]). They also travel to an undetermined location in
South America to stop money laundering intended to fund armed terrorists (The
Wailing Siren Mystery [1951]) and into revolutionary Cuba to stop the prolifer-
ation of atomic weapons (The Ghost at Skeleton Rock [1958]).
By the 1930s and 40s, animation and films began to replace YA literature as
the dominant form of YA entertainment. However, the prevailing war discourse
continued to be a central theme as the United States entered into the Second
World War. This phase can be characterized by the rise in popularity of Walt Dis-
ney whose company produced a series of films about Latin America. In one of
the most direct examples of state influence on childrens culture, Nelson Rocke-
feller, head of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, enlisted
Walt Disneys services as a Goodwill Ambassador.
6
The material from Disneys
Goodwill trip through Latin America resulted in the South American trilogy
a series of cartoon films that included South of the Border with Disney (1941),
Saludos Amigos (1943), and The Three Caballeros (1945). The trilogy helped to
further elevate the representation of Latin America in childrens popular culture. It
is within this context that Mena published her first YA book, The Water-Carriers
Secret (1942), which aimed at fostering cross-cultural understanding that suited
the Good Neighbor Policys objectives. In an interview, Mena describes why she
wrote the book: Ive written this bookmy first juvenilewith the hand on the
heart as we say in Mexico. It is my small contribution and very large wish for a
better understanding by the youth of the United Statesmy adopted country
of Mexicothe country of my birth (Hoehn 199). This sentiment informs all of
her YA books and reveals her practice of using literature to challenge denigrating
stereotypes of Mexicans. But in addition to providing the youth of the United
States with a better understanding of Mexico, Mena also challenges the tra-
ditional tropes of imperialist YA fiction. Rather than promote triumphalist views
of U.S. military intervention, most of Menas YA fiction exposes the asymmetri-
cal power dynamics at work in U.S.-Mexican relations.
Anti-Communism and the Symbolism of Chapultepec
Boy Heroes of Chapultepec begins with an editorial introduction by Cecile
Matschat and Carl Carmer who briefly mention Trumans visit to Chapultepec
Park to lay a wreath on the monument to the six Mexican cadets (viii). They
then end their introduction by stating: This book is the story of that heroic
defense, honored alike by Americans everywhere and their neighbors south of
the border. Their explicit reference to Trumans visit was most likely due to its
treatment in the U.S. and Mexican press as a significant instance of political the-
ater. A New York Times reporter described how Mexican military cadets wept as
Truman placed a floral wreath at the monument and how old men wiped their
eyes as Truman was driven away (Belair 1). The same article quotes Mexican
Foreign Minister Jaime Torres Bodet as saying: President Truman, by render-
ing homage to the immortal glory of the boy heroes, in a gesture worthy of a
gentleman and a friend, spans an abyss of the past by another bridge into the
future. Similar reactions describe how Trumans actions amounted to an unof-
ficial, albeit belated, apology that helped to assuage Mexicos wounds of his-
torical memory over the loss of land and the sacrifice of Mexican youth. David
McCullough writes that with one simple, unheralded gesture, [Truman] did
more to improve Mexican-American relations than had any President in a cen-
tury. Within hours, as the word spread, he had become a hero (542). The
responses to Trumans act reflect both hyperbole as well as the extent to which
the story of the Nios Hroes was deeply embedded in Mexican public con-
sciousness. In fact, the remains of the Nios Hroes had been recently discov-
ered in 1947 at the base of a hill in Chapultepec Park.
7
News of the discovery
and the centennial anniversary of the war likely added to the publics reported-
ly effusive response.
Trumans Mexico visit took place during a potentially precarious moment.
On the eve of the centennial commemoration of the U.S.-Mexican War of
1848a war referred to in Mexico as the U.S. War of InterventionTruman
arrived asking for greater solidarity between the two nations. In his remarks,
President Aleman noted that, although he was not interested in perpetuating ani-
mosity, over and above the dialogues of men, history speaks.
8
Yet, while
acknowledging that the centennial speaks for itself, Aleman went on to say
that because the two nations fought against each other in battle, their current
friendship holds a greater meaning for the world. For his part, Truman
referred to the war as a set of tragic difficulties and offered the platitude that
the victor loses in total war as well as the vanquished.
It was clearly in the interest of both Presidents to move delicately beyond
the centennial in order to address the more pressing needs of the present: eco-
nomic aid and hemispheric security. Yet tensions remained under the surface as
both countries pursued their competing agendas. The tension was evident at the
1945 Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace held at Cha-
pultepec. As delegates from most of the Latin American states pushed for
increased U.S. financial assistance and investment in their postwar industrial-
ization plans, the U.S. delegate focused on securing a multilateral hemispheric
defense initiative (Lpez-Maya 142-143). At the conferences conclusion, dele-
gates adopted the Act of Chapultepec that outlined the first postwar regional
security alliance. The Act stipulated that invasion by armed forces of one state
into the territory of another [ . . . ] shall constitute an act of aggression.
9
In
instances of invasion, state signatories to the Act would then consult on the
course of action necessary to prevent or repel aggression. It is not clear
whether U.S. delegates understood the irony of the Acts resolution against inva-
sion and the conferences location and its history. However, Truman would have
to confront that irony two years later during his visit to Chapultepec if he want-
ed to garner Mexican support against communism in the hemisphere.
Trumans official visit in 1947 focused on reaffirming friendly relations
between the two nations and reassuring Mexico that the United States was no
longer a threat to its sovereignty. In his public address to the Mexican people,
Truman emphasized his intentions: The Good Neighbor Policy specifically
includes the Doctrine of Nonintervention. This assures each nation freedom for
its own development. [ . . . ] Without it we could not exist as a community of
good neighbors. [ . . . ] My own country will be faithful to the letter and to the
spirit of that law (Address). Judging from newspaper headlines at the time,
public skepticism may have been somewhat attenuated by Trumans symbolic
gesture at Chapultepec Park. However, those who remained dubious of U.S. pol-
icy, it turns out, had a right to be. In the immediate postwar years, U.S. foreign
policy tolerated and encouraged a brief interlude of democratic and populist
reforms across Latin America as dictatorships fell, popular forces were mobi-
lized, and elections with a relatively high level of participation were held
(Joseph 20).
10
However, by 1947, the United States had shifted its policy toward
Latin American democracies in favor of conservative forces who used repres-
sion to achieve political stability: operating through its embassy officials, the
FBI, the American Federation of Labor, and, after 1947, the newly created CIA,
the United States carefully monitored the regions internal front, applying a
range of economic and political pressures on governments and unions. The pop-
ular democratic movements that Washington had validated in the middle of the
decade were discouraged by 1947 (22). The U.S. support of Anastasio Somoza
in Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and Fulgencio Batista
in Cuba illustrate the shift toward anti-democratic rule. Trumans promise that
the United States would uphold the Doctrine of Nonintervention was broken
again only one year after the publication of Boy Heroes when, in 1954, the
C.I.A. planned a covert operation to overthrow the democratically-elected
Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. McPherson explains that this U.S.-
supported coup dtat was only part of a growing Latin American instability and
that by 1954 thirteen of twenty Latin American nations were dictatorships tied
closely to Washington (25).
It is against this backdrop of U.S. intervention in Latin America that Menas
narrative of land loss and U.S. military invasion can best be understood. Tru-
mans strategic evocation of the Nios Hroes points to one of the most perva-
sive and recognizable strategies of war discourse: the resignification of previous
wars for the purpose of waging new ones. Truman used the history of Chapul-
tepec as part of a U.S.-led imperative against Communism. The editors of Boy
Heroes then used this visit to link the history of the U.S.-Mexican War to the
current state of world affairs. It is within this context of rapidly shifting Cold
War alliances that Mena negotiates war discourses from the past and the present
as she rewrites the story of U.S. intervention for modern, young adult readers.
Rewriting the Story of los Nios Hroes
Despite its title and the fanfare surrounding the martyred military cadets
memorialized at Chapultepec, the protagonist of Boy Heroes is, ironically
enough, not one of the Nios Hroes. Rather, he is a fourteen-year old Indian
peasant named Pedro who works on Don Luis Ramos Blancos hacienda. Pedro
is described as a boy who, since the age of ten years, had been doing mans
work around the hacienda, with never a complaint about anything. His father
was forever reminding him to look upon Don Luis as his lord and master,
because he had been born on his hacienda and owed the master loyalty all his
life (5). However, as he grows older, Pedro views himself as a slave and longs
to leave the hacienda with his father. The only member of Don Luiss family that
Pedro holds in high esteem is the young son, Domingo, who will eventually
become one of the Nios Hroes. When news arrives of an impending U.S. mil-
itary invasion, Don Luis and his family flee their property leaving the Indian
peasant workers to face possible death while protecting the hacienda. Eventual-
ly General Zachary Taylor will occupy the hacienda while preparing for his con-
frontation with General Santa Annas forces nearby. U.S. forces eventually
occupy Mexico City and bring about the joint suicide of the Nios Hroes at the
Chapultepec military academy.
Before readers are treated to a presumably familiar and glorified narrative
about U.S. military intervention, they encounter the editors contextualization of
the U.S.-Mexican War. Carmer and Matschats opening lines attempt to reclaim
a war that had been regarded by many as a shameful example of U.S. imperial-
ism: Some historians have claimed that the war of 18461848 with Mexico is
a foul blot upon our national honor. They contend that the war was fomented
by slaveholders interested only in acquiring new territory. Actually, nothing
could be further from the truth (vii). They go on to explain President Polks
continued efforts to negotiate for peace in the face of Mexican diplomatic
recalcitrance. After dubious dealings with General Santa Anna, both nations
entered into peace negotiations in which Mexico was given almost as generous
terms as before the Americans had stormed and won their capital (vii). In
Carmer and Matschats version, readers are encouraged to view the war and the
resulting annexation of land as the result of treaty negotiations between con-
senting parties without the taint of coercion. In this version, the United States
acts honorably in its taking of roughly half of Mexicos territory.
In contradiction to her editors assertions, Mena offers a subtle opposition
to the books editorial frame by presenting Zachary Taylors views on the wars
origins. Carmer and Matschat had insisted that the U.S. engagement was justi-
fied and that Mexico had been the actual aggressors: Texas had been an inde-
pendent Republic for nine years before its annexation by the United States. Yet
Mexico claimed this annexation as a cause for war (vii). To help illustrate this
point, Mena incorporates Zachary Taylor, one of the wars acclaimed leaders, as
an authoritative voice in the text who can give a first-hand account of what
took place. While speaking with one of his sergeants about the wars beginning,
Taylor states, As a matter of fact, the war actually began on April 25, 1845,
when Congress agreed to the annexation of Texas (60-61). However, he goes
on to say, It was when President Polk ordered troops to the frontier and put me
in command of the American troops there. [ . . . ] Well, the Mexicans thought it
was an invasion of their country [ . . . ] (61). Taylors account alludes to the
common belief that President Polk instigated the war with Mexico by sending
Taylor into disputed Mexican territory. In this scene, Taylors words suggest an
alternative version of Polks attempt to to negotiate for peace. Furthermore,
Taylor implicates himself in prompting a Mexican military response as he estab-
lished a fort in the contested territory between the Nueces and Ro Bravo Rivers.
He views his own actions from the Mexican perspective and implicitly suggests
that the Mexicans were justified in their reaction to the U.S. territorial incursion
(the Mexicans thought it was an invasion of their country). Readers are thus
presented with a muddied and contradictory picture of the war and its causes.
Expecting to read about a justified U.S. invasion of Mexico as laid out in the
editorial introduction, readers are instead treated to an ambiguous depiction that
makes room for the possibility that the Mexican defensive reaction to U.S. pol-
icy was fair and reasonable.
Despite her attempt to offer a counter interpretation to the wars origins,
Mena was nonetheless limited in her ability to present a more explicit challenge
to the U.S. version of history. She was, after all, writing for a U.S. readership no
doubt accustomed by the genre of imperialist YA literature to expect positive
depictions of U.S. intervention. These reader (and publisher) expectations
resulted in an unusual yet creative plot twist as Mena attempted to avoid direct
condemnation of U.S. actions. Boy Heroes takes an improbable turn when Pedro
attempts to calm down the rising fear of raiding Yanquis by convincing the
group of frightened peasants that the Americans are on the side of the work-
ers! (50). Menas insertion of a pro-labor U.S. Army seems out of context and
suggests her attempt to reconcile the Mexican view of U.S. imperialism with the
anti-imperial framework of the editorial introduction. By recasting the U.S. mil-
itary as defenders of the Mexican peasantry, Mena deviates from history and
reveals the weight of publisher demands on her writing. But even in the revi-
sionist characterization of the U.S. Army, Boy Heroes maintains its skepticism
of U.S. forces. After describing his intent to meet with the Army leaders, Pedro
says, I believe the Americans are good people but . . . (67). The sentence sug-
gestively trails into an ellipsis as Gaspar, Pedros father, interjects, But if the
Yanquis begin shooting and try to burn the hacienda before you have time to
speak, and when you speak they do not listen to you, what then? In a moment
of renewed patriotism that highlights his conditional support for the invading
army, Pedro exclaims, Then we shall defend the hacienda!
Menas focus on class exploitation and worker revolt not only enables a
positive depiction of the U.S. military, it also allows a critical reading of the
Mexican elite. With Pedro as the protagonist and Domingo a minor character
(indeed, the Nios Hroes appear primarily in the last two of the books eleven
chapters), the text foregrounds Mexicos history of exploiting indigenous com-
munities. In the telling of Pedros story, Mena exposes the foul blot that mars
Mexicos national memory. The hacienda at Buena Vista becomes metonymic of
the Mexican state in which Don Luis represents the elite and Pedro the indige-
nous underclass. Don Luis flees for safety from U.S. forces and takes for grant-
ed his workers loyalty when he says, Those Yanquis [ . . . ] dont know our
Indians! Our millions of patriots who are ready to die for their country! (19).
However, these presumed patriots soon shift allegiance from the hacienda to the
invaders because of the injustice they suffer. At one point, a crowd of peasant
women exhorts Pedro to voice their grievance to the U.S. Army: Tell them, tell
the Yanquis how every year at harvesttime [sic] Don Luis promised to give us a
little piece of ground for ourselves, but after the harvest he gave us nothing,
nothing (51). Pedros followers applaud his resistance to exploitation when he
tells them, Ive heard that the Americans are on the side of the workers and
against the masters. I am a Mexican and love my country, but I am a worker and
we here all are workers [ . . . ] I am for fighting against the cruel masters on the
side of the Americans! (52). Menas version of the Nios Hroes challenges
Mexican militarism because it questions the idea of a Mexican state that is
worth dying for. The fact that Pedro and the Indian workers reject the Mexican
call to arms shows how the Mexican state has a tenuous hold on the allegiance
of its people. Again, readers are subjected to a conflicted story of national alle-
giance as Pedros freedom and that of his fellow workers is dependent upon U.S.
invasion. Furthermore, Boy Heroes reframes the war and embeds internal class
and racial struggle within the larger foreign invasion. The parallel stories of U.S.
military invasion and Mexican exploitation further complicate the simplified
nationalist narratives of both countries.
Pedro occupies the dual position of traitor and patriot by simultaneously
aiding the enemy and championing Mexican workers rights. He is also equally
as brave and patriotic as his rich master, Domingo. For example, Pedro faces
death early in the book when Don Luis sends a pack of dogs and search party
on a manhunt to find him after he had run away from home. Don Luis had heard
rumors that Pedro had expressed dissatisfaction with his peasant status and tells
Gaspar to discipline his treacherous son: I suspect him to be on the side of the
workers against his master. Now, go and teach that son of yours to do his duty
(22). Gaspar, who is the overseer of the hacienda, later viciously slaps Pedro
who refuses to beg for the masters forgiveness. This scene crystallizes the link
between the patriarchal state and the patriarchal family and shows how Pedro
questions the authority of the father and the state by rejecting racial and class
hierarchies. Pedros encounter with Gaspar and Don Luis suggests that boys
were still subject to domination as they were expected to obey both their elders
and the state. Just as boys must rely on their parents for guidance and support,
citizens must rely on the state for direction and instruction. Drawing such par-
allels between the parent-child relationship and the social contract between the
citizen and the state naturalizes the latter. Boy Heroes, however, uses the exam-
ple of a childs defiance against his father and patrn to challenge the presumed
equivalence between citizen and patriot and to question state authority.
The deaths of the Nios Hroes represent what Rolando Romero calls a
suitable metaphor for national innocence (368). While Truman strategically
expressed national guilt over the incident itself (and not necessarily the war),
Mexican militarism used the memory of the Nios Hroes for its own national-
ist agendas. Patriotism requires instruction and examples. In Mexico, the Nios
Hroes are an example of patriotic suicide or sacrifice meant to serve as an
injunction for sustained commitment to the state and to provide examples for
others to emulate if not in deed, then in spirit. Memorialization of the Nios
Hroes is the Mexican states retroactive attempt to promote national unity, but
in Menas text, disunity is precisely what led to their suicides in the first place.
In Boy Heroes, Mexicans achieve a more egalitarian society as a result of the
foreign invasion which enables the indigenous workers to topple their oppres-
sors by taking over the hacienda: Pedro welcomed the transformation of the
elegant and forbidden Manor House into an Indian workers home, nearly every
inch of which was now covered by straw mats over Don Luiss precious Span-
ish carpets (63). Despite this positive outcome of the war, Boy Heroes does not
suggest that U.S. military intervention was justified. Rather, the text refocuses
attention on Mexicos internal racial and class conflicts in order to suggest that
national defense necessitates a more just and equal society.
Working within her editors imposed narrative frame of the U.S.-Mexican
War and within the fragile political moment of the early 1950s, Mena strikes a
delicate balance of not overtly criticizing the U.S. invasion of Mexico while
nevertheless providing an account of Mexican resistance to U.S. intervention. In
some sense, the historical events speak for themselves. That is, the ultimate con-
demnation of the U.S. invasion is the deaths of the six cadets. The last two chap-
ters of Boy Heroes provide a detailed description of Domingos final days in the
castle. Domingo and the soon-to-be immortalized group of cadets decide to stay
in the towers to defend what they can of the castle. When U.S. forces begin
bombarding the castle, Domingo is briefly separated from his fellow cadets and
later finds their bodies in a barricaded room: The young cadets were on the
floor, their pistols near each one. They had shot themselves! (179). Being the
lone survivor of the group, Domingo also decides to take his own life. From the
ground below outside of the castle, Pedro watches Domingo deliberately walk
to the very edge of the parapet, wrap the Mexican flag tighter around his body,
then look down at the precipice below for a quick moment and throw himself
off crying at the top of his voice: Viva Mxico! Long live Mexico! (181). The
group sacrifice of the Nios Hroes adds to the sense of historical shame over
what many observers view as an imperialist war.
Los Nios Hroes as Nationalist and Internationalist Icons
Early Chicano literary critics did not fully acknowledge Menas deftness at
engaging with political and social ideologies as she negotiated competing
nationalisms within the heightened tensions of the postwar era. For example,
Raymund Paredes characterizes her as an individual who lacked sufficient
courage as a writer: Menas portrayals are ultimately obsequious, and if one
can appreciate the weight of popular attitudes on Menas consciousness, one can
also say that a braver, more perceptive writer would have confronted the life of
her culture more forcefully (85). However, Boy Heroes forms an important link
to the kind of forceful Chicano literary aesthetics that Paredes values particu-
larly in the poetry of Chicano activist Rodolfo Corky Gonzales. Gonzaless
landmark poem I Am Joaqun: an Epic Poem, 1967, is considered to be one
of the most galvanizing literary works produced during the Chicano movimien-
to because of its defiant, militant tone. The poem constructs Chicano cultural
identity by drawing parallels between Joaquin, the representative Chicano
subject, and figures from Mexican history including the Nios Hroes:
I jumped from the tower of Chapultepec
Into the sea of fame;
My countrys flag
My burial shroud;
With Los Nios,
Whose pride and courage
Could not surrender
With indignity
Their countrys flag
To strangers . . . in their land. (24)
Gonzaless reference to the fallen boys reveals the importance of Mexican his-
tory and transnational symbols of patriotism to Chicana/o cultural identity. The
poem expresses Chicana/o protest to a history of U.S. dominance experienced
by generations of Mexican Americans and Chicanas/os in the United States
since 1848. Boy Heroes is the precursor to Gonzaless epic poem but portrays a
more critical assessment of the Nios Hroes that acknowledges their ideologi-
cal deployment by both Mexico and the United States. Instead of using the
Nios Hroes to construct a cultural nationalist sentiment that only glorifies
their suicidal defiance, Menas text exposes the racism of the Mexican state.
Nevertheless, both Menas and Gonzaless literary representations register the
profundity of the historical wound of a war that has shaped Mexican and
Chicana/o cultural production.
A perceptive observer of her time, Mena was able to resignify the histori-
cal narrative of the U.S.-Mexican War of 1848 within a Cold War context. Boy
Heroes is a particularly strong example of the way state discoursesboth U.S.
and Mexicanare implicated in the construction of YA literature and entertain-
ment. In his attempt to build hemispheric unity around the theme of defending
against invaders, Truman provided the occasion for Mena to reinterpret the his-
torical narrative of the U.S.-Mexican War by focusing on Mexican resistance to
Manifest Destiny. However, while exposing the history of U.S. empire, she also
challenges idealized notions of a democratic Mexican state. Her text casts a
light on internal racial and class exploitation and exposes the myth of a unified
and egalitarian Mexican nation. Boy Heroes refutes Mexicos ideological
deployment of patriotic suicide by making an indigenous peasant boy the pro-
tagonist of the book rather than the Nios Hroes themselves.
Boy Heroes also does more than commemorate the dead; rather, it engages
with the tradition of imperialist YA fiction and shows how this genre promotes
certain ideals of masculinity and practices of empire. Such fiction constructed
images of an aggressive boyhood in order to foster the xenophobic patriotism
that served U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Menas YA fiction works within
and against representations of an underdeveloped Mexico in need of U.S. eco-
nomic and military intervention. Rather than justify the U.S. invasion of Mexi-
co in 1848, Boy Heroes presents a more critical view of U.S. actions. Anglo-
American boys do not overtake the land to prove their racial and national
superiority. Instead, an indigenous Mexican boy learns to defend his communi-
ty against foreign invaders and the domestic ruling class.
Menas prescience about the symbolism of the Nios Hroes illustrates the
value of her insight into U.S.-Mexican political and cultural relationsa central
focus found in much of her writing. Her foresight is especially evident when we
remember Vice President Albert Gores 1993 visit to Mexico and his address
given before the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA). In his prepared remarks, he commemorated Truman for commemo-
rating the Nios Hroes:
For at one point during his visit, Harry Truman drove to Chapultepec
Castle, and walked to the stone monument honoring Los Nios
Hroesthe brave, child heroes of the Mexican-American War, who
had died a hundred years before. There, he laid a floral wreath, a ges-
ture of respect symbolizing his belief that the United States must
acknowledge the heartache of our past in order to enter the future.
(Toward a Western Hemisphere Community)
This complex layering of historical moments uses the familiar and successful
practice of appropriating the memorialized bodies of boys to suture diverse
national agendas. Four years later when U.S.-Mexican relations faced difficul-
ties, the Nios Hroes were once again called for duty as President Bill Clinton
paid a visit to their shrine to shore up Mexican popular support for U.S. policies
(Clinton to Visit). Both acts of recognition are contemporary examples of the
symbolic value of the Nios Hroes and the attempt to use their patriotic suicide
to obscure newer forms of U.S. domination and elite Mexican complicity. Like
the currency that once donned their images, the Nios Hroes have been easily
exchanged among nation-states in the service of patriotism, nationalism, and
anti-imperialism or hemispheric unity, anti-communism, and neoliberalism.
Notes
Acknowledgments
This essay owes much to the patience and insightful comments of my anony-
mous reader. I also thank Mary Pat Brady for her critical comments on various
drafts of this paper. Special appreciation goes to Rodrigo Rodrguez.
1
According to David McCullough, Trumans official visit was the first visit to
Mexico ever by a President of the United States (539). Upon landing, he was
greeted by hundreds of thousands of people who poured into the streets to
see and cheer an American President for the first time (542).
2
In March 12, 1947, Truman addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress ask-
ing that financial and military aid be given to Greece and Turkey for their eco-
nomic stability and defense against insurgent forces. Truman described how
the free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their free-
doms. [ . . . ] Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift
movement of events. For Truman, the U.S. had a responsibility to protect
weaker nations against totalitarian regimes, by which he meant the Soviet
Union. The Doctrine became the basis for a U.S. interventionist Cold War pol-
icy. See: President Trumans Message to Congress; March 12, 1947.
3
Mena is known within Chicana/o literary studies for her adult short stories that
were published under her maiden name. Although all of her childrens books
were published under her married name Chambers, I will refer to her
throughout this paper by her maiden name to avoid possible confusion or mis-
recognition.
4
Born in Mexico City, she enjoyed the privileged life of the Mexican elite.
Three years before the outbreak of the 1910 Mexican revolution, her parents
sent her to live with family friends in Brooklyn, New York, which became her
permanent home and the site of her promising, yet brief, literary career.
5
This narrative of a Mexican who steals from U.S. investments in Mexican
oil anticipates Mexicos nationalization of its oil industry in 1938an event
that raised tensions between Mexico and the United States.
6
See Julianne Burtons Don (Juanito) Duck and the Imperial-Patriarchal
Unconscious.
7
Griswold del Castillo, 230. Presumably the remains were found before Tru-
mans visit since newspaper accounts describe how an elaborate memorial pro-
ject for the Nios Hroes had been delayed until after Trumans visit because
it might be discourteous to bring up the subject of the Mexican War during
his stay. See Milton Bracker, Truman Bolsters Ties with Mexico.
8
See Texts of Addresses of Aleman and Truman in Mexico City.
9
The Act of Chapultepec in Holden and Zolov, 174-175.
10
Joseph writes that the postwar democratic spring lasted roughly from 1944
to 1946 (20).
Works Cited
Belair Jr., Felix, Mexico is Touched as Truman Honors her Heroes of 1847
New York Times March 5, 1947, 1.
Bracker, Milton. Truman Bolsters Ties with Mexico, New York Times Mar 5,
1947, 4.
Brady, Mary Pat. Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies: Chicana Literature
and the Urgency of Space. Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 2002.
Burton, Julianne. Don (Juanito) Duck and the Imperial-Patriarchal Uncon-
scious: Disney Studios, the Good Neighbor Policy, and the Packaging of
Latin America. Nationalisms and Sexualities. Eds. Andrew Parker, Mary
Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Carmer, Carl and Cecile Matschat, eds. The Mexican War. Introduction. Boy
Heroes of Chapultepec: A Story of the Mexican War. By Mara Cristina
Chambers. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1953. vii-viii.
Chambers, Mara Cristina. Boy Heroes of Chapultepec: A Story of the Mexican
War. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1953.
______. The Water-Carriers Secrets. New York: Oxford UP, 1942.
Clinton to Honor Mexico Cadets. AP. Online posting. 4 May 1997. Chia-
pas95. 6 May 2006 <http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~archive/chiapas95/
1997.05/msg00070.html>.
Dixon, Franklin W. The Clue in the Embers. New York: Grosset and Dunlap,
1972.
______. The Ghost at Skeleton Rock. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1957.
______. The Mark on the Door. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1967.
______. The Masked Monkey. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1972.
______. The Wailing Siren Mystery. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1968.
Fowler, Frank. The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz; or, Uphold-
ing the Honor of the Stars and Stripes. New York: A.L. Burt Company,
1916.
Gonzales, Rodolfo. I Am Joaqun: An Epic Poem, 1967. Message to Aztln:
Selected Writings. Ed. Antonio Esquibel. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 2001.
16-29.
Gore, Albert. Toward a Western Hemisphere Community of Democracies.
Mexican, American, and Latin American Chambers of Commerce. Nation-
al Auditorium, Mexico City, Mexico. 1 Dec. 1993. The William J. Clinton
Presidential Library [online]. National Archives and Records Administra-
tion. Little Rock, AR. 15 May 2006 <http://clinton1.nara.gov/White_
House/EOP/OVP/other/mexico.txt>.
Griswold del Castillo, Richard. Los Nios Hroes, The United State and Mex-
ico at War: Nineteenth-Century Expansionism and Conflict. Eds. Donald S.
Frazier. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998. 230.
Hancock, H. Irving. Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz: Fighting with the U.S. Navy in
Mexico. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Co., 1914.
______. The Young Engineers in Mexico; or, Fighting the Mine Swindlers. New
York: The Saalfield Publishing Company, 1913.
Harvey Ralphson, G. Boy Scouts in Mexico; or, On Guard with Uncle Sam.
Chicago: M.A. Donohue and Company, 1911.
Hoehn, Matthew, ed. Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches:
19301947. Newark, NJ.: St. Marys Abbey, 1948.
Holden, Robert H. and Eric Zolov, eds. The Act of Chapultepec. Latin Amer-
ica and the United States: A Documentary History. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2000: 174-175.
Hugill, Imperialism and Manliness in Edwardian Boys Novels. Ecumene 6.3
(1999): 318-340.
Joseph, Gilbert M. What We Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin Ameri-
ca More Meaningfully into Cold War Studies. In from the Cold: Latin
Americas New Encounter with the Cold War. Eds. Gilbert M. Joseph and
Daniela Spenser. Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 2008.
Lpez-Maya, Margarita. The Change in the Discourse of U.S.-Latin American
Relations from the End of the Second World War to the Beginning of the
Cold War. Review of International Political Economy 2.1 (Winter 1995):
135-149.
McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
McPherson, Alan. Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles: The United States and Latin
America Since 1945. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006.
Paredes, Raymund A. The Evolution of Chicano Literature. MELUS 5 (1978):
71-110.
President Trumans Message to Congress March 12, 1947; Document 171;
80th Congress, 1st Session; Records of the United States House of Repre-
sentatives; Record Group 233; National Archives. Our Documents [online].
5 September 2010 <http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=old&
doc=81>.
Romero, Rolando J. The Alamo, Slavery, and the Politics of Memory. Decolo-
nial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century.
Eds. Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi H. Quionez. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
UP, 2002. 366-377.
Simmen, Edward. The Mountain Came Long Ago to Mohammed: The Ameri-
can Cultural Invasion of Mexico as Seen in the Short Fiction of Mara
Cristina Mena. Journal of American Culture 2 (1997): 147-152.
Texts of Addresses of Aleman and Truman in Mexico City, New York Times,
Mar 4, 1947, 2.
Truman, Harry S. Address in Mexico City. Mexico City. 3 March 1947. The
American Presidency Project [online]. Eds. John Woolley and Gerhard
Peters. U of California Santa Barbara. 10 May 2006 <http://www.presiden-
cy.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12841>.
37
Squatting in Uncle Toms Cabin: Intertextual
References and Literary Tactics of Nineteenth-
Century U.S. Women Writers
BETH HERNANDEZ-JASON
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, MERCED
T
here have been numerous articles and books published about Harriet
Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin and Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burtons
two novels, Who Would Have Thought It? and The Squatter and the Don.
However, the possibility that Ruiz de Burton was familiar with Uncle Toms
Cabin remains to be explored at length. In short, I find it nearly impossible to
imagine that Ruiz de Burton did not read Uncle Toms Cabin given its wide-
spread popularity, or at least watch a theatrical adaptation. In a letter from Ruiz
de Burton to Mariano Vallejo dated November 30 1851 (the year that Uncle
Toms Cabin was serialized), she writes . . . Ud. sabe bien que las dificultades
crecen si la seora tiene que recordar al caballero que l prometi prestar a ella
todos los libros que ella quiera(Conflicts of Interest 75-76). Rosaura Snchez
and Beatrice Pita also write that Vallejo received books from New York, which,
from the description, might have included Madame Bovary and other contro-
versial books:
In 1851, when Thomas O. Larkin . . . traveled to New York to look after
his business affairs there, Vallejo gave him a thousand dollars to buy
books for him. Vallejo, since youth, had built up an impressive library
by buying books, even church-banned books, from traders who
anchored at Monterey or San Francisco. (71)
In addition, Uncle Toms Cabin was translated into Spanish [b]efore the end of
the year 1852,
1
although Ruiz de Burton was trilingual and could have read it
in English (Parker 313-314). Finally, according to Amelia Mara de la Luz Mon-
tes and Elizabeth E. Goldman, La Cabaa de Tom . . . an adaptation of Uncle
Toms Cabin translated by Ramn Saavedra, opened on July 19, 1874 in San
Francisco, when Ruiz de Burton was on the west coast (Introduction 3). This
leaves little doubt in my mind that Ruiz de Burton must have been familiar with
the work,
2
and adds an interesting dimension to my analysis of the intertextual
and rhetorical parallels and departures between Stowe and Ruiz de Burton. Tak-
ing my cue from Manuel M. Martn-Rodrguez
3
who combines Wolfgang Isers
concept of the repertoire with Angel Ramas transculturacin, I would like to
explore Ruiz de Burtons role as a cultural mediador with cultural authority
something that Stowe could not claim. Also, Ruiz de Burton was influenced
by a number of international texts, and featured these intertextual references
much more prominently than Stowe. Wolfgang Isers concept of the implied
reader illuminates how these intertextual references and other literary tactics
reveal the multiple ideal readers of these novels. This leads me to a crucial ques-
tion: Why was Uncle Toms Cabin so much more successful than The Squatter
and the Don or Who Would Have Thought It? Furthermore, how does one go
about defining that success? For my purposes, I have chosen to explore the
popular success (i.e. reviews at the time and numbers of books sold) as well
as the subsequent critical reception of these texts. However, in addition to these
factors, one must also take into account practical issues, such as an authors
access to publishers and literary magazines to ensure effective, targeted market-
ing of the implied reader. Finally, I will briefly examine some of the current
scholarly approaches to Ruiz de Burtons novels and how her role in the literary
landscape is being reconfigured.
Literary repertoire and tactics
[T]he popular demand in fiction is always for a mixed form, a romantic
novel just romantic enough for the reader to project his libido on the
hero and his anima on the heroine, and just novel enough to keep these
projections in a familiar world. (Frye 305)
4
The repertoire consists of all the familiar territory within the text. This
may be in the form of references to earlier works, or to social and his-
torical norms, or to the whole culture from which the text has
emergedin brief . . . the extratextual reality. (Iser 69)
38 ! !!!!!!! Beth Hernandez-Jason
As Northrop Frye notes above, most books are made up of multiple genres,
and cannot be put into simple categories of romance or protest or senti-
mental. In the books I examine, there are multiple genres, including the senti-
mental novel, historical romance, socio-political commentary, and a mixture of
regionalism and travel writing. Uncle Toms Cabin has been classified as a sen-
timental, historical (plantation) romance, with large doses of social reform. The
Squatter and the Don and Who Would Have Thought It? have been labeled a
multitude of things, including historical romance and sentimental parody, with
elements of history protest and promotional writing
5
. Most scholars have
focused on the sentimental, romantic elements of the novels, without examining
the literary history it comes out of, or the philosophical underpinnings, and have
disparaged these books for their sentimental elements. David Luis-Brown
notes that with regards to Squatter, [d]espite the canon-expanding feminist
criticism . . . which has allowed us to read as politically engaged the previous-
ly marginalized genres of melodrama and romance, current critics still bemoan
the supposed inadequacy of such superfluous emotion (813). Gregg Camfield
also addresses this issue with scholarship on Uncle Toms Cabin, pointing out
the (Scottish) philosophical basis for Stowes sentimentality that had been over-
looked: Stowe worked from a fully developed and culturally shared set of
philosophies that included sentimentalism as an absolutely central component
(322). In the works of Stowe and Ruiz de Burton, sentimentalism and romance
are used to evoke sympathy, pity, and guilt, while providing a compelling sto-
ryline that draws in readers. However, there are also undercurrents of racist
assumptions in these novels toward either the main group that is being defend-
ed (as in the case of Stowe) or toward other ethnic groups and classes (Ruiz de
Burton).
Both Stowe and Ruiz de Burton use the tradition of the romance genre in
their works. Northrop Frye writes that the romances of [Walter] Scott . . . [are]
a Romantic reaction against the new industrialism in the Midlands, which also
produced the . . . philosophy of Carlyle (306). Incidentally, Carlyle figures
prominently within Ruiz de Burtons Squatter, and Walter Scott was read by
both Stowe and Ruiz de Burton. Given that these two writers read many of the
same books, it is more difficult to demonstrate that Stowes book influenced
Ruiz de Burton, as we do not know if Ruiz de Burton read Uncle Toms Cabin
or if she coincidentally referenced many of the same authors while having never
read Stowes work. It also shows that both writers were appealing to an audi-
ence that would have been familiar with and sympathetic to these references, or
would have found them convincing.
6
Stowe and Ruiz de Burton shared several intertextual references beyond
genre. Although religious references and themes are far more pronounced in
Squatting in Uncle Toms Cabin: Intertextual References . . . ! ! 39
Stowes work, Montes writes about the international literary references made by
Ruiz de Burton in Squatter, pointing out in particular the influence of French lit-
erature. However, when she discusses Victor Hugos Lhomme qui rit, Montes
does not mention how this novel relates to the subject matter of Who Would
Have Thought It? Montes summarizes the plot of Lhomme as being about the
story of Gwynplaine, a victim of . . . child-buyers . . . [who] mutilate his face
(Es necesario 127). In Who Would, Lolas mother is stolen by Native Ameri-
cans and has her child in captivity, and both of their faces are then disfigured
(dyed) in order to keep them from running away. Another potential intertextual
reference is that of the captivity narratives of seventeenth-century England, as
well as North and South America.
7
Of course, just as critics and readers are
familiar with different literary and cultural references, these references serve
different functions within the text, both signaling the ideal reader and creating a
specific tone. Iser explains that classical and contemporary allusions have more
than just a social implicationthey are also important strategically. Classical art
and mythology are not simply an appeal exclusively to the educated reader
they evoke certain attributes (145). There are many different ways to evoke
certain attributessome references will simply reinforce what the text is try-
ing to say, while other times it functions as a satire or parody of the earlier texts.
For instance, Snchez and Pita write that in Who Would, [t]he novels sardon-
ic allusion to classical Greek and Roman dramatic and historical characters . . .
serves . . . to ridicule the petty nature of the narratives chief scoundrels and their
minions (Introduction, Who Would xv). On the other hand, the use of these
texts also signals to readers the literary and cultural references that are to be
associated with a text that has Mexican-American characters. Ruiz de Burton
reclaims, albeit selectively and strategically, an eighteenth-century Enlighten-
ment liberal ideology that affirms her as an aristocratic, white Mexican, and also
as a rightful heir to a proud Spanish Mexican colonial past (emphasis mine,
Aranda 108). While her text might have worked to impress an Anglo audience,
it was also probably meant to educate fellow Californios and sympathetic set-
tlers by explaining the laws (and how they were being broken or misused).
Within Who Would Have Thought It? and The Squatter and the Don, the
discourse of law is used and also critiqued, which Stowe also engages in to a
lesser degree:
Ruiz de Burton . . . refuses to rewrite the law to accord with generic con-
vention; . . . But in giving up the aesthetic pleasures of metaphor the
writer is also calling attention to its political register, critiquing and
deglamorizing the (legal) euphemisms by which the state sanctions its
power. (Goldman, I Think Our Romance 74)
Similarly, in Uncle Toms Cabin Stowe contrasts the flawed law of man with the
law of God, and toward the end of the novel she writes of law and justice in a
narrative, conversational form. In the last pages, the narrator launches into a ser-
mon directed at farmers of Massachusetts . . . generous men of New York . . .
[a]nd you, mothers of America (375). Ruiz de Burtons novels, on the other
hand, do not have such a heavy religious moralistic tone but instead emphasize
the hypocritical rhetoric of politicians and greedy settlers: Fellow citizens! . . .
follow us blindly, and stop talking about how Grant treated Lee when he sur-
rendered (Who Would 294). Stowe disburses religious references and appeals
to sentimentality throughout her novel and sermonizes at the end, while Ruiz
de Burton heavily draws upon legal discourse in her novels (and particularly in
Squatter), changing tone drastically in order to make her points. They also dif-
fer in their use of religion and references to religious texts.
Ruiz de Burtons work displays a strong familiarity with international liter-
ature and philosophy, while Stowes primary literary references include the
Bible, hymns, and some Romantic writers and musicians
8
with only passing ref-
erences to classical literature and Greek mythology. In Uncle Toms Cabin bib-
lical references make up the majority of the literary references, and several char-
acters are found reading their Bibles (Tom and Eva). These references align with
the primary theme in Stowes novel: slavery is a sin, because Christ loves all
human beings. While Ruiz de Burtons heroines are all pious, chaste (Catholic)
women, their piety is less overt. Instead, Ruiz de Burton, through her authorial
voice, mocks the hypocritical faith of New Englanders mercilessly in Who
Would Have Thought It?, which contrasts vividly with Stowes evangelizing
Protestant work. However, both authors strategically use examples of hypocrit-
ical Christians, although Stowes novel is arguably meant to bolster and even
create the readers faith,
9
with the abolishment of slavery as a secondary goal:
In Paris, the reading of Uncle Tom created a great demand for Bibles; and
purchasers eagerly inquired if they were buying the real BibleUncle Toms
Bible! (Parker 316). This suggests that beyond North versus South readerships,
there were two other distinctive implied readerships of Uncle Toms Cabin:
Christians and those who needed encouragement. After all, Stowes strategies
to show the immorality of the institution of slavery depended on Christian faith,
and so non-Christian slaveholders would first need to have their hearts softened
to the gospel (which is presented in various ways by Uncle Tom, Eva, and the
Quakers).
10
Therefore, Stowe needed to (and did) succeed not only in getting
Christians to read her work of fiction, but also to heed her call to action regard-
ing the Fugitive Slave Act. Gregg Camfield argues that people reacted to Uncle
Toms Cabin less for its antislavery rhetoric than for its pietistic evangelism,
and failed to recognize the reasoned philosophy that supports it, namely, that
of Common Sense voluntarism (342-344)
11
.
On the other hand, in Who Would Have Thought It?, there are numerous ref-
erences to religion, yet it serves an entirely different purpose from that of
Stowes. Several of the references to religion, show a disdain for the New Eng-
land hypocrisy of Christians who prided themselves on religious freedom as an
integral part of their national identity, yet still denied that same freedom to oth-
ers (Catholics):
His theme, to be sure, was the hackneyed one of the sublime love of
religious freedom, which made the Pilgrim fathers abandon home, civ-
ilization, and friends . . . all for the sake of that one thing dearer to them
than all else, viz., FREEDOM OF OPINION, which is the individ-
ual liberty of the soul, said Mr. Hackwell, and launched forth with
renewed vigor upon the threatened rebellion. (Who Would Have
Thought It? 64)
The hypocrisy of Protestants regarding religious freedom is a recurring theme
throughout the novel, and in this is perhaps one of the stronger signs of a
response or reaction to Uncle Toms Cabin. At the end of the novel, Mattie mocks
her mothers former pastor (and lover) Major Hackwell, saying You used to
preach very hard, bigoted sermons when you played your role of parson. Let me
preach you a little one now . . . we can see very well it looks like a black divid-
ing- line . . . traced by Providence to separate you and tell you to cease perse-
cuting her (284). In this scene, a woman (Mattie) talks back to a male religious
figure and reinterprets the sign of black smoke, while also pointing out his big-
otryan incredibly bold denunciation of U.S. Protestants and re-appropriation
of moral authority.
12
There is an interesting parallel between Stowe and Ruiz de Burtons strate-
gy of depicting pro-slavery or racist women as lacking authentic Christian faith
and maternal compassion. In Chapter Four of Who Would, Mrs. Norval grudg-
ingly states I shall do my duty as a Christian woman with regards to Lola,
referred to as that Indian child (23). This nearly mirrors Miss Ophelias reac-
tion to her cousins request that she bring up the goblin-like Topsy: Well, it
might be a real missionary work, said she (Stowe 203). At the same time, Mrs.
Norval is also like Marie St. Clare, in that she is portrayed as a bad mother.
While Mrs. Norval refuses to allow Lola to attend a catholic church, she appears
indifferent about her sister and daughters going to a different church from her
ownan inconsistency which had made the doctor smile (63). Unlike Mrs.
Norval, and perhaps more in line with Miss Lavinia Sprig, Miss Ophelia in
Uncle Toms Cabin does learn to soften her heart toward Topsy, but it takes
Evas death and example of Christ-like love to change her, although her love
ultimately functions to allow her to exert an influence over the mind of the des-
titute child that she never lost (253). Mrs. Norval, unfortunately, is not so
inspired by her parson to love this child.
As I have already begun to illustrate, the implied readers of the two novels
of Ruiz de Burton were of various cultural and regional backgrounds, whereas
Stowe was writing with a fairly specific audience in mind: Northern and South-
ern Protestant Anglo Americans. Stowe wrote from a position that was both
empowering (white) and restraining (female), while Ruiz de Burton had a far
more complex position. As Manuel Martn-Rodrguez has written, Ruiz de
Burtons double audience (and her double voice) cannot be dissociated from her
need to speak both from a historically situated hegemonic class position . . . and
from the contestatory space opened up by her recent social displacement (A
Net 11). While writing to educate a broad audience, Ruiz de Burtons texts also
contain specific references that only culturally and literarily privileged readers
would readily understand, ranging from inside jokes to obscure literary refer-
ences that personal friends like Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo might have under-
stood. It is this double audience of insiders and outsiders, informed and unin-
formed readers that creates a textual richness of layers, making Ruiz de Burtons
works so rewarding to study now. However, at the time of publication, some of
her strategies might have precluded her novels from reaching the more main-
stream audience she might have wanted at the time.
There are some literary tactics that Ruiz de Burton and Stowe appear to
share in spite of their differences, and these include the use of domestic space,
childhood, the break-up of the Anglo American family, and strategic essential-
ism in conjunction with sentimentalism. Stowe and Ruiz de Burton use domes-
tic space as a metaphor for national (and sometimes international) issues, and as
an arena for female characters to reign. Philip Fisher writes that Thoreau, Har-
riet Beecher Stowe and her sister all address
the topic of freedom [as] seen from the angle of intimate servitude. The
interior of a house is the point of departure for each writer. The politics
of domestic order reflects a national order, and its transformation or
improvement makes possible an imaginative refounding of democracy.
(88)
This is also true of Who Would Have Thought It?, where the Norval household
reflects, to a certain extent, the racism/nativism and moral depravity of the
nation at large. Anne Goldman writes that [w]here her contemporaries defuse
political violence by relocating it in a domestic space defined in opposition to
the social domain, Ruiz de Burton politicizes the family circle, so that home
becomes the locus from which to describe national conflict (I Think Our
Romance 72). In addition, Ruiz de Burtons female protagonists move much
further out of the home into the public sphere than those of Stowe or Jackson.
When Eliza runs away from home, her interaction with politics is in the pri-
vate home of Senator and Mrs. Bird, and Eliza is not the one who convinces
Senator Bird that her plight is unjusthis wife does. On the other hand, Miss
Lavinia Sprig goes to Washington, DC and meets with politicians. Of course,
this is still out of a domestic concern, as Anne Goldman points out: Ruiz de
Burton justifies Lavinias transgression onto the masculine domain of party pol-
itics by suggesting that her fearful encroachment of the public sphere is in fact
an effort to right the private sector (Who ever heard, 68).
Another literary tactic used in conjunction with that of the domestic sphere
is that of childhood: Stowe . . . interposes between the reader and the slave, a
child. By doing this she is able to borrow from the nearly completed historical
sentimentalization of the child, the energy to begin the more difficult and his-
torically risky sentimentalization of the black slave (P. Fisher 99). In Who
Would, Ruiz de Burton similarly inserts a childLola into her story, although
Lola in many ways is very different from Eva. Eva is born into privilege and
never is questioned or mistreated, and she actively evangelizes her father and the
black slaves. Lola, on the other hand, spends much of the text hidden in a con-
vent, waiting to be rescued by Dr. Norval or Julian, and submissively bearing
the emotional assaults of Mrs. Norval and Emma. In this sense, Lolas charac-
ter type is nearly that of Uncle Tom, with a twist of romance added. Also, when
we are first introduced to Lola and hear of her story through Dr. Norval, Lola
has been painfully separated from her mother, although this story is complicat-
ed by two things- their shared captivity by Native Americans, and her mothers
desire to send Lola with Dr. Norval in order to raise her as a white (although
Catholic) young woman. Of course, Lolas mother, unlike the slaves in Uncle
Toms Cabin, has a choice, and does not fear for her daughters moral or physi-
cal safety under the tender, watchful eye of Dr. Norval. Therefore, while the
story of their separation is sad, the tone does not incite the reader to an over-
whelming feeling of pity- particularly because the listener in the text, Mrs. Nor-
val, is seemingly unaffected by the tale and is distracted instead by gold and dia-
monds. Therefore, the response of the reader is perhaps anger or frustration,
assuming that by now enough sympathy for Lola has been raised to override her
problem of color (at this point in the narrative, her skin is still stained). In a
sense, Lola and her parents are romanticized much like the slaves in Uncle
Toms Cabin, while maintaining their moral and cultural equality (or superiori-
ty) with upper class Anglo Americans, a distinction clearly lacking in Uncle
Toms Cabin, which focuses primarily on morality.
The final tactic within the domestic sphere is showing the destruction of the
(Anglo American) family unit, which is meant to both resonate with the (Anglo
American) reader and act as a metaphor for the nation. Who Would mirrors
Uncle Toms Cabin in the demonstration of how racism and corruption ulti-
mately corrode Anglo American families.
13
In Uncle Toms Cabin, Mrs. Norval
falls into moral depravity caused by her racism and greed, which in turn permits
her to steal her money with the assistance of her lover, Mr. Hackwell. In so
doing, the family unit is threatened, with Mrs. Norval eventually descending
into madness and guilt [w]ith a piercing cry, Mrs. Norval threw her hands up
and fell back in Julians arms. Who would have thought it? shrieked the
wretched woman, as she swooned away (267). This melodramatic scene is the
culmination of a novel that repeatedly points out how morally superior Lola and
her (biological) parents are to Mrs. Norval, Mr. Hackwell, and the Cackles, in a
manner that might accurately be called essentialist.
Gayatri Spivak describes how subaltern scholars sometimes employ a
strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political inter-
est in order to temporarily form coalitions for social action (In Other Worlds:
Essays in Cultural Politics, 205).
14
In considering whether Stowe and Ruiz de
Burton were strategically essentializing the groups they represented, we must
first ask Were they each representing subaltern groups, and was it necessary
for them to achieve their purposes? While slaves and Native Americans in the
nineteenth century easily fall into the category of subaltern, dispossessed Cali-
fornios are more problematic, as noted by several scholars such as Martn-
Rodrguez and Aranda.
15
Was the use of essentialism necessary to evoke sym-
pathy or a sense of identification with Californios and African American slaves?
At the time of publication for all of the novels studied here, one of the social
norms included racism, which Ruiz de Burton (as well as Stowe) dealt with
by employing essentialism and the use of pale skinned female protagonists.
16
This was part of the strategy of all these authors to gain sympathy and a more
mainstream readership.
17
Stowe and Ruiz de Burton must have realized that
Anglo American (and Californio) audiences would have an easier time identi-
fying with a character that is at least partially white. For example, in Uncle
Toms Cabin, female readers are meant to identify with Eva, Miss Ophelia, or
Eliza, a mixed-blood slave. In the case of Eliza (as well as Cassy and Emme-
line), that is where the injustice is meant to be even more painful- that a young
woman who looks (and feels) just like the reader could have these horrible
things happen to her based on a morally corrupt system. In The Squatter and the
Don, Mercedes and her family are all fair, and in Who Would Have Thought It?
Lola only temporarily suffers from dark skinover time the dye in her skin
fades, revealing a pristine woman ready to marry an Anglo-American man.
The sympathy evoked by the depiction of suffering, according to Philip
Fisher, is a democratizing element:
The political content of sentimentality is democratic in that it experi-
ments with the extension of full and complete humanity to classes of
figures from whom it has been socially withheld . . . the madman, the
child, the very old, the animal, and the slave. Each achieves, or rather
earns, the right to human regard by means of the reality of their suffer-
ing. (P. Fisher 99)
In Uncle Toms Cabin, the suffering of slaves evokes not only sympathy but also
humanizes people who were often referred to in animalistic terms; the tears of
the wealthy slave-owner Marie St. Clare evoke less sympathy than those of
Mammy (although Augustines grief is still valorized, because he has a con-
science), thereby elevating Mammy. Also, the subaltern in the text also suffer
in different degrees, as the pain that Topsy undergoes when Miss Ophelia
attempts to physically discipline her is shown to be different from the emotion-
al suffering that she feels knowing that Miss Ophelia finds her repulsive because
of her skin color. In Who Would, we also see differing degrees of emotional suf-
fering, and we immediately compare the tears of Lola with those of Lavinia
Sprig in the beginning. However, Ruiz de Burtons novels also featured satirical
elements, sometimes tinged with a cynical bitterness that is lacking in Uncle
Toms Cabin, which might have had something to do with the fact that she had
the distinction of identifying with the primary ethnic group she portrayed. I con-
sider Ruiz de Burton to be a mediadora with cultural authority, something that
Stowe could not claim. While Stowe knew her mainstream audience, her treat-
ment of her subjectAfrican American slaves and the institution of slaveryis
lacking in personal experience and perspective. However, Stowe did share one
attribute in common with some slaves and many of her readers: being a Protes-
tant woman. Therefore, she effectively focused on the sentimental and religious
aspects that she knew would win Protestant female readers. In a sense, she was
able to find two areas of common groundfemale experiences (i.e. mother-
hood, male dominance) and religionwith which to connect herself to her sub-
ject matter, as well as form connections for her readers.
I propose that Stowe also had a better understanding of the literary tastes of
their peers, and had different goals in mind than those of Ruiz de Burtons.
Stowe was extremely popular in her own time, and despite the passage of time,
her works have continued to elicit scholarly attention. While both authors relied
on the domestic sphere, childhood and strategic essentialism, Ruiz de Burtons
female protagonists are not nearly romantic or sentimental enough. Instead,
both of her novels end with women denouncing the men/government (Mattie
Norval in Who Would and Doa Josefa in Squatter), and then feature a break in
genre that moves entirely into the political realm, leaving the romance and sen-
timents behind. However, these endings leave the reader on a sour, cynical note:
The reviewer . . . concludes that Mrs. Burton has talent, descriptive and nar-
rative power and a critical though perhaps too cynical habit of observation (Alta
California, 9-15-72) (Conflicts 557). These elements, combined with a lack of
access to sufficient resources or supportive publishers, led to Ruiz de Burtons
failure when compared with her contemporaries.
Publication Strategies and The New York Press
Stowe successfully captured the hearts of the nation, and Helen Hunt Jack-
son, [h]oping to emulate Harriet Beecher Stowes literary and reforming suc-
cess with Uncle Toms Cabin . . . turned to the genre of the novel (Jacobs 216).
On the other hand, while Ruiz de Burton might have wanted the same type of
literary and social success, she did not rely on Stowes techniques, particularly
in The Squatter and the Don, even though she must have known it was effective.
According to Aranda, Squatter does not
perform the kind of cultural work usually associated with a novel like
. . . Uncle Toms Cabin (1852). By contrast, The Squatter and the Don
aims to incite direct political action. The narrator employs an altogeth-
er alternative form of narrative persuasion that is aggressive, impatient,
and vigilante. (Returning, 18)
How, then, do we make sense of the fact that Who Would Have Thought It? and
Squatter do employ some of the cultural work that we see in Uncle Toms
Cabin? In her novels, Ruiz de Burton occasionally shows some of the younger
Mexican-American women sobbing melodramatically in order to elicit sympa-
thy (namely, Lola and Mercedes), while the older women tend to rely on logi-
cal or philosophical arguments,
18
and many of the other textual strategies used
in Ramona and Uncle Toms Cabin are seen in Ruiz de Burtons novels, as
shown above. Perhaps it was the personal nature of Squatter, combined with
years of frustration and bitterness in dealing with squatters and the U.S. gov-
ernment that made Squatter seem bitter to some. Snchez and Pita argue that the
Battle of Mussel Slough (1880), which is mentioned in the conclusion of Squat-
ter, is the premise of the novel (Introduction, 31). In addition, with the years
progressing and the Bancroft historical project appearing to be a disappointment
for Californios, she must have wanted to put herself and her friends down in her
own history book for posterity. While Aranda claims that she wrote to rescue
elite native Californios from economic and political ruin, I am more inclined to
believe that her primary goal was to rescue them from cultural anonymity (12).
I explained to Mr. Lippincott that I wished four copies of my book to be sent
to you & you would send them to the World, Herald, Times and Tribune . . . The
title of it is Who Would Have Thought It? I hope you will give me all the bene-
fit of your influence with the New York Press, for I would like to make the ven-
ture a little bit profitable. (Ruiz de Burton to S.L.M. Barlow, Sept 9 1872, Con-
flicts 437-438).
In Es necesario mirar bien, Montes notes the many ways in which Ruiz
de Burton was disadvantaged in terms of writing and publishing: first, her
Mexican racial inheritance left her an exotic in the eyes of Anglo America, and
secondly, she did not have any literary community of men or women except for
her closest few friends (92-93). Snchez and Pita also add that Ruiz de Burton
probably would have written a good deal more if she had not spent most of her
time and energies in litigation (Conflicts 560). This illustrates how complex
Ruiz de Burtons position waswhile wealthy enough to find time to write, in
the end her time was spent fighting (unsuccessfully) to maintain control of her
land (the source of her wealth).
Another factor to consider is the initial method of publication: if either of
Ruiz de Burtons novels had been serialized, would it have made a difference in
the reception at the time? Iser writes that If we read such novels [serialized] in
installments, they may well hold our interest, but if we read them in book form,
the chances are that we shall soon put them down. The difference arises out of
the cutting technique used in the serial story (191). Finally, could the location
of the publication have anything to do with the reception of her novels? A
reviewer for San Franciscos Daily Alta California wrote of Who Would that
The book will be read with pleasure on this Coast at least (Conflicts 572).
Many of the major literary magazines were based out of the East coast, and so
getting reviews of her pieces into those papers could not have been easy. In the
1885 edition of The Literary World: A Fortnightly Review of Current Literature
out of Boston, I found this mention of Ruiz de Burtons novel The Squatter and
the Don:
Samuel Carson & Co. of San Francisco have in press for early publica-
tion With the Invader a book of glimpses of the Southwest, by Edwards
Roberts; The Squatter and the Don, a California novel by C. Loyal; A
California Pilgrimage, told in verse by Amelia Woodwoard Trucadell,
one of the pilgrims; and A Trip to Alaska, by George Wardman, agent
of the U.S. Treasury at the seal islands. (34)
In this same issue, there are at least 8 mentions of Ramona, and in one instance,
A Century of Dishonor is referred to as A Key to Ramona, a clear reference
to Uncle Toms Cabin (327). Ramona is also advertised by Roberts Brothers as
The Great American Novel, and compared favorably with Uncle Toms Cabin.
The ad then quotes The Atlantic Monthly, which calls Jackson a Murillo in
literature and her story one of the more artistic creations of American litera-
ture (22)
19
.
Uncle Toms Cabin was published on the East Coast, as a serialized piece,
and met with huge success: Uncle Tom began to be published in the Nation-
al Era, as a serial, in the summer of 1851, and was continued from week to
week until its conclusion in March, 1852 (Parker 311). Jackson also published
Ramona in a magazine, which helped her reach her target audience: That Jack-
son aimed Ramona at a feminine and moralistic audience is clear from her
choice to publish it first as a series in the Christian Union (Ramirez 14). Ruiz
de Burton, on the other hand, paid for the publication of her two novels, which
were not serialized.
In terms of success in achieving social change, the impact of Stowes novel
has already been well documented
20
. Ramona, on the other hand, maintained
popularity but it was unrelated to its future-focused reform message . . . most
of Jacksons contemporary readers and critics solely attended to Ramonas love
story and its pastoral Californio setting (Ramirez 17). For the Spanish-language
version of Ramona that Mart translated, Lpez Mesa states that No conoce-
mos qu recepcin tuvo la traduccin martiana de Ramona en los medios cultu-
rales hispanoparlantes de los Estados Unidos (189). While The Squatter and
the Don and Who Would Have Thought It? were dismal failures by these stan-
dards, they did win for their author a sort of academic immortality, when,
approximately 20 years ago, both were rescued from oblivion and are now
available to a wider readership thanks to the efforts of . . . modern editors
(Martn-Rodrguez Textual 42).
Current Scholarly Approaches
After the Recovery Project (Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Her-
itage) uncovered Ruiz de Burtons two novels in 1992 and 1995 (with multiple
editions of Squatter published later), there have been several developments in
multiple academic disciplines. For historians (and literary historians), it has
meant reconfiguring North-South and Black-White attitudes toward the Civil
War Era and regional literaturewhat Anne Goldman aptly calls new scholar-
ly landscaping (Continental Divides, xiii). Manuel M. Martn-Rodrguez has
noted that Squatter has generated a significant body of criticism since the
1990s (most of it overwhelmingly celebratory), and it has become required
reading in many university courses, which has resulted in several reprints to
date (Textual 150). He uses the historical reception of her texts in order to
study how the present can influence our understanding and appreciation (or
rejection) of any given text. For example, he points out how the enthusiastic crit-
ical reception of Vallejo and his contemporary Californios in the early 1990s
sharply contrasts with the dismissive condemnation found two decades earlier,
in 1972, in Raymond V. Padillas critique of Leonard M. Pitts The Decline of
the Californios (Life 149). Others focus on how race is constructed in Ruiz
de Burtons novels, acknowledging the unstable nature of racial categories in
the late nineteenth century which had previously been assumed by many to be
rigid and fixed (Jacobs 213). Jacobs then continues, stating that [Ruiz de Bur-
ton] prefigured late twentieth-century scholars theories regarding the social
construction of race (Jacobs 214). In Mara Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical
and Pedagogical Perspectives, editors Amelia Mara de la Luz Montes and Anne
E. Goldman compile essays that work within and between genres, literary tra-
ditions, historical and critical rubrics in order to honor the richness of Mara
Amparo Ruiz de Burtons canon and articulate the contradictions of colonial
identity in California (Introduction 6). They also add at the back of the book
pedagogical discussions for teachers where scholars talk about how they work
Ruiz de Burton into their syllabi (6). While the introduction is admittedly cel-
ebratory, many of the essays included in the collection (and even earlier by
Manuel Martn-Rodrguez in his 1996 article Textual and Land Reclamations)
explore the ambiguity and contradictions within the works of Ruiz de Burton.
Conclusion
As scholars continue to re-insert Ruiz de Burton into her historical and lit-
erary contexts, we must remain diligent in considering how a Mexican-American
woman does and does not integrate with U.S., Americano and international
literary and cultural contexts. Her novels should be read alongside her contem-
poraries, Stowe and Jackson, in order to more fully understand what her works
are trying to accomplish, and how they differ from those of other U.S. writers at
the time. Literary scholars must continually cross national and ethnic bound-
aries in order to fully analyze Anglo-American and Californio/Chicano texts.
Just as the analysis of Uncle Toms Cabin enriches our understanding of The
Squatter and the Don, the reading of Stowes popular novel is enriched by our
reading of Ruiz de Burton. If there is one thing that Ruiz de Burtons writing
demands, it is that her readers acknowledge her cosmopolitan literary tastes and
her philosophical and political discourse. With David Palumbo-Liu, we must
avoid the type of reading and teaching of Ruiz de Burton that seeks to under-
stand difference as a general phenomenon and subsume it under other categories
that do not radically obstruct the smooth functioning of social apparatuses (11).
By inserting Ruiz de Burton into the canon of Chicana/o literature (and with
her decision to publish in English), we must constantly fight the urge to hege-
monize an already elitist text within the economics of pedagogy (14). At the
same time, we cannot ignore the ways in which her work interacts with other
novels within the U.S. canon and within the international literary sphere.
Notes
1
In her dissertation, Warford focuses on the rhetorical success of Uncle Toms
Cabin, The Squatter and the Don, Ramona, and The Grapes of Wrath, while
also examining the socio-political impact of these novels.
2
In White Slaves, Luis-Brown claims that [b]oth Ruiz de Burton and Jackson
corroborate Marts insights by describing their own texts as indebted to senti-
mental antislavery novels (814), and in his notes proceeds to call upon Ruiz
de Burtons use of the term white slaves as evidence of this. I would argue
that this term could have come from abolitionists who often compared slavery
in the U.S. to wage-labor in England.
3
See Life in Search of Readers, pp. 112-115, as well as Angel Ramas Transcul-
turacin narrativa en Amrica Latina.
4
Frye also wryly observes that [t]he forms of prose fiction are mixed, like racial
strains in human beings, not separable like the sexes (Frye 305).
5
Martn-Rodrguezs Textual and Land Reclamations, 42-43.
6
According to Wolfgang Iser, [t]he concept of the implied reader is . . . a tex-
tual structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without necessarily defin-
ing him . . . [and it] designates a network of response-inviting structures, which
impel the reader to grasp the text (34).
7
I am grateful to Manuel Martn-Rodrguez for pointing out the possible con-
nection with a tradition of narratives of captivity in Latin America that includes
Esteban Echevarras La cautiva (1837) among other texts. Narratives of cap-
tivity were also popular in Southwestern folklore.
8
Goethe, Lord Byron, Chateaubriand, Mozarts Requiem, and, indirectly,
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Arabian Nights.
9
In The Rhetoric of Race, Susan Marie Nuernberg argues that the purpose of
[Stowes] book is not to promote social equality. The abolition of slavery is
necessary from Stowes point of view to purify the nation of sin (255).
10
This is also, perhaps, a product of the times: according to Parker, up to that
point, novels were considered sinful, and Stowe was trying to redeem the
genre: Now the novel, in those days, was regarded, by all pious people at
least, as an unclean thing. It was not tolerated, and, indeed, it had become real-
ly unclean and intolerable in the hands of the previous generation of writers of
fiction (Parker 301).
11
I would modify this only in noting that there was a very strong reaction to the
antislavery rhetoric from both sides of the debate, as evidenced by the pletho-
ra of Anti-Uncle Tom books published. According to Jordan-Lake, while
plantation fiction existed before Uncle Toms Cabin, typically strong female
characters did not, and in this, the anti-Uncle Tom women novelists in par-
ticular, emulated Stowe in order to refute her (5).
12
In this exchange, Major Hackwell claims that the black smoke is actually the
devil pointing out his direction to continue pursuing Lola, which is reminis-
cent in tone and theme to that of Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter
(1850). Chillingworth is the long-lost husband of Hestor Prynne, and he
returns to his old New England town to haunt Hestors one-time lover and pas-
tor (and father of her child, Pearl). This then causes readers familiar with that
novel to see the link between Mrs. Norvals unfaithfulness with her parson and
that of Hester and Dimmesdale.
13
In Uncle Toms Cabin the destruction of the family, the primary result of slav-
ery in the lives of the slaves themselves, has a second and multiplied effect
because this destruction is witnessed . . . by the white family which is, in its
turn, destroyed by this witnessing (P. Fisher 103).
14
I would suggest that elements in their text would warrant a reading of the pro-
ject to retrieve the subaltern consciousness as the attempt to undo a massive
historiographic metalepsis and situate the effect of the subject as subaltern.
I would read it, then, as a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupu-
lously visible political interest (In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics,
205).
15
That theres a contradiction between the theoretical valence of the word sub-
altern and the political and historical record of the Californio as an imperial
colonizer is, I am sure, not lost upon Snchez. Whats at issue for her and other
like-minded Chicano/a scholars is the theory of historical agency best suited
to promote a sociopolitical agenda for todays Mexican-American communi-
ty (Aranda When We Arrive 86).
16
Warford mentions this strategy of using pale-skinned protagonists as a method
of increasing the ties of identification with a white audience (6). However,
she does not analyze the ethnic readerships of Ruiz de Burton (Anglo and
Mexican-American) in any depth, instead claiming that Ruiz de Burton main-
ly focused on a Californian audience. She also does not analyze how Ruiz de
Burtons in-group status might have affected her use of rhetorical strategies,
which is addressed in great detail in Martn-Rodrguezs Textual and Land
Reclamations (1996).
17
The use of mixed race characters was also a strategy used by Charles Chesnutt
to show how arbitrary the category of race really was (see The Wife of His
Youth and Other Stories). While Jackson and Stowe tended more toward
essentialist racial differences, which often resulted in romanticizing the sup-
posed moral or religious superiority of these races, there was still the counter-
balance of environment and upbringing as seen in their treatment of children.
18
On the other hand, Stowe does use this approach throughout her novel: . . .
the power of her own intense sympathy for the oppressed millions whose
cause she pleads, is felt throbbing in every line of the narrative (Parker 318).
19
It is also worth noting that it appears that Jos Mart was unfamiliar with Ruiz
de Burtons work; this indicates how difficult it was for her to distribute her
work, and we can only guess how his assistance might have benefited her mar-
keting attempts. According to Martn-Rodrguez, his childrens magazine, La
Edad de Oro tap[ped] into the institutional support of international and
transnational networks of marketing and distribution (see Chicano/A Chil-
drens Literature: A Transaztlantic Readers History, Journal of American
Studies of Turkey 23 (2006): 16).
20
The writer of this article was then a little boy in one of the remoter villages
of Maine, but remembers how Uncle Toms Cabin was the theme of univer-
sal discussion . . . We were all, from the baby upward, converted into the most
earnest kind of abolitionists (Parker 312).
Works Cited
Alemn, Jesse. Thank God, Lolita Is Away from Those Horrid Savages: The
Politics of Whiteness in Who Would Have Thought It? Montes and Gold-
man 95-111.
Aranda, Jos F., Jr. Contradictory Impulses: Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton,
Resistance Theory, and the Politics of Chicano/a Studies. American Liter-
ature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 70.3
(1998): 551-79.
______. Returning California to the People: Vigilantism in The Squatter and
the Don. Montes and Goldman 11-26.
______. When We Arrive: A New Literary History of Mexican America. Tucson:
U of Arizona P, 2003.
Belnap, Jeffrey and Ral Fernndez, ed. Jos Marts Our America: From
National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies. New Americanists. Durham:
Duke UP, 1998.
Camfield, Gregg. The Moral Aesthetics of Sentimentality: A Missing Key to
Uncle Toms Cabin. Nineteenth-Century Literature. 43.3 (1988): 319-45.
Chvez, Denise. Introduction. Ramona. By Helen Hunt Jackson. New York:
Modern Library, 2005. xiii-xxii.
Chvany, Peter A. Those Indians Are Great Thieves, I Suppose?: Historicizing
the White Woman in The Squatter and the Don. White Women in Racial-
ized Spaces: Imaginative Transformation and Ethical Action in Litera-
ture. Ed. Samina Najmi and Rajini Srikanth. Albany: State University of
New York P, 2002. 105-18.
Fisher, Beth. The Captive Mexicana and the Desiring Bourgeois Woman:
Domesticity and Expansionism in Ruiz De Burtons Who Would Have
Thought It? Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 16.1 (1999):
59-69.
______, Precarious Performances: Ruiz De Burtons Theatrical Vision of the
Gilded Age Female Consumer. Montes and Goldman 187-205.
Fisher, Philip. Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American Novel. London:
Oxford UP, 1985.
Frye, Herman Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton UP:
1957.
Gillman, Susan. The Squatter, the Don, and the Grandissimes in Our Ameri-
ca. Mixing Race, Mixing Culture: Inter-American Literary Dialogues. Ed.
Monika Kaup and Debra J. Rosenthal. Austin: U of Texas P, 2002. 140-59.
Goldman, Anne E. Continental Divides: Revisioning American Literature. New
York: Palgrave. 2000.
______. Beasts in the Jungle: Foreigners and Natives in Boston. Montes and
Goldman 75-90.
______. I Think Our Romance Is Spoiled, or, Crossing Genres: California
History in Helen Hunt Jacksons Ramona and Mara Amparo Ruiz de Bur-
tons The Squatter and the Don. Over the Edge: Remapping the American
West. Ed. Valerie J. Matsumoto and Blake Allmendinger. Berkeley: UC P,
1999. 65-80.
______. Mara Amparo Ruiz de Burton Negotiates American Literary Politics
and Culture. Challenging Boundaries: Gender and Periodization, Ed.
Joyce Warren and Margaret Dickie. Athens: U Georgia P, 2000. 202-25.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. 1976. Bal-
timore: John Hopkins UP, 1987.
Jackson, Helen Hunt. The Annotated Ramona. Ed. May Antoinette. San Carlos,
CA: Tetra, 1989.
Jacobs, Margaret D. Mixed-Bloods, Mestizas, and Pintos: Race, Gender, and
Claims to Whiteness in Helen Hunt Jacksons Ramona and Mara Amparo
Ruiz De Burtons Who Would Have Thought It? Western American Liter-
ature 36.3 (2001): 212-31.
Jordan-Lake, Joy. Whitewashing Uncle Toms Cabin: Nineteenth-Century
Women Novelists Respond to Stowe. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2005.
Lpez Mesa, Enrique. Un documento y un libro: el proyecto editorial de Jos
Mart. TEMAS 50-51 (2007): 184-193.
Luis-Brown, David. White Slaves and the Arrogant Mestiza: Reconfiguring
Whiteness in The Squatter and the Don and Ramona. American Literature
69.4 (1997): 813-39.
Mart, Jos. Introduction to the 1888 Spanish Edition of Helen Hunt Jacksons
Ramona, Translated and Published by Jos Mart. Appendix. Trans. Esther
Allen. Ramona. By Helen Hunt Jackson. New York: Modern Library, 2005.
355-60.
Martn-Rodrguez, Manuel M. A Net Made of Holes: Towards a Cultural His-
tory of Chicano Literature. Modern Language Quarterly 62.1 (2001): 1-18.
______. Textual and Land Reclamations: The Critical Reception of Early Chi-
cano Literature, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage. Vol. 2.
Ed. Erlinda Gonzales-Berry and Chuck Tatum. Houston: Arte Pblico P,
1996. 40-58.
______. Life in Search of Readers: Reading (in) Chicano/a Literature. Albu-
querque: U of New Mexico P, 2003.
McCullough, Kate. Regions of Identity: The Construction of America in
Womens Fiction. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999.
Meer, Sarah. Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Transatlantic Culture
in the 1850s. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2005.
Montes, Amelia Mara de la Luz. Es Necesario Mirar Bien: Letter Making,
Fiction Writing, and American Nationhood in the Nineteenth Century.
Diss. U of Denver, 1999.
______. Mine Is the Mission to Redress: The New Order of Knight- Errantry
in Don Quixote De La Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts. Montes and Gold-
man 206-24.
Montes, Amelia Mara de la Luz and Anne E. Goldman, ed. Mara Amparo Ruiz
De Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives. Lincoln: U of Nebraska
P, 2004.
______. Introduction. Montes and Goldman 1-8.
Murphy, Gretchen. A Europeanized New World: Colonialism and Cosmopoli-
tanism in Who Would Have Thought It? Montes and Goldman 135-52.
Nuernberg, Susan Marie. The Rhetoric of Race, The Stowe Debate: Rhetorical
Strategies in Uncle Toms Cabin. Ed. Mason I. Lowance, Jr., Ellen E. West-
brook and R.C. De Prospo. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1994. 255-70.
Palumbo-Liu, David, ed. Introduction. The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Insititu-
tions, and Interventions. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995. 1-27.
Parker, E.P. Harriet Beecher. Eminent Women of the Age; Being Narratives of
the Lives and Deeds of the Most Prominent Women of the Present Genera-
tion. Hartford, CT: S.M. Betts & Company. 1868. 296-331.
Prez, Vincent. South by Southwest: Land and Community in Mara Amparo
Ruiz De Burtons The Squatter and the Don and Mariano Guadalupe Valle-
jos Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California. Recov-
ering the U. S. Hispanic Literary Heritage. Vol. 4. Ed. Jos F. Aranda, Jr.
and SilvioTorres-Saillant. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 2002. 96-132.
______. Teaching the Hacienda: Juan Rulfo and Mexican American Cultural
Memory. Western American Literature 35.1 (2000): 33-44.
______. Remembering the Hacienda: Land and Community in Californio
Narratives. Montes and Goldman 27-55.
Pita, Beatrice. Engendering Critique: Race, Class, and Gender in Ruiz De Bur-
ton and Mart. Belnap and Fernndez 129-44.
Ramirez, Karen E. Reading Helen Hunt Jacksons Ramona. Boise: Boise State
U Western Writers Series, 2006.
Ruiz de Burton, Mara Amparo. The Squatter and the Don. 1885. Ed. Rosaura
Snchez and Beatrice Pita.2nd ed. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 1997.
______. Who Would Have Thought It? 1872. Ed. Rosaura Snchez and Beatrice
Pita. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 1995.
Saldvar, Jos David. Nuestra Americas Borders: Remapping American Cul-
tural Studies. Belnap and Fernndez 145-75.
Snchez, Rosaura. Dismantling the Colossus: Mart and Ruiz De Burton on the
Formulation of Anglo Amrica. Belnap and Fernndez 115-28.
Snchez, Rosaura, and Beatrice Pita, ed. Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of
Mara Amparo Ruiz De Burton. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 2001.
Spivak, Gayatri. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Rout-
ledge. 1988.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. A Key to Uncle Toms Cabin: Presenting the original
facts and documents upon which the story is founded together with corrob-
orative statements verifying the truth of the work. 1853. Port Washington,
NY: Kennikat P, Inc., 1968.
______. Uncle Toms Cabin. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. 1852,
2005.
______. The Annotated Uncle Toms Cabin. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and
Hollis Robbins. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.
The Literary World: A Fortnightly Review of Current Literature. Boston: E. H.
Hames & Company, XVI (1885).
Tinnemeyer, Andrea. Rescuing the Past: The Case of Olive Oatman and Lola
Medina. Montes and Goldman 169-83.
Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction
1790-1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.
Tuttle, Jennifer S. The Symptoms of Conquest: Race, Class, and the Nervous
Body in The Squatter and the Don. Montes and Goldman 56-72.
Warford, Elisa Leigh. Americans in the Golden State: The Rhetoric of Identity
in Four California Social Protest Novels. Diss. U of Maryland, College
Park. 2006. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 3 Jan. 2009.
Part II
Mapping Latino Voices in the United States
61
Espaa Libre: peridico de exilio
espaol en Nueva York
1
MONTSE FEU
D
esde Nueva York y durante treinta y ocho aos, Espaa Libre (1939-
1977), denunci el derrocamiento militar de la Segunda Repblica espa-
ola y la implantacin de la dictadura del general Francisco Franco des-
pus de la Guerra Civil (1936-1939). Como rgano propagandstico de las
Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas agrup a pro-republicanos en Estados Unidos
y recaud dos millones de dlares para ayuda a los refugiados (Cuadro de
Honor 4). En la inmensa bibliografa del exilio de la Guerra Civil Espaola, los
indiscutibles logros polticos y literarios de la comunidad obrera confederada en
SHC han quedado prcticamente olvidados. Este trabajo recupera brevemente el
activismo poltico del peridico, su preservacin de la memoria progresista espa-
ola y su perspectiva de regreso a la patria. Estas caractersticas definen a la publi-
cacin como literatura de exilio de oposicin al rgimen franquista. Sin embargo,
en este estudio introductorio tambin se anuncian las distancias ideolgicas de
la composicin autorial del peridico.
La Segunda Repblica 19311936
Mientras que a finales del siglo XIX el subdesarrollo social, econmico y
educacional de la poblacin espaola segua vivo, en cuyo seno naca un movi-
miento anarquista y sindicalista nico en Europa, el inicio del siglo XX fue un
periodo de expansin y de modernizacin, que foment la coalicin de fuerzas
polticas de izquierda para la reforma educativa, social e institucional de un sis-
tema tradicional y feudal (Payne 14-37). Las reformas sociales, culturales, pol-
ticas y econmicas de la Segunda Repblica, formada por una coalicin de fuer-
zas de izquierda, fueron extensas y propiciaron un cambio indispensable para el
desarrollo de una democracia liberal (Holgun 26; Payne 121). Sin embargo, las
reformas agrarias, religiosas y federales propuestas endurecieron a su vez posi-
ciones tradicionalistas, catlicas y centralistas que culminaron en el levanta-
miento militar del General Francisco Franco (Payne 371-3).
Estados Unidos
A pesar de la poltica anti-intervencionalista del gobierno norteamericano,
el conflicto espaol suscit una extensa reaccin extraoficial. Los conflictos
laborales y raciales sufridos por la clase trabajadora norteamericana de finales
del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX se acrecentaron con la gran depresin
de los aos treinta, convirtiendo esta clase social en la abanderada de la lucha
en contra de los sistemas opresivos al trabajador
2
. La reaccin de la comunidad
hispana de la ciudad de Nueva York ante la Guerra Civil Espaola fue genero-
sa: Trabajadores, activistas e intelectuales progresistas se sintieron parte de un
colectivo internacional que defenda la Segunda Repblica espaola como sm-
bolo de antifascismo popular
3
:
Hispanic communities across the United States embraced the refugees
and sympathized with their cause; many Cuban, Mexican and Puerto
Rican organizations had fund-raisers for the Republican cause during
the Spanish Civil War. Expatriates were fast to establish their own exile
press. Their efforts hit fertile soil in Depression-era communities that
were already hotbeds for union and socialist organizing. (Kanellos and
Martell, Hispanic Periodicals 27)
Por ejemplo, la comunidad hispana recaud fondos para los refugiados espao-
les mediante la puesta en escena de festivales artsticos, participando as del ya
vibrante teatro hispano en Nueva York. (Kanellos New York City 104-45).
Fundados el 25 de julio de 1936, las Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas
(SHC)
4
, fueron uno de los diversos esfuerzos conjuntos con hispano-americanos
y anglo-americanos en la ayuda a la Repblica espaola. SHC tenan la sede
central en Brooklyn y constituan una media de 60.000 miembros repartidos en
un total de 139 organismos federados en Estados Unidos en los aos cuarenta
5
.
Los miembros de las SHC se declararon obreros o pequeos comerciantes
(Protegidos1-2), apoyaron al gobierno republicano o en el exilio, pero no se
agruparon ni poltica ni sindicalmente como lo hizo la colonia de Tampa, Flori-
da (Rey Garca 114)
6
. Ordaz califica de permeable la organizacin dndole la
62 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
capacidad de aglutinar en su seno la heterogeneidad social, cultural y en gran
medida poltica, de los sectores no fascistas en Estados Unidos (228). Es indis-
cutible, no obstante, el carcter anarquista de Espaa Libre. Hay que considerar
que SHC encontr el apoyo de los grupos anarquistas italianos, rusos y espao-
les establecidos en Estados Unidos desde principios de siglo (Avrich 148), una
cultura que se mantuvo activa en la vida obrera estadounidense hasta el final de
la Segunda Guerra Mundial (Avrich 320). En este contexto, Espaa Libre ela-
bor ideas libertarias en sus columnas periodsticas y lo continu haciendo hasta
el final de sus das.
Las sociedades se distanciaron pronto de la militancia comunista y por ello
el peridico cambio de nombre de Frente Popular (1937-1939) a Espaa Libre
(1939-1977)
7
. El distanciamiento responda a las dos grandes dificultades en las
que se encontraba el activismo pro-republicano: los partidismos y la indiferen-
cia internacional a su causa (Al Tercer Congreso 7; Gonzlez Malo 4). El con-
flicto ideolgico entre anarquistas y comunistas radic en las mismas diferen-
cias que estas posturas ideolgicas tuvieron en Europa: la concepcin de estado
fuerte por parte de los comunistas frente a la sospecha frente cualquier sistema
de formacin social por parte de los anarquistas. Adems, las campaas de des-
crdito entre socialistas, comunistas y anarquistas por causa de sus conflictos
ideolgicos invalid la imagen internacional de un Frente Popular capaz de con-
trolar sus facciones ms extremistas (Faber 71; Rey Garca 76; Shain 70). Por
ello, SHC sinti la necesidad de eliminar la imagen totalitaria del seno de la
Repblica y proyectar la imagen progresista que sentan les caracterizaba
(Baraibar 11; Novos 2).
El enfrentamiento con los grupos comunistas no fue la nica dificultad para
las sociedades confederadas; tambin lo fueron los grupos ms reaccionarios y
la diplomacia franquista. Los pro-franquistas, apoyados por partidarios conser-
vadores y catlicos norteamericanos, entraron en una batalla dialctica con los
pro-republicanos. Tanto las ideas polticas republicanas, comunistas, anarquis-
tas o socialistas, como las catlicas o franquistas se propagaban y se contra-
rrestaban en publicaciones periodsticas, panfletos, pelculas, documentales,
mtines, sermones, foto reportajes, retransmiciones radiofnicas, dibujos, can-
ciones, montajes teatrales y artsticos, y fiestas populares (Rey Garca 67, 152-
62; Blanco 3). Por ello, Espaa Libre denunci frecuentemente a la prensa esta-
dounidense y a ciertos peridicos hispanos de Nueva York de tomar posturas
poco objetivas al hablar de Espaa. Jos Asensio alertaba en uno de sus artcu-
los de la informacin errnea publicada en La Prensa de Nueva York acerca de
la aceptacin por parte de los republicanos espaoles de una monarqua como
alternativa del rgimen Franquista (General Asensio 8), e incluso otro cola-
borador acusaba a la misma publicacin de exteriorizar sus simpatas fascistas
Espaa Libre: peridico de exilio espaol en Nueva York ! ! 63
(Refugiados 5). La alusin de redactores, editores y directores de Espaa
Libre a otras publicaciones indica una estrecha relacin, aunque no siempre
amistosa, entre los distintos redactores hispanos en Nueva York. A pesar de las
protestas en contra de ocasionales columnistas pro-franquistas, las SHC mantu-
vieron una buena relacin con La Prensa y otros peridicos hispanos.
Espaa Libre
Espaa Libre public de ocho a doce pginas, en efemrides importantes
algunas pginas ms. Ciertas columnas mantuvieron una colaboracin conti-
nuada y duradera, pero la caracterstica sobresaliente del peridico es la multi-
tud de colaboraciones espordicas durante toda su trayectoria. Sus lectores se
extendieron a todos los pases donde se encontraban refugiados o exiliados
espaoles, e incluso Espaa, puesto que la misin de Espaa Libre fue la de lle-
gar a todos los republicanos como un servicio a ellos, muchas veces sin esperar
compensacin econmica.
Espaa Libre estuvo financiada por la recaudacin de la cuota del ejemplar
y los anuncios de los comerciantes hispanos. En mayor medida, lo estuvo tam-
bin por SHC, que a razn de festivales artsticos, recaudacin de donaciones,
venta de productos y patrocinadores conseguan costear el peridico, el progra-
ma radiofnico semanal La voz de Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas
8
, y la
ayuda a los refugiados y a los presos polticos. Ni los articulistas ni editores de
Espaa Libre recibieron remuneracin alguna. A pesar de ello, el peridico
sufri dificultades econmicas y su continuidad peligr en diversas ocasiones
9
.
Sus directores fueron Jos Castilla Morales (1937-1961), Jess Gonzlez
Malo (1961-1965), Miguel R. Ortiz (1961-1966) y Marcos C. Mari (1967-
1972)
10
. Como acertadamente analiza Caudet, en su estudio de la revistas de exi-
liados en Mxico, a partir de los cincuenta la resistencia se fue organizando en
Espaa y empezaron las primeras manifestaciones estudiantiles en territorio
espaol (El exilio 336). Mientras que la accin poltica se traslad hacia el inte-
rior, la prensa de exilio pas a ser la caja de resonancia de lo que estaba pasan-
do en Espaa (El exilio 336; El campo de la lucha1-2). Ya no hubo razn para
publicar Espaa Libre cuando las elecciones democrticas se celebraron en
1977 porque la lucha por la libertad ha vuelto a establecerse en Espaa (El
campo de la lucha 1-2).
La pertenencia de Espaa Libre a la prensa alternativa de exilio le da una
posicin liminal tanto en el canon literario estadounidense como en el espaol.
Como puntualiza Mari Paz Balibrea, la literatura del exilio plantea la dificultad de
su ubicacin: No es que no exista una bibliografa sobre la cultura de este exilio,
o sobre su literatura. . . . Lo que falta abrumadoramente es el sitio dnde ubicar-
64 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
la (17). Esta posicin liminal se debe a que la literatura de exilio dinamita el
canon y los presupuestos poltico-narrativos nacionales: Con ello quiero decir
que la nacin necesita expulsar[la], o mantener[la] fuera, para definirse (20-3);
por ello, Balibrea propone estudiar el exilio bajo las teoras del poscolonialismo.
A pesar de las ventajas que proporciona una teora literaria que considera
las posibilidades subversivas de esta posicin perifrica, el poscolonialismo no
abarca la complejidad ideolgica del fenmeno del exilio de la Guerra Civil
espaola puesto que hubo cierta institucionalizacin en su seno. Sebastiaan
Faber en su estudio de los intelectuales espaoles en Mxico asegura que los
intelectuales republicanos no consiguieron construir un espacio subversivo de la
identidad nacional hegemnica, ya sea mexicana o espaola, por dos motivos
principales. En primer lugar, su institucionalizacin en puestos acadmicos y
culturales mexicanos les proporcion cierta complacencia con el gobierno
mexicano (63). Por otro lado, no consiguieron superar los estereotipos esencia-
listas de la identidad nacional espaola (63).
La colaboracin intelectual de Espaa Libre surgi de la comunicacin
constante con otros pases de habla hispana, bien mediante la distribucin del
peridico, bien por el paso de exiliados por Nueva York hacia Latinoamrica
11
.
Por ejemplo, la columna Espaa Adentro del Jefe del Gobierno republicano
en el exilio, lvaro de Albornoz Limiana, surge frecuentemente de la edicin de
Nuestra Espaa, peridico que dirige en Cuba. De modo similar, Adolfo Garca
Fernndez escribe la comuna Facetas de actualidad desde Cuba, donde dirige
la revista con el mismo nombre. Del mismo modo, Lus Araquistin escribe
desde Londres su columna London, centrada en las relaciones entre Inglate-
rra y Espaa. Esto es, escritores y poetas reconocidos ceden su trabajo al peri-
dico, as lo hacen tambin Ramn J. Sender y Salvador de Madariaga. Adems,
aquellos profesionales, burcratas o funcionarios pblicos que estuvieron nti-
mamente ligados al funcionamiento del estado durante la Segunda Repblica y
la Guerra Civil, publican espordicamente para Espaa Libre, entre otros: Julio
lvarez del Vayo, Emilio Herrera, Francisco Largo Caballero, Diego Martnez
Barrio, Jos Miaja Menant, Juan Negrn Lpez, Indalecio Prieto Tuero y Fer-
nando Varela.
De hecho, la propia definicin de exiliado nos remite a esta lite intelectual.
De acuerdo con Victoria Lerner Sigal el exiliado es un refugiado fundamental-
mente poltico, por su relacin estrecha con el poder, porque lo tuvo y lo perdi
o pretende obtenerlo. [ . . . ] slo podr regresar en caso de que reciba amnista
o por un vuelco poltico [ . . . ] es natural que desde el exilio l luche frecuen-
temente para derrocar a sus enemigos por ideales, intereses personales y aspira-
ciones polticas (2). Por ello, los colaboradores de un peridico de exilio sue-
len ser miembros importante[s] en el gobierno anterior (3) y la mayora son
parte de la lite poltica: periodistas, juristas, escritores, filsofos, historiadores,
ingenieros (4). Yossi Shain advierte que la crtica literaria del exilio parece olvi-
dar que por definicin un exiliado engage in political activity designed to end
their exile, those who seek victory over their opponents so as to reverse and/or
advance history (8). Si por el contrario, la crtica literaria del exilio se enfoca en
la experiencia social y psicolgica del exiliado entonces lo destierra (por segun-
da vez) de su particularidad histrica y poltica: Simply put, the condition of
exile is directly a result of the social and political climate occupied by the autor,
making ahistorical exile literature a contradiction in terms (McClennen 32).
Aunque Espaa Libre apoy al gobierno republicano en el exilio, sin
embargo, su perspectiva obrera dificulta su clasificacin como produccin lite-
raria institucionalizado. En efecto, la particularidad histrica y poltica de Espa-
a Libre radica en que la colonia obrera, tanto la hispana como la americana, se
involucraron activamente en la bsqueda de apoyo internacional para derrocar
al rgimen franquista, en la ayuda a los refugiados y la edicin del peridico.
Julin Gorkin (Julin Garca Gmez) destac este cambio del papel tradicional
del obrero:
[Espaa libre] Ha tenido que vencer mil dificultades para seguir su
carrera y cumplir su misin. Sin subvenciones de nadie. Sin cargos retri-
buidos. Gracias a la contribucinmoral y materialde los obreros y
los intelectuales espaoles residentes en los Estados Unidos [ . . . ] obre-
ro convertido en escritor y periodistaen intelectual de accin. (2)
Esta conversin del obrero en sujeto poltico fue un logro extraordinario incen-
tivado por intelectuales orgnicos en trminos Gramscianos; esto es, intelec-
tuales libertarios, lderes anarquistas y sindicalistas surgidos de las clases obre-
ras o comprometidos con los movimientos base pertenecientes a SHC; entre
ellos, cabe destacar a Jess Gonzlez Malo. La prctica anarquista presupuso
igualdad entre el intelectual y el trabajador, y por ello el activismo del exilio no
abog por legitimar la lite sino por una participacin constituyente desde
abajo
12
. Los anarquistas en el SHC no aspiraron a retomar el poder poltico sino
tambin a generar activismo poltico desde las bases sociales de la sociedad
civil. Su actividad en el exilio no dist de la realizada en suelo espaol: propor-
cionaron nuevos espacios de accin poltica mediante los cuales se dio subjeti-
vidad a la clase trabajadora.
La comunidad obrera invit al intelectual tradicional y foment el debate
entre ideales republicanos, socialistas y anarquistas. Tal como considera un
colaborador annimo, Espaa Libre otorg voz al intelectual, participante de un
proyecto comn Frente Popular, y de este modo los intelectuales se acercan al
66 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
pueblo, contribuyendo [sic] a su cultura (Lo que dijo 8). La labor periodsti-
ca y activista recay sobre la comunidad obrera que defendi su cometido en las
pginas de su rgano propagandstico:
la excepcin en nuestros cuadros; lo predominante y substancial de
Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas somos la masa; hombres sin nombre:
los fogoneros y lavaplatos. Constatarlo, no implica orgullo ni vejamen;
sino el reconocimiento de un hecho: todos somos necesarios y ninguno
indispensable. No somos una organizacin de clase, ni adscrita a esta o
aquella bandera poltica; somos pueblo. (Nuestras Actividades 7)
As se estableca la misin del peridico en la editorial del 14 junio de 1940:
Espaa Libre no tiene subvenciones de nadie, no est sujeta a un partido o
grupo, es un semanario antifascista independiente, refleja las actividades de
Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas. Espaa Libre cuenta con un grupo de nota-
bles y prestigiosos escritores, [ . . . ] es la autntica y genuina voz de las aspira-
ciones del pueblo espaol (Espaa Libre 7).
De acuerdo con Yossin Shain, la actividad poltica del intelectual tradicio-
nal en el exilio consiste entonces en mantener a la dispora exiliada leal al
gobierno expulsado y ofrecer una imagen internacional de unidad para facilitar
su retorno al poder (Shain 31). En el caso de Espaa Libre, fue fundamental la
influencia ideolgica de los intelectuales orgnicos para dificultar una hegemo-
na de la lite pro-republicana en la actividad poltica del exilio estadounidense.
A pesar de que Ordaz defiende que la inspiracin obrerista y anarquista de
Espaa Libre slo puede observarse en sus primeros aos de publicacin, modi-
ficndose con la llegada de nuevos exiliados (234), una lectura detenida del
debate ideolgico a lo largo de la vida del peridico neoyorkino demuestra que
mantiene las aspiraciones progresistas de los movimientos obreros si bien con
un discurso que pueda ser apoyado por las democracias internacionales.
La progresin ideolgica de Espaa Libre no dista de la estrategia de los
movimientos obreros europeos durante el siglo XX
13
. La necesidad de modera-
cin y de consolidacin del pensamiento obrero fue crucial en el exilio espaol
de Estados Unidos debido al entorno poltico de vigilancia a la izquierda radi-
cal. La necesidad de una unin progresista y de una proyeccin internacional
democrtica se aprendi de la derrota de la Guerra Civil. La particularidad espa-
ola anterior al levantamiento militar delata las distancias ideolgicas que mar-
caban la relacin de las distintas posiciones polticas del Frente Popular espa-
ol. Para los polticos moderados integrantes del gobierno, el trmino frente
popular sugiri una sociedad pluralista y abierta gobernada por instituciones
del gobierno representativas como las que funcionaban en los sistemas parla-
mentarios occidentales. Por el contrario, para los polticos extremistas no se
refera a una democracia liberal capitalista, sino a una democracia de masas que
slo podra ocurrir cuando se constituyera una sociedad proletaria sin privile-
gios de clase (Esenwein 150).
Aparte de la necesidad de proyectar un frente popular comn que animara
al apoyo internacional, hay que considerar un factor clave que permiti la unin
de la lite y el pueblo en la actividad poltica del exilio estadounidense: la ide-
alizacin de la nacin en la dispora. Celebrando el aniversario de la Repbli-
ca, el colaborador y periodista Aurelio Pego concluye que la Segunda Repbli-
ca fue una repblica muy espaola en la que todos pretendamos entendernos
y no se entenda nadie [ . . . ] sta que celebramos [en el exilio] . . . [es] una
repblica ideal, una repblica de enamorados, porque cada uno al celebrar el
aniversario, . . . vemos una repblica tal y como la forja nuestra fantasa (Una
repblica de enamorados 8). Se trat, entonces, de una unin idealizada, de una
comunidad imaginada, en trminos de Benedict Anderson. Un sentimiento de
pertenencia que se idealiz an ms en el exilio por la imposibilidad de llevar-
se a cabo de forma material en el territorio del estado. As lo precisa Edward
Said: Exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, their past. They generally
do not have armies or states, although they are often in search of them. Exiles
feel, therefore, an urgent need to reconstitute their broken lives, usually by
choosing to see themselves as part of a triumphant ideology or a restored peo-
ple (177). La idealizacin de la Repblica contribuy a que tanto intelectuales
como obreros respondieran a una aparente concepcin compartida de la nacin.
La construccin discursiva de la nacin
El ensayo fue el instrumento literario de los articulistas para persuadir ide-
olgicamente al lector e incitarlo a la accin y a la reflexin. El factor de clase
se hizo patente en la construccin discursiva de la nacin, y por tanto sta se
apoy en una combinacin de la herencia liberal, socialista, anarquista y sindi-
calista espaola del XIX y del XX. Se mantuvo la memoria de estas corrientes
ideolgicas, y se contrapusieron a la Espaa totalitaria. Se contrastaron con
efecto las dos Espaas: la democrtica, la republicana, la libertaria, la peregrina
frente a la del nacional-catolicismo, la de la ultraderecha, la del centralismo uni-
formista, la colonialista.
En una tpica funcin propagandstica del peridico, Flix Mart Ibez
asegura que existen dos patrias. Una es la de la dictadura que En nombre de la
Patria y sus derechos, desde las Cruzadas hasta nuestras guerras de Marruecos,
se consumaron asesinatos de pueblos enteros invocando supuestos derechos
patriticos casi siempre rebosantes de religiosidad mal entendida (3). Por otro
68 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
lado existe: esa Patria humana que no est cimentada en piedras sino en cora-
zones s que creemos y por ella sufrimos. [ . . . ] Nuestra patria humana no se
engrandece por obra simple de un Gobierno o de los milagros de una Gaceta
sino por el afn comn de cuantos trabajan y luchan dentro del perfil de aque-
lla (Mart baez 3).
Espaa Libre toma la imagen del pueblo heroico como smbolo que apoya
discursivamente la construccin de la nacin exiliada. La editorial del 20 de
diciembre de 1940 anuncia que cuando la historia cuente que el espaol, que
cant en las trincheras donde luchaba por la libertad [ . . . ] y en el campo de
concentracin donde fue brbaramente castigado y en todos los cruceros del
mundo por donde la ley, el reglamento, la religin, los racismos, no lo dejaron
pasar, no tendr explicacin la falta de apoyo que tuvo un pueblo sometido
por las armas (Sin Patria 2). Por ello, Jos Asensio insta a la colonia exilia-
da a rendir nuestro tributo al PUEBLO, nico hroe de estas jornadas (Al
pueblo madrileo 11)
14
.
En la actualidad, la recuperacin de la memoria histrica espaola intenta
subsanar las consecuencias del pacto del olvido que se estableci durante la
Transicin del Franquismo a la democracia despus de la muerte del General
Franco a finales de los aos setenta, puesto que se reconoce la necesidad de
recuperar la reciente historia de la nacin, por dolorosa que sta haya sido. De
forma paralela, los colaboradores de Espaa Libre reconocieron ya desde el exi-
lio la importancia de inscribir el legado progresista en las narrativas annimas
del pueblo, en la identificacin con sus lderes, en smbolos y en momentos y
espacios fundacionales. Este es el objetivo de la columna editorial del 16 de
febrero de 1962 titulada Nuestros Muertos:
nuestros muertos: proclammoslo bien alto y claro y con legtimo orgu-
llo, son los autnticos forjadores de un mundo nuevo, regido por la jus-
ticia estricta, con pan y libertad para todos. Cuando el acceso al cono-
cimiento de la verdad no est monopolizado, ni sea un privilegio de
casta o clase; sino, comn acicate, en el corazn de cada hombre estu-
dioso, emancipado de prejuicios, nuestros muertos tendrn un hueque-
cito acogedor. (Nuestros muertos 4)
La energa potica y los relatos personales tambin gravitaron hacia la mitifica-
cin pica de los hroes annimos del pueblo.
Otra estrategia discursiva unificadora fue el poder simblico de la mujer
como representacin del valor y la perseverancia del pueblo pro-republicano.
Antonio de la Villa narra un episodio de su experiencia como periodista del dia-
rio madrileo Ahora durante la contienda de Madrid; y en especfico, el gesto
heroico de la madre del escultor Emiliano Barral, muerto en las trincheras de
Legans. Arriesgando ser capturada por los soldados nacionales que ocupaban
el pueblo, aquella mujer y madre, mil veces santa y mil veces madre, quiso ella
misma ir a recoger el cuerpo de su hijo, al lugar donde se dijo que haba muer-
to (10). Este es un ejemplo de la misma lnea de articulacin del discurso liber-
tario en suelo espaol, que explotaba la maternidad en la propaganda pro-repu-
blicana, como ha sealado la historiadora Mary Nash (74).
Se replic a la valoracin franquista al papel tradicional de la mujer, argu-
mentando que la mujer haba roto las cadenas que las sujetaba al placer del
seorito y haba mostrado al mundo su herosmo y su capacidad de lucha (Mar-
tnez 8). Sin embargo, la voz de la mujer est casi ausente en la publicacin. Son
pocas y poco frecuentes las colaboradoras. Las representaciones heroicas de las
madres junto con la poca mencin a la activa participacin antifascista y anti-
franquista de la mujer constituy en el peridico otro ejemplo ms de la estra-
tgica contribucin de la mujer a la causa, como la llam la poeta Lucia Sn-
chez Saornil, quien consider que el aporte de la mujer a grupos
pro-republicanos liderados por hombres no fue reconocido oficialmente (qtd. in
Nash 87)
15
.
El duelo por la prdida de la libertad constitucional en suelo espaol tam-
bin uni a los miembros de SHC. El terrorismo de estado de la Espaa Fran-
quista se denunci constantemente por los colaboradores de Espaa Libre y se
publicaron numerosas listas de espaoles ejecutados por el rgimen. Los articu-
listas ms mordaces son, sin duda, Aurelio Pego y Lirn (Adolfo Jimnez
Coln). Por ejemplo, Pego ataca a la iglesia en una crnica satrica en el que
considera que el franquismo debera motorizar a los curas porque:
. . . en caso de necesidad, si surgiera de nuevo la revolucin, todos estos
curas motorizados constituiran un gran refuerzo militar . . . asomando
al lado del farol de cada una de las Vespas el can de una ametralla-
dora automtica . . . Quiz pudiera lograrse que el sonoro traqueteo de
la ametralladora produjera en lugar de tac-tac-tac-tac unas voces
que dijeran: al in-fi-er-no-te-vas-dios-te-per-do-ne. Vi-va-Fran-co . . .
(Curas motorizados 4)
Lirn tambin ataca la Espaa del nacional-catolicismo en Bombas de mano
publicado por S.H.C. en Nueva York en 1938. Bombas recopila algunos de los
poemas satricos publicados en Espaa Libre. Por ejemplo, en Sermn de Pas-
cua, el autor adopta la estructura de un sermn catlico para horrorizar al lector.
Un cura franquista alecciona a sus feligreses con una doctrina de odio: Y, cuan-
to ms nos insulten/ Y opongan ms resistencia,/ mayor ser nuestra saa,/ y
70 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
mayor nuestra violencia:/ Y aumentar el bombardeo/ que har volar por docenas/
nios, mujeres y ancianos (30). Sus poemas punzantes verbalizan la imposibili-
dad de la unin incongruente del rgimen franquista con los valores catlico-
cristianos.
Es interesante destacar que en una carta personal de Gonzlez Malo a A.
Iglesias publicada en 1966 percibimos el final de este proceso de duelo cuando
el lder anarquista mira atrs sin remordimientos
. . . nos cabe la intima satisfaccin de haber aportado nuestro grano de
arena; no hemos sido unos parsitos de la sociedad ni de la civilizacin,
tampoco de esa causa noble, entre las ms nobles, la de la libertad,
hemos batallado, porque nuestro espritu sigue ondeando en el espacio.
Qu importa que no podamos disfrutar de la cosecha! Es que por ven-
tura, alguno de nosotros pens en aprovecharse? Lo dimos todo como
hay que darlo, a manos llenas y lamentando no poder dar ms (Gonz-
lez Malo qtd in A. Iglesias 2).
Ms all de un ejercicio de duelo por la democracia perdida se aspir a cons-
truir el futuro de la nacin. Sin embargo, desde su misin propagandstica,
Espaa Libre ofrece un recuento efectivo, pero a veces, sesgado del conflicto al
desmentir el anticlericalismo que toler la quema de conventos y asesinatos
como propaganda falsa fascista
16
.
La vuelta al suelo nacional
Una vez el futuro de la nacin se ha formulado discursivamente en el exi-
lio, se ambiciona el territorio nacional. De acuerdo con Nicols Kanellos, el
sueo de la reconquista marca la literatura de exilio de forma paralela a como
lo hace el sueo del retorno en la literatura de emigracin, y ambos se contra-
ponen discursivamente al sueo americano: ni inmigrantes ni exiliados experi-
mentan Estados Unidos como la tierra prometida (Panorama xliii). Si el emi-
grante suea con el da que volver a su tierra natal, el exiliado suea con el da
que esa vuelta significar el retorno de una nacin derrotada. De acuerdo con el
colaborador Antonio Penichet, la parte humana de la Espaa vital, dispersa por
la conjuncin de fuerzas antiespaolas tiene como objetivo reconquistar la
Espaa arruinada por Franco (La Espaa vital 3). Ninguno de los espaoles
que ha salido renunci al regreso para que la Espaa por donde transitan los
jinetes del apocalipsis vuelva a ser repblica (La Espaa vital 3). Ms con-
tundente es Carmen Aldecoa slo los insensatos [ . . . ] pueden creer que Espa-
a, los espaoles, no estamos en guerra. Tan absurdo es ello como creer que una
guerra se termina porque una divisin sea copada (3).
El sueo de la reconquista se elabor discursivamente en Espaa Libre en
trminos polticos: los columnistas propusieron una reconquista que formulara
un estado federal frente a la Espaa centralista y una relacin de respeto a la
soberana de Hispanoamrica en contraposicin con la Espaa expansionista. La
constitucin de un estado federal es uno de los aspectos de la construccin de la
nacin de difcil consenso entre los columnistas. An as, se dedican varias
columnas para discutir la poca validez de un estado centralista espaol porque
se considera que Espaa tiene fronteras espirituales infranqueables, por no
decir inaccesibles (Albornoz La agona de Unamuno 3). Se invoca con fre-
cuencia el federalismo de Francesc Pi i Margall como solucin a las confronta-
ciones regionales existentes debidas a una poltica fuertemente centralizadora:
Frente las concepciones totalitarias del Estado, el espaol ser siempre un par-
tidario del Estado mnimo. Es as, ha llegado a ser as, por la oposicin geogr-
fica, por el contraste y el juego histrico, por lo abrupto del carcter, por la
rebelda del espritu (Albornoz Fascismo y espaolismo 3).
La reconquista del estado por las fuerzas progresistas sanar no slo la con-
frontacin territorial, sino tambin establecera una nueva relacin con pueblos
que fueron invadidos por la Espaa imperialista y que estaban a la merced del
mpetu expansionista de la Espaa Franquista. Se dedicaron varios artculos en
noviembre de 1940 a criticar la creacin del Consejo de la Hispanidad por el
gobierno de Franco. Este organismo interministerial que agrupaba tambin al
cuerpo diplomtico en Hispanoamrica, tena como misin convertirse en un
organismo supranacional que funcionara como eje unificador de la cultura, los
intereses econmicos y de poder relacionados con las naciones latinoamericanas
(Barbeito Dez 11720). Los columnistas acusaron al rgimen de intentar
reconquistar Hispanoamrica y expandir el fascismo (Continuacin del infor-
me 5-6; Penichet La Espaa conquistadora 6).
Recapitulando, el activismo poltico que define a Espaa Libre como peri-
dico de exilio no se limita a denunciar el estado totalitario que se ha apoderado
del territorio nacional, a proyectar la unin de la nacin exiliada y a preservar
su memoria, sino que, en trminos ms trascendentales, los exiliados conside-
ran un deber patritico organizar el combate, armado si fuese necesario, por la
libertad de Espaa, por la Espaa en la dispora y por las naciones del antiguo
imperio Espaol.
Conclusin
Espaa Libre desde Nueva York cuestion el franquismo y divulg la idea
de una nacin espaola democrtica. Espaa libre es un lugar privilegiado
donde se testimonia la pluralidad ideolgica de la Repblica. La trayectoria de
72 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
Espaa Libre no dista de la de otras publicaciones del exilio espaol en cuanto
a que mantuvieron la memoria de la repblica y fomentaron la unidad de los exi-
liados. En contraste con otras publicaciones en Mxico, cuya creacin nacional
est constituida por intelectuales tradicionales, Espaa Libre integra la ideolo-
ga de la clase obrera, representada por las voces de dirigentes anarcosindicalis-
tas. La ideologa anarquista de Espaa Libre infunde a la organizacin el nimo
de distribuir poder horizontalmente. La colaboracin de intelectuales progresis-
tas y obreros en un proyecto comn proporciona un marco que matiza la lectu-
ra de cada una de las aportaciones literarias ya provengan de la lite intelectual
o de la colonia obrera. El logro de Espaa Libre como prensa de exilio es el
tesn inagotable en la lucha por encontrar conexiones entre la lite progresista
y la clase obrera. Una difcil unin de intereses que se impuso por la necesidad
de preservar una unidad poltica solidaria que alentara la ayuda internacional a
los refugiados, a los presos polticos y al pueblo espaol bajo el rgimen de
Francisco Franco.
Notas
1
Este artculo es un extracto de la tesis doctoral inscrita en la Universidad de
Houston, TX, sobre Espaa Libre.
2
Vase Carroll and Fernndezs Facing Fascism y Rey Garcas Stars for Spain.
3
Vase Kanellos, New York City (1990).
4
Inicialmente se llamaron Comit Antifascista Espaol.
5
La afiliacin anual disminuy en los aos cincuenta.
6
Vase Rueda y Kanellos Hispanic Periodicals para una relacin de peridicos
y revistas hispanas de ideologa obrera en Estados Unidos.
7
A pesar de ello, el peridico mantuvo a columnistas con ideologa comunista
a la causa pro-republicana. Por esta razn y por su orientacin anarquista, la
FBI vigil el peridico. Vese Ordaz Romay en la bibliografa.
8
Difundieron este programa radiofnico desde las emisoras WBBC (Brooklyn
Broadcasting Corporation); WARD; WEVD (New York NY Debs Memorial
Radio Fund); WLTH y WVFV.
9
Por ello, en septiembre de 1953 se decidi reducir la tirada a mil quinientos
ejemplares, retirar los envos a universidades y centros culturales. En julio de
1954 se convierte de semanal a quincenal; en 1962, en mensual, y en 1966 se
publica cada dos meses.
10
De 1972 a 1977, el peridico no revela su director pero Joaqun Maurn Juli
y Eugenio F. Granell fueron sus editores y llevaron el peso de la publicacin.
11
Vase Hutchens, The Future of Anarchism para un estudio reciente del legado
de la ideologa anarquista.
12
Vase Eley, Forging Democracy para un anlisis del desarrollo de la izquier-
da europea en el siglo XX y de la deuda de las democracias actuales a los
movimientos obreros.
13
El historiador Paul Preston coincide con este anlisis heroico de la resistencia
del pueblo espaol, puesto que considera que la Guerra Civil no fue planeada
como tal sino como un golpe militar: Their plans for a rapid alzamiento, or
rising, to be followed by a military directory like that established in 1933, and
they had not counted on the strength of working-class resistance (102).
14
Snchez Saornil, Lucia. La cuestin femenina en nuestros medios, Solidari-
dad Obrera, 2 octubre 1935.
15
Vase como ejemplo Ossorio y Gallardo, La obra de los rojos (1949).
16
Si bien la doctrina federal de Pi i Margall ha sido criticada por ser ms filo-
sfica que poltica puesto que crea en una federacin inmediata organizada
desde abajo y no paulatinamente desde el poder (Mart Gilabert 49-52).
Bibliografa
Fuentes Primarias
Comit Antifascista Espaol de los Estados Unidos de Norte Amrica, and
Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas de los Estados Unidos de Norte Amri-
ca. Espaa Libre rgano del Comit Antifascista Espaol de los Estados
Unidos. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Comit Antifascista Espaol de los Estados
Unidos, 1939-1977.
Albornoz Limiana, lvaro de. Fascismo y Espaolismo. Espaa adentro.
Espaa Libre 2 agosto 1940: 3. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-
1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
______. La agona de Unamuno. Espaa adentro. Espaa Libre 20 diciembre
1940: 3. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 June 2009.
Aldecoa, Carmen. Grito que se pierde. Espaa Libre 22 noviembre 1940: 3.
Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
Asensio, Jos Al pueblo madrileo en la gesta heroica de su resistencia.
Espaa Libre 17 noviembre 1939: 11. Hispanic American Newspapers
(1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
______. Al Tercer Congreso Nacional de Sociedades Hispanas Confeder-
adas. Espaa Libre 12 enero 1940: 5-7. Hispanic American Newspapers
(1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
______. General Asensio denuncia la falsedad de una noticia. Espaa Libre
9 febrero 1940: 8. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24
junio 2009.
74 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
Baraibar, Carlos de. El estalinismo en Espaa. Espaa Libre 8 diciembre
1939: 11. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio
2009.
Continuacin del informe del Tercer Congreso Nacional de SHC. Espaa
Libre 2 febrero 1940: 5 - 6. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980).
Web. 24 junio 2009.
Cuadro de Honor. Espaa Libre mayo-junio 1977: 4. Print.
El campo de la lucha por la libertad ha vuelto a establecerse en Espaa.
Espaa Libre mayo-junio 1977:1-2. Print.
Espaa Libre. Espaa Libre 14 junio 1940: 7. Hispanic American Newspa-
pers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
Gonzlez Malo, Jess. De la tragedia ibrica. Espaa Libre 5 enero 1940: 3.
Gorkin, Julin (Julin Garca Gmez). Maana. Espaa Libre marzo-abril
1966: 1. Print.
Iglesias, A. Retales de una vida. Uno menos. Espaa Libre marzo-abril 1966:
2. Print.
Lirn (Adolfo Jimnez Coln). Bombas de Mano. Nueva York: S.H.C., 1938.
Print.
Lo que dijo el alcalde de El Ferrol. Espaa Libre 23 de febrero 1940: 9. His-
panic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
Mart Ibez, Flix. Vida, tradicin y patria. Cuaderno de Bitcora. Espaa
Libre 3 de mayo de 1940: 3. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980).
Web. 24 junio 2009.
Martnez, R. Bajo el cielo de Cuba. Espaa Libre 2 febrero 1940: 6. Hispanic
American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
Novos, J. Suicidas. Espaa Libre 15 diciembre 1939: 2. Hispanic American
Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
Nuestras actividades. Espaa Libre 20 noviembre 1953: 7. Print.
Nuestros muertos. Editorial. Espaa Libre 16 febrero 1962: 4. Print.
Ossorio y Gallardo, ngel. La obra de los Rojos. Espaa Libre 17 enero
1949: 1-2. Print.
Pego, Aurelio. Una repblica de enamorados. Espaa Libre 12 abril 1940: 8.
______. Curas motorizados. Espaa Libre 4 mayo 1956: 4. Print.
Penichet, Antonio. La Espaa vital dispersa. Espaa Libre 1 diciembre 1939:
3. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
______. La Espaa conquistadora y la Espaa por conquistar. Espaa Libre
29 diciembre 1939: 6. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web.
24 junio 2009.
Protegidos por las notas del Himno de Riego. Espaa Libre 9 febrero 1940:
1-2. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
Refugiados que al pasar por Nueva York rinden preferencia al peridico
fascista La Prensa. Espaa Libre 1 diciembre 1939: 5. Hispanic American
Newspapers (1808-1980). Web. 24 junio 2009.
Sin patria, pero con dignidad. Editorial. Espaa Libre 20 diciembre 1940: 2.
Villa, Antonio de la. Pongamos a Madrid como ejemplo. Espaa Libre 17
noviembre 1939: 10. Hispanic American Newspapers (1808-1980). Web.
24 junio 2009.
Fuentes Secundarias
Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1995. Print.
Balibrea, Mari Paz. El paradigma exilio. Genealogies of Displacement. Nuevo
Texto Crtico 29/32. Stanford: Stanford University, 2003. 17-39. Print.
Barbeito Dez, Mercedes. El Consejo de la Hispanidad. UNED 5.2. Espacio,
Tiempo y Forma, (1989): 113-137.1 junio 2008. Web.
Barona Villar, Josep Llus. Introduccin: Flix Mart Ibez: los dos rostros de
un triunfador. Antologa de textos de Flix Mart Ibez. Eds. Mart, Jos
Vte. y Antonio Rey. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 2004. 13-21. Print.
Blanco, Francisco A. Proyeccin de la Falange en los Estados Unidos (1936-
1939). Asociacin Cultural Rastros de la Historia. 23 junio 2008. Web.
Carroll, Peter N., and James D. Fernndez. Facing Fascism: New York and the
Spanish Civil War. New York: Museum of the City of New York, 2007.
Print.
Caudet, Francisco. El exilio republicano en Mxico. Las revistas literarias
(1939-1971). Madrid: Fundacin Banco Exterior, 1992. Print.
______. El ensayo durante el exilio. Las literaturas exiliadas en 1939. Ed.
Manuel Aznar Soler. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes,
2002. Edicin digital basada en la de Salamanca, Universidad, 2001. Cer-
vantes Virtual. 1 mayo 2008. Web.
Eley, Geoff. Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
Esenwein, George. Seeing the Spanish Civil War through Foreign Eyes.
Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War. Ed. Nol Valis. New
York: MLA, 2007. 147-159. Print.
Faber, Sebastiaan. Exile and Cultural Hegemony: Spanish Intellectuals in Mex-
ico, 1939-1975. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2002. Print.
76 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
Holgun, Sandie Eleanor. Navigating the Historical Labyrinth of the Spanish
Civil War. Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War. Ed. Nol
Valis. New York: MLA, 2001. 24-33. Print.
Hutchens, Benjamin, ed. The Future of Anarchism. 113 Issue of Substance. A
Review of Theory and Literary Criticism. 36.2 (2007). Print.
Kanellos, Nicols.New York City.A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United
States. Origins to 1940. Austin: UTP, 1990. 104-45. Print.
______. Panorama de la literatura hispana de los Estados Unidos. En otra
voz. Antologa de la literatura hispana de los Estados Unidos. Houston:
Arte Pblico P, 2002. xi-liv. Print.
Kanellos, Nicols with Helvetia Martell. Hispanic Periodicals in the United
States, Origins to 1960. A Brief History and Comprehensive Bibliography.
Houston: Arte Pblico P, 2000. Print.
Lerner Sigal, Victoria. Exilio e historia. Algunas hiptesis generales a partir del
caso de los mexicanos exiliados por la revolucin mexicana (1906-1920).
Working Papers Series 7. Summer 2000. Chicago: Mexican Studies Pro-
gram. Center for Latin American Studies. University of Chicago. 2-21.
Print.
Mart Gilabert, Francisco. La primera Repblica Espaola 1873-1874. Madrid:
Ediciones Rialp, 2007.
McClennen, Sophia A. The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language, and
Space in Hispanic Literatures. West Lafayette: P.U.P., 2004.
Nash, Mary. Defying Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish Civil War. Den-
ver: Arden P, 1995.
Neira Vilas, Xos y Xess Alonso Montero. A cultura gallega en Buenos Aires:
1950-1960. Real Academia Gallega, 2001. <http://www.realacademia-
galega.org/PlainRAG/catalog/publications/files/Neira%20Vilas.pdf>.
Ordaz Romay, Mara ngeles. Las Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas en
archivos del FBI. (Emigracin y exilio espaol de 1936 a 1975 en Estados
Unidos). Revista Complutense de Historia de Amrica. 32 (2006). 227-
247. Instituto Universitario de Investigacin en Estudios Norteamericanos,
2006. 10 agosto 2008. Web.
Payne, Stanley G. Spains First Democracy. The Second Republic, 1931-1936.
Madison: UWP, 1993. Print.
Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge. 2006.
New York: WW. Norton & Company, Inc., 1986. Print.
Rey Garca, Marta. Stars for Spain. La guerra civil espaola en los Estados
Unidos. La Corua: Edicios Do Castro, 1997. Print.
Rueda, Germn. La emigracin contempornea de espaoles a Estados Unidos.
Madrid: Maphre: 1993. Print.
Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard
UP, 2000. Print.
Shain, Yossi. The Frontier of Loyalty. Political Exiles in the Age of the Nation-
State. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1989. Print.
Smith, Eric R. New Yorks Aid to the Spanish Republic. Facing Fascism. New
York and the Spanish Civil War. Ed. Carroll, Peter N., and James D. Fer-
nndez. New York: NYU P, 2007. 40- 51. Print.
78 ! !!!!!!!!! Montse Feu
79
No Hay Justicia! The Execution of Simplicio Torres
1
PATRICIA A. BONN
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
N
o Hay Justicia! The headline of the April 27, 1920 edition of the
Phoenix newspaper Justicia voiced the sentiments of la colonia
Mexicana at the execution of Simplicio Torres. Spanish-language
newspapers took up the role of contestation, offering alternative views and
reports challenging those published in the English-language press. Not only did
the newspaper protest the execution of this young man, but expressed outrage
that only Hispanics had been put to death at the Arizona State Prison in Florence
since it opened in 1910. In spite of the efforts of La Liga Protectora Latina and
the assessment by two prison chaplains declaring Torres insane, the twenty-three
year-old young man died on the gallows at 10:04 a.m. on Friday, April 20, 1920.
The execution of Simplicio Torres is more complex than just the tragic
death of a young man and the Spanish-language newspaper seeking to protect
the civil rights of the minority community in the Territory and State of Arizona.
It is about a Mexican sheepherder tried in a discriminatory legal system for the
death of an Anglo town constable during a decade of violence, fear, and racism.
This paper peels away the layers of the story of Simplicio Torres to exam-
ine the crime and the legal proceedings that placed him on death row by an all-
white jury, ironically after being saved from lynching by Anglo law enforcement
officers. This contradiction in Arizonas justice system is the essence of the
charge by la colonia Mexicana that only Hispanics hung for capital crimes in
Arizona during the 1910s.
2
Prejudice, politics, and Progressivism all play a role
in the events of that decade that directly or obliquely influence the outcome of
this case.
Violence and Racism
Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Arizona faced racial and class pressures
of a Spanish-speaking public living under the hegemony of English-speaking
American society on land that was once part of Mexico. While the numerical supe-
riority of Anglo Americans factored into the hostile environment, many forces
local, regional, globalinfluenced fears of foreigners. Concerned citizens
feared that America or Arizona could not assimilate countless multitudes of aliens.
Armed conflict even in the most remote regions of the globe created the
perception of threats to America. Violence occurred too close to home with the
Mexican Revolution spilling over the international boundary sending millions
fleeing death and destruction. The armies of both countries traversed the border
for a variety of reasons from banditry to military operations. In 1914, World War
I began in Europe and the United States entered in conflict in 1917, the same
year as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. As the Great War in Europe was
winding down, an influenza pandemic killed more people than the warfare. In
the years 1918-1919, the global disaster known as Spanish Flu or La Grippe
claimed more people than the Black Death Bubonic Plague of fourteenth centu-
ry (The Influenza Pandemic).
As the railroad opened the territory to an influx of newcomers, social
change created anxiety in Arizona. Communities developed along both the
northern line through Flagstaff (1881) and the southern route via Tucson (1879).
The axis of influence from traditional ties with Mexico shifted to the east and
west coasts of the United States. With this orientation to the United States rather
than northern Mexico, business partnerships and intermarriage between Anglos
and Mexicans steadily declined creating a segregated society. Frontier condi-
tions could obscure differences of race and class, but the demographic shift cre-
ated turmoil within Arizona (Sheridan, 185-186).
The railroad brought industrialization to Arizona and immigrants from
around the globe provided a workforce for its economic engine. Waves of immi-
grants from Mexico either responding to the pull of work or the push of condi-
tions at home were caught between capitalists and labor radicals. The mix of eth-
nicities was often volatile, a condition often encouraged by corporate employers
to keep labor organizations at bay. Racism mixed with fears of foreign agita-
tors led to violent confrontations, especially in the mining communities.
Worldwide labor unrest fed into the fear of foreigners. In 1917 in Bisbee,
citizens rounded up suspected members of the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW). The organization known as the Wobblies espoused socialist doctrine
and violence, but its members did not act upon those beliefs. Regardless of affil-
iation, vigilantes backed by mine management abducted more than 1,100 men,
80 ! !!!!!!!!! Patricia A. Bonn
crammed them into boxcars under armed guard, and then abandoned them in the
desert west of Columbus, New Mexico, without food or water. Mexicans were
the largest group of the men who came from twenty different nations, most of
whom were not IWW members (Sheridan, 185-186).
From the last decades of the nineteenth century and into the early years of
the twentieth, copper and railroad corporations controlled Arizona politics and
the pursuit of statehood. Residents of the joint territory of New Mexico and Ari-
zona attempted to petition Congress for admission as states. Arizonans reacted
with righteous indignation as well as more than a little racism when the Chair
of the Committee on Territories proposed dual admission; the same way the two
territories were created in 1863. Their rancor was directed at the Hispano major-
ity of New Mexicos population with its powerful elite. By comparison, the
Anglo majority had marginalized Arizonas Hispanic minority, except in their
natural stronghold of Tucson (Sheridan, 174).
Behind the scenes, copper companies and railroads fueled the dispute
because dual statehood would be in their best interests. Organized labor consid-
ered separate statehood as a chance to prohibit alien labor in Arizona. In
November 1906, citizens of the two territories voted on the statehood issue. New
Mexicans supported the measure with a substantial margin. Arizona, however,
soundly rejected joint statehood and the concept of dual statehood was defunct.
The Twenty-Fifth Territorial Legislature in 1909 severely limited Mexican polit-
ical power in Arizona by passing a literacy law over the veto of Governor Joseph
Kibbey. The law prohibited the registration of any voter who could not read a
section of the U.S. Constitution or write his own name (Sheridan, 174).
In 1910, President William Howard Taft signed the Enabling Act to admit
Arizona and New Mexico as individual states. At the center of many issues fac-
ing the constitutional convention were the Spanish-speaking Mexican laborers
working in Arizonas extractive economy and the goal was to ban most Mexi-
can labor in Arizona by law. Realizing lack of access to cheap labor would be
catastrophic to Arizonas economy, the debate focused on the English language
calling the proposition a safety measure rather than an anti-Mexican measure.
President Taft signed a compromise Constitution making Arizona the forty-
eighth state on February 14, 1912 (Sheridan, 174). It is in this milieu of fear,
racism, violence, and death that executions of Simplicio Torres and nine other
Hispanic death row prisoners occurred between 1910 and 1920.
Capital Crime and Punishment in Arizona
Execution is defined as the infliction of death by society as an individual-
ized punishment for a particular crime or series of crimes. Motivation for legal
No Hay Justicia! The Execution of Simplicio Torres ! ! ! 81
executions may be found in the fear that lynching would undermine the author-
ity of society and its justice system (Galliher 574, 576). A legal execution is car-
ried out after trial and sentencing by lawfully constituted authorities. A mob,
posse, vigilantes, or members of a law and order committee conduct an ille-
gal execution (Abney, 4). The American justice system is based on English law
and punishment for murder was unambiguous and swift. Death warrants from
eighteenth-century England commanded that the condemned to be hanged by
the neck until nearly dead on the morrow. And that meant just what it said,
not next year, next month, but tomorrow (Schafer, 6).
In the Territory of Arizona, only murder and treason were capital crimes
enacted in the Howell Code of 1864. Over the next four decades, the Penal Code
made the crimes of murder, treason, train robbery and assault with a deadly
weapon by a prisoner serving a life sentence punishable by death (Eaton, 30).
Today all sentences are appealable, especially those imposing death. Like many
states, Arizona has a mandatory and automatic appeal in death cases. Previous-
ly, if the defendant or someone on his behalf did not appeal, he used to be exe-
cuted. Arizona had executed seven such individuals.
3
Two men were executed
after they were refused an appeal because they filed their appeal papers too late:
Ramos Villalobos (1915) and Simplicio Torres (1920) (Schafer, 6-7).
The method of execution defined in the Howell Code was punishment of
death shall be inflicted by hanging the defendant by the neck until he be dead
(Abney, 10). The Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma operated thirty-three years
incarcerating male and female prisoners for crimes from murder to polygamy.
No executions took place at the prison because capital punishment was admin-
istered by the county governments (Yuma Territorial Prison). That changed
when Arizona constructed a new prison in the early 1900s in Florence equipped
with a permanent indoor two-story gallows located one floor above the cells on
death row. Its initial executed prisoner was Jose Lopez on January 5, 1910.
It has been argued that society used capital punishment to oppress minori-
ties and protect the majority (Galliher et al, 538-539). Traditionally the death
penalty has been administered in a racist fashion
4
and states with the highest
concentrations of non-white citizens have used the death penalty most fre-
quently.
5
An editorial in the Arizona Republican of May 21, 1916 noted that
many Hispanics indeed felt that the death penalty was unfairly applied to their
people and that sentiment was certainly expressed in Spanish-language news-
papers. Paul J. Heitter in his article A Surprising Amount of Justice: The Expe-
rience of Mexican and Racial Minority Defendants Charged with Serious
Crimes in Arizona, 1865-1920 argues that racial and ethnic discrimination
were common in Arizona and the rest of the West. Justice officials and jurors
were usually Anglo, and their racial views were likely to influence the outcome
of legal proceedings (184). These statistics become more troublesome because
the Anglo population in Arizona constituted about 70 percent of the total popu-
lation in 1910. With increased immigration of both Mexicans and Anglos, the
execution disparity widened even more after 1910 (Rosales, 136).
Name Date
!ose Lopez 01-03-1910
Cesarlo Sanchez 12-02-1910
8afael 8arela 12-02-1910
uomlngo lranco 07-07-1911
Ale[andro Callegos 07-28-1911
8amon vlllalobo 12-10-1913
lranclsco 8odrlguez 03-19-1916
n.8. Chavez 06-09-1916
Mlguel eralLa 07-07-1916
Slmpllclo 1orrez 04-16-1920
1ab|e 1. Lxecut|ons Ar|zona State r|son at I|orence 1910-1920.
Procedural due process is designed to protect the rights of the accused
through all phases of the criminal justice system. However, Heitter argues that
objectivity could be tempered by the prejudices of justice officials and jurors,
particularly at the trial stage when the biases of Arizona society increasingly
came into play. Once a minority defendant was indicted, the ability to obtain
good legal counsel and knowledge of English created disadvantages character-
istically reflected in higher conviction rates for minorities (216-217).
Condemned prisoners could be spared from hanging by other means than
appeal. The Penal Code stated that insanity was a legal stay of execution (Arizona
Revised Statutes). Arizonas territorial governor had the power to reprieve, com-
mutate, or pardon. However, in 1883 Governor Frederick Augustus Tritle recom-
mended the formation of an independent board of pardons because the sole par-
don power to one person imposed a responsibility greater, in my judgment, than
should be vested by the law-making power of the Government in an individual
(Abney, 38). That opinion would become law with statehood but not without polit-
ical machinations by George W.P. Hunt, Arizonas first state governor.
Death Penalty and Politics
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, called the Progressive Era,
activists and politicians worked for reform legislation designed to protect and
improve the lives of the public. In addition to work place safeguards, Progres-
Source: LxecuLlons by MeLhod," Arlzona ueparLmenL of CorrecLlons.
sive philosophies of law and punishment were reflected by the abolition of the
death penalty in ten states between 1897 and 1917. The significance of the moti-
vations behind a specific legislative policy can only be understood fully within
the social, economic, and demographic context of that process. Abolition of cap-
ital punishment was associated with economic boom, its reinstatement occurred
during economic recession and a growing fear of communists, foreigners and
other minorities (Galliher, 541).
Hunt supported an anti-death penalty clause in the state charter crafted by
the 1910 Arizona Constitutional Convention that was struck down. As Governor,
Hunt led the fight against the death penalty. He was quoted as claiming that no
executions would take place in the state as long as he was governor. In his first
term he granted 105 pardons, commutations and reprieves and eighty-five in
1912-13 alone. In a statement to the first legislature of the newly admitted state,
Governor Hunt made the following remarks. I subscribe . . . to the belief . . . that
capital punishment is relic of barbarism; that the legalized taking of life is a
straining of Christs law which has no place in modern civilization (Abney, 89).
When he took office in March 1912, Governor Hunt vetoed the penal
reform bill and reprieved prisoners to give the legislature a chance to abolish the
death penalty or place the issue on the ballot. The bill stated that the governor
might not grant reprieve, commutation or pardon without prior approval of the
Board of Pardons and Paroles controlled by capital punishment advocate Attor-
ney General Wiley E. Jones. The next spring the state legislature passed the
same law then overrode Governor Hunts veto. As signatures were collected for
a referendum, Governor Hunt continued to use pardon power (Abney, 45-57).
Of the twelve men on death row in 1915, five were Mexican and all were
scheduled to hang for unrelated crimes on May 28, 1915. Preventing this mass
execution became one of the first issues of the newly organized La Liga Protecto-
ra Latina. On the eve of the executions, Governor Hunt received dispatches from
U.S. Secretary of State William J. Bryan, General Francisco Villa and Governor
Maytorena of Sonora expressing concerns regarding the impending executions.
Only Villalobos was a Mexican citizen, but the communications alluded to the
possibility of reprisals against American citizens in Mexico (Eaton, 31).
In spite of the loss of clemency powers, Governor Hunt pressured the Board
that these executions would exacerbate serious border problems. La Liga Pro-
tectora Latina and Douglas consul Ives Levelier met with Hunt and the Board
pointing out that a referendum to decide the death penaltys future was pending.
They argued that the condemned Mexicans fate should await the outcome.
Regardless, four were executed individually over the next year and only Eduar-
do Prez, convicted for killing another Mexican, received a commutation from
the Board (Rosales, 139). It would appear that the brief reprieves for the con-
demned men were based on political expediency.
6
Governor Hunt could acqui-
esce to the executions in the face of fierce opposition of Attorney General Wiley,
but continue to use the means available to save as many men as he could and
persist in pushing for abolition of capital punishment.
7
The non-Hispanic death row prisoners met a different fate as all had their
sentences commuted by the Board that based the decisions on mitigating factors
such as the age of the men at the time of their crimes or insanity. Florence Prison
Warden R.B. Sims refused to hang William Faltin because two doctors provid-
ed affidavits as to the prisoners insanity. An interesting side note, Faltins case
was then overlooked for a decade and in 1928, his sentence was commuted
(Abney 86, 98).
At the general election in November 1916, the voters apparently decided to
implement Governor Hunts progressive measure on the abolition of capital
punishment. While the death penalty abolition was law, the governors office
was in controversy. In 1917 Thomas Edward Campbell, first Republican and
first native-born governor, was declared Arizonas second governor in a disput-
ed election. The Supreme Court of Arizona, who awarded the election to George
W.P. Hunt, later overturned the decision. Campbell later ran again and served for
two terms from 1919 to 1923 when Hunt again took office.
Arizona had no death penalty from December 8, 1916, until December 5,
1918. A rise in homicides in 1917 alarmed Arizonans who appeared to relate the
increase to the absence of the death penalty as a deterrent. Several factors prob-
ably combined to spur voters to place the issue on the ballot again in November
1918. One or two particularly violent crimes appealed to emotion rather than a
dispassionate consideration of crime and punishment. Some have argued that
with the entry of the United States into World War I people feared crimes by
German spies and sympathizers (Eaton, 49). Regardless, on April 16, 1920,
Simplicio Torres became the first person executed after the abolition of the
death penalty was rescinded.
The Crime and Legal Proceedings
The Coconino Sun of June 6, 1919, reported the events of the crime. Tor-
res
8
had in his possession a black horse that was the property of Mrs. Ambrosia
Means. She confronted him while he was watering the horse a half block from
her home in Williams. The accused told Mrs. Means that he would take his sad-
dle home giving the impression that he would then return the horse. When the
local authoritiesEd Hamilton, Tom White, and J.H. Paddockarrived at his
home, Torres was just finished with a bath. He initially agreed to cooperate and
got dressed, apparently hiding a .32-caliber automatic gun in his clothes. How-
ever, he scuffled with Hamilton who had Torres by the wrist. He broke away
from the hold and pulled his weapon threatening Hamilton who gave up his own
gun (Marshal V.H. Melick). Torres and Hamilton started walking toward
town; the former armed with a concealed weapon and the latter unarmed.
Hamilton suggested that they contact the party who Torres said had given him
permission to ride the horse but to no avail. J.H. Paddock to whom Hamilton
whispered his predicament joined the party. Paddock told the two men to go on
to the Means home and he would join them there. In the meantime, he went
home and picked up a .30-.30 rifle (Marshal V.H. Melick).
Williams Constable Victor H. Melick arrived at the Means home at the
same time as Torres and Hamilton. He unfortunately was not aware that Torres
was armed or of any of the events that had taken place, except that Torres was
wanted for stealing a horse. As the constable was trying to arrest the accused,
Torres denied the crime and started for home. Melick stopped him and Torres
replied he was going to eat supper while gradually edging away as they talked.
Torres pulled his weapon and fired three shots from a distance of less than ten
feet, two of which hit Melick in the torso (Marshal V.H. Melick).
Constable Melick died within minutes and Torres ran for hiding. Citizens
of Williams gathered and armed themselves to search the town for the murder-
er. Torres was located in a small house not far from the jail and when he did not
surrender to the crowd, they fired riddling the house with bullet holes. Some-
how, Torres only suffered a wound in the shoulder and still managed to return
fire (Marshal V.H. Melick).
In the meantime, word arrived in Flagstaff of the murder and hunt for the
killer. Sheriff Jack Harrington, Undersheriff Bill Hicklin, County Attorney F.M.
Gold and Assistant County Attorney George Harben drove to Williams, at times
going faster than 50 miles an hour over some roads that ordinarily averaged 20
miles an hour. The Flagstaff law enforcement officers arrived during the barrage
of bullets into the house where Torres was hiding. Hicklin caught a glimpse of
the young man and entered the house. The wounded Torres surrendered rather
than face certain death at the hands of the citizens. Sheriff Harrington led the
crowd to believe that Torres was dying and he devised a plan to transport the pris-
oner to Flagstaff after doctors in the jail examined him (Marshall V.H. Melick).
With the car backed up to the jail door, Torres was thrown into the back seat
but not before being kicked by some twenty-five people crowded in the few feet
from the door to the car. One man drew his gun to shoot the prisoner when Hick-
lin said, Dont shoot him; hes dead, and the man put his gun up. Sheriff Har-
rington showed the crowd Torres wound to reinforce the impression that he
would not survive. The party then sped away for Flagstaff keeping a sharp look
out for lights on the road behind (Marshal V.H. Melick).
It was clear that if Sheriff Harrington and the others had not interceded, the
citizens of Williams would have lynched Torres. The newspaper Justicia argued
that the incident was evidence of the Anglo residents of Williams racist predis-
position, and Torres could not receive justice in Coconino County. The citizens
who fired more than 200 rounds into the house where Torres was hiding unques-
tionably intended to kill the accused.
Coconino County attorney charged Simplicio Torres on June 11, 1919 with
the murder of Victor H. Melick. The defendant was arraigned and pleaded not
guilty. Mercer Hemperly of Flagstaff and Isaac Barth of Albuquerque were the
attorneys for the accused. A jury trial was held in Superior Court of the County
of Coconino in Flagstaff. The jury, obtained from a pool of sixty-nine Anglo
men, was seated on Tuesday afternoon, July 15 (Plea of Insanity).
1ab|e 2. State of Ar|zona v. S|mp||c|o 1orrez 1919, Iury L|st.
Source: SLaLe of Arlzona v. Slmpllclo 1orrez, !ury LlsL, Case no. 494, Superlor
CourL of Coconlno CounLy 1919 and lea of lnsanlLy".
Iuror Name Cccupat|on kes|dence
P.8. lay clvll englneer llagsLaff
u.L. vance rancher Crand Canyon
!ohn M. Ware farmer Sedona
W.l. MarLln clerk llagsLaff
lrank CnsLarL rancher uoney ark
AlberL L. 1homson rancher Cak Creek
!ames Clddlngs caLLleman LlLLle Colorado 8lver
W.P. nlckell laborer llagsLaff
lrank Conrad englneer llagsLaff
8oberL 8lckeLLs laborer llagsLaff
Llmer L. Lawrey farmer llagsLaff
Charles 8abcock laborer llagsLaff
In addition to jury selection on July 15, attorneys for both sides presented
their cases. George W. Harben assisted County Attorney F.M. Gold for the pros-
ecution. Gold told the jury in a concise statement what the state intended to
prove. The defendants attorney Hemperly stated he would not deny his client
committed murder, but that he would prove by the witnesses that Torres was
insane. During the first day of the trial deputy sheriff Ed Hamilton, Mrs. Mary
Means, Tom White, and Lawrence Murphy, an 11-year-old boy, testified for the
prosecution relating the events of the confrontation at the Means home. All stat-
ed that Torres fired the first shot (Plea of Insanity).
Torres took the stand in his own defense on the second day of testimony. He
admitted he shot Melick, but insisted that the constable shot him first and he
fired in self-defense. His parents testified in Spanish with Frank Rodriguez
interpreting. They gave evidence of their sons troubles although sustained
objections from the county attorney prohibited Mr. Torres to state his opinion
regarding his sons mental state. Orville Brown of Marshall Lake said he
thought was simply a bad Mexican rather than giving an opinion that Torres
was insane (Plea of Insanity). After a reported deliberation of seven minutes,
the jury found Torres guilty of murder in the first degree with the penalty fixed
at death (Torez to Hang).
The verdict was rendered on July 18, 1919, and three days later, the defen-
dant filed an appeal from the verdict. On August 4, 1919, the court rendered judg-
ment and sentenced Torres to death. After the pronouncement by Judge J.E.
Jones of the sentence that Torres was to be hanged at Florence on October 24, he
responded, Thank you very much, Judge; I hope when you get there youll get
justice, too (Torez Sentenced). The defendant filed a motion for a new trial,
which was over-ruled. No notice of appeal from the judgment or from the order
denying the motion for a new trial was given (Simplicio Torrez v. State 1919).
Apparently Torresor perhaps more correctly his attorneysbelieved that
the appeal filed on July 21 was all that was necessary so did nothing further and
the sixty days period in which to file a proper notice of appeal passed. When the
Supreme Court of Arizona looked at the appeal, it was five months later (Simp-
licio Torrez v. State 1919). The filing of the appeal did postpone the execution
until the court ruled. The delay was not well received by Anglos in northern Ari-
zona whose opinions of the case were captured in an article in the December 1,
1919 issue of the Tombstone Epitaph. Also expressed in the article are reactions
of the Mexican community to yet another execution of a Hispanic:
Though Arizona returned more than a year ago to the death penalty for
murder, no executions thus far have been known. Simplicio Torrez is
held in the state prison at Florence awaiting execution, after conviction
at Flagstaff of murder in the first degree. One phase of the case is that
it is on appeal before the state supreme court. A strong agitation has
started in the prisoners behalf, especially within the Mexican element
of the state. The issue seems more or less a race one. In opposition, Gov.
Campbell has received from Williams a protest, signed by thirty-seven
citizens, and headed by Mayor W.C. Rittenhouse, affirming that noth-
ing short of the death penalty would be sufficient, and urging that the
execution be permitted to go on (North Arizona).
The Supreme Court of Arizona filed its response to the appeal from judg-
ment on December 1, 1919, stating that the law was unequivocally clear and dis-
missed the appeal:
The provisions of the statute, fixing the how and when an appeal of a
criminal case may be taken to the court, are mandatory and jurisdic-
tional. In Ramon Villalobo v. State, the court stated the right to appeal
is purely a creature of the statute, and where an appeal is not taken
within the time prescribed by the law, this court, of course, acquires
no jurisdiction, and the judgment of the lower court becomes final
and conclusive. This is so well understood by both the bench and the
bar that it is a waste of words to repeat such a statement of the law
(Simplicio Torrez v. State 1919).
The timing of these events is crucial to this case and led to accusations of
incompetence on the part of the defense attorneys. There is no such thing as an
appeal solely from a verdict of guilty under the provisions of the Penal Code
(Arizona Revised Statutes 1153). The appeal filed July 21 was based on the
verdict rather than on the judgment of August 4. Therefore, the appeal was not
filed in the time prescribed by the law, i.e. it was filed before the judgment. The
Supreme Court of Arizona had no jurisdiction, upheld the judgment of the lower
court, and dismissed the appeal with directions to the Superior Court of Coconi-
no County to proceed with the execution of its judgment (Simplicio Torrez v.
State 1919).
On January 27, 1920, Torres was brought before the court. After the court
inquired if any legal reason existed why the judgment should not be carried out,
and none having been shown, the court fixed April 16, 1920, as the day the
defendant would be put to death. An appeal was filed with the Supreme Court
of Arizona on April 2, 1920 and the following day Attorney General Wiley E.
Jones filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the order of the court fixing
the date of execution cannot be appealed. On April 14, 1920, the court ordered
the attempted appeal stricken from the files because the court had no jurisdic-
tion to review the order (Simplicio Torres v. State 1920). With the appeal process
exhausted, the execution order of Simplicio Torres went forward.
A Cry for Justice
Arizonas Mexican community viewed the death sentences as the most
deadly of abuses perpetrated against la colonia Mexicana by the dominant
Anglo society. These abuses were particularly evident in the legal justice system
with police brutality, arrests disproportionate to the size of their community, and
discrimination in the courtroom all with little or no recourse. Four of the Mex-
icans executed between 1910 and 1920 received the death sentence for killing
law enforcement officers. Few legal defense organizations existed prior to 1915
to advocate for the Mexican death row prisoners. The Mexican government of
the 1910s was too distracted by internal power struggles and the catastrophic
results of a decade of violence to intervene on behalf of immigrants. The Mex-
ican Revolution influenced Anglo hostility with border strife and refugees flee-
ing into the United States in large numbers (Rosales, 136-138).
Protest of the de jure and de facto racism fell to the minority press and the
fledgling civil rights organizations like La Liga Protectora Latina, a mutual aid
society incorporated in Phoenix in 1915.
9
Newspaper editors were the communi-
ty leaders, such as Pedro Garcia de la Lama of Justicia, who sought to protect the
civil rights of the Mexican community and cried out when injustice occurred.
The edition of Justicia published after Torres execution printed scathing
articles condemning the various parties that could have intervened in this case.
Not mincing words, the article labeled Attorney General Jones a borrachn
asqueroso (disgusting drunkard) who with Board members Court Miller and
C.O. Case were like hyenas, in relentless pursuit to kill Mexicans (No Hay
Justicia, 1). Governor Campbell fared little better as he was compared to Pilate
who washed his hands of the case and left it to Superintendent Powell to exe-
cute Torres (No Hay Justicia, 1).
A narrative led readers through the legal proceedings and the last-minute
efforts by La Liga Protectora Latina to secure a reprieve in order to prove the
defendants insanity, thus saving him from hanging. A letter from Father Aman-
cio de Jess C.D. stated that he ministered to Torres at the prison and related that
the young man held no malice toward those who refused to save him from the
gallows. The priest believed that this execution was less for a crime than for the
hatred of la raza Latina. Editor de la Lama printed a letter sent to Attorney Gen-
eral Jones in which he listed the known facts of Torres mental problems. The
letter continued:
Maana es la fecha de la ejecucin. Usted ha hecho antes y hace ahora
todo lo que est en sus manos para colgar un hombre, a quien el escrito
y muchas otras personas creen totalmente irresponsable de sus actos,
por estar loco. Si Simplicio Torres es colgado, Usted puede recordar por
el resto de su vida que Usted permiti esta tremenda injusticia, y que
Ud. invoc todos los tecnicismos aun ms irivolos de la ley, para efec-
tuar este ultraje. (No Hay Justicia, 2)
10
When Jones stated he never received the letter, de la Lama accused the
Attorney General of throwing it away. The editor railed against the government
officials involved stating that the death of Torres was a sentiment of revenge
against the Latino race, not for the crime committed. He called out to his read-
ers, Let this serve as a lesson for all Latinos to unite and take interest in polit-
ical matters, vote against these terrible acts . . . to make politics not a consider-
ation (No Hay Justicia, 2).
De la Lama pointed out that Mexicanos have hung at Florence when vari-
ous foreigners and Americans with the same sentence have been commuted for
insanity or illness. He protested publishing of photos of the rope used to kill Tor-
res as vengeance for our race, a great affront for la raza, a religious immorality.
In the name of humanity, the residents of Florence need to protest, stop these
photos that insult the dignity of our raza. Torres was not a raving lunatic . . . he
was killed only because of the hatred of nuestra raza (No Hay Justicia, 2).
De la Lama as publisher of Justicia and member of the nascent organization,
La Liga Protectora Latina, posed the question to Attorney General Jones, How
can you not say there is reasonable doubt of Torres insanity? (No Hay Justi-
cia, 2). He argued there was ample evidence in the public record of this young
mans mental troubles to justify a commutation of his sentence to life in prison.
An Argument for Justice
Unfortunately, for Torres, the argument presented to Attorney General Jones
for commutation of sentence because of insanity failed to prevent the young
mans execution. De la Lama offered this evidence as his proof of Torres men-
tal disorder: the prison chaplains who swore to his insanity, the fact that Torres
had spent time in the State Asylum, that various members of his mothers fami-
ly were insane including an uncle who had been in the Asylum since 1907 (No
Hay Justicia, 2). Further examination of these statements is warranted to ascer-
tain if there indeed was ample evidence of the defendants insanity.
When La Liga Protectora Latina made a last effort to save Torres from exe-
cution, the organization secured the services of criminal attorney Fred C. Struck-
meyer (Sr.). Together they obtained sworn statements from two prison chaplains,
Fr. Amancio de Jess and a Presbyterian minister, requesting the warden to allow
three doctors to examine the mental condition of the defendant. Warden C.G.
Powell refused the request. On April 15, 1920, the day before the scheduled exe-
cution, Struckmeyer filed a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for Ari-
zona in Tucson that was denied by Federal Judge William Henry Sawtelle.
Newspaper articles in the Coconino Sun and Arizona Gazette recap a life
of crime that began when Torres was young. He had often been in trouble with
law enforcement in Williams following raids on hen roosts, tobacco, and fruit
stands. Both police and the community tolerated his acts of petty larceny out of
respect to his parents and other family members, all hard-working, law-abiding,
and respectable people. However, Torres criminal activity escalated and in
December 1916 he was arrested for burglary on the property of the Pitman Val-
ley Land & Cattle Company. He was tried in Coconino County Superior Court
after a preliminary hearing in the Justice Court of the Williams Precinct. Court
documents indicate that the case was dismissed in February 1917 (State of Ari-
zona v. Simplicio Torrez 1916). It appears that in lieu of prison, Torres was sent
to the Arizona State Insane Asylum in Phoenix from which he was later released
and returned to Williams (Torez to Hang).
Torres made his next court appearance in January 1918. He waived counsel
and pled guilty of burglary in Superior Court of Coconino County. Court docu-
ments indicate:
His family are bitterly opposed to his being sent to the asylum again and
have asked that he be sent to the penitentiary. The defendant prefers to
be sent to the penitentiary to being returned to the asylum. Inasmuch as
the authorities at the asylum seem to feel that he is not a fit subject for
that institution we know of no other alternative then to send him to the
penitentiary. (State of Arizona v. Simplicio Torrez 1918)
On February 5, 1918, Torres was transported to Arizona State Prison in Florence
to serve one to five years.
The request from the young mans family to send him to the penitentiary
may appear callous in light of present-day prison environment. However, in the
1910s there were no alternatives to imprisonment in either the asylum or peni-
tentiary for someone like Torres. The second half of the nineteenth century was
the era of the asylum when mental illness was considered treatable and moral
treatment was the most popular form of therapy. An orderly environment, away
from family and the stresses of society, combined with a routine of light work,
recreation, and rest would manipulate patients to develop the self-discipline to
control their inappropriate impulses. However, by World War I asylums had
become vast repositories for the chronically insane and demented. They were
overcrowded warehouses in which any hope of therapy was illusory by psychi-
atrists who had a poor reputation among their medical colleagues (Shorter, 33,
65). Asylums may have fallen out of favor but since the 1800s the medical com-
munity did have scientific evidence of the role that heredity played in mental
disorders. Heredity figures among those circumstances that physicians have
always known about, because the major psychiatric illnesses tend to cluster in
certain family trees (Shorter, 28).
From a twenty-first-century laypersons viewpoint, it would appear that
Torres was bipolar, acting out when in a manic phase then calming down when
his internal pendulum swung in the opposite direction. In addition to his inter-
est in chickens, newspapers related accounts of bizarre behavior with an escala-
tion of the threat of violence because he began to carry a concealed weapon that
he brandished at times. There was a family history of mental illness with one
uncle admitted to the insane asylum and his sister committed suicide while he
recovered from his wound in the Flagstaff jail after the Melick murder. He was
under close watch while in jail awaiting trial because of his propensity to feud
with other prisoners and he had a silver-plated star labeled United States
Detective pinned to his undershirt (Torez to Hang).
In testimony given at the 1919 murder trial, Mr. Dawson Henderson for
whom Torres worked in sheep camps, stated that I believed he had a loose
screw in his head . . . I know of many occurrences and many acts of the said
Simplicio Torrez, that I considered that no reasonable or normal person would
do (State of Arizona v. Simplicio Torrez 1919).
Unfortunately, the periodic appearance of sanity did little to elicit sympa-
thy or understanding of his fluid mental state. At the murder trial both his par-
ents testified. His mother stated that her son had long been incorrigible and his
father expressed the hope that a life sentence be given in order to protect the
lives of others. A plea of insanity was entered by the defense, but the clear, ratio-
nal, detailed description of the murder, which Torres gave, refuted that con-
tention (Penalty Paid by Torres). In addition, Assistant County Attorney
George W. Harben entered into evidence a certified copy of Torezs discharge
from the insane asylum in Phoenix in 1917, which pronounced him sane (Torez
to Hang).
It would appear that this young mans mental illness was common knowl-
edge in his community as expressed in newspaper articles and recorded in court
documents. Regardless, the insanity plea failed and the all white jury found the
Mexican defendant guilty of murder in the first degree and fixed the penalty at
death. Even in his last moments when Torres said he held no malice in his heart
toward anyone connected with his arrest and prosecution his mental condition
was questioned. The Tucson Citizen reported that Torres went to the scaffold
without trace of fear or any manifestation on insanity, state officials who wit-
nessed the execution stated, although friends of the condemned man had many
efforts to have his life by allegations of his insanity (Torres Hangs).
The limited knowledge about mental illness in the 1910s contributed to the
tragic nature of this case, but attorney incompetence prohibited any recourse
within the justice system for Torres. Citing Ramon Villalobo v. State (1915),
judges of Arizona Supreme Court clearly stated the obvious fact that the time
frame for an appeal was prescribed by law so well understood by both the
bench and bar (Simplicio Torrez v. State 1919). Attorneys Hemperly and
Barth
11
sealed the defendants fate when they botched the appeal then failed to
recognize their error before the sixty-day deadline. Their malfeasance left the
court with no alternative than to dismiss the appeal. It is not a pleasant duty to
have to dismiss an appeal without reviewing the case, especially in so grave a
case as the present one; but we are powerless and without any discretion in the
matter (Simplicio Torres v. State 1920). The appeal filed by Hemperly on April
2, 1920 was likewise dismissed because no appeal lies from the order of the
court fixing the date of execution and for the very evident reason that we have
no jurisdiction to review the order which is the subject of the attempt to appeal
(Simplicio Torres v. State 1920).
A final court appeal failed to save the life of Torres. The argument placed
before Judge Sawtelle was that the defendant was deprived of his constitutional
rights because a hearing was denied before a justice of the peace and Torres had
not waived preliminary examination. Assistant Attorney General Alexander
Baker and Coconino County Attorney Harben declared records proved that the
young man had waived the preliminary hearing. The writ of habeas corpus was
denied (Torres Hangs).
One more avenue to appeal remained and that was with Governor Camp-
bell and Attorney General Jones and the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Whether
he received the letter from de la Lama or not, it is clear that Jones did not intend
to commute Torres sentence from death to life in prison. An advocate of capi-
tal punishment, Jones resisted all efforts to spare the defendant from the gallows
(Attorney General Opposes). The Coconino Sun reported that Governor
Campbell visited the prison on April 15, presumably for the purpose of inves-
tigating personally the insanity reports which have come to his office (Torrez
Will Hang). Whatever his intent for the visit, Governor Campbell chose not to
pursue a stay of execution from the Board.
No Justice for Simplicio Torres
There is no doubt that Simplicio Torres shot and killed Constable Victor E.
Melick on the streets of Williams on May 31, 1919, a crime punishable by death
as prescribed by law. Arizona law is also supposed to protect those individuals
who are not responsible for their actions by reason of insanity. Clearly, there
was substantial evidence that this young man was afflicted by a behavioral or
mental disorder.
The Anglo-dominated Arizona justice system placed minority defendants at
a distinct disadvantage by their lower socio-economic status, limited access to
qualified legal representation, poor English skills, and the racial bias of society.
Apparently, most Arizonans believe that legal capital punishment was a deter-
rent to further violence and loss of life. Hunt or Campbells veiled racism was
politically expedient. Their efforts to seek justice were influenced by an unwill-
ingness to jeopardize their office to change the outcome for Torres and the other
nine Hispanics executed.
The role of Spanish-language newspapers is to be the heart, soul, and voice
of la colonia Mexicanato inform, to nourish, and to protest when injustice
occurred. Pedro Garcia de la Lama and Justicia did all those and saved the story
of Simplicio Torres from being lost in the dusty past.
The headline read No Hay Justicia! On April 16, 1920 in Florence, Ari-
zona, the question was not whether due process was followed but rather was jus-
tice possible for Simplicio Torres in Arizonas judicial system?
Notes
1
The author extends her gratitude to Dr. F. Arturo Rosales and Dr. Christine
Marin of Arizona State University for their invaluable assistance.
2
The Justicia article refers to Torres as No. 13the thirteenth Latino execut-
ed at the Florence prison. My research has only identified ten Hispanic men
(Mexican, Mexican American, Spaniard) executed in the period of January
1910 to April 1920.
3
Pedro Dominguez (1921), Manual Martinez (1923), William Ward (1924),
Alvin Odom (1938), James Rawlings (1943), U.L. Holley (1945), and Lester
Bartholomew (1955).
4
William J. Bowers et al. Legal Homicide: Death as Punishment in America,
1840-1982 (1984) as qtd. in Galliher, 541.
5
U.S. Department of Justice. Capital Punishment (1973) as qtd. in Galliher, 541.
6
Ramn Villalobos, December 1915; Francisco Rodrguez, May 1916; N.B.
Chvez, June 1916; Miguel Peralta, July 1916.
7
Hunt . . . had to content with ill health, a vigorous primary contest, and an
even more strenuous election struggle with Republican Thomas Campbell.
Hunt was willing to let his past efforts percolate through the electorate in pref-
erence to stirring up unnecessary troubles (Abney, 90-91).
8
Torres name is misspelled as Torrez or Torez in many of the newspaper arti-
cles and even in legal documents. When quoting those materials, I shall use the
spelling as the name appeared in the documents.
9
The organization supplied financial support to unemployed and ill members,
educational and social assistance and burial funds. In 1917, the organization
played an important role in calling attention to the plight of Mexican and
Mexican-American miners who staged copper strikes in communities such as
Globe, Miami, Bisbee, Clifton, Morenci, and Sonora. La Liga Protectora Lati-
na remained active until the Great Depression (The Chicana/Chicano Experi-
ence in Arizona-Organizations).
10
Tomorrow is the date of execution. You have done everything in your power to
hang a man who myself and many other persons believe to be not responsible
for his actions because he is insane. If Torres is hung, you will have to live the
rest of your life that you permitted this terrible injustice, that you employed all
the trivial technicalities of the law to effect this outrage.
11
Isaac Barth of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was disbarred in that state on May
12, 1920, on the recommendation of the State Board of Bar Examiners (The
Pacific Reporter, 499.)
Works Cited
Abney, David Lawrence. Capital Punishment in Arizona, 1863-1963. MA The-
sis. Arizona State U, 1988.
Arizona Death Penalty History. Arizona Department of Corrections.
http://www.azcorrections.gov/adc/datasearch/dr_history.asp Accessed 25
May 2008.
Arizona Revised Statutes. Penal Code 114-1144, 1913.
Attorney General Opposes Attempt to Save S. Torez. The Coconino Sun
[Flagstaff] 12 Oct. 1919: 2.
The Chicana/Chicano Experience in Arizona-Organizations. http://www.asu.
edu/lib/archives/website/organiza.htm Accessed 9 Nov. 2008.
Eaton, William L. The Death Penalty in Arizona (1864-1933). n.d.
Editorial, Arizona Republican 21 May 1916: n. pag.
Executions by Method. Arizona Department of Corrections. http://www.
azcorrections.gov/adc/datasearch/ex_method.asp Accessed 25 May 2008.
Galliher, John F., Gregory Ray, and Brent Cook. Abolition and Reinstatement
of Capital Punishment during the Progressive Era and Early 20th Century.
The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 83.3 (1992): 538-539.
Heitter, Paul T. A Surprising Amount of Justice: The Experience of Mexican
and Racial Minority Defendants Charged with Serious Crimes in Arizona,
1865-1920. Pacific Historical Review 70.2 (2001): 183-219).
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Stanford University. http://virus.
stanford.edu/uda Accessed 16 Oct. 2008.
Marin, Christine. Re: a question about Hispanics & juries in AZ. Email to the
author. 30 Oct. 2008.
Marshall V.H. Melick of Williams, Killed by Mexican; Murderer Wounded and
Is In County Jail Here. The Coconino Sun 6 June 1919: 1+.
No Hay Justicia! Justicia [Phoenix] Abril 27 de 1920: 1+.
North Arizona Wrought Up Over Death Penalty. Tombstone Epitaph 1 Dec.
1919: n. pag.
The Pacific Reporter. 189. St. Paul: West Publishing Co. (1920); 499.
Penalty Paid by Torres for Killing of Officer. Arizona Gazette [Phoenix] 16
Apr. 1920: 1+.
Plea of Insanity Will Probably Be Made in Torez Murder Case. The Coconi-
no Sun 18 July 1919: 1+.
Rosales, F. Arturo. Pobre Raza! Violence, Justice, and Mobilization among
Mxico Lindo Immigrants, 1900-1936. Austin: U of Texas P, 1999.
Schafer, Bill. Arizonas Death Penalty. Phoenix: Attorney General, State of Ari-
zona. n.d.
Sheridan, Thomas E. Arizona: A History. Tucson: The U of Arizona P, 1995.
Shorter, Edward. A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age
of Prozac. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
Simplicio Torres v. State, 21 Ariz., 185, Pac. 360, Supreme Court of Arizona 1919.
Simplicio Torres v. State, 21 Ariz., 188, Pac. 877, Supreme Court of Arizona 1920.
State of Arizona v. Simplicio Torrez. Case No. 542, Superior Court of Coconino
County 1916.
State of Arizona v. Simplicio Torrez. Case No.701, Superior Court of Coconino
County 1918.
State of Arizona v. Simplicio Torrez. Case No. 494, Superior Court of Coconino
County 1919.
Torres Hangs in State Prison at 10 Oclock Today. The Tucson Citizen 16 Apr.
1920: 2.
Torez Sentenced to Death, Still Imprudent. The Coconino Sun. 8 Aug. 1919: 1.
Torez to Hang for the Murder of Vic. E. Melick. The Coconino Sun 25 July
1919: 1.
Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park. Arizona State Parks.
http://www.pr.state.az.us/parks/YUTE/index.html Accessed 30 Oct. 2008.
99
Recovering Spanish-Language Education in
Alta California: Ecologies, Ideologies
and Intertexualities
ROBERT W. TRAIN
SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
Introduction: Zones of Complexity
T
he contact zone of Spanish-language and education is best understood in
post-colonial terms as the ongoing legacy of empire. Drawing on soci-
olinguistic terminology to advance dialectic and historicized approach to
the writing of empire, Mary Louise Pratt defines contact zone as the space
of imperial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and histori-
cally separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing rela-
tions, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and
intractable conflict. (Pratt 8). Language education in California is very much
about how empire has been written beginning with the imperial accounts of lan-
guage and schooling attached to European empire to the English-language focus
of education attached to the American empire.
Reframing the conference theme of Mapping the Contact Zone(s) of Nues-
tra Amrica, this paper attempts to contribute to the mapping cultural, political,
linguistic, and historical (dis)continuities and (dis)connections between individ-
uals and groups of this contact zone. Others (Snchez Mapping 8) have
mapped the current situation of Spanish in the ideologically English-language
speaking United States, particularly in the Southwest border region where Span-
ish has a long history as a print language and in popular media, such as in the-
ater (Kanellos) and newspapers. Spanish in these cultural, textual and sociopo-
litical spaces has survived and even thrived in some contexts within and across
the political and linguistic borders that constitute the United States, despite the
intense pressures and conflicts stemming from monolingual assimilationist ide-
ologies and policies that would fuse American identity to the exclusive use of
English language. The same may be said of Spanish-language education in the
United States, from traditional foreign language programs focusing on Spanish
as a non-native language to Spanish as a minority language programs targeting
bilingual or heritage speakers. However marginalizedas minority, foreign,
bilingual or heritageSpanish-language education has endured despite the
wide-spread neglect, underfunding and even hostility stemming from ideologies
and policies that favor an English-only public and institutional space (see Free-
man; Valds et al.). Yet the place of Spanish in North American schooling has
always been fragile, characterized by its complex and often troubling historical
presence-absence in California before and after 1848. It is this enduring fragili-
ty and tenuous perseverance/persistence that has not been adequately mapped
and that this paper attempts to begin to address.
The complexity of Spanish-language education in California has been
largely reduced, even erased, in a number of ways. Among the factors for this
reduction and erasure, two stand out: the relative material scarcity of documen-
tary evidence from the Spanish and Mexican periods (1769-1848) and the mar-
ginalization of Spanish and Spanish-speakers (entextualized in dominant narra-
tives of contact between Anglo-Americans and Hispanic Americans) that have
been fundamental to the construction of a post-1848 California as part of the
ideologically English-speaking United States.
By way of tentatively reconstituting the complexity of what was, is, might
have been and could be Spanish-language education, this paper will approach
the little known and often troubling heritage of Spanish-language education by
examining the small cluster of extant school texts printed in 1836 and 1843 in
the capital of Mexican California, Monterey. By situating these under-explored
texts with respect to other texts and contexts, it is possible to glimpse into cul-
tures of print and schooling within the complex postcolonial ecologies shaped
by the intersection of imperial/colonial ideologies and intertextualities of reduc-
tion and violence. While constructing a problematic locus of contact between
educated and non-educated speakers of Spanish, the school texts of Alta Cal-
ifornia can be seen as sites of contested possibilities for the emergence of new
postcolonial literate identities on the margins of nation and empire. In conclu-
sion, it is suggested that a critical, post-colonial understanding of these histori-
cal texts and contexts is relevant to current practice and policy surrounding
Spanish-language education in California.
100 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
Recovery and Ecology
Recovering Spanish-language education requires recovering the often trou-
bling complexity of language and education. Two questions surrounding the
recovery of Spanish-language education in Alta California emerge in their
irreducible complexity. How do we go about studying and understanding the
texts and contexts that have constituted and have been constituted in and by edu-
cation in Alta California? What does understanding education in Alta California
have to do with (re)conceptualizing Spanish-language education today?
In an effort to grasp the fluidities and ruptures between languages, speak-
ers and education raised by these questions, it is useful to outline a larger post-
structuralist and post-colonial view of ecological complexity. In poststructural-
ist terms, any claim to know or recover what Spanish-language education really
was in any objective terms will prove inadequate as our knowledge and under-
standing of the past and present is necessarily partial, emergent and contingent,
shaped and reshaped by the interplay of histories, textualities, ideologies and so
forth. Given the limits and contours of recovery, it is my purpose to work toward
an emergent and critical understanding that will address some of the contingen-
cies of Spanish-language education without claiming to neatly position myself
outside or beyond them, despite my sincerest wishes that education past and
present were other than what it appears to have been.
In her discussion of ecological perspectives on language acquisition and
socialization, Kramsch notes that the ecology metaphor is a convenient short-
hand for the poststructuralist realization that learning is a non-linear, relational
human activity, co-constructed between humans and their environment, contin-
gent upon their position in space and history, and a site of struggle for the con-
trol of social power and cultural memory (Kramsch 5). For the purposes of the
present discussion, I will insert the notion of language learning into a broader
ecological view of education, a complex system organized in dynamic politi-
cal, historical, social, cultural, institutional, ideological, textual, and affective
spaces that constitute and are constituted in and by practices and theories of
teaching, learning, curriculum and policy.
The term Spanish-language education involves several layers of defini-
tional complexity. It includes education in Spanish as the medium of instruction
(e.g., content based instruction; bilingual education) focusing on the
learning/teaching of content, such as history or science. It also refers to educa-
tional projectsnot necessarily exclusive of the precedingin which the
Spanish language figures as a pedagogical object and subject of instruction, cur-
riculum and policy attached to institutionalized configurations, such as Spanish-
language departments, and codified language practices (e.g., grammars, lan-
Recovering Spanish-Language Education . . . ! ! ! ! 101
guage textbooks, dictionaries, standards). In fact, the separation of language
from educational content is a dubious proposition. This situation was especial-
ly relevant in early California as throughout most of Europe and the Americas
where formal education, when available, was for most learners reduced almost
entirely to language: reading and writing, in addition to some basic arithmetic.
Even today it has been accurately pointed out that language is the hidden or not
so hidden agenda of schooling (Christie; Schleppegrell). Most importantly, the
notion of language or a language has often come to be conflated with the lit-
erate and standardizing practices on which the language of schooling is based
and which tend to position individuals and groups as educated or non-edu-
cated within larger hierarchies of social inequality surrounding educational
success or failure. This primacy of language, or rather a certain reductive set
of privileged language practices in education and society, is perhaps most
poignantly evidenced by the disproportionate number of English-language
learners who are positioned as failures based on underperformance on stan-
dardized tests in school (Valenzuela). The intersecting medium and object/
subject of Spanish are more accurately portrayed as part of the larger ecology of
education and language(s) in school and society in which multiple, complex
uses of Spanish and other languages can be said to exist in relation to the com-
plexity of human life (e.g., success/failure, not/learning, not/teaching, policy,
politics, ideology, literacy, identity, etc.).
In terms of the postcolonial contact zone mentioned above, Spanish lan-
guage and education in California can be seen as part of a complex linguistic
ecology (Mhlhusler) involving linguistic imperialism (Phillipson) and other
forms of domination by world languages in (post)colonial, (neo)imperial and
minority contexts, such as Spanish in the Americas and increasingly English
across the globe. These world languages can be characterized as standardizing
constructs of language (e.g., the English language) and identity (e.g., non/native
speaker of x language, educated speaker, American) that are typically attached
to educational projects generally developed in national/colonial/imperial centers
of power and diffused within and beyond their nations of origin. Makoni and
Pennycook argue that languages were, in the most literal sense, invented, par-
ticularly as part of the Christian/colonial and nationalistic projects in different
parts of the globe (1). In direct relation with the invention of languages through
social, cultural and political movements, a metadiscursive regime emerged
based on an ideology of languages as separate and enumerable categories
(Makoni and Pennycook 2). These world language forms of Spanish and Eng-
lish, for instance, involve a long-standing ideology of reduction that operates in
complex ways to reduce the diversity of language and speaker identity toward
what can be called an ideological Native Standard Language speaker model,
102 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
where schooling is seen as a way to create speaker identities linked to a domi-
nant standard language (Train, The (Non)Native; Train, Real Spanish;
Train, Getting Past).
Ironically, reduction can be a very complex process, and complexity can
seem strangely reductive. Working with the concepts of ecology and
colonial/imperial contact zone can go far toward beginning to recover the com-
plexity of education in Alta California. But it is also important to temper this
statement by understanding the liminality of this space in the colonial/imperial
projects of the past. From 1769 to 1848, Alta California was the northernmost
frontier of Spanish colonization and Mexican nation with reduced funding for
education and infrastructure (Ortega Soto; Bolton; Weber, New Spains; Weber,
The Spanish). From the 1840s, the California coast was the continental margin
of Manifest Destiny, which its powerful desire to reduce California to English-
speaking, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant identity, culture, and institutions.
(Inter)Textual Reductions and Complexities: Beyond the Bancroft Effect
On another level of complexity, one of the most salient features of education
in Alta California before 1848 is the relatively reduced amount of documentary
evidence, which can be largely but not exclusively found scattered in bits and
pieces in the following interwoven six groups of texts:
1. Six extant school textbooks written by two different teachers (one from
Mexico City and the other from France) and printed in Monterey in 1836
and 1843 (two grammar-based language textbooks of Spanish, three arith-
metic textbooks, and a catechism), all six texts appear to have survived in
unique copies now housed in three major research libraries in the United
States;
2. Several extant texts of religious education (i.e., catechisms and confesion-
arios) composed in several of the major local indigenous languages by
Franciscan missionary linguists (Kelsey; Sen and Beeler);
3. Extant official documents and extant public/private correspondence from
Spanish and Mexican Alta California related to education, 1769-1848 (e.g.,
mission documents, school accounts, letters, speeches, government docu-
ments, legal texts) mostly preserved in various archives collections associ-
ated with (post)colonial and imperial centers of power in Spain, Mexico
and the United States (see Hilton and Gonzlez Casanovas);
4. A handful of autoethnographic accounts of mission life including education
from the perspective of Indians (e.g., Csar; Hass, Raise; Tac, Hewes and
Hewes; see Sandos 212);
5. Autoethnographic narratives of Californios (testimonios) describing life in
California, collected in the 1870s under the direction of Hubert Howe Ban-
croft (e.g., Snchez, Pita and Reyes; Tays; Beebe and Senkewicz, Testimo-
nios; Hjar et al.; Alvarado; Vallejo);
6. Narratives and ethnographies of imperial contact published by American
and European travelers and missionaries to Alta California describing local
customs, including the language and education of Californians (e.g., Tay-
lor; Boscana; Duflot de Mofras).
In fact, these primary sources of understanding language and education in
Alta California, which will be discussed later, have been secondary to the tex-
tual accounts and narratives of contact written by Anglo-Americans who sought
to construct California as a state of the United States by devaluing Spanish as a
language of education, and therefore the identity of Spanish-speakers as edu-
cated persons. This post-1850 double reduction of Spanish-language education
can be located, among other places, in the historiographical accounts of society
in Alta California, including education, by Anglo-American historians (e.g.,
Bancroft, History; Bancroft California; Richman; Hittell; Chapman).
Despite the ample treatment in recent research of the Franciscan mission-
aries education for Indians in California missions (e.g., McGarry; Hackel; Jack-
son; Lightfoot; Weber, Brbaros; Bolton), a very small body of research has
explored Spanish language and education outside the missions during the Span-
ish and Mexican periods (see Sapiens; Blanco Snchez; Valds). The most in-
depth account of education for non-Indians in early California remains a chap-
ter entitled A Futile Fight with Ignorance in Hubert Howe Bancrofts
popularizing history California Pastoral published in 1888. Bancrofts discus-
sion opens with the following characterization of Spanish-language education
and Spanish-speakers before 1850:
Owing to the very exceptional nature of education among the Califor-
nians, it will be necessary, in treating of what little did exist, to enter
somewhat into detail, and adhere strictly to the chronological order of a
few meager facts; for from the earliest settlement of the country until it
became an integral part of the American republic, California had no
well-established system of schools. All of the instruction imparted to
her sons and daughters was due to the spasmodic and short-lived efforts
of rulers, who, on coming into office, deemed it their duty to initiate
reform, and yet lacked the ability and power to overcome the obstacles
which at every step confronted them. These obstacles, we shall find,
were ever alike in kind, although varying in degree, and consisted in the
104 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
chronic depletion of the public treasury, and an inveterate unwillingness
on the part of the people, which was theirs by right of inheritance from
illiterate ancestors, to give to their children an education better than that
which had fallen to their own lot.
In all that pertains to the proper discipline and enlightenment of the
intellect, the Californians, compared even with their brethren in many
of the Mexican states, were deficient. Almost without exception, the
early settlers, men and women of mixed blood, drawn from the humbler
ranks of Spanish colonial society, were unable either to read or to write.
(Bancroft California 493-94)
Bancrofts portrayal is one of a top-down, policy-driven educational system
or dis-systememanating reluctantly from political authorities. While point-
ing out the legitimate issue of limited historical record as a symptom and result
of the limited educational institution, Bancroft seems to confuse the limited
resources and ineffectual public policy statements, which are always politically
oriented and notoriously misleading, with the actually practice and existence of
schooling and literacy, which were probably less spasmodic and more persis-
tent. In fact, evidence from the testimonios points to the often below-the-radar
literacy, often in informal, non-institutional settings such as the home where
some women of educated families passed on literacy practices or in the case of
literate soldiers who instructed other soldiers and their families in the presidios
(see Beebe and Senkewicz, Testimonios). Bancroft rightly points to the serious
lack of educational funding and infrastructure compared to the centers of power
(i.e., Mexico), as well as enormous social inequalities surrounding literacy/illit-
eracy and non/access to schooling. However, these were all issues that were, and
still are, basic to schooling throughout the world, particularly in colonial/post-
colonial contexts. More tellingly, Bancroft offers his late nineteenth-century
judgment, steeped in the racial and neo-imperial ideologies surrounding the
supposed superiority of Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Americans who considered
themselves destined to bring progress and enlightenment to the world. In his
massive History of California, Bancroft also voiced his American version of the
colonial/imperial discourse of the white mans burden and the civilizing mission
by framing education in Alta California under Spanish rule in the first decades
of the nineteenth century in comparison with more developed schooling (in
English) under the U.S. regime:
It would seem that, with here and there a point of resemblance, the
Monterey school, in comparison with even the most primitive back-
woods establishment of the Atlantic states at the same epoch, was a very
rude institution, worthy of no praise but for the fact that human beings
did there learn to read and write. (Bancroft, History 427)
This North American view is grounded in the multi-faceted reduction of
education under Spanish and Mexican rule that is complicated by the limitation
of extant records. The complex relationship between the Californios and their
schooling was reduced to a narrative of deficiency and impoverishment. This his-
torical narrative is based on a set of often trivial and misleading details that serve
to construct the superiority of a North American English-speaking culture, gov-
ernment, and social organization, exemplified by the public educational system.
The Bancroft Effect is not simple. Bancrofts role in the study of education
in early California also adds a level of complexity. On one hand, he deserves
credit for organizing the enormous endeavor of collecting the testimonios and
other documentation. On the other hand, Bancroft constructed a controlling
master narrative, a silencing authoritative account of education in California
before the conquest by the United States. I suggest that some of the lack of
research into education in early California stems from the hegemonic presence
of Bancrofts work, which largely dismissed Spanish and Mexican efforts in
education.
It was not until well into the twentieth century when groundbreaking inter-
disciplinary research (e.g., Padilla; Heidenreich; Snchez, Pita and Reyes;
Snchez, Telling) began to recover and reinterpret the nineteenth-century Cali-
fornio testimonials or testimonios through new critical lenses, as well as the
important publications and translations of these texts in the Bancroft archives
(Beebe and Senkewicz, Lands; Beebe and Senkewicz, Testimonios; Osio, Beebe
and Senkewicz). These culturally historicized and contextually reaccentuated
readings (Padilla 30) have done much to recreate new accounts of identity and
textuality surrounding the Spanish-Mexican period in California. This impres-
sive scholarly work has focused on recovering early California texts as an auto-
biographical genre. Moreover, the scholarship of the last decades have
admirably contested the archival silence, to use Padillas well-turned phrase,
surrounding Bancrofts work and archives, where womens voices were largely
reduced to whispers in Bancrofts work; most remain silenced in the Bancroft
library archives (Padilla 112). Ill suggest that the complexity of education in
the pre-United States California remains silenced and reduced in Bancrofts
work and trapped in the voluminous Bancroft library archives and in a handful
of other libraries that have not been explored for the purposes of better under-
standing education in California.
The thin textual or documentary evidence only serves to amplify the dis-
cursive and ideological connections and contestations between texts. For schol-
106 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
ars, the interpretation of these texts is something of a philological and anthro-
pological endeavor. Bancrofts copyists (like medieval scribes) recorded what
were apparently, and yet necessarily not, the words of the Californios. These
scribes (Thomas Savage, Henry Cerruti, and Vicente Gmez) rendered the oral
written text, not unlike the ethnographer who by entextualizing and publishing
the native narratives is doing a sort of often problematical anthropological
philology (Hymes) in recreating those stories. In some cases, the literate Cali-
fornio elite, like Mariano G. Vallejo and Juan Bautista Alvarado, had more con-
trol over their narratives as they themselves wrote notes which they shared with
each other in some instances, but dictated their narratives to Bancrofts assis-
tants who transcribed them and copied them.
The resulting testimonios are richly complex texts constituted in a dynam-
ic changing context or ecology that should in no way be assumed to simply rep-
resent historical fact. Rather it is useful to think of the testimonios as
autoethnography or autoethnographic expression, defined by Pratt from a
postcolonial perspective: This term in either form refers to instances in which
colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with
the colonizers terms (9). The Californios had to engage with the physical, eco-
nomic and symbolic violence toward Spanish-speakers perpetrated by English-
speaking Americans after 1848 that was real, brutal and devastating (Pitt; Haas).
One way of doing soat least for the elite Californioswas to draw on the
already well established devaluing and marginalization of certain practices of
Spanish. In other words, both the subjugation and the resistance of some Cali-
fornios were in some respects facilitated by the very reductionist ideologies that
formed the Spanish/Mexican imperial/colonial enterprise. For example, one is
confronted with testimonio texts, like the letter written in English by one of the
Californio scions to Bancroft in 1874 describing the customs and social rela-
tions of Californios, native Californians:
Necessarily the langua[ge] which the first settlers brought to the Coun-
try, underwent some changes which the nature of the Country and the
provincialisms which each one brought demanded. It is to be regretted
that they did not keep in its purity the Castilian. They however pre-
served great many memories of old Spain. Many of its curious proverbs
which the Moors had brought into Spain, many of its legends and tradi-
tions and ways. They could learn very little in those days. Schools were
few, books rare, and the pursuits of the people required not a very exten-
sive book learning. When any writing was needed to be drawn, they
could always apply to one of the few who were the depositaries of legal
forms or epistolary ability.
[ . . . ] There are [a] great many families in whose veins circulates much
of the sangre azul of Spain. Once in a while you see some of the native
Californians, like De la Guerra, Pacheco, Vallejo, and others, whose
traits of character, features, and mental gifts prove them the true sons of
that proud nation whose deeds, power and magnificence once gave her
pre-eminence over the powers of the earth. (Seplveda 3-4, 9)
Written some 30 years after the U.S. takeover, Seplveda (re)positions old Cal-
ifornio families as Spanish, the heirs of world Empire, not former Mexican cit-
izens. However, within Seplvedas assumption of a genetic, racial purity of
Spanish blood and Spanish cultural heritage, the supposedly pure
Spanish/Castilian language has been corrupted by Californians. For Seplveda,
linguistic corruption is loosely associated with a lack of education and literacy.
According to this account, real Spanish language and education in Spanish are
located elsewhere, beyond the grasp of most if not all Spanish-speakers in Cal-
ifornia (Train, Real Spanish).
Imperial Colonial/Imperial Pedagogies of Reduction
How did reduction play out in the intertwined spaces of Alta Californias
shifting ecologies? Linguistic reduction was metaphorically and ideologically
fused with colonial/imperial conquest in California, as in the rest of the Ameri-
cas. A 1697 text signed by the Viceroy of Nueva Espaa authorized two Jesuit
missionaries, Salvatierra and Kino, to enter Baja California for the purpose of
reducing the indigenous gentiles to the community of our holy catholic
faith (para la entrada a las provincias de Californias y que puedan reducir a
los gentiles de ellas al gremio de nuestra santa fe catlica), along with the sol-
diers, weapons, and the right to administer justice necessary to carry out the col-
onization project (i.e., la conquista y reduccin de los infieles) in the name of
the King (Martnez 65-66).
After the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Americas in 1767, Franciscan
missionaries were chosen to reduce the indigenous peoples of Alta California.
The 21 missions established by the Franciscan missionaries from San Diego
(1769) to San Francisco Solano/Sonoma (1823) were designed as sites of
reduction of the Indians to civilized ways through missionary education.
Writing to his Viceroy of New Spain in 1770, King Charles III summed up the
imperial reduction project: cathequizarlos [a los indios], y reducirlos mi
R[ea]l vediencia en las 200, 250 leguas de aquel terreno con el methodo de
Missioneros extraordinarios (Carlos III 1). Missionary-military policy of
reducing Indians to the supposedly civilizing space of the mission typically
108 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
limited Spanish-language instruction to Indians for the purpose of conversion,
control and exploitation. The future Bishop of Nuevo Leon, Rafael Jos Verger,
then at the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, provided the Viceroy of
New Spain in 1772 with an outline of the Franciscan method for teaching,
reducing and converting native of California: Por lo q[u]e. debemos consider-
ar los referidos [Indios], como Pupiles, necessitados de Tutores, que cuiden de
los sobre dichos vienes, y personas (Verger 3). Verger highlights the role of
corporal punishment, citing Biblical verses referring to the dangers of spoil-the-
rod-spoil-the-child. In conjunction with his pedagogical method of Spiritual
Conquest, Verger offered a justification for corrective violence toward the mis-
sion Indians of California, who must be taught with a strong hand due to the
lack of civilization on the frontier, unlike the Yndios cibilizados in other parts
of America who according to official policy must not be treated with physical
force and violence by missionaries (Verger 8). Education for the mission Indi-
ans was largely reduced in Vergers account to the use of Spanish (castellano)
by the missionaries to explain the prayers and Christian teachings (y el texto de
la Doctrina Christiana) to the recently or soon-to-be converted Indians (Verger
10). In some cases, the missionaries entextualized this religious instruction in
catechisms (books of religious instruction designed to impart Christian beliefs to
native converts) and confesionarios (confessional aids to guide the Indians
through the 10 Commandments) in one of the usually multiple languages spoken
by the neophytes (converted Indians) at a given mission. In particular, the confe-
sionarios give us textually based glimpses of the magnitude of cultural and per-
sonal reduction and violence inflicted by the friars as they probed and examined
the most detailed intimate behaviors of the Indians in an apparent attempt to root
out sexual sins (Sandos 95-98; Sen and Beeler; Kelsey).
Regardless of the language of instruction, the goal of education in the mis-
sions was oriented largely toward identity: turning Indians into Christian and
imperial subjects. The standard pedagogical text at the center of colonial mis-
sionary activity was Gernimo de Ripaldas Catecismo y exposicin breve de la
doctrina Cristiana:
Pregunta. Decid nio: como os llamais?
Responder su nombre: Pedro, Juan Francisco, &c.
Preg. Sois Christiano?
Resp. S, por la gracia de nuestro Seor Jesu-Christo.
Preg. Qu quiere decir Cristiano?
Resp. Hombre que tiene la F de Christo, que profes en el Bautismo.
(Ripalda 33-34)
The catechistic style was one that was already well known to Europeans as cen-
tral to pedagogical discourse. Since late antiquity, education was based on the
liberal arts curriculum in which grammar was the first of the arts. Fundamental
grammar instruction was constructed around the use of pedagogical reductions
of the language to Donatus-style short question and answers (e.g. How many
parts of speech are there? Eight. What are they? etc.), which the schoolmaster
expected pupils to learn by heart, often under threat of dire physical and/or emo-
tional violence (Chin; Law 65-75).
The colonial/imperial/Christian project required the art and science of
linguistic description and language education given that, in the words of the
Viceroy to Peru in 1736, the art of making Christians is the science of raising
men: el arte de hacer cristianos es la ciencia de criar hombres (Weber, Br-
baros 91-137; Saiz Dez 140; Train, Toward). However, despite the Franciscan
tradition elsewhere of creating schools to teach reading and writing to Indians,
that tradition was never pursued by Franciscan missionaries in Alta California,
resulting in a general neglect of formal education for Indian neophytes (Sandos
95). But the most promising male children who could be useful to the priests
were taught to read and write, in one case two neophytes from the Mission San
Luis Rey were sent to study in Rome (Hass, Raise; Tagliavini).
Language Education for Californios in Monterey
In order to recover the little known cluster of school texts printed in 1836
and 1843 in the capital of Mexican California, Monterey, we must recognize
thatno less than in the missionseducation in this small urban center was
part of a complex imperial/colonial ecology. The missions were established with
military action, emanating from the handful of presidios or forts founded on the
coast for the pacification of the local indigenous peoples: San Diego (1769),
Monterey (1770), San Francisco (1776), Santa Barbara (1786). The imperial
colonization strategy was further advanced by the establishment of several
pueblos or towns for settlement of Christian non-Indians in San Jose (1777),
Los Angeles (1779), and Branciforte (1797). Over the course of colonization,
the presidios effectively became pueblos as soldiers retired and the colonial
population of California grew. While the Indians were reduced to the missions,
the presidios and pueblos constituted another locus of socially differentiated
access to schooling (according to gender, class, race) for the imperial and post-
colonial gente de razn (non-Indians). Although more extensive than what the
Indians received in the missions, the formal education of most of those non-
Indian Californios who had the opportunity to go to school consisted of basic
literacy and numeracy linked to religion and civic participation.
110 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
The basic configuration of public education in California and throughout
the Empire was codified in educational policy in the 1812 Spanish Constitution
for the purposes of creating literate imperial subjects:
De la instruccin pblica. Art. 366. En todos los pueblos de la Monar-
qua se establecern escuelas de primeras letras, en las que se ensear
los nios leer, escribir y contar, y el catecismo de la religin catli-
ca, que comprender tambin una breve exposicin de las obligaciones
civiles. (Constitucion 103)
In their testimonios for Bancrofts history project, two of the most powerful Cal-
ifornios, Juan Bautista Alvarado and Mariano G. Vallejo, confirmed the place of
the Catholic catechism in the curriculum as they shared their experiences as
classmates in la antigua escuela with soldier-teacher Maestro Archuleta in
Monterey sometime between 1815-1820. But these were anything but fond
memories. Alvarado portrayed the negative intellectual effect of el catecismo
de Ripalda que [ . . . ] estaba escrita de tal manera que ofuscaba en vez de des-
pejar las inteligencias (73). Vallejo recounted the connection between the cate-
chistic instructional text with its method of rote learning under pain of pedago-
gic violence: el repaso recordacion [ . . . ] del catecismo de Ripalda era un
suplicio, pues el maestro contaba los puntos falta de memoria y castigaba
cruelmente tan horrendo delito, con la [ . . . ] zurra [ . . . ] el azote (Vallejo
4: 188). In their accounts, both men constructed their school memories to
enhance their postcolonial criollo identities as educated, enlightened citizens
who heroically pursued their education in spite of what Vallejo eloquently called
the la escuela del servilismo in which the young of his generation were infec-
ted with a difficult to cure virus that led them toward becoming the slave-like
subjects of empire on their way to the slave-house of the monarchy (la ergs-
tula de la monarqua): Un cuadro palpitante de lo que era aquella escuela,
reproducir mejor que ningn otro razonamiento todos los horrores de la ense-
anza antigua que no era menos ingrata entonces para los pobre[s] que para los
ricos (Vallejo 4: 181-82).
In fact, the elite of the capital did have a different education than most Cali-
fornios. Alvarado and Vallejo both narrated how then-Governor Pablo Vicente de
Sol took the school boys to his office and explained to them the importance of
education: cuan util importante les era estudiar con toda aplicacion y con sen-
tidas palabras les hizo comprender las ventajas que la instruccion algun dia les
habia de producir (Alvarado 74). The Governor then gave them a selection of
readings that went beyond the reductive literacy instruction grounded in catechism
and Christian doctrine: como mejor medio de instruccion les indic la lectura de
libros de historia; acompa su Excelencia sus consejos con una porcin de gace-
tas del gobierno de Mejico diario que se publicava en aquella capital, varios ejem-
plares de la Constitucin de 1812, algunos decretos de las Cortes espaolas de
1813 y la obra de Cervantes el Don Quijote de la Mancha (Alvarado 75).
During the Mexican period, the political and social elite of the territory,
spared no expense on the educational preparation of their (male) children, some
of whom were sent thousands of miles to be educated in Europe, the United
States or Latin America (Pubols 177; Richman 345-346). In stark contrast to the
elite literate speakers of Spanish educated in the centers of imperial/post-colo-
nial power elsewhere, most Mexican Californians, especially women and Indi-
ans, found themselves marginalized as less-than-educated. However, on an ide-
ological and political level, Spanish-language education, which in the Spanish
imperial ecology had been essentially the vehicle for religious instruction and
Christian civilization against the barbarians (whether Indians, Jews or
Moors), became central to the nation building efforts of the new republican and
democratic Mexico, grounded in a supposed meritocracy and constitutional
order. In Foucaults sense, Spanish language in education was basic to the
emerging governmentality of the modern state, grounded in the idea that there
could be a government of men, and that men could be governed (Foucault 127).
Spanish and its teaching then is inscribed is a far-reaching system of control,
regulation, grounded in technologies of power, all of which serve to govern
the beliefs, practices and identities of all citizens (Train, Todos).
It is in education that modern governmentality, with its tantalizing promise
of inclusion and the reality of exclusion, intersected with the long-standing
imperative of a pure, reduced and standard Spanish/Castilian based on the
usage of educated speakers, whether Spaniards or European-oriented criollos in
Mexico, as the language of national unity (see Heath 44-79). An official circu-
lar of the Mexican government in 1835 called for the establishment of an Aca-
demia de la lengua in Mexico City in order to restituir toda la pureza y explen-
dor la lengua que heredamos de nuestros mayores, y que es por consiguiente
la nuestra and to contain the supposed linguistic decline among Mexicans, due
in part to la falta de principios en la mayor parte de los que la hablan y escri-
ben. (Dubln et al. 3: 35). In this display of post-colonial Europe envy, the
Spanish languagethe supposed real and correct language of educated speakers
was situated elsewhere, in Spain, beyond the grasp of most Mexicans.
Formal schooling in Mexican Alta California, although typically in Spanish,
was limited in scope, quality, and distribution. Given the scant institutional infra-
structure, schooling was not widely available, particularly outside of the mis-
sion-presidio-pueblo settlements, and was largelybut by no means exclusive-
lya gendered activity that white males participated in more than women or
112 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
Indians (see Snchez 188-227). Education was viewed primarily in terms of lit-
eracy in Spanish in the context of Catholic religious instruction provided by the
clergy. However, the presidios also formed an important site of literacy, as one
observer noted in 1834, since some of the officers had been educated elsewhere
or learned from contact with the old Spanish officers and the merchants and oth-
ers who came on ships (quoted in Beebe and Senkewicz, Lands 447-448). The
same 1834 commentator remarked that in the interior settlements there were
very few people who could be said to write and figure and, even with the arrival
of well-educated families from Spain or Mexico, the women learned even less,
because they had been convinced that book-learning was bad for girls; they
could barely read, let alone write (quoted in Beebe and Senkewicz, Lands 447-
448). In the same year, the California Governor Figueroa reported to the federal
government in Mexico City that there were only three elementary schools for
boys in the California territory (in Monterey, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara),
and they were poorly funded and staffed with incompetent teachers. He added
that there were no schools for girls in the territory, and no attempt had ever been
made to provide a good education for them (Hutchinson 322-23).
Nation-building politics and educational policy in Mexico involved the lib-
eral project of secularization which called for the organization of a secular pub-
lic education. On the one hand, secularization spelled the end of the oppressive
mission regime of reduction in California, on the grounds that the missions were
not sufficiently successful in converting their Indians into Christian, Spanish-
speaking farmers able to hold the land for Spain (Hutchinson viii). On the other
hand, this new national, secular public instruction had the democratic goal of
expanding social access to education coupled with the utilitarian objective of
reducing education to, in the words of vice president Gmez Faras to the Mex-
ican Congress in 1833, generalizing among the people the knowledge they
need in the various professions and employments in which they are engaged,
rather than to showing off a useless erudition not suitable for a new-born soci-
ety (cited in Hutchinson 193).
Twenty-two teachers, as part of a group of educated and professional
colonists sent from Mexico City, arrived in California in 1834 charged with set-
ting up schools in conjunction with the secularization of the missions. One of
these teachers, Jos Mariano Romero, established a Normal School in Monterey
to train elementary school teachers. On the only printing press operating in Cal-
ifornia at that time, the school master Romero produced in 1836 what was prob-
ably the first school book printed in California, a tiny compilation of basic arith-
metic (Tablas para los nios que empiezan a contar). Later the same year,
Romero also published a short treatise on orthoepy or ortologa (el arte que
ensea a pronunciar bien las letras) dedicated to his Normal School students,
probably the first and possibly the only textbook treatment of the Spanish lan-
guage published in Mexican California for teachers (Romero). This work was
modeled on the canonical Donatus-style question/answer format (Pregunta. En
cuantas partes se divide la Ortologia? Respuesta. En dos.) and reveals the
unequal and segmented state of formal schooling that, when available, was
largely reduced to rudimentary levels for most Californians.
In 1843, after a gap of 7 years, we find another extant group of school
books published in California. As in 1836, the set includes a pairing of a lan-
guage text and a basic arithmetic book, with the addition of a higher level arith-
metic text, Definicion de las principales operaciones de arismetica, and a poor-
ly printed copy of the standard Ripalda catechism, El testo de la doctrina
[cristiana]. The 1843 language textbook is a Compendio de la gramatica caste-
llana. While it is a more extensive work than the 1836 Catecismo de ortologa,
it is squarely in the compendium genre, which reduces a larger grammar into a
condensed normative text for learners. As does the 1836 text, the Compendio
follows the essential catechistic formula: P[regunta]. Que es Gramatica?
R[espuesta]. El arte de hablar rectamente y con propiedad (Compendio 3).
This cluster of school texts in California published in 1843, like those print-
ed in 1836, corresponds to the letter of official postcolonial Mexican educa-
tional and linguistic policy. In an 1842 government decree, President Santa
Anna reaffirmed the centrality of primary education as a basis for citizenship
and social inclusion in the Mexican state (el que ignora su propio idioma, tiene
de hecho suspensos los derechos apreciables de ciudadana) and restated the
basic curriculum: . . . se ensear leer y escribir, las cuatro primeras reglas
de la aritmtica y la doctrina cristiana, sin perjuicio de ampliar los conocimien-
tos hasta donde fuere posible (Dubln et al. 4: 310-12 ). All four of the 1843
Monterey school texts were printed on the same and only press as in 1836, and
they were all probably compiled by the primary school teacher currently teach-
ing in Monterey. The 1843 teacher-writer-printer in question was one Henri
(Enrique) Cambuston, an immigrant from France who had lived in metropolitan
Mexico before coming to California in the early 1840s. One of the longest serv-
ing teachers in Monterey, he taught from August 1840 to January 1846, at which
time he was removed from his teaching post, like Romero, after disagreeing
with the local political authorities (Bancroft, California 496). Like Romero,
Cambuston was probably also involved in teacher education, as there is a record
of his 1842 request for money to purchase medals to award to the students of
the Escuela normal in Monterey (Departmental State). In the firing letter writ-
ten by the Prefect Manuel Castro in 1846, Cambuston is repeatedly referred to as
the estrangero (Castro 284-303), a troubling comment on the ideological dis-
placement of educated persons and educators to a location outside California.
114 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
Conclusion
The texts examined in this chapter offer insights into the construction of
language and education in the complex postcolonial ecologies shaped by the
intersection of imperial/colonial ideologies and intertextualities of reduction
and violence. While constructing a problematic locus of contact between edu-
cated and non-educated speakers of Spanish, these school texts can be seen as
a site of contested possibilities for the emergence of new postcolonial literate
identities on the margins of nation and empire. I will conclude this chapter by
suggesting that a critical understanding of these historical texts and contexts is
relevant to current practice and policy surrounding Spanish-language education
in California. I will suggest that educator-scholars work toward moving beyond
ideologies of reduction and violence upon which languages, Spanish as much as
English, have been invented. I will also suggest that language education would
benefit from a critical decolonial, post-colonial, even post-postcolonial engage-
ment with the ongoing colonial, imperial and national legacies in an effort to
reconstitute Spanish and English in language education (see Makoni and Pen-
nycook 2007) to arrive at a sort of decolonial third space (Prez 1999). In work-
ing toward a reconstituted idea of language, we might well consider, as Cana-
garajah has suggested, a language ecology model that offers an alternative
approach to traditional approaches to language in education policy in the con-
text of the pervasive tensions in postcolonial communities facing the chal-
lenges posed by globalization (198). Rethinking language in education in terms
of complex ecologies points toward validating and fostering the emergence of
complex intercultural spaces for bilingual communicative practice (Gumperz
and Cook-Gumperz), as well as developing and valuing translingual and tran-
scultural competence as an educational goal (MLA).
Works Cited
Alvarado, Juan Bautista. Historia de California. 1876. MS. Bancroft Lib., Berkeley.
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. California Pastoral. 1769-1848. San Francisco: The
History Company, 1888. Print.
______. History of California. Vol II. 1801-1824. San Francisco: The History
Company, 1886. Print.
Beebe, Rose Marie, and Robert M. Senkewicz, eds. Lands of Promise and
Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535-1846. Santa Clara: Santa
Clara U; Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2001. Print.
______, eds. Testimonios: Early California through the Eyes of Women, 1815-
1848. Berkeley: Heyday Books; Berkeley: Bancroft Library, U of Califor-
nia, 2006. Print.
Blanco Snchez, Antonio. La Lengua espaola en la historia de California.
Contribucin a su estudio. Madrid: Cultura hispnica, 1971. Print.
Bolton, Herbert E. The Mission as a Frontier Institution in the Spanish-
American Colonies. The American Historical Review 23.1 (1917): 42-61.
Print.
Boscana, Gernimo. Chinigchinich: A Revised and Annotated Version of Alfred
Robinsons Translation of Father Gernimo Boscanas Historical Account
of the Belief, Usages, Customs, and Extravagancies of the Indians of This
Mission of San Juan Capistrano Called the Acagchemem Tribe. Banning,
CA: Malki Museum P, Morongo Indian Reservation, 1978. Print.
Compendio de la gramtica castellana. Monterey, CA, 1843. Print.
Canagarajah, A. Suresh. Accommodating Tensions in Language-in-Education
Policies: An Afterword. Decolonisation, Globalisation: Language-in-Edu-
cation, Policy and Practice. Eds. Angel M. Y. Lin and Peter W. Martin.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2005. 194-201. Print.
Carlos III. Cdula of King to Viceroy of New Spain. 1770. TS. Documents relating
to Missions of the Californias: Papeles del Padre Fischer. Bancroft Lib., Ber-
keley.
Castro, Manuel de Jess. Documentos para la historia de California. 1828-
1875. MS. Bancroft Lib., Berkeley.
Csar, Julio. Cosas de indios de California. 1878. MS. Bancroft Lib., Berkeley.
Chapman, Charles Edward. A History of California: The Spanish Period. New
York: Macmillan Company, 1925. Print.
Chin, Catherine M. Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World.
Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008. Print.
Christie, Francis. Language and Schooling. Language, Schooling, and Soci-
ety. Ed. Stephen Tchudi. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook Publishers,
1985. 21-40. Print.
Constitucin poltica de la monarqua espaola: promulgada en Cadiz 19 de
marzo de 1812. Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1820.
Departmental State Papers: Benicia. Commissary and Treasurery. 1876-1877.
MS. Bancroft Lib., Berkeley.
Dubln, Manuel, et al. Legislacin mexicana. Mxico, D.F.: Imprenta del
Comercio, 1876. Reprint: Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nacin El Cole-
gio de Mxico Escuela Libre de Derecho Toluca, Mxico Tribunal Superior
de Justicia del Estado de Mxico, 2004. Print.
116 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
Duflot de Mofras, Eugne Exploration du Territoire de lOrgon, des Califor-
nies et de la Mer Vermeille, excute pendant les annes 1840, 1841 et
1842. Paris: A. Bertrand, 1844. Print.
Foucault, Michel. Scurit, territoire, population. Cours au Collge de France
(1977-1978). Paris: Editions Hautes Etudes/Gallimard/Seuil, 2004. Print.
Freeman, Rebecca D. Dual-Language Planning at Oyster Bilingual School:
Its Much More Than Language. TESOL Quarterly 30.3 (1996): 557-82.
Print.
Gumperz , John J., and Jenny Cook-Gumperz. Language Standardization and
the Complexities of Communicative Practice. Complexities: Beyond
Nature and Nurture. Eds. Susan McKinnon, and Sydel Silverman. Chica-
go: U of Chicago P, 2005. 268-88. Print.
Haas, Lisbeth. Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936.
Berkeley: U of California P, 1995. Print.
______. Raise Your Sword and I Will Eat You: Luiseo Scholar Pablo Tac,
ca. 1841. Alta California: Peoples in Motion, Identities in Formation,
1769-1850. Ed. Steven W. Hackel. Berkeley, CA: U of California P; San
Marino, CA: Huntington Lib., 2010. 79-110. Print.
Hackel, Steven W. Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-
Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850. Chapel Hill: U of
North Carolina P, 2005. Print.
Heath, Shirley Brice. Telling Tongues; Language Policy in Mexico, Colony to
Nation. New York: Teachers College P, 1972. Print.
Heidenreich, Linda. This Land Was Mexican Once: Histories of Resistance
from Northern California. Austin: U of Texas P, 2007. Print.
Hjar, Carlos N., et al. Three Memoirs of Mexican California. Berkeley: Friends
of the Bancroft Library U of California at Berkeley, 1988. Print.
Hilton, Sylvia L., and Ignacio Gonzlez Casanovas. Fuentes manuscritas para
la historia de Iberoamrica: Gua de instrumentos de investigacin.
Madrid: MAPFRE, 1995. Print.
Hittell, Theodore. History of California. 4 vols. San Francisco: Occidental Pub-
lishing Co., 1885. Print.
Hutchinson, C. Alan. Frontier Settlement in Mexican California: The Hjar-
Padrs Colony and its Origins, 1769-1835. New Haven: Yale UP, 1969. Print.
Hymes, Dell H. In Vain I Tried to Tell You: Essays in Native American
Ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1981. Print.
Jackson, Robert H. From Savages to Subjects: Missions in the History of the
American Southwest. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000. Print.
Kanellos, Nicols. Mexican American Theatre: Then and Now. Houston: Arte
Pblico P/Revista Chicano-Riquea, 1989. Print.
Kelsey, Harry. The Doctrina and Confesionario of Juan Corts. Altadena, CA:
Howling Coyote P, 1979. Print.
Kramsch, Claire. Introduction: How Can We Tell the Dancer from the Dance?
Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological Perspec-
tives. Ed. Claire Kramsch. New York: Continuum, 2002. 1-30. Print.
Law, Vivien. The History of Linguistics in Europe from Plato to 1600. New
York: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.
Lightfoot, Kent G. Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colo-
nial Encounters on the California Frontiers. Berkeley: U of California P,
2005. Print.
Makoni, Sinfree, and Alastair Pennycook. Disinventing and Reconstituting
Languages. Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Eds. Sinfree
Makoni, and Alastair Pennycook. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2007. 1-
41. Print.
Martnez, Pablo L. Leccines de historia de Baja California: Dedicadas a la
Niez de la Pennsula. Mxico, D.F.: Editorial Baja California, 1958. Print.
McGarry, Daniel D. Educational Methods of the Franciscans in Spanish Cali-
fornia. The Americas 6.2 (1950): 335-58. Print.
MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages. Foreign Languages and High-
er Education: New Structures for a Changed World. New York: Modern
Language Association, 2007. Print.
Mhlhusler, Peter. Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Impe-
rialism in the Pacific Region. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print.
Ortega Soto, Martha Alta California: Una frontera olvidada del noroeste de
Mxico, 1769-1846. Mexico: Plaza y Valdes 2001. Print.
Osio, Antonio Mara, Rose Marie Beebe, and Robert M. Senkewicz. The Histo-
ry of Alta California: A Memoir of Mexican California. Madison: U of Wis-
consin P, 1996. Print.
Padilla, Genaro M. My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American
Autobiography. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1993. Print.
Prez, Emma. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. Print.
Phillipson, Robert. Linguistic Imperialism. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.
Pitt, Leonard. The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-
Speaking Californians, 1846-1890. Berkeley: U of California P, 1966.
Print.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 2nd ed.
New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.
118 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
Pubols, Louise. The Father of All: The De La Guerra Family, Power, and Patri-
archy in Mexican California. Berkeley: U of California P; Huntington Lib.,
San Marino, CA, 2009. Print.
Richman, Irving Berdine. California under Spain and Mexico, 1535-1847. New
York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1965. Print.
Ripalda, Geronimo de. Catecismo y Exposicion breve de la Doctrina Christia-
na. Puebla de Los Angeles, Mexico: Pedro de la Rosa, 1784. Print.
Romero, Jos Mariano Catecismo De Ortologia : Dedicado los alumnos de
la Escuela Normal de Monterrey por su director Jos Mariano Romero.
Monterrey, CA: C. Agust. V. Zamorano, 1836. Print.
Saiz Dez, Flix. Los Colegios de Propaganda Fide en Hispanoamrica.
Madrid: Raycar, 1969. Print.
Snchez, Rosaura. Mapping the Spanish Language Along a Multiethnic and
Multilingual Border. The Latino Studies Reader: Culture, Economy, and
Society. Eds. Antonia Darder, and Rodolfo D. Torres. Malden, MA: Black-
well, 1998. 101-25. Print.
______. Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios. Minneapolis, MN: U of
Minnesota P, 1995. Print.
Snchez, Rosaura, Beatrice Pita, and Brbara Reyes, eds. Nineteenth Century
Californio Testimonials. La Jolla, CA: UCSD Ethnic Studies/Third World
Studies, 1994. Print.
Sandos, James A. Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Mis-
sions. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004. Print.
Sapiens, Alexander. Spanish in California: A Historical Perspective. Journal
of Communication 29 (1979): 72-82. Print.
Schleppegrell, Mary J. The Language of Schooling: A Functional Linguistics
Perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. Print.
Sen, Jos Francisco de Paula, and Madison Scott Beeler. The Ventureo Con-
fesionario of Jos Sen, O.F.M. Berkeley: U of California P, 1967. Print.
Seplveda, Ignacio. Letter to Hubert H. Bancroft. 1874. MS. Bancroft Lib.,
Berkeley.
Tac, Pablo, Minna Hewes, and Gordon Hewes. Indian Life and Customs at
Mission San Luis Rey. The Americas 9.1 (1952): 87-106. Print.
Tagliavini, Carlo. Levangelizzazione e i costumi degli indi luiseos secondo la
narrazione di un chierico indigeno. XXIII International Congress of American-
ists. Lancaster, PA: The Science Press Printing Company, 1930. 633-48. Print.
Taylor, Bayard. Eldorado: Adventures in the Path of Empire. Santa Clara, CA:
Santa Clara U; Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2000. Print.
Tays, George. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Sonoma: A Biography and a His-
tory. California Historical Society Quarterly 16.2 (1937): 99-121. Print.
Train, Robert W. Reducing Spanish on the Margins of Empire: A Historical
Perspective on Ideologies and Ecologies of Language in Sonoma County,
California. Spanish of the Southwest: A Language in Transition. Eds.
Susana Rivera-Mills, and Daniel Villa. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/
Vervuert, 2010. 353-72. Print.
______. Todos los peregrinos de nuestra lengua: Ideologies and Accounts of
Spanish-as-a-(Foreign) Language. Espaol en Estados Unidos y otros con-
textos de contacto: Sociolingstica, ideologa y pedagoga. Eds. Manel
Lacorte and Jennifer Leeman. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana, 2009.
191-207. Print
______. Toward a Natural History of the Native (Standard) Speaker. The Native
Speaker Concept: Ethnographic Investigations of Native Speaker Effects. Ed.
Neriko Musha Doerr. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. 47-78. Print.
______. Real Spanish: Historical Perspectives on the Ideological Construc-
tion of a (Foreign) Language. Critical inquiry in language studies 4.2-3
(2007): 207-35. Print.
______. The (Non)Native Standard Language in Foreign Language Educa-
tion: A Critical Perspective. The Sociolinguistics of Foreign Language
Classrooms: Contributions of the Native, the near-Native and the Non-
Native Speaker. Ed. Carl Blyth. Boston, MA: Heinle, 2003. 3-39. Print.
______. Getting Past the Ideology of the Language: The Standardization of
French and Spanish, and its Implications in Foreign-Language Pedagogy.
Diss. U of California, Berkeley, 2000. Print.
Valds, Guadalupe. The Spanish Language in California. Developing Minor-
ity Language Resources: The Case of Spanish in California. Eds. Valds,
Guadalupe, et al. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006. 24-53. Print.
Valds, Guadalupe, et al. Developing Minority Language Resources: The Case
of Spanish in California. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2006. Print.
Valenzuela, Angela, ed. Leaving Children Behind: How Texas-Style Account-
ability Fails Latino Youth. Albany: State U of New York P, 2005. Print.
Vallejo, Mariano Guadalupe. Recuerdos histricos y personales tocantes a la
Alta California, 1769-1849. MS. 1875. Bancroft Lib., Berkeley.
Verger, Rafael Jos. Primer informe, Methodo nuebo de Mission[e]s. para
Govierno Espiritual, y temporal. 1772. TS. Documents Relating to Mis-
sions of the Californias: Papeles del Padre Fischer. Bancroft Lib., Berkeley.
Weber, David J. Brbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlight-
enment. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005. Print.
______, ed. New Spains Far Northern Frontier : Essays on Spain in the Amer-
ican West, 1540-1821. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1979. Print.
______. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. Print.
120 ! !!!!!!!!! Robert W. Train
Part III
Postcoloniality in Autobiography
123
Autobiographical Politics in the Contact Zone
Miguel Antonio Oteros My Life on the Frontier
ERIN MURRAH-MANDRIL
THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO
T
he United States was founded as a contact zone with the means and desire
for expansion built into its very constitution through article IVs instruc-
tions for incorporating new states into the union. And, for the next centu-
ry, the politics of contact in the United States were largely the politics of west-
ward expansion. Ironically, it was the supposed end of this expansion that
inspired the most influential analysis of the frontiers significance for both his-
torians and the greater U.S. population. Frederic Jackson Turners Frontier The-
sis, delivered at the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair, narrates the movement of the
U.S. frontier as a zone of contact between civilization and savagery in which
U.S. democracy and industry is revitalized by this interaction. According to
Turner, The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the
advance of American settlement westward explain American development
(59). His exposition clearly positions Western European U.S. immigrants as the
triumphant heroes of America whose adaptability and innovation transform the
zone of contact into a democratic civilization. Anyone on the western side of
this zone is cast as an obstacleas antagonists that frontiersmen must overcome
in the triumph of progress over wilderness. In Turners epic history, Each [suc-
cessive frontier] was won by a series of Indian wars (65). And, while Indians
are opponents of civilization in Turners history, mexicanos exist entirely under
erasure as do Asians, most African-Americans and women of all ethnicities.
Historians of the U.S. West since Turner have worked to move beyond the
Frontier Thesis, but Turners interpretation of U.S. western history has remained
central in U.S. conceptualizations of the West. Henry Nash Smiths Virgin Land
(1950) and Richard Slotkins, Gunfighter Nation (1998) have reexamined the
frontier as a type of myth in U.S. historical imagination by looking at underly-
ing metaphors in representations of the West, but the metaphors they analyze are
those codified by Turners thesis. Patricia Nelson Limericks The Legacy of
Conquest (1987), which analyzes the West as a place rather than a process
did much to combat the dominance of Turners Thesis in historical conceptual-
izations of the U.S. West, yet the fact that it argues so fervently against Turner-
arian ideas indicates the persistence of Turners myth almost one hundred years
after it was presented at the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair (26). Even Turners own
attempt to revise the ideas in his original thesis had little affect on its prevailing
influence in both academic and popular culture alike.
The conceptual framework of the Frontier Thesis has been even more
durable in the political rhetoric of U.S. history which maintains much of the
original form of the thesis, though perhaps not self consciously. From Roosevelt
to Reagan the West was a celebratory space of the triumph of U.S. progress.
Indeed, even President Barack Obamas description of western expansion is
strikingly similar to Turners when, in his 2006 political autobiography, The
Audacity of Hope, Obama writes, Our passage from an agricultural to an indus-
trialized society was eased by the sheer size of the continent, vast tracts of land
and abundant resources that allowed new immigrants to continually remake
themselves (67). Yet one nineteenth-century politiciana contemporary of
Turnerused his own political autobiography to undermine the dominant con-
cept of a westward-moving frontier that transformed savagery into civilization.
New Mexico Governor and long-time politician, Miguel Antonio Otero, refuted
the most dominant U.S. interpretation of the frontier, not by disputing the dual-
ism of savagery and civilization that its ideology entails, but by reconstituting
the politics of conquest in the Southwestern U.S. and redrawing the lines of
civility and wildness in turn-of-the-century New Mexico. As a politician, Otero
could not openly refute the U.S. ideology of Western expansion, yet as a
nuevomexicano he could not pretend that the West was a realm of undefined sav-
agery before the 1848 U.S. conquest of northern Mexico.
Miguel Antonio Otero begins his three-volume autobiography with his
childhood journey west on the Kansas-Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa
F Railroad. Through these scenes, Otero aligns himself with U.S. frontiersmen,
though he is in fact returning to his family home in New Mexico rather than
lighting out for the West. Juan Bruce-Novoa asserts that through this opening
move Otero wrote himself into the westward-expanding frontier by fusing his
origin with the railroad, the epitome of nineteenth-century progress (112).
Bruce-Novoa concludes that Oteros descent into the liminality of the U.S. west-
124 ! !!!!!!!! Erin Murrah-Mandril
ern frontier is part of a process joining the foreign, Spanish community of
New Mexico to U.S. industrial centers by squeezing out the uncivilized space
between them, the zone of Indian wildness that threatens both New Mexico
territory and U.S. states. While Bruce-Novoa rightly places Otero at the center
of U.S. empire building, his conclusion fails to acknowledge the central position
that Otero gives New Mexico in his autobiographical depiction of taming the
Wild West. Throughout the text, Otero manipulates tropes of U.S. expansionism
not to pay homage to U.S. frontiersmen nor even to join them as equals, but to
usurp their role as the modern colonizers of North Americato draw from their
well of ideological power at the same time that he works to supplant their polit-
ical power.
Miguel Antonio Otero is noted for being the first Nuevomexicano governor
of the New Mexico territory under U.S. rule. Though he was born in Missouri
during his fathers business travels, Otero was descended from a long line of
New Mexico politicians. His grandfather, Don Vicente Otero, was a Spanish
alcalde who settled in the region prior to 1800, and his father, Miguel Antonio
Otero I, was appointed Attorney General of the U.S. New Mexico territory and
was later elected as a Democratic Delegate to the U.S. Congress. Miguel Anto-
nio Otero II (who also named his son Miguel Antonio Otero) began working
with the Republican Party as a young man when he witnessed the corruption of
entrenched political rings in New Mexico. In 1892, he was elected as a delegate
for the Republican National Convention. At the convention, Otero met William
McKinley who in 1897 appointed him governor of the New Mexico territory.
Otero remained governor for nine years and his major political focus during this
time was the territorys battle for statehood. After a short break from politics,
Otero was appointed U.S. Marshal of the Panama Canal from 1917-1921, and
over a decade later he began publishing his autobiography.
Oteros autobiographical form and focus do not coincide with other Mexican-
American texts produced in the same period, and it has consequently been over-
looked at times. Otero wrote against the grain of Southwestern nostalgia pro-
duced by texts like Charles Loomiss Land of Poco Tiempo and utilized by
nuevomexicana/o writers to contest Anglo dominance.
1
Indeed, Oteros autobi-
ography and his political actions place little emphasis on preserving or record-
ing nuevomexicano culture and folk practice; nor does it parallel the multi-
generic, non-linear structure that characterizes numerous other nuevomexicano
autobiographies.
2
It is thus difficult to group Otero with proto Chicana/o authors
like Rafael and Eusebio Chacn, Nina Otero Warren, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca
and others, particularly in light of some of his political actions. For example,
Otero was in favor of English-only education throughout the territory and his
economic policy generally was most beneficial to elite, landed nuevomexicanos
Autobiographical Politics in the Contact Zone . . . ! ! ! ! 125
and their Anglo allies, rather then the increasingly impoverished nuevomexicano
population. Nonetheless, Oteros autobiography is contestatory within the con-
text of U.S. national politics wherein the federal government controlled New
Mexico policies, finances and political offices. The federal governments
administration of New Mexico was responsible in large part for the systematic
disenfranchisement of nuevomexicanos at all socioeconomic levels. Otero
reworks dominant Anglo tropes of the periodnot the romantic Spanish south-
west of folklore and local color, but the adventuresome myth of the Wild
Westto contest political corruption and domination. In this way, Oteros
attack on misrepresentation is two-fold. He attacks both the political misrepre-
sentation caused by corrupt, federally appointed politicians and the literary mis-
representation of New Mexico as backward, pre-modern, and lawless.
Otero wrote his autobiography near the end of his life, titling the first two
volumes My Life on the Frontier (1935 and 1939) and the third volume My Nine
Years as Governor of the Territory of New Mexico (1940). In these books, Otero
defends his political choices and chastises his rivals, though his fiercest politi-
cal enemy, Thomas Catron, had been dead for over a decade by the time volume
one was published, and Otero had long since retired from politics. The three-
volume autobiography, like Oteros political speeches and reports, positions elite
Nuevomexicanos as the driving force in bringing technological and economic
advancement to the region in the form of railroads, telephone service, and finan-
cial institutions while depicting the territorys struggle for self-determination via
statehood. Throughout the narrative Otero positions New Mexicans as modern-
izing frontiersmen with himself as their Western Hero.
Between volumes one and two of My Life on the Frontier, Otero also man-
aged to sandwich his highly political biography of Billy the Kid, which was
later recovered by John-Michael Rivera. Riveras introduction to the 1998
republication of The Real Billy The Kid With New Light on the Lincoln County
War, explains how Otero emplots Billys story as tragedy in a move to contest
dominant Anglo representations that depict Billy and the Nuevomexicanos he
sided with as villains. Oteros text especially works to combat Pat Garetts biog-
raphy, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, which Otero calls unadulterated rot
(73). According to Rivera, Oteros biography attempts to rewrite the discours-
es that had construed nuevomexicanos in the public imagination as semicivi-
lized citizens [and] historicize that important period surrounding Billy the Kids
death (Rivera Miguel 55). Additionally, Oteros history works within the
larger discourse of U.S. Manifest Destiny to combat the claim that Anglos had
tamed the West through their eradication of figures like the Kid. In this context,
Rivera argues, Oteros biography renders nuevomexicano bourgeois men
[rather than Anglos . . . ] as the direct civilizers of the new New Mexico at the
turn of the century (Miguel 55). Yet, while the biography addresses U.S. expan-
sion indirectly through the metaphoric rendering of Billys body as Hispano
as El BillitoOteros autobiography directly and repeatedly contests U.S. ter-
ritorial domination and the political disenfranchisement of Nuevomexicanos.
And, whereas his Billy the Kid biography emplots the tragedy of an Anglo hero,
Oteros autobiography emplots the romantic comedy of Oteros rise to power
and his political reform of New Mexico.
In Metahistory Hayden White explicates four types of historical emplotment
Romance, Satire, Comedy, and Tragedythat may be combined in a number
of ways. The deep structure of a history manifests itself as either Satiric or
Romantic emplotment. Satire depicts the irony of a human consciousness that is
incapable of comprehending the world whereas Romantic emplotment is a
drama of self-identification symbolized by the heros transcendence of the
world of experience, his victory over it. It is [ . . . ] a drama of the triumph of
good over evil, virtue over vice (8-10). The other two forms of emplotment,
Comedy and Tragedy, work in conjunction with Satire and Romance, to orga-
nize localized trends in history. Nearly all U.S. politicians including Otero uti-
lize a Romantic structure because it inspires confidence and helps ensure votes
or political appointments. It is thus the choice of Comic or Tragic emplotment
that reveals a politicians ideological alignment. Important to Oteros emplot-
ment of Billy the Kid is the fact that in Tragedy the fall of the protagonist and
the shaking of the world he inhabits are not regarded as totally threatening to
those who survive the agonistic test. There [is] a gain in consciousness for the
spectators of the event (9). Within Billy the Kids biography, Otero is the sur-
viving spectator and recorder of events who shares the lessons of Billys life
with his audience. To make sense of the biography, though, it should be insert-
ed back into Oteros autobiography, the drama of self-identification to recall
Whites phrase, for which it exists essentially as a footnote.
Otero originally published an account of Billy the Kid in the first volume
of My Life on the Frontier where the Kid is only one of numerous Wild West-
erners who move in and out of Oteros story. This volume is, in fact, a
picaresque narrative of Oteros adventures growing up in the Wild West where
he meets famous figures like Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, and Billy the Kid.
These adventures help set the stage for Oteros political ascendancy in the later
two volumes. Volume one begins with Oteros journey west through the termi-
nal towns of the developing railroads and closes with the death of his father,
Miguel Otero Sr., and the symbolic end of his carefree youth. Bruce-Novoa
explains Oteros proleptic railroad opening, writing:
In contrast to the orderly, systematic design his textualized life assumes
within the completed autobiographical project, Otero characterizes his
youthful frontier wandering as nomadizing, linking it to the primitive
and wild. Yet, by closing the paragraph with a reference to the end of a
national period, he implies that his youthful nomadizing culminated in
his and the frontiers mutual reincorporation into orderly society when
the frontier disappeared. (113)
The analysis is again insightful, but it conceals the agency that Otero exerted
throughout his text and his life to actively create a specific kind of order for
Nuevomexicano society, one in which Otero and his political allies are credited
with modernizing the territory and extending the sovereignty of statehood to all
New Mexicans. In the autobiography it is Otero himself who brings an end to
the frontier of the Old West, reincorporating it into orderly society by draw-
ing on the lessons he learns during his childhood encounters. Throughout this
drama of self-identification Otero subsumes the rugged individualistic identi-
ties of the Wild Western figures he encounters, incorporating their characteris-
tics into his own powerful political persona. I found myself thrown altogether
upon my own resources Otero writes on the last page of volume one of My Life,
but I soon learned that in this life one must depend largely on oneself, and I
was not long in learning my lesson, for I had gained a wonderful experience for
one so young by my association with men who were much older than myself
and I meant to use the knowledge thus acquired judiciously, fearlessly and hon-
estly (288). Even as he acknowledges the Old Westerners of his childhood trav-
els, Otero erases them. Their resources become his resources; their knowledge
becomes his self-reliance.
It is precisely the de-politicized naivet of childhood in Oteros first auto-
biography that permits this intriguing political reversal of the western contact
zone as it is normally imagined in U.S. western historiography. Through the
lens of nostalgia, Otero eulogizes the passing of the Old West in the same way
that nineteenth-century Anglo authors eulogized the disappearance of Native
Americans. Renato Rosaldo calls this process Imperalist Nostalgia explain-
ing, [n]ostalgia is a particularly appropriate emotion to evoke in attempting to
establish ones innocence and at the same time talk about what one has
destroyed (70). Generally the rhetoric of imperialist nostalgia works to absolve
the empire of its historically violent tactics of removal and extermination, and
shift the onus of native disappearance onto native peoples or nature itself.
Richard Slotkin adds to this discussion of empire through his concept of regen-
eration through violence where Indians first teach the Anglo how to survive in
the wilderness of the western frontier and then, as Rosaldo summarizes, the
disciple turns on his spiritual masters and achieves redemption by killing them
(72). Oteros autobiography is innovative in U.S. imperialist discourse, not for
the method he uses, but because his spiritual masters are not the Indians of
Slotkins or Rosaldos analyses but the Anglo westerners and frontiersmen who
had supplanted natives in the original U.S. imperialist discourse. Otero worked
to displace the Old West and the people who thrived in it through both his
rhetoric and his political goal of modernization. The Wild Westerners in
Oteros autobiographical history act as a simulacra of the original frontier,
which Otero conquers metonymically through his political campaign of mod-
ernization and reform. Oteros self representation envisions him as supplanting
not a natural wilderness, but the wildness of the Old West.
It is in this context that Oteros biography of Billy the Kid contests the dis-
enfranchisement and dehistorization of Nuevomexicanos. Though Billys death
is tragic, it is fated by his role as a figure of the Wild West, and only through
death does Billys story open a space for Otero to participate in popular U.S.
western discourse. Most importantly, before writing the Kid biography, Otero
places Billy in the autobiography, positioning him as one of the wild western-
ers who act as Oteros spiritual masters embodying masculinity, justice, and
social grace. Otero depicts this early encounter in chapter nineteen of My Life,
writing:
To be frank, I found myself liking the Kid [ . . . ]; he had a reputation of
always being kind and considerate to the old, the young, the poor; he was
loyal to his friends; and, above all, loved his mother devotedly [ . . . ].
He never had to borrow courage from any man as he had plenty of it
himself. (215)
Through his appropriation of Billys story, Otero too takes on these characteristics.
What is perhaps even more strategic, however, is Oteros ability to appro-
priate native savagery through the filter of Anglo westerners. Slotkin asserts
that the frontier hero must be a man who knows Indians who can act as a
mediator or interpreter between races and cultures but more often as civiliza-
tions most effective instrument against savagery (16). While this is a key char-
acteristic for the Western hero, it is a dangerous position for nineteenth-century
Nuevomexicanos who were repeatedly disenfranchised on the basis of their
degraded, mixed blood status, which positioned them as whollyrather
than just metaphoricallysavage in U.S. Anglo imagination. As governor,
Otero witnessed the defeat of the statehood-granting Knox Bill because a
malign senator from Indiana accused New Mexicans of living mostly in mud
huts.
3
Consequently Otero was wary of aligning himself and other Nuevomex-
icanos with savage Indians. Instead, Otero used his autobiography to aligned
himself with the savagery of Anglo Wild Westerners. For example, Otero
describes Billy the Kid in an Indian fight picking up a prairie axe with a howl
that frightened even the Apaches and using it to kill eight Indians (The Real
Billy the Kid 18). Otero revels in Billys Indian killing and never includes these
deaths in his tally of Billys murders. In this way it is not only Oteros
nomadizing that links him to the primitive and the wild, as Bruce-Novoa
describes, but also his alignment with Wild Westerners who had themselves
metaphorically usurped the position of Natives in the American frontier.
Otero also enacts a mediated version of Indian killing through his numer-
ous childhood buffalo hunts as he learns what it means to be a good western-
er. At an early age, Otero recalls hunting buffalo with Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill
Hickok and remarks,
Wild Bill was genuinely brave; I never met his equal for courage on the
frontier. I believe, if necessary, he would tackle a buzz saw. [ . . . ] Buf-
falo Bill, on the other hand, was rather selfish and wanted all the pomp
and grandeur for himself. I would not call him a brave man [ . . . ] As a
scout and Indian fighter he had many superiors. (My Life 1: 32-33).
Through his comparison of the two men, Otero asserts values that he will enact
in his political battles as an adult. In his campaign against crime, corruption, and
misrepresentation, Otero will mimic the independence, bravery, and understat-
ed compassion of a good scout and Indian fighter. But, Oteros battles will be
markedly political, rather than physical, as he ushers in a new West of econom-
ic and technological growth within the pages of his second two autobiographi-
cal volumes. Even his nostalgic childhood scenes forecast the political battles of
his adulthood. Otero only hunts with Wild Bill after the western icon is hired as
Hays County Sheriff by the local Vigilance Committee, of which Oteros
father is a prominent member. Thus, Wild Bills positive qualities are already
explicitly aligned with political reform brought about by the Oteros before
Miguel goes on the hunt with him. And, while Otero is clearly complacent in the
use of buffalo killing to put and end to the Indian depredations, his own depic-
tions of hunting mitigate this violence by relegating the activity to recreation, as
in his own childhood outings, or industry, as in the great stores of buffalo hides
that his fathers commission house, Otero, Seller & Co., ships East (My Life 2:
x). In his nostalgic account, Otero gives buffalo hunting camps the innocuous
appearance of a New England wash day with the fresh buffalo meat hanging
on stretched ropes (12). This transformation of western violence into leisure
and capital serves Oteros adult project of boosterism, a key strategy in his pro-
motion of statehood and economic growth.
While buffalo hunts are a common occurrence in Oteros youth, the exploits
of local vigilance committees like the one that hired Buffalo Bill are even more
frequent, especially in Oteros hometown of Las Vegas, New Mexico. In one
episode of the autobiography, Las Vegas residents are forced to form a vigilance
committee after a new precinct in the anglicized East Las Vegas elects a corrupt
Justice of the Peace named H. G. Neill, later known as Hoodoo Brown. Neill
neglects his duties, and he and his henchman Dutchy orchestrate the murder
of a wealthy cattle investor from Wyoming in order to rob his corps (My Life 1:
200-1). Otero explains, It was such things as this that started the vigilantes to
work, for the peace officers of the town were not interested in enforcing law and
order (My Life 1: 184). Though the Wyoming rancher, Michael Kelliher, had
no direct relation to Otero, his free flowing pocketbook and interest in New
Mexico cattle represent the kind of capital that both Otero and his father worked
to bring to New Mexico. Hoodoo Browns murder of Kelliher is indicative of the
corrupt, unnatural economy supported by mercenary Anglo political rings that
flourished in the territory. This brief incident in the autobiography parallels The
Real Billy the Kids account of the corrupt Murphy-Dolan Company as sup-
ported by the Santa F Ring and their defeat of the newer Tunstall-McSween
Company, aligned with Oteros family business.
As with The Real Billy the Kid, the repeated accounts of corruption in
Oteros autobiography attribute the cause of violence to the federal govern-
ments inability to maintain order in the territory and to local Anglo politicians
manipulation of the justice system. Consequently, the burden of justice falls on
Nuevomexicanos and their allies, who must protect the community through pru-
dent acts of vigilantism. Though Otero distances himself from vigilante justice
as an adult, he maintains that federal neglect of the territory legitimated these
actions during his youth. In his self-appointed role as New Mexicos western
hero, Oteros depicts his primary political goal as the eradication of territorial
corruption. In My Nine Years as Governor Otero uses chapters titled Saving the
Waters of the Rio Grande for New Mexico, I Remove the Hubbells, I Tri-
umph Over My Enemies Again, and the like to demonstrate his heroic legal
defeat of politically corrupt networks within the territory. In these sections
Otero embodies the ideals of vigilantism by taking it upon himself to ensure jus-
tice for New Mexico and by organizing his own faction of cohorts to combat the
powerful Santa F Ring. However, Otero outwits his opponents through legal
maneuvers rather than violence, effectively supplanting both his political ene-
mies and the Wild West system of justice that they necessitate. This tactic is
important for his position as the modernizing hero of his own romantic comedy
because in Oteros view the representation of a Wild West was just as damn-
ing to New Mexicans as the actual violence that it entailed. He writes, Outlaws,
train robbers, and other desperados furnish a rather picturesque element in the
West of fiction and the scenario. However, in real life they gave the southwest-
ern territories a reputation for crime and violence and insecurity of life and
property which greatly retarded the coming of both immigration and capital
(My Nine Years 90).
While Oteros nostalgia for buffalo hunts and vigilante justice help him
appropriate one form of imperialist rhetoric in his heroic tale of modernizing
New Mexico, his indictment of the U.S.s inability to administer its territorial
acquisition appropriates another imperialist tactic. In 1844, Josiah Greggs
Commerce of the Prairies criticized Mexicos inability to govern New Mexico
claiming, The administration of laws in Northern Mexico constitutes one of the
most pitiful features of her institutions. Justice or rather judgments are a com-
mon article of traffic (159). Accusations like these helped justify U.S. invasion
of Mexico for capitalists and politicians who felt that unused or misused land
ought to fall under the aegis of U.S. domain. This extension of the imperialist
logic that claimed a right to unused Indian and Mexican land not only worked
to usurp New Mexico territory, it also set a precedent for continued territorial
domination that helped sustain entrenched political rings who manipulated the
territorys justice system. The depiction of Mexicos inability to govern its out-
lying territories quickly transformed into a belief in New Mexicos incapacity
for self-governance during the struggle for statehood. Published 23 years after
statehood was secured, Oteros autobiography is still obsessed with this mis-
representation. As with imperialist nostalgia, Otero uses the U.S.s own rhetoric
of conquest to justify his rise to power; consequently, his portrayal of the U.S.
New Mexico reflects Greggs earlier account of the Mexican territory. Like
Gregg, Otero presents a litany of judicial offenses claiming that corruption was
caused by a negligent federal administration located too far from the territory to
understand or care about its particular needs, but this time, it is the United States
rather than Mexico that is lax in the administration of its far west territory. And,
like Gregg, Otero also utilizes numerous anecdotes in his critique of New Mex-
icos corruption.
Where Gregg critiques the territory for rampant gambling through anec-
dotes like the story of a monte-playing prostitute named La Tules who rises to
the respectable station of Doa Gertrudes Barcel, Otero presents an explicitly
political counter-narrative in which Anglo businessmen and lawyers are the avid
gamblers and the victims of their own legislative miscalculation. According to
Otero, the territorial legislature proffered a gambling prohibition bill with the
expectation that gambling fraternities would expend funds to have the bill over-
turned. When the fraternities refuse, the bill becomes law and every lawyer in
Oteros hometown of Las Vegas is indicted for gambling. Otero comically por-
trays his later rival, Thomas Catrons consternation at this prospect; Catron
fussed and fumed liked a caged hyena. Indict him? . . . Why it was not for a
moment to be thought of. . . . To fine him $50.00? . . . Why that would be adding
an injury to an insult (My Life 1: 159). Catron tries to evade the fine by indict-
ing the presiding judge, but when the judge enters a plea of guilty, Catron and
the other attorneys are forced to pay up. This innocent and humorous episode
does double duty in Oteros narrative; it reverses stereotypes (like Greggs) of
mexicano gambling within the politics of the contact zone, and it makes Oteros
rival, Catron, the butt of his joke. Oteros humor is much more overtly political
than Greggs.
Oteros narrative strategy in the multi-volume autobiography is more than
a re-purposing of literary tropes, however. The very temporal structure of the
autobiographical account evolves throughout the work in conjunction with
Oteros rise to power and the corresponding order and organization that he sup-
posedly brings to New Mexico. The entire first volume is a series of vignettes,
either humorous or adventuresome, that focus on Otero and the people around
him. Consequently, the narratives explanatory power is cumulative rather than
progressive. By the end of the book, Oteros gain in consciousness appears to be
ex nihilo because the cause and effect of his maturation is obscured by the nar-
rative form. It is difficult to discern even the temporal order of events in volume
one. For example, the gambling incident with Catron occurs some time between
1866 when La Fonda of Las Vegas is founded and 1880 (the historical point in
the narrative from which Otero is recouting the events), but this time frame
encompasses almost the entire volume, which covers 1864-82. In contrast, My
Nine Years as Governor is clearly sequential and rarely disrupted by digressive
reminiscences. The clarity and organization of this final volume parallel Oteros
businesslike administration, and it draws distinct causal relationships between
Oteros actions and the positive results they produce (My Life 1: 286).
Likewise, volume two of My Life on the Frontier is a transitional narrative
in both style and content between Oteros carefree, disorganized youthful mem-
ories and his official and orderly record as governor. In volume two, Otero
becomes involved in local politics where he is more thoroughly acquainted with
the corruption of New Mexico politicians, particularly the Santa F Ring a
title that he uses interchangeably with Catronites in reference to his enemy
Thomas Catron. In one chapter of this volume, Otero depicts his own battle over
land rights with the Santa F Ring in a form reminiscent of the wild western
showdown between Billy the Kid and the Dolan-Murphy clan. In the 1870s the
Santa F Ring manipulated a land grant in order to obtain the Nuestra Seora de
los Dolores mine, which belonged to the Otero family.
4
Because the Ring con-
trols both the surveyor and the territorys Chief Justice, the Oteros are unable to
reclaim the mine legally and so Miguel Otero decides to give up the court bat-
tle and take the mine by force. Otero and his cohorts capture the mine and its
adjoining armory, renaming their holding Fort Otero. The presiding judge
throughout Oteros court battle is none other than S. B. Axtell, the former terri-
torial governor whose ineptitude had helped inflame the Lincoln County War.
According to Otero, Axtells initials seemed at least very appropriate, and sure-
ly they were (My Life 2: 87).
What is even more appropriate is Oteros triumph over Axtell and the Ring
where Billy had failed. Initially, Otero is summoned to court and held in con-
tempt. He arrives in court, not because he is captured by the Ring but because
he feels obligated to return to Las Vegas when the bank he manages needs him
to fill out paperwork, and thus he surrenders to the sheriff in order to fulfill his
duties at the bank. This situation highlights the awkward literary position Otero
creates for himself as both modernizing, managerial-class banker and vigilante
wild westerner. In the end, Otero achieves success through the legal system
when he is acquitted by a grand jury. President Cleveland subsequently removes
Judge Axtell and the courts decide the mine case in Oteros favor. Though Otero
submits to the law in this episode, his vigilante actions also place him in control
of the law. While in the county jail, Otero subdues a mob of five hundred men
who had come to bust him out, and, notably, each night the sheriff leaves
Otero firearms and the keys to the jail because of Oteros trusted position with-
in the community. This section in the transitional volume of the autobiography
emphasizes that Oteros acquiescence to the law is a choicea choice that fur-
ther amplifies his control over the law by enabling his victory over the corrupt
judicial system.
This moment in the autobiography is one of the most complexly construct-
ed, particularly in light of the fact that Oteros was a pyrrhic victory. Like many
New Mexicans, Otero was double crossed by his own lawyers who received
portions of the mine as payment and then manipulated the land grant such that
Otero lost almost $20,000 in the venture. Otero glosses over this outcome in sin-
gle paragraph, however, to maintain the focus on his success throughout the text.
It is imperative to Oteros narrative that he remain triumphant in order to fulfill
his literary role as New Mexicos modernizing Western hero. Thus, even after
his lawyers have stolen the land he proclaims, There is one thing certain and
sure in this connection: I am still alive, while, so far as I know, all others asso-
ciated with me in the Nuestra Seora de los Dolores mining suit are now trav-
eling that inevitable route which issues no return tickets (My Life 2: 96).
By the time Otero appears in My Nine Years as Governor, his Wild West
showdowns are purely political and thus constitute a metaphorical contact zone.
Indeed in 1899, Otero performs the role of western hero to perfection in a heat-
ed argument with President Roosevelt who, he learns, is opposing New Mexico
statehood. In this scene, the President embodies the pomp and grandeur that
Otero condemned in his childhood account of Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill had in
fact helped spread the fame of Roosevelt and his Rough Riders in the 1898 show
Buffalo Bills Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World, and Buffa-
lo Bills self-aggrandizement is almost a prefiguration of Roosevelts personal-
ity in the third volume. During the political confrontation Roosevelt tells Otero,
If I were in your place I would remain a territory as long as the United States
government will pay your running expenses adding that as a territory, New
Mexicos corrupt judges could be removed by the executive branch. Otero
explains,
Mr. Roosevelt [ . . . ] in most eloquent words tried to impress me that
all judges in the West were corrupt. He wound up his spleen by saying:
Governor Otero, I think a corrupt judge ought to be taken out to the
corral, [ . . . ] and sh to death. I smilingly agreed [ . . . ], but insisted
that we had many honest and capable judges in New Mexico, much bet-
ter than those sent out to us by politicians in the East (My Nine Years
63, 216).
Here Oteros persistent and understated opposition to the Presidents braggado-
cio reflect his formative experience hunting with Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill
Hickok, and Oteros response to the former Rough Rider reflects the understat-
ed fortitude that Otero had earlier admired in Bill Hickok. Otero later explains
that Roosevelt never outgrew the selfishness and self-display characteristic of
children (315). And the childish President consequently made several
removals [of local politicians] in New Mexico that [Otero] considered arbitrary
and unjust (326). In this pinnacle of political disputes, Roosevelts temper and
rash decisions about the territory parallel the unruly Wild West that Otero works
to tame both symbolically and literally throughout his administration.
At the time Otero published his autobiography his ability to tame the west
was clearly questionable. Like so many other nuevomexicanos, Oteros family
lost most of their land by the 1930s, and his falling out with Roosevelt nega-
tively affected his political career. Likewise, his socioeconomic background and
political views did not prepare him for the type of proto-Chicano contestatory
activism of early twentieth-century New Mexico in which other figures like
Aurora Lucero White Lea and Eusebio Chacn participated. Yet Oteros eco-
nomic reform and modernization of the territory along with his intense cam-
paign for statehood had a tremendous impact on the region and helped transi-
tion the territory into the twentieth century. And, perhaps most of all, his strug-
gle against territorial corruption, which disenfranchised nuevomexicanos, set
the stage for future political self-determination via statehood. It is appropriate
then that after retiring from his political career, Otero turned to the politics of
writing, still holding out hope in his attempts to tame the wild representations
of New Mexico that were circulating in popular fiction by recasting his life as a
romantic comedy, triumphing over the wilds of the west, and drawing on the
U.S.s own romantic narrative of Western expansion to position nuevomexicanos
within the U.S.s formative contact zone not as antagonistic obstacles, but as the
heroes of progress.
Notes
1
See Tey Diana Rebolledos Strategies of Resistance in Hispana Writing for
an analysis of how nuevomexicana authors used nostalgic discourses like
Loomiss to contests Anglo domination in the region.
2
See Genaro Padillas My History Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican Amer-
ican Autobiography.
3
After Catron, Oteros bitterest enemy in the autobiography is Senator Albert
Beveridge who singlehandedly delayed the Knox Bills review in the Senate
and orchestrated a visit to New Mexico to gather evidence of the territorys
incapacity for self-rule. His report was made to the second session of the fifty-
seventh U.S. Congress, which voted against the Knox Bill despite its swift
approval in the House.
4
Land grant manipulation was rampant in New Mexico after the 1948 treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Santa F Ring was one of its main practitioners.
Thomas Catron alone acquired over two million acres in the territory, mostly
through fraudulent land grant claims that Nuevomexicano landowners could
not afford to dispute and by collecting his attorney fees in the form of land
rather than cash.
Works Cited
Bruce-Novoa, Juan. Offshoring the American Dream. CR: The New Centen-
nial Review 3 (2003): 109-45.
Gregg, Josiah. Commerce of the Prairies. Philadelphia: J. W. Moore, 1850.
Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the
American West. New York: Norton, 1987.
Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope. New York: Random House, 2006.
Otero, Miguel Antonio II. My Life on the Frontier 1864-1882: Incidents and
Characters of the Period when Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico were
Passing through the Last of their Wild and Romantic Years. New York: The
Press of the Pioneers, 1935.
______. My Life on the Frontier, 1882-1897: Death Knell of a Territory and
Birth of a State. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1939.
______. My Nine Years as Governor of the Territory of New Mexico 1897-1906.
Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1940.
Padilla, Genaro M. My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American
Autobiography. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1993.
Rebolledo, Tey Diana. Narrative Strategies of Resistance in Hispana Writing.
The Journal of Narrative Technique 20 (1990): 134-146.
Rivera, John-Michael. Miguel Antonio Otero II, Billy the Kids Body, and the
Fight for New Mexican Manhood. Western American Literature 35 (2000):
46-57.
______, ed. The Real Billy the Kid: With New Light on the Lincoln County War.
By Miguel Antonio Otero II. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 1998.
Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston:
Beacon P, 1989.
Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-
Century America. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.
Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1950.
Turner, Frederic Jackson. History Frontier and Section: Three Essays by Fred-
eric Jackson Turner. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1993.
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-
Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973.
139
The Autobiography of Conversion of Rev. Santiago
Tafolla, Sr., Runaway, Soldier and Methodist
Minister: a Postcolonial Bildungsroman
NORMA A. MOUTON
T
here are many literary categories that provide patterns for the elaboration
of the autobiography (Smith and Watson 70). The Rev. Santiago Tafolla,
Sr. penned his autobiography in Spanish in 1908.
1
He has left a life writ-
ing that combines the characteristics of two literary categories, the autobiogra-
phy of conversion and the Bildungsroman. This study will look at the autobiog-
raphy of conversion and its link to the Bildungsroman; specifically how they are
reflected in Tafollas life narrative. It will define both literary categories and
demonstrate how the Bildungsroman, a traditionally Eurocentric bourgeois lit-
erary narrative, reflects postcolonial theories.
The Rev. Santiago Tafolla, Sr. never completed the task of writing his auto-
biography. He left a truncated conversion life narrative of approximately 141
handwritten pages.
2
Not only does this book relate his life in his own words, but
it also narrates his disenchantment with the Catholic faith and his subsequent
experience with and acceptance of the Protestant faith. The conversion experi-
ence is the key component in the autobiography of conversion and differentiates
it from any other type of autobiography. There are two types of conversion expe-
riences. The crisis model is the more dramatic for its reliance on a transcenden-
tal experience like that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus as related in The
New Testament book of Acts. This model is characterized by a sudden spiritual
stirring that often occurs in youth (James 196). A crisis conversion may also
involve unexpected and startling mystical events reminiscent of the ecstasy of
revival (James 196). The lysis model is a more gradual coming to faith usually
seen when a person is raised in a pious household (James 203). It is also more
intentional than the crisis conversion model. By relating the conversion experi-
ence to the time of experimentation and testing characteristic of adolescence,
this category of life narrative is open to conflation with the Bildungsroman.
The conversion experience irrespective of the model that it represents is
divided into four phases: 1) the convert is separated from God, 2) the call from
God, 3) the convert responds to Gods call, and 4) the convert forms a new rela-
tionship with God
3
(Kuder 286). Because this work by Tafolla is unfinished,
only the first three phases of conversion are narrated in his story. An analysis of
the authorial perspective confirms Tafollas new relationship with God since
he includes a scripture reference
4
in Chapter XV saying that he now understands
the full meaning of the passage: ahora que conozco el Evangelio, me acuerdo
de lo que le dijo el centurion al Seor . . . (Tafolla Memorias Folio 52).
5
This
relationship is further confirmed in another passage where Tafolla alludes to the
ministry that became his future profession after having escaped a hunting acci-
dent: . . . di gracias Dios que no me mate ese dia y me puse pensar si me
hubiera matado quien . . . Sabe cuando me hubieran hallado pero Dios no lo per-
mitio por que tenia un trabajo para mi. Yo Siempre lo he pensado asi (Tafolla
Memorias Folios 29-30).
6
This is clearly the perspective of a man who is com-
mitted to God, a man who knows scripture, and so confirms the fourth phase of
the conversion experience.
Naturally, Tafollas truncated work dwells heavily on the early part of his life
reflecting the first phase of separation from God. Although Tafolla is exposed to
a Catholic family life, it is always as a spectator and never as a participant. He is
never made to feel welcome as part of his older brothers family and hence he
never takes part in the religious activity within the family. The next stage of
Tafollas life begins with his fleeing New Mexico and wandering from there to
Washington, D.C. and eventually to Georgia. Unlike in the classic Bildungsro-
man where the voyage is undertaken as a quest of self-development, in the post-
colonial context and specifically in the Tafolla autobiography, the voyage is
necessitated by the harsh circumstances of the young boys life. Had Tafolla not
fled the circumstances of his youth, he would have had few or no possibilities for
developing his own identity since he was so totally subjugated to his older broth-
ers will. This wandering is also part of the first phase of conversion.
In the autobiography of conversion, the author is also on a quest, but in this
case instead of going on a physical journey, he undertakes a psychological or
spiritual journey on a quest for the Truth. This quest for the Truth requires a
transformation
7
and this transformation is characteristic of confessional litera-
140 ! !!!!!!!! Norma A. Mouton
ture like the conversion narrative.
8
In Tafollas work the Truth he seeks has two
facets: the first is tied to his spiritual position and his relationship with God
while the second is about his identity as a Mexican American. This search for
Truth is common to the Quaker narratives of conversion and so also true for the
genre of autobiography of conversion. But Truth in the autobiography of con-
version is expressed on two levels: 1) the spiritual level that deals with the con-
version process central to this genre and 2) the temporal or historical level that
treats the empirical veracity attributed to the wider genre of autobiography.
Because the purpose of an autobiography is to communicate truth with his-
torical accuracy as understood by the author as well as to narrate the story of the
authors life, autobiography falls into that space liminal to both history and lit-
erature. The most obvious difference between history and literature is that the
one is devoted to relating actual events while the other is grounded in the imag-
ination (White 44). But whether the autobiography conforms to literary dis-
course or to historical narrative is a question still to be answered. The problem
lies in that historical narrative assumes a literary character in its endeavor to draw
in the reader by its use of literary flourishes (White x) and thus blurs the line
between historical narrative and literary discourse. A historical narrative is one
that judiciously respects the evidence that it presents. It respects the chronologi-
cal occurrence of the events and it neither draws conclusions nor presents con-
jecture. Beyond presenting events merely as a sequence, it postulates a structure
to the events (White 4-5). Tafollas work respects this definition with its narrative
from the perspective of the observer. An example of this perspective is evident in
the objective retelling of the observations of the young man as in the following
incident that occurred en route to Washington, D.C. from New Mexico:
Habia un hombre Sentado en una silla que al parecer estaba enfermo por
que estaba muy palido, este Sele acerco el cochero y pegandole la
porta moneda la cara, le hablaba al parecer con mucho furor, y el otro
Se ponia mas palido. Cerca del enfermo esta Sentado un Seor anciano
alto delgado que tambien parecia estar enfermo, tenia en la mano un
baston grueso y muy masiso. En una vuelta que el coehro dio para fuera
donde estaba el coche este Seor anciano lo Siguio y al volver querer
entrar la puerta el anciano le peg un palo entre medio de los dos ojos
y el cochero cayo para atras en el enpedrado y al irse levantar le pego
otro palo en la cabeza. Y entonces cayo en la calle detras del coche y el
anciano Se fue Sobre de l y le peg muchos palos en las espaldas y el
nomas gritaba. Y toda la gente q[ue] estaba presente decia hit him again.
A la ultima el anciano lo dejo Sin hablar una palabra desde que comen-
zo hasta que acabo (Tafolla Memorias Folios 11-12).
9
The Autobiography of Coversion of Rev. Santiago Tafolla, Sr. . . . ! 141
Given this definition of historical narrative, the autobiography seems to fit the
category because it presents reality from the authors perspective usually in a
chronological pattern. But because autobiography can also be a meditation as in
the case of Augustines Confessions or the Education of Henry Adams, it cross-
es the line into literature as well. In Tafollas work such meditations are usual-
ly short asides that relate an event to the ultimate goals in the authors life as
with his conversion: Y yo nunca he dudado de que Dios contesto esa oracion,
y espero un dia ir darle la mano en el cielo . . . (Tafolla Memorias Folio 28).
10
It is in Georgia that Tafolla heeds Gods call and responds to it by convert-
ing to the Methodist church thus resolving the first facet of his psychological
quest. These are also the second and third phases respectively of conversion.
Because Tafolla never relates a transcendental event that provokes his conver-
sion, but rather demonstrates a gradual acceptance of a Protestant spiritual
expression through the examples of his various mentors, this conversion is a
model of the lysis category of conversion. It is during his adolescence that Tafol-
la takes the step of conversion to Protestantism. That event is recounted in Chap-
ter X: . . . en una reunion campestre que hubo me converti . . . y yo crei en mi
Salvador con todo mi corazon (Tafolla Folio 28).
11
Certain denominations tended to favor the crisis conversion model over the
lysis model to show that a believer had actually accepted Christ and been con-
verted. William James states: . . . the Moravian Protestants appear to have been
the first to see this logical consequence. The Methodists soon followed suit, prac-
tically if not dogmatically . . . (222). Therefore, according to James, the
Methodists required a crisis model conversion experience to validate a believers
acceptance into the faith.
12
Tafollas work lacks the description of any mystical
experience and yet meets the requirements of an autobiography of conversion.
Tafolla begins recounting his story by giving his birthplace as Santa Fe,
New Mexico. He then states that he lived outside of Santa Fe proper in a place
called El Realito. Tafolla describes the home as including fields of corn and
wheat, thus making it a rural environment. This setting replicates the character-
istic environment of the Bildungsheld before the protagonist goes off to make
his way in the world (Buckley 17). Tafolla is orphaned of both parents by the
age of seven and goes to live with his eldest brother, Lorenzo. Tafolla describes
Lorenzo stating: A veces . . . se emborrachaba de sentimiento y venia a media
noche golpiando la puerta, gritando, y echando maldiciones . . . Y nomas lo oia-
mos y ya estabamos temblando de miedo . . . (Tafolla Memorias Folio 6).
13
He
also states that even the least little mistake whether justified or not would drive
Lorenzo to beat him to the point of drawing blood.
Tafollas wanderings begin in the fourth chapter when at the age of eleven
he decides to run away from home. The entire story is told in the first person
always from the narrators perspective as observer. Running away from home
provides a wealth of new experiences that are the focus of Tafollas story. Since
like the classic Bildungsroman, Tafollas work is the story of growing up, the
values and goals of the young man are in various stages of development. But
unlike the classic Bildungsroman, the postcolonial Bildungsroman replaces the
characteristic romantic involvement with a focus on matters of greater political
or social relevance (Fernndez Vzquez 116-117). In Tafollas story the focus is
on elements of racism and discrimination. These are also the elements that he
must reconcile to satisfy the second facet of his psychological quest for Truth.
In satisfying the first facet of his quest, Tafolla also notes the injustices of
Catholics who profess faith in the Church, but do not reflect that faith in their
actions toward others.
There are eight narrative structures exemplary of conversion discourse: 1)
the condition of wanderer, 2) the form of the work, 3) the narrators view, 4) the
narrator as observer of new experiences, 5) the values, goals, commitment, 6)
the convert as observer of the spiritual condition, 7) the convert moving through
the geographical and spiritual worlds, and 8) the journey or quest (Kuder 287).
When Tafolla runs away he joins a wagon train headed east initiating his condi-
tion of wanderer. He tells of his experience of having to make himself under-
stood to people who speak little Spanish while he himself speaks no English.
But this is not enough to deter him and only marks the first of such cross-cul-
tural situations he confronts. Tafolla is fortunate to be taken under the wing of
Mr. Robert A. Matthews who becomes his mentor: El hombre que me invito
que Subiera al carro, Se llamaba Robert A. Matthews, y desde ese dia Se hizo
cargo de mi (Tafolla Memorias Folio 8).
14
In chapter seven, after recently arriv-
ing in St. Louis and having wandered away from the hotel, a Mexican woman
warns him against associating with Negroes: . . . y ella me aconsejo que no me
juntara con los Negros y me mando al Hotel con un muchacho americano
(Tafolla Memorias Folio 18).
15
Prior to this encounter, Tafolla had no qualms
about mixing with people of any race or ethnic background. This is why it was
easy for him to run away with a group of Anglo Saxons who spoke English
almost exclusively. This Mexican woman in St. Louis is the first adult who
points out to him that there are differences between the races and that each race
has its place within society. The idea of Otherness is only just beginning to man-
ifest itself in Tafollas personal episteme. One of the distinguishing characteris-
tics between the American and European models of the Bildungsroman is an
encounter with the unknown, an experience that often becomes an encounter
with the Other. In such cases the Other usually involves an American Indian or
a Negro (Moretti 229).
The young Tafolla follows his mentor from the frontier of Kansas to Inde-
pendence, Missouri, to St. Louis and by steamboat to Cincinnati, Ohio, then on
to New York City, and eventually arriving in Baltimore, Maryland. Room and
board in exchange for messenger and delivery services is arranged for the boy
at The United States Hotel in Washington, D.C., where his mentor is staying. It
is while there that he learns English. His mentor also makes arrangements for
the boy to attend school and so Tafolla begins attending a local public school.
Mrs. Davis is the lady with whom his mentor, Mr. Matthews, takes him to stay
after Matthews moves out of The United States Hotel. Tafolla works at her
boarding house as an errand boy and is sent to a Catholic school like the one that
Mrs. Davis daughter attends. This period of development is intrinsic to the lit-
erary form of autobiography conflated with the Bildungsroman. As a schoolboy
in Washington, D.C., Tafolla tells of the cruelty he suffers at the hands of the
priests at the Catholic school he attends for three months:
Nunca he visto hombre tan crueles con los nios como esos hombres
. . . habia nios que no pasaban de 6 aos, y les daban unos castigos tan
crueles que me hacian recordar de lo que yo sufria en mi infancia, cuan-
do en poder de mi hermano Lorenzo . . . Aveces los agarraban de las ore-
jas, y los levantaban como 3 pies y los abentavan, y no habian de llorar
. . . Todo lo que aprend en cosa de tres meses que estube alli fue a resar
la Salve, y la Ave Mara, y el Padre Nuestro, y el Credo en ingles todos
pero letura, nada (Tafolla Memorias Folios 22-23).
16
Tafolla does not relate his educational experience before fleeing New Mexico,
but we can infer from the harsh treatment he receives from his brother and the
favoritism shown to his brothers daughter that his education in New Mexico is
if not inadequate at least inconsequential as compared to the home environment:
. . . ellos tenian una hija llamada Francisca y como era la unica hija la queran
mucho y veces sufria yo por causa de ella (Tafolla Memorias Folio 5).
17
When his mentor, Mr. Matthews, marries and decides to return to his birth-
place, the young Tafolla goes with him as far as Charleston, South Carolina,
where Mr. Matthews leaves Tafolla in the care of his brother. That arrangement
lasts only three months when Tafolla is sent to live with another brother,
Charles, on his plantation. Tafolla has been living with Charles Matthews and
his wife for about three months when a misunderstanding arises. Not knowing
what to do and too ashamed to go home, the young Tafolla decides it is time to
move on and follows the railroad tracks for about 30 miles to Columbus. After
a few days, he makes his way to Talbaton, Georgia, where Mr. Robert Matthews
lives. When he arrives at the home of his mentors father, Dr. F.T. Matthews, he
is warmly received. Even so, in Georgia Tafolla begins to feel the weight of dis-
crimination directed toward him:
Las gentes que venian verme decian, he is nearly white. Y otros decian
he is as white as any body. Y el Dr les deca Of cause he is white. Como
en esos tiempos habia esclavitud, los blancos no se juntaban con los
negros deninguna manera y era una degradacion para un blanco aun
simpatizar con los negros (Tafolla Memorias Folio 27).
18
The people he met at Dr. Mathews house refer to Tafolla as Mexican Jim
(Tafolla Memorias Folio 27). Discrimination is also reflected in a remark he
cites between a child and her mother when he overhears the child asking her
mother if Mexican Jim is white or black: Me acuerdo que una nia de la Seo-
ra Matthews le dijo a su mama, Mamm is Mexican Jim sure enough white. Y
ella le dijo, hija, Jims blood is as pure from negro blood as yours or mine
(Tafolla Memorias Folio 27).
19
The irony here is that while Tafolla is told that
he is part of the hegemony by being assured that his blood is as pure from
negro blood as any white persons blood can be, he is still made to acknowl-
edge his Otherness by being referred to as Mexican Jim.
In another situation where Tafolla is asked to work as an overseer on a plan-
tation, the question of his place in a society so focused on race is yet again a
paradoxical point of confusion. It occurs during the summer break when Tafol-
la has no school to attend and Dr. Matthews is suddenly left in need of an over-
seer on his plantation:
El Dr F.T. Matthews tenia plantacion cosa de 5 millas del pueblo. Y
tena como 15 Negros en ella. Ese ao Sele Salio el mayordomo que era
un hombre blanco. (Todos los dueos de plantacion que tenian esclavos,
tenian mayordomos blancos) y como en ese tiempo ern las vacasion de
la escuela estaba yo en la casa y el Dr me puso de mayordomo en la
plantacion. Habia un Negro anciano que era el que se entendia [de las]
disicion[es] de trabajo de manera que mi trabajo era mas cuidar de dar-
les las provisiones cada semana y guardar el orden porque se hacia muy
necesario que hubiera alguna persona Blanca en el lugar, quien se
diera cuenta de lo que sucedia. Estube all como 3 meses (Tafolla
Memorias Folios 28-29).
20
The vulnerability of the Bildungsheld and the process of Bildung itself are not
elements central to Tafollas work; nevertheless, he does single out those who
denigrate or offend him. On two occasions he leaves an apprenticeship: the first
is while training as a cobbler in Talbaton when required to wear dress clothes to
church that make him uncomfortable in the eyes of his peers: . . . y me com-
pro . . . un Sombrero del mismo estilo que el usaba que era de esos altos de pelo
que los decian entre los muchachos americanos Two Story hats . . . Yo tenia tanta
verguenza que me vieran los muchachos . . . (Tafolla Memorias Folio 31).
21
The second occurs after returning to Washington, D.C., when apprenticed to a
tailor who is an irredeemable liar and who cheat a customer:
. . . como yo ya era Evangelico, no me gustaban sus costumbres. Mr.
Mudd echaba muchas mentiras sus clientes . . . Me acuerdo de un
joven que . . . un dia le trajo una capa muy fina y le dijo que queria que
le hiciera una levita de ella. El se comprometio hacerla. Convinieron
en precio y le tomo las medidas y le dijo el joven que la queria para la
Noche buena. Me parece que era a fines de Septiembre . . . Se paso
como 3 semanas y Mr. Mudd no daba principio al trabajo de la levita.
Un dia le pregunto el joven si ya habia comenzado la levita y l le con-
testo que si, que no tubiera cuidado que estaria lista para cuando la
necesitara. A mi me Sumbaron las orejas al oir como mentia tan
descara[damente], y luego que se fue el Joven, Se puso reir en lugar
de darle verguenza . . . (Tafolla Memorias Folios 33-34).
22
Yet aside from these few examples, Tafollas work neither reflects the negative
mechanisms of individuation as promulgated by the hegemony nor does it use
irony to criticize the Bildung process and censure those who attack the vulner-
able Bildungsheld.
In the South, Tafolla has made a spiritual commitment to Protestantism, but
cannot make a cultural connection to the Anglo Saxons that surround him. This
cultural unrest leads him to find a way to return to the Southwest where he
knows that he can make his life among Mexicans with whom he shares a com-
mon cultural heritage. He sees an announcement for men to enlist in the U.S.
Army to go to New Mexico, Texas or California. None of his previous attempts
at acquiring a trade have given Tafolla any satisfaction or sense of fulfillment,
so Tafolla decides to join the Army and go west. When he goes to enlist, he
meets the then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis:
. . . en esos dias lei en un periodico que se llamaba The Boltimore Sun
un anuncio donde decia, se necesitan 50 jovenes para que vayan
Nuevo Mexico, Texas, California. Me informe que estos jovenes los
necesitaban para Soldados. No se como seme vino la idea de escribir al
Secretario de Guerra que era entonces Mr Jeferson Davis y como no
recibi contestacion a los 3 dias fui yo mismo la oficina y pedi permiso
para hablar con el Secretario de Guerra. Me recibio cortezmente y me
senalo un asiento. Cuando le trate del asunto me dijo, Those appoint-
ments are not open yet (Esos nombramientos no se han abierto todavia.
Y yo le dije que no Sabia que Se habia que esperar algun nombraminto
para Ser Soldado.) Entonce me dio la Siguiente recomendacion. If the
bearer wishes to enlist, I recommend him to the nearest recruiting
offices which is Boltimore. El dia siguiente tome el tren para Boltimore
y muy pronto hasta la oficina, pues traia el periodico conmigo (Tafolla
Memorias Folios 36).
23
But Tafolla is only seventeen years old at the time and needs to obtain his men-
tors written permission to enlist in the Army. When Tafolla presents his wishes
to Mr. Matthews and Matthews asks him why he wants to enlist, Tafolla
responds that he queria volver a mi pais y esta era una oportunidad para hac-
erlo (Tafola Memorias Folio 37). Unfortunately for Tafolla, the regiment to
which he was assigned ended up going to Texas and not to New Mexico as he
had hoped.
In Tafollas work, although the Bildung process appears to be described in
the first half of the autobiography that deals with the adventures of the eleven-
year-old run away from his time in Washington, D.C. until he joins the U.S.
Army, this period is not devoted to a concerted apprenticeship, but rather with
various attempts at apprenticeship. It focuses more directly on the wandering
culminating in conversion that is intrinsic to the autobiography of conversion.
The relationship between the period of his apprenticeship and adolescence and
his lifes work lies in his conversion and not in the skills he acquires as an
apprentice in the various professions with which he is involved. This fleeing
from one apprenticeship to the next provides a Bildung process that is disjoint-
ed, nonlinear and not altogether successful. Instead of focusing on the Bildung
process, Tafolla uses each failed apprenticeship as a lesson in spiritual develop-
ment. Tafolla further breaks with the traditional chronological order of the tra-
ditional Bildungsroman by allowing himself to wander from one event to anoth-
er and later returning to the original story line. This is seen most clearly when
he relates the story of Mr. Mudd and the Prince Albert coat in chapter XI
(Tafolla Memorias Folios 33-34). He begins by retelling the saga of lies and bad
faith and breaks it with his Sunday routine that one day gleans a contact from
New Mexico and later returning to the story of the unfinished coat.
. . . se escondia Mr. Mudd cadavez que el joven venia y preguntaba por
l y los oficiales le decian que habia Salido, mintiendo tambien ellos,
pues el estaba en el cuarto detras de la oficina mi me chocaba tanto
aquello, que ya me pesaba haber comenzado trabajar alli. Los domin-
gos iva yo visitar mis amigos del hotel del United States. En uno de
esos das me dijeron en el hotel que un Seor mexicano me buscaba . . .
Pero ya me voy olvidando de Mr. Mudd y la levita del panadero . . .
(Tafolla Memorias Folios 34-35).
24
While the return is an integral part of the classic Bildungsroman, in the post-
colonial Bildungsroman the return may disappear altogether (Fernndez
Vzquez 121). In the case of Tafollas work, the return lacks the triumphal
restoration of the hero into the home environment and replaces it with a reinte-
gration into the Mexican community. Thus for Tafolla it is more important to
reinsert himself into a Mexican community with which he can identify than to
prove to anyone he may have left behind that he has triumphed as an individual.
And indeed, once Tafolla gets to Texas and settles down there, he never finds a
need to return to New Mexico. Tafolla is seeking a sense of belonging that is
missing for him among the Anglo Saxons who mentor him. The sense of sepa-
ration Tafolla experiences in Washington, D.C. and Georgia provoke sufficient
unease to prompt the young man to seek out a Mexican community where he
can feel welcome.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army and while on his way to Texas, Tafolla tells
of observing and interacting with various Native American Indian tribes. The
thing that strikes him as the most interesting is the fact that not only are these
tribes very advanced, but many of these Native American Indians have Negro
slaves and these slaves speak no English:
Estos Indios estaban muy avanzado en civilizacion, tenian buenas
labores, buenos Ranchos, buenas escuelas, y algunos colegios. Algunos
de ellos tenian Negros esclavos que no hablaban el Ingles. Para mi era
cosa muy curiosa oir los Negros hablar en la lengua de los Indios, y
no entender el Ingles (Tafolla Memorias Folio 41).
25
Up to this point, Tafolla has not been directly and personally affected by the
racism that has surrounded him. But that changes in Texas when he enlists in the
Confederacy in 1862. In one incident, Tafolla describes the racial discrimination
directed toward him and his fellow Mexican-American soldiers by White South-
ern officers and soldiers in the Confederacy. The young White overseer of
Black slaves has grown up and is no longer considered an equal by these fine
Southern gentlemen.
Pues habia en el regimento un bando compuesto de cosa de 10 individ-
uos que tenian el nombre de horcadores. Y Se decia que habian horca-
do varios hombres que no estaban de cuerdo con sus ideas Y entre
ellos habia un Capitan que Se llamaba Tailor que decian tenia agravio
con el cabo Mercado y habia echado la amenaza de horcarlo . . . pero
. . . el coronel . . . nos aseguraba que Mercado no habia Sido horcado
. . . Un dia que estabamos acampados en el Rio de la vaca Se Sucito una
discordia entre un mexicano y un americano y llego tanto que los
americanos tomando las armas dijeron que iban poner fin los gris-
eros que habia entre ellos (Tafolla Memorias Folio 101-102).
26
It is this very real danger as well as news that the Confederacy is losing the Civil
War that prompts Tafolla to agree to desert the Confederacy with his Mexican-
American compatriots. That night, March 1, 1864, they take their own horses
and flee, first going home to visit their families and eventually crossing into
Mexico. When Tafolla finally makes it safely to Mexico, he sends for his fami-
ly to join him. . . . depues de estar en Piedras Negras un tiempo, mande llevar
mi familia y me fui a vivir l Precidio de Rio Grande q[ue] ahora se llama Guer-
rero de Coahuila (Tafolla Memorias Folio 118).
27
Tafolla moved with ease from
Texas to Mexico even to moving his entire family. While in Mexico he worked
as an interpreter for a monolingual English speaker: . . . un doctor . . . me Soli-
cito que fuera con el como interprete visitar las villa del estado de Coahuila.
Me ofrecio pagar un peso y la comida por dia, para mi y mi caballo . . . (Tafol-
la Memorias Folio 119).
28
The hybrid or liminal condition attributed to postcolonial subjects is reflect-
ed in the sense of belonging that the Bildungsheld communicates in differing
cultural environments (Fernndez Vzquez 120). In the case of Tafolla, he
relates that he moved from a Mexican home environment in New Mexico to an
Anglo Saxon cultural working environment during his time both in Washington,
D.C. and in Georgia. We know that his decision to return to a Mexican cultural
setting prompted him to join the U.S. Army, but because Tafolla both mastered
English and converted to Protestantism, he found a measure of acceptance
among Anglo Saxons.
There are three characteristics that distinguish the North American autobi-
ography from its European predecessors and that directly apply to the Tafolla
autobiography: 1) an expression of individualism, 2) the didactic nature based
upon its intensified religious confessional heritage, and 3) the idea of the self-
made man (Kanellos 228-229). The first and third items relate directly to the
Bildungsroman while the second item harkens back to the Puritan tradition of
conversion narratives. Tafollas work is an expression of individualism
because it is told exclusively from the first person perspective. Any comments
included by other individuals are relevant only as they elaborate on the thoughts
and impressions of the central figure. Furthermore, Tafolla portrays himself as
a self-made man by emphasizing the personal nature of the key choices made
in his development. This is exemplified by his decision to join the military. And
although this is an unfinished conversion narrative that does not go on to high-
light the religious work undertaken by the author, throughout the work Tafolla
colors his words with religious references that serve to instruct the reader.
Tafollas autobiography as seen here demonstrates all the major character-
istics of the autobiography of conversion and the Bildungsroman with postcolo-
nial features. From this same focus on the spiritual quest described by Franois
Jost, Werner P. Friederich, and others, this work demonstrates the conflation of
the two literary categories. Jost defines the term Weltbildung as a universal for-
mation that allows us to totally integrate ourselves into the world in order to bet-
ter understand it with a view to not allowing it to dominate us nor to crush us
(115). This definition provides the motivation in producing a Bildungsroman for
Santiago Tafolla, just as it does for every postcolonial author who wants to avoid
being dominated or crushed by the hegemony.
Notes
1
The Rev. Santiago Tafolla, Sr., wrote his autobiography in Spanish. His grand-
son, Fidel Tafolla, translated it into English in 1970, and until now this trans-
lation was the only copy of his work available to the public since the original
had been in the hands of family members.
2
Tafolla uses few accent marks in his writing and his use of capitalization and
grammar, as well as punctuation are irregular. This could have been because
all his schooling after leaving Santa Fe was in English. The original text cited
here is taken from the microfilmed manuscript available through the Universi-
ty of Houstons Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. The
author composed his autobiography in pencil on two tablets. Because he some-
times neglected to number pages and sometimes repeated a number, this study
follows a chronological folio enumeration consecutively from the preface
through the end of the work.
3
For a further explanation of conversion literature see Stephen R. Kuders dis-
sertation entitled The Literature of Conversion: Religious Background and Lit-
erary Achievement in Dante Alighiere, John Bunyan and James Joyce.
4
Tafolla refers the reader to Matthew 8:9, the story of the centurian who has sol-
diers under his authority.
5
The translation into English of this citation that follows as well as all other
translations into English of the original Tafolla manuscript used in this study
were done by Santiago Tafollas grandson, Fidel Tafolla: Now I get the full
meaning of the passage of scripture where the centurion tells the Master about
his authority (Tafolla A Life . . . 41).
6
Translation: I thanked God that I didnt kill myself that day. And then I imag-
ined how long it would have taken others to find my body had I killed myself.
But God did not permit that to happen, because He had a job cut out for me.
Ive always believed that to be the case (Tafolla A Life . . . 26). The job
referred to is his profession of Methodist minister.
7
For a further explanation of this transformation see Michel Foucault in The
Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France, 1981-82, page 15.
8
The characteristics of confessional literature referred to here are defined by
Mara Zambrano in La confesin gnero literario, page 14.
9
Translation: There was a man sitting in a chair who apparently was sick, for he
looked pale. The driver approached him and, pushing the money bag in the
mans face, spoke in such a furious tone that the man became more and more
pale by the minute. A tall, thin elderly man became more and more pale by the
minute. A tall, thin elderly man was sitting close by and he also looked sickly
and pale. He had a thick, solid cane in his hand. On one of the exits the driver
made from the waiting room, this old man walked to the door and waited for
him. Just as the driver returned to the door, the old man dealt him such a blow
between the eyes with the walking stick that the driver fell back on the rocky
pavement. As the coachman tried to get up, the old man once again dealt him
another blow on the head and made him fall behind his coach. The old man
followed him and rained blows on his back. The driver would cry out at each
blow but the people who gathered about would say, Hit him, hit him again.
Finally the old man left him alone, not having uttered a single word form the
time he dealt the first blow until he stopped hitting him (Tafolla A Life . . . 13).
10
Translation: And I have never doubted that God answered that prayer. And I
hope someday to meet him in Heaven and to put my hand in his . . . (Tafol-
la A Life . . . 25). In this passage, Tafolla is hoping to meet the revival evan-
gelical who prayed for his conversin and shake his hand in heaven.
11
Translation: . . . I got converted during a camp meeting there . . . .and I
believed in my Savior with all my heart (Tafolla A Life . . . 25).
12
It may have been a realization on the part of the author that his conversion
experience lacked that mystical element thus not meeting the expectations of
his chosen denomination that caused him to leave his work unfinished.
13
Translation: Sometimes . . . he would get drunk with his own sadness. On
such occasions, he would come home in the middle of the night, beating on
doors, shouting and cursing. And as soon as we heard him, we began trembling
with fear (Tafolla A Life . . . 6-7).
14
Translation: The man who invited me to get on his wagon was named Robert
A. Matthews, and from that day on, he took care of me (Tafolla A Life . . . 11).
15
Translation: And then she advised me not to associate with Negroes and sent
me to the hotel with and an American boy (Tafolla A Life . . . 17)
16
Translation: I have never seen men so cruel with children . . . there were some
children who couldnt have been more than six years old. And they would pun-
ish these children so cruelly that it made me recall my own childhood at the
hands of Lorenzo . . . At times they would grab them by the ears and lift them
three feet off the ground and throw them, and the children were not to cry
(Tafolla A Life . . . 20).
17
Translation: They had a daughter by the name of Francisca and since she was
their only daughter, my bother and his wife adored her, and sometimes she was
the cause of my suffering (Tafolla A Life . . . 5).
18
Translation: Some of the people who came to see me expressed surprise and
would say, He is nearly White while others would say, Hes as White as any-
body. The doctor would reply to them, Of course, he is White. Since there
was still slavery at that time, the Whites would not associate at all with the
Blacks and considered it a degradation to even sympathize with Negroes
(Tafolla A Life . . . 23-24).
19
Translation: I remember that Mrs. Matthews daughter asked her mother one
day, Mama, is Mexican Jim sure enough White? and her mother answered,
Daughter, James blood is as free from Negro blood as yours or mine (Tafol-
la A Life . . . 24).
20
Translation: Dr. F.T. Matthews had a plantation about five miles from town,
and he had about fifteen Negroes working there. That year, the plantation over-
seer, a White man, quit his position. (All the plantations that had slaves had
White overseers.) Since school was on summer vacation, I was at home, and
the doctor put me in charge as overseer of the plantation. There was an elder-
ly Negro who supervised all the work so my only duties were to see that the
workers were properly supplied with food every week and to maintain order
because it was necessary to have some White person on location, to monitor
what was happening. I acted in this capacity for about three months (Tafolla A
Life . . . 25-26).
21
Translation: . . . and [he] bought me a suit to his liking, and also a hat of the
same style he wore. It was one of those high stiff felt hats which the American
boys used to refer to as two-story hats. . . . I was so embarrassed and dread-
ed for the boys to see me . . . (Tafolla A Life . . . 26-27).
22
Translation: . . . as I was already a converted evangelical, I didnt like some of
their habits. Mr. Mudd would tell many lies to his clients, . . . I remember a
young man who . . . One day . . . brought him a very fine cloak which he wan-
ted altered and made into a Prince Albert frock coat. Mr. Mudd promised to do
this, agreed on a price, and took his measurements. And the young man told
him he wanted it for Christmans Eve. I think it was toward the end of Sep-
tember . . . About three weeks went by, and Mr. Mudd had not even started the
coat. One day the young man asked if he had started working on his Prince
Albert coat, and Mr. Mudd said that he had and not to worry, that it would be
ready when he needed it. My ears buzzed at hearing such a shameless lie, and
after the young man left, Mr. Mudd laughed about it, instead of feeling asha-
med (Tafolla A Life . . . 28-29).
23
Translation: . . . But around that time, I read an ad in The Baltimore Sun which
said, We need fifty young men to go to New Mexico, Texas or California. I
found out that these young men were needed as soldiers. I dont know how, but
I got the idea to write to the Secretary of War, who at that time was Mr. Jef-
ferson Davis. When three days later I had still not received an answer, I went
to his office and personally asked permission to speak to him. He received me
very courteously and motioned for me to sit down. When I brought up the sub-
ject, he replied, Those appointments are not open yet. And I responded that
I did not know that it was necessary to await an appointment in order to enlist
as a soldier. Then he gave me a recommendation that stated, If the bearer wish-
es to enlist, I recommend him to the nearest recruiting office which is Balti-
more. The following day I took the train to Baltimore and, as I had a copy of
the paper with me, I soon found the office (Tafolla A Life . . . 31).
24
Translation: . . . Mr Mudd would hide when the young man came asking for
him. His employees would lie also, saying that Mr. Mudd had gone out, know-
ing full well that he was in the room behind the office. This grated so much on
my nerves that soon I was sorry I had ever come to work there. On Sundays I
would go visit my friends at The United States Hotel. On one of those days,
they told me at the hotel that a Mexican gentleman was looking for me, . . .
But I am forgetting Mr. Mudd and the young bakers Prince Albert coat . . .
(Tafolla A Life . . . 29).
25
Translation: These Indians were quite advanced in civilization. They had good
farms, good ranches, good schools, and some colleges. Some of them had Negro
slaves who spoke no English. It seemed very strange to me to hear Negroes
speaking the languages of the Indians and not understand English . . . (Tafol-
la A Life . . . 35).
26
Translation: We had in our regiment a group of about ten men who had the bad
reputation of hanging folks. And it was said that they had hanged several men
who didnt go along with their ideas. Among these hangmen, there was a cap-
tain named Taylor who they said had a grudge against Corporal Mercado and
had threatened to hang him . . . The colonel, however, . . . assured us that Cor-
poral Mercado had not been hanged. . . . [W]hile camped on the Lavaca River,
a dispute arose between a mexicano and an americano. The contention grew to
the point where the americanos took up arms and said they would put an end
to all the greasers in their midst (Tafolla A Life . . . 70-71).
27
Translation: After being in Piedras Negras for a while, I sent for my family,
and we went to live in Presidio del Rio Grande, which is now known as Guer-
rero de Coahuila (Tafolla A Life . . . 79).
28
Translation: This doctor invited me to go along with him as an interpreter as
he visited towns in the state of Coahuila. He promised to feed me and my horse
and to pay me a dollar a day (Tafolla A Life . . . 79).
Works Cited
Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. Boston, MA: Houghton Mif-
flin, 1918. Print.
Bishop of Hippo, Saint Augustine. Confessions. Trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin. New
York, NY: Penguin Books, 1961. Print.
Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. Season of Youth: The Bildungsoman from Dickens to
Golding. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard UP, 1974. Print.
Fernndez Vzquez, Jos Santiago. Reescrituras postcoloniales del Bildungsro-
man. Madrid, Espaa: Editorial Verbum, 2003. Print.
Foucault, Michel. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de
France, 1981-82.Ed. Frdric Gros, et al. Trans. Graham Burchell. 2001.
New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.
Frederich, Werner P. History of German Literature. 2nd ed. 1948. New York,
NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 1961. Print. College Outline Series.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human
Nature. 1902. New York: Random House, Inc., 1929. N.pag. Print. The
Modern Library.
Jost, Franois. La Tradition Du Bildungsroman. Comparative Literature 21.2
(1969): 97-115. JSTOR. Web. 24 July 2008.
Kanellos, Nicols. La literatura hispana de los EE. UU. y el gnero autobi-
ogrfico. Hispanos en los Estados Unidos. Ed. Rodolfo J. Cortina and
Alberto Moncada. Madrid: Instituto de Cooperacin Iberoamericana, 1988.
219-30. Print. Ediciones de Cultura Hispnica.
Kuder, Stephen R. The Literature of Conversion: Religious Background and Lit-
erary Achievement in Dante Alighiere, John Bunyan and James Joyce. Diss.
Graduate Theological Union, 1975. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1978. Print.
Moretti, Franco. The Way of the world: the Bildungsroman in European Culture.
London: Verso,1987. Print.
Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Inter-
preting Life Narratives. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 2001. Print.
Tafolla, Santiago, Sr. A Life Crossing Borders: Memoir of a Mexican-American
Confederate/Las memorias de un mexicoamericano en la Confederacin.
Ed. Carmen Tafolla and Laura Tafolla. Trans. Fidel L. Tafolla. Houston,
TX: Arte Pblico P, 2010. Print. Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary
Heritage.
______. Memorias. CD-ROM. [Houston]: [Arte Pblico], [2009].
White, Hayden. The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. Print.
Zambrano, Mara. La confesin: gnero literario. 3rd ed. 1995. Madrid, Espaa:
Ediciones Siruela, S.A., 2004. Print.
157
De la experiencia a la enseanza: Contrastes
estructurales y didcticos en
El sol de Texas y Macho!
LAURA GARZA
L
as novelas El sol de Texas de Conrado Espinoza y Macho! de Vctor
Villaseor presentan la inmigracin de los mexicanos a los Estados Uni-
dos desde perspectivas y estructuras diferentes. El sol de Texas presenta
la estructura de la novela de camino en la cual se describe la experiencia del
inmigrante en el pas sin que se establezca un cambio de conciencia en los per-
sonajes principales, mientras que en Macho! se exhibe la estructura de la nove-
la de educacin o Bildungsroman, en la cual el personaje principal s presen-
ta un cambio de conciencia o crecimiento moral (Shaffner 7). La primera
publicada en 1926 presenta una visin filtrada por los movimientos revolucio-
narios y la necesidad econmica que surgi en Mxico y que orill a muchos
mexicanos a buscar mejores oportunidades de vida en los Estados Unidos, sin
dejar de mencionar la Primera Guerra Mundial que oblig a la importacin de
mano de obra.
En Macho! se observa, aunque ambientada en los cuarentas y escrita en los
sesentas, la inmigracin por problemas econmicos resultado de un pas desor-
ganizado por los anteriores movimientos armados como la Revolucin, la Gue-
rra Cristera y la Segunda Guerra Mundial. La diferencia entre ambas es el tra-
tamiento que se le da al fenmeno de la inmigracin y la perspectiva que se
maneja sobre el pas de llegada. En El sol de Texas, el enfoque que se le da a la
llegada a un pas extrao y la experiencia del camino es negativa. Adems que
su propsito es evitar que ms inmigrantes lleguen a los Estados Unidos y dejen
su patria (Pluecker xxv). Mientras que en Macho! se presenta este mismo fen-
meno pero a la inversa. Es decir, el inmigrar se convierte en algo positivo y, por
lo tanto, favorece un punto de vista nativista. Aunque no solamente se encuen-
tran diferencias, tambin hay un aspecto que comparten ambas obras: el tema de
las mujeres como portadoras de la asimilacin a la cultura norteamericana.
En esta ocasin se compararn dos obras El sol de Texas de Conrado Espi-
noza y Macho! de Vctor Villaseor que representan la literatura de inmigra-
cin y la nativista respectivamente. Se analizar el sueo del retorno y del Bil-
dungsroman en las diferentes perspectivas de los protagonistas, adems del
tema de las mujeres y su papel activo en la asimilacin a la cultura de los Esta-
dos Unidos.
Las diversas inmigraciones hacia los Estados Unidos han influenciado de
manera definitiva a los inmigrantes debido al contacto con ideologas y tradi-
ciones diferentes. La literatura es uno de los elementos que ms ha presentado
la influencia de los cambios polticos, histricos y sociales del pas, y la escrita
por hispanos en los Estados Unidos no ha sido la excepcin. Dentro del marco
que delimita a este tipo de literatura se encuentran tres vertientes que se basan
en la perspectiva que se presenta en la obra. Estas tres perspectivas son la de
inmigracin, la nativa y la que presenta el tema del exilio. Segn Nicols Kane-
llos Estas categoras se relacionan con los procesos sociohistricos que los his-
panos han experimentado en los Estados Unidos (xv).
La nostalgia por el pas de origen es una de las caractersticas de la litera-
tura de inmigracin, ya que exalta, nutre y arraiga el nacionalismo en los per-
sonajes de la obra (Kanellos 225). Para estos personajes los abusos, ese pere-
grinaje, la adquisicin y posterior reemplazo de todo antecedente cultural
relacionado a su patria representan la prdida de identidad nacional. De acuer-
do con Kanellos, Adems de ser fervientemente nacionalista, esta literatura
busca representar y proteger los derechos de los inmigrantes, protestando con-
tra la discriminacin, el racismo y los abusos de los derechos humanos (xxxiii).
Es decir, todos estos aspectos negativos que se van recibiendo y viviendo a lo
largo del camino en la bsqueda del sueo americano contradicen completa-
mente los valores patriticos nacionales como la lengua, las costumbres y las
tradiciones (Kanellos 225). La experiencia del sueo americano llevar a estos
personajes inmigrantes a la degradacin de su propia esencia, ya que debern de
ceirse a los valores de una cultura extraa. Para Boelhower An immigrant pro-
tagonist(s), representing an ethnic world view, comes to America with great
expectations, and through a series of trials is led to reconsider them in terms of
his final status (5). El gran mensaje de este tipo de literatura es prevenir al
inmigrante de los peligros que puede encontrar, no solamente en su camino, sino
158 ! !!!!!!!!! Laura Garza
de todos aquellos prejuicios y cambios de valores que eventualmente harn
mella en su cultura (Kanellos 225). Toda esa nueva ideologa que se encuentra
en el pas extrao no debe absorberse, y en su lugar se buscar la preservacin
de la propia cultura.
La literatura de inmigracin es producida generalmente por personas de la
primera generacin, ya que han vivido y sentido la experiencia cultural de
ambos pases. Es decir, estos han tenido la capacidad de comparar su pas ori-
ginal con el nuevo, lo que lleva a que se tomen ciertas perspectivas dependien-
do de la experiencia vivida por cada uno. La literatura nativa, aunque es produ-
cida por personas de la segunda o tercera generacin y que presentan referencias
de la cultura de la que son descendientes, no siempre logran tener la experien-
cia cultural de primera mano de su pas. La mayora de las veces este bagaje cul-
tural ha sido transmitido a travs de los padres. Lo que conlleva a que esta carga
cultural transmitida no contenga fidelidad, sino que ya est, si pudiera decirse,
plagado de idealizaciones acerca del pas natal.
En esta literatura nativa, los personajes optan por asimilar los valores as como
el lenguaje del nuevo pas con el fin de convertirse en un ciudadano aceptado por
el resto de la nacin. El nuevo inmigrante trata de establecer una nueva identidad,
ya sea adquiriendo e incorporando estas ideologas extranjeras a las propias o hasta
cortando de tajo con la cultura anterior y re-crendose por completo.
Dentro de este afn por hacerse or y hacer acto de presencia, los autores
nativos han optado por adquirir estilos narrativos norteamericanos como por
ejemplo la autobiografa tnica. Para Boelhower In other words, immigrant
autobiography must organize two cultural systems, a culture of the present and
the future and a culture of memory, into a single model (7). Este estilo prove-
niente de la cultura sajona ya no es considerado literatura de inmigracin, aun-
que puede presentar algunos tintes de sta, tal y como lo asegura Kanellos:
Pero la literatura actual de los chicanos y nuyorriqueos en ingls o
en forma bilinge no es una literatura de inmigracin. Es una literatura
norteamericana del campo y de la ciudad, que se basa en tradiciones
literarias norteamericanas e hispanoamericanas y reclama sus derechos
tanto civiles como estticos. S, expresa a veces una nostalgia de Mxi-
co o Puerto Rico y a veces una idealizacin romntica del pasado azte-
ca, taino o africano, pero tambin sus autores se dan cuenta que la vida
en Mxico o Puerto Rico les ser imposible. (226)
Tal es el caso de Vctor Villaseor, quien es sus obras se puede encontrar una
amplia influencia de la estructura autobiogrfica tnica norteamericana. Jerzy
Durczak seala que Their authors generally share Franklins optimistic belief in
De la experiencia a la enseanza . . . ! ! ! ! ! ! 159
freedom and progress, they stress the importance of perseverance and hard work,
and extol the virtues of education. Just like Franklin, they are often openly didac-
tic and ideological (14). Aunque la obra Macho! no es una autobiografa como
tal, bien representa los elementos estructurales de esta clase de literatura.
Durczak seala que American autobiography has always reflected the
peculiarity of American experience. The countrys autobiographies have told
usually optimistic stories, in which they praised the power of the individual or
the cult of hard work and success (8). Para Kanellos La autobiografa tnica
novelada se basa usualmente en la vida del inmigrante en Amrica y las
barreras raciales, sociales y econmicas que tiene que romper para lograr el gran
sueo americano; pero en esta novela el inmigrante siempre logra sobrepasar
estas barreras y asimilarse (228). Villaseor toma como ejemplo una estructu-
ra cannica por excelencia para poder establecer su voz dentro de la cultura
dominante. Segn Kanellos, Stowe observa cmo este elemento de apego hacia
un canon de poder es crear una identidad y asegura que La meta del escritor en
su libro es crear una identidad, la cual representa uno de los valores mximos
del individualismo norteamericano (227).
En la novela de inmigracin, El sol de Texas narra la historia de dos fami-
lias inmigrantes que vienen en busca del sueo americano a los Estados Unidos.
La familia Garca que est conformada por seis miembros que son Quico, Cuca,
Doroteo, Juanita, Justa y Pedro. Don Serapio, el padre, Matas y Jos vienen de
Michoacn. En la novela se narra el penar de estas dos familias entre San Anto-
nio, Houston y Port Arthur en busca de trabajo. La narracin comienza en San
Antonio, donde son engaados por los enganchadores que se burlan de ellos.
Mientras trabajan en el ferrocarril (traque), Jos muere atropellado por ste.
Despus de un largo peregrinar, los Garca llegan a Port Arthur y deciden esta-
blecerse, mientras que Serapio y Matas deciden regresar a Mxico para darle
sepultura a Jos. Juanita se corta las trenzas y se viste a la usanza anglosajona y
Doroteo se hunde en el materialismo y el alcoholismo. Al finalizar la obra,
Quico se lamenta por no poder regresar a Mxico mientras que Serapio y Mat-
as regresan a su patria arrepentidos por haber buscado una vida mejor en los
Estados Unidos.
La novela Macho! presenta la historia de Roberto, un joven humilde de
Michoacn que desea mejorarse econmicamente a travs del trabajo. Toms, el
padre de Roberto, es un alcohlico quien deja de mantener a su familia a causa
de su enfermedad. Roberto se ve en la necesidad de inmigrar a los Estados Uni-
dos buscando alivio econmico para su familia y le acompaan los norteos,
entre los cuales encuentra a un mentor Juan Aguilar. Estos individuos buscan
a jvenes para llevrselos a los Estados Unidos a trabajar a cambio de que les
den una comisin por hacerles el favor de ensearles las estrategias para sobre-
160 ! !!!!!!!!! Laura Garza
vivir y ganar dinero en aquel pas. Estos personajes son una especie de coyotes
benvolos que han vivido la experiencia de la inmigracin y que buscan a cam-
bio de una remuneracin econmica iniciar al verde en su experiencia en los
Estados Unidos.
Durante su travesa hacia la frontera les ocurren diversos hechos que miden
la valenta de estos hombres y llevan su resistencia al mximo. Al llegar a los
Estados Unidos empiezan su viaje por los diferentes ranchos en los que les dan
trabajo. Roberto haba estado mandando todo su dinero a Esperanza, su herma-
na, quien se estaba haciendo cargo de administrar el hogar y el dinero en su
ausencia. Cuando Roberto se entera a travs de una carta de que Pedro haba
matado a su padre, decide regresar a Michoacn para vengar su muerte. A su
regreso, Roberto se encuentra con un pueblo totalmente diferente a lo que haba
observado en los Estados Unidos y compara las vidas en ambos lugares. Final-
mente, Aguilar muere, pero antes mata a Pedro, y Roberto decide regresar a los
Estados Unidos en compaa de su familia. El desenlace de esta obra muestra
un aspecto completamente inverso a lo que define a una novela de inmigracin.
En lugar de que los protagonistas se decepcionen de su vida en los Estados Uni-
dos y aoren un regreso a su pas de origen, estos prefieren permanecer en los
Estados Unidos y rechazan la posibilidad de regresar.
Uno de los primeros elementos que se contrastan en ambas obras es el tema
del establecimiento en los Estados Unidos, es decir, la permanencia en los Esta-
dos Unidos versus el regreso en detrimento de la inmigracin. En El sol de Texas
podemos observar que la premisa del regreso se repite constantemente desde el
principio de la novela hasta que termina. Al principio de la obra, cuando Quico y
su familia se van trasladando a los Estados Unidos, el narrador interviene dando
voz al pensamiento de ste: S, volvera a su tierra cuando pasara la bola, claro
que no iba a quedarse entre los gringos. Eso no, su tierra antes que todo . . . (12).
Lo anterior indica que desde un principio la intencin de Quico es solamente
juntar algn capital y luego regresar a Mxico, adems de que su estada en los
Estados Unidos tiene un tono despectivo.
Despus de todo lo sucedido con sus hijos Juana se haba ido con un
hombre y tal vez se refugiara en la prostitucin y Doroteo que se haba con-
vertido en un ser inmoral y alcohlico Quico se lamenta de haber inmigrado
a los Estados Unidos y les dice a Serapio y a Matas que estn a punto de cru-
zar el puente: S, amigos me quedo. Yo no puedo regresar ya a mi tierra. No
soy rico, vivimos, nada ms vivimos, gracias a que hay trabajo que desempear
. . . soy tan probe como cuando vine, y ahora tengo lo que antes no tena, un hijo
borracho, perdido . . . (109). Con lo anterior se observa el enfoque negativo
que se le quiere dar a la inmigracin; es un mensaje para que no vengan, ya que
la vida en los Estados Unidos y el materialismo corrompen. En la nacin ima-
ginada mexicana se establece un sentimiento de igualdad y colectividad que se
representa con la alianza y ayuda mutua entre compatriotas. Anderson seala
que regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in
each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship (7).
En Macho! se presentan algunas comparaciones entre Mxico y el pas
receptor, pero desde una perspectiva positiva hacia los Estados Unidos. Aunque
en un principio no se puede ver la intencin de Roberto de quedarse, al final, l
puede observar que la vida en Mxico no es buena y que su nica posibilidad es
regresar a los Estados Unidos. Despus del asesinato de Pedro y de uno de los
hermanos Reyes, el narrador refirindose a Roberto, seala que Recogi un
puado de tierra. Sonri. Apret la tierra, fuertemente. Haba aprendido tanto
all en el norte. Podra, si quisiera hacer, mucho bien aqu. Le dio una patada a
la tierra sintindose como un verdadero hroe, y avent el puado de tierra hacia
el cielo con un grito de alegra (185). Roberto sabe que no se puede quedar, ya
que su vida y la de los miembros de su familia corren peligro, lo que seala una
conclusin negativa sobre Mxico.
La referencia a sentirse como un verdadero hroe presenta ese cambio de
consciencia. Shaffner seala que el protagonista en las novelas de educacin
has changed into a different entity by the end (8). Anteriormente, la imagen
mexicana del hroe era aquel hombre macho que daba la vida por su honor.
Ahora para Roberto ese verdadero hroe representa al hombre que se gana la
vida de una manera pacfica y que busca superarse a travs del trabajo duro y no
del envalentonamiento equivocado que abusa del otro, del oprimido. En su
resea del libro, Tom Howard seala que This is a journey of manhood, of
coming of age and developing a system of morality within a constant state of
conflict (71). Roberto se convertir en ese nuevo Adn. Katherine Payant indi-
ca que This new Adam in a New Eden was someone different, a new breed of
human, more freedom loving and independent, more practical, more hardwork-
ing, and less likely to bow to arbitrary authority than the Europeans who were
his ancestors (xvii). Roberto entonces representa al nuevo Adn que es libre e
independiente y que busca la superacin individual a travs del trabajo y que
adems busca el respeto de sus derechos como ser humano.
El pensamiento que se presenta en Macho! hace referencia a un Mxico
sumamente negativo y hasta cierto punto romntico. Mxico es un pas corrup-
to, lleno de personas incivilizadas que da a da se juegan la vida en carreras de
caballos en la defensa del honor. Un ejemplo de los personajes que presentan
esta falta de civilizacin son los norteos. Estos personajes presentan un senti-
do hbrido debido a que han tenido la experiencia de inmigrar a los Estados Uni-
dos y volver a Mxico. El modo de actuar de los norteos representa el machis-
mo mexicano empoderado por el materialismo del anglosajn. Su posicin de
162 ! !!!!!!!!! Laura Garza
superioridad frente al pueblo convierte a estos personajes en la viva imagen del
macho. Segn el narrador, los norteos regresan con ropa nueva y andan arma-
dos; adems contratan a los msicos del pueblo y se paran en la puerta de la
cantina sintindose gigantes con sus sombreros, pantalones, pistolas y fundas
(15). Desde esta perspectiva el autor presenta la idea de que Mxico es tierra de
nadie y lleno de esta clase de personajes. Estos protagonistas presentan los efec-
tos que trae consigo la experiencia del ir y venir de su pas a los Estados Uni-
dos por lo que su xito en el pas extranjero los convierte, segn su perspectiva,
en seres superiores, corruptos y violentos.
Segn la obra, Roberto se civiliza en Estados Unidos. Roberto representa la
imagen del noble salvaje que ve la luz al ir a los Estados Unidos, y que, por con-
secuencia, todo eso que aprendi le hizo sopesar las diferencias entre las vidas
en Mxico y en Estados Unidos. Segn sus experiencias, la vida en el norte es
mucho ms civilizada que la barbarie en la que coexisten los mexicanos. Es
decir, Roberto debido a todas estas experiencias vividas desarrolla su propia
perspectiva existencial. Shaffner muestra que Each human being carries with-
in himself the potential for development as a unique, and hence exceptional,
individual (17). Al final de la obra, Roberto al estar frente a frente con el ase-
sino de su padre, y al no quererlo matar y darle la espalda, se da cuenta de que
su padre haba sido tomado como un cobarde por no haber querido vivir como
un macho. Toms no optaba por la violencia como el resto de los mexicanos;
por esa razn era tratado como un cobarde, lo que lo lleva finalmente a hundir-
se en el alcohol debido a la presin ejercida por la sociedad. En los Estados Uni-
dos, Roberto se formar a s mismo sin tener que emular o seguir a otros. Para
Shaffner the hero must be termed an active agent of his own development
(19). Roberto toma las riendas de su propia vida y acta de la manera ms con-
veniente para l y su familia. Pero no slo los protagonistas masculinos como
Roberto, logran desarrollarse individualmente, algunas de las mujeres que se
presentan en ambas novelas se asimilan a la nueva cultura, lo que les otorga
igualdad frente a sus contrapartes masculinas y su propio desarrollo como seres
humanos.
El tema de la mujer como partidaria de la asimilacin a los Estados Unidos
y su desarrollo individual se presenta en ambas obras. Generalmente la literatu-
ra de inmigracin muestra a la mujer como la base de la familia y, por conse-
cuencia, el sostn de la cultura y tradiciones originales. Segn Susan C. Cham-
bers, women played an important role by raising loyal and virtuous citizens
(58). Si el personaje femenino opta por una asimilacin hacia la nueva cultura,
representa el fin de la cultura original, dando como resultado la decadencia del
inmigrante. Para Baeza Ventura a la mujer se le culpa por el deterioro de las tra-
diciones y por intentar incorporarse en un espacio la cultura anglosajona que
rompe con los roles tradicionales (42). Zeitz seala que la influencia de la flap-
per norteamericana no solamente se limita a la mujer anglosajona sino que tam-
bin marca a las mujeres inmigrantes como muestra de la aculturacin a la socie-
dad estadounidense (265). A esta mujer que sigue las costumbres de la flapper
anglosajona se le conoce como pelona haciendo referencia a su pelo corto.
En El sol de Texas se presenta al personaje de Juanita como la agringada de
la novela. Cuando la familia est recin llegada a los Estados Unidos se obser-
va que Juanita sigue comportndose como debera portarse una mujer mexica-
na, ya que todava se viste a la usanza del pas natal y lleva trenzas. Adems no
solamente mantiene el aspecto fsico sino tambin la moral conservadora que le
inculcaron sus padres. Al permanecer en el pas, Juanita va adquiriendo la cul-
tura norteamericana, es decir, se agringa y empieza a asimilarse y a perder su
cultura original.
Un claro ejemplo en la obra de este contraste se encuentra en el episodio
inicial en el que al ver la situacin econmica de la familia, las mujeres empie-
zan a orar. El narrador cuenta que Cuando Cuca y las muchachas supieron el
fracaso de los suyos, renunciaron a seguir pegadas al ventanucho por el cual
vean la ciudad. La tristeza iba ahogndolas y, sin decirse una palabra, fueron a
un rincn al cuarto, colocaron en fila a los santitos y se pusieron a orar (25).
En lo anterior se observa cmo las mujeres se limitaban a seguir con sus prcti-
cas religiosas en un mbito privado y no eran capaces de salir a ayudar a su
familia. La funcin de la mujer se limita a fungir como apoyo al hombre y no
como miembro activo de la sociedad. Segn el punto de vista del narrador, las
mujeres solamente pueden actuar en el hogar, ya que su condicin femenina,
segn la ideologa patriarcal, no permita que stas se pudieran desenvolver en
un mbito pblico. De acuerdo con Anzalda, The culture and the Church
insist that women are subservient to males (39).
Despus de haber transcurrido un tiempo, Juanita empieza a cambiar su
apariencia personal y su manera de vestir; es decir, toma iniciativa propia y
empieza a sustituir sus costumbres mexicanas por las anglosajonas, lo cual se ve
como una seal de que se est apegando a la cultura norteamericana, o sea, se
est agringando. Juana presenta todas las caractersticas de la pelona: se corta
el pelo, es coqueta, se viste provocativamente y baila, adems gana su propio
dinero. El narrador seala que Juana tena a su vez gran contento, ya era como
una seorita de aquellas que envidiara tanto en San Antonio, ya tena pelo corto,
vestidos de seda, medias transparentes, zapatos finos, sombreros floreados y
hasta abrigo de pieles (96). Adems tambin seala la aficin de Juana al baile
y comenta que Un fongrafo gangueaba todo el da piezas y piezas y Juana
estaba loca ensayando bailes siempre que tena el ms mnimo tiempo, frente
aquel cajoncito tan milagrosamente alegre . . . (97). Es decir que Juana se ha
164 ! !!!!!!!!! Laura Garza
agringado y su apariencia y actitudes la han convertido en una pelona. Casi al
finalizar la obra, se presenta una situacin en la que Quico le reclama a Cuca
por no haber sabido guiar bien a Juanita. Cuca le contesta Deregida por m?
A modo que yo la dej raparse las trenzas, a modo que yo le consent que emba-
rrarse los cachetes, a modo que yo la llev a la tienda para que se mercara esas
naguas liadas y ese gorro provocativo y esas medias de mujer mala y esos zapa-
tos . . . (91). Juanita se ha convertido en toda una pelona, una mujer libre al
estilo americano, una mala mujer al tomar las riendas de su vida. Para Anzal-
da, en una sociedad patriarcal como la mexicana, If a woman rebels, she is a
mujer mala (39). Quico y Cuca empiezan a culparse uno a otro por lo que est
sucediendo con Juanita y, en general, con los hijos. La familia como base de la
cultura se est desmembrando por la intrusin de valores norteamericanos como
el materialismo y el consumismo, dejando a un lado el respeto por la autoridad
de los padres y la religiosidad, lo que va a resultar en la decadencia de la cultu-
ra mexicana en los Estados Unidos.
En Macho! se presentan dos personajes femeninos, Esperanza y Gloria,
que encarnan este mismo sentimiento de abogar por una asimilacin a la cultu-
ra norteamericana y el cumplimiento del sueo americano, que como anterior-
mente se haba presentado, forma parte de los elementos representativos de la
autobiografa tnica. Esperanza, la hermana de Roberto, es una mujer joven que
se siente marginalizada en la sociedad patriarcal en la que vive. Anzalda seala
que Culture is made by those in powermen (38). Desde el punto de vista del
personaje de Esperanza, los Estados Unidos representan esa oportunidad por
dejar a un lado la marginalizacin basada en una ideologa patriarcal de la que
ha sido vctima. De acuerdo con Shaffner, Self-culture or self-formation indeed
permeates the apprenticeship novel as its primary recurrent theme (22). Para
Esperanza, el pas anglosajn es la oportunidad de dejar un lugar secundario
debido a la ideologa de la igualdad de oportunidades que propaga el sueo
americano. As que el cumplimiento del sueo americano no solamente se logra
para el personaje masculino sino que tambin el personaje femenino se ve bene-
ficiado por la oportunidad de llevar a cabo sus logros.
En una ocasin, Esperanza le comenta a Roberto que si yo fuera hombre
. . . carajo, ya me habra ido hace muchos aos! (23). A lo que Roberto le con-
testa, Esperanza, te prohibo que hables as. Dios te hizo mujer. No tienes por
qu estar cuestionando todo. Ten respeto! No es suficiente con que yo haya
roto las costumbres esta noche? (23). En el dilogo anterior, se observa cmo
Esperanza no puede expresarse como quiere debido a que ese comportamiento
es considerado solamente apto para los hombres. Para Esperanza la inmigracin
a los Estados Unidos representa la va para poder establecer una identidad pro-
pia sin estar supeditada a una sociedad patriarcal.
Gloria es otro personaje que encarna el sueo americano y el rechazo de la
cultura mexicana. El personaje de Gloria es el comprobante de que esta ilusin
se llega a cumplir, es decir, que las oportunidades, ya sea laborales o educativas,
en los Estados Unidos son equitativas para todos y que el destino de cada quien
depende de s mismo. El narrador seala que Gloria, la ms educada de la fami-
lia, haba terminado la preparatoria y el ao anterior haba recibido una beca
para ir a la universidad (150). Con lo anterior se presenta que las mujeres en
los Estados Unidos tienen la oportunidad de estudiar y de ascender en la escala
social gracias al trabajo duro. Anzalda explica que la cuarta salida para la
mujer, aparte de convertirse en ama de casa, monja o prostituta, es la educacin
y aade que, entering the world by way of education and career and becoming
self-autonomous persons (39). Estos personajes femeninos encarnan el con-
cepto de la hocicona
1
de Gloria Anzalda, ya que son calladas constantemen-
te por sus madres, padres o hermanos. Estas mujeres no desean seguir con los
patrones que les impone la sociedad y ven en la oportunidad de emigrar a los
Estados Unidos y asimilarse, la posibilidad de romper con la ideologa patriar-
cal de sus pases de origen. A diferencia de Gloria y Esperanza cuya asimilacin
y apego a la cultura norteamericana posee un enfoque positivo en cuanto a la
vida del inmigrante en los Estados Unidos, el personaje de Juanita, su acultura-
cin y posterior adquisicin de aspectos relacionados con la flapper, muestran
un tono negativo hacia la mujer y la cultura anglosajona.
Conrado Espinoza en El sol de Texas presenta un buen modelo de literatu-
ra de inmigracin, ya que contiene todos los elementos necesarios para estable-
cerla como tal. Por ejemplo, se ve claramente un mensaje contra la inmigracin
o de regreso, se insta por una conservacin de los valores del pas de origen, se
ve una gran nostalgia hacia Mxico y se presentan los personajes tpicos como
el verde, la agringada y el pcaro. Lo mencionado anteriormente engloba toda
esta perspectiva negativa que se tiene al hacer contacto con la cultura estadou-
nidense que finalmente representa la esencia de la literatura de inmigracin. Al
contrario, de Macho!, que presenta las caractersticas de la literatura nativa. En
este tipo de obra se exalta el ac como nuevo lugar de pertenencia; su meta es
quedarse y asimilarse. En general, la perspectiva hacia los Estados Unidos que
se presenta en este tipo de obras es positiva y se busca una integracin a la nueva
cultura tomando como base el desprecio y reniego por la patria original.
Notas
1
Segn Gloria Anzalda, la hocicona es aquella mujer que se atreve a desobe-
decer las convenciones sociales y morales que la sociedad espera de ella.
166 ! !!!!!!!!! Laura Garza
Bibliografa
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 2006.
Anzalda, Gloria. Borderlands = La frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books,
1999.
Baeza Ventura, Gabriela. La imagen de la mujer en la crnica del Mxico de
afuera. Ciudad Jurez: U Autnoma de Ciudad Jurez, 2006.
Boelhower, William Q. The Immigrant Novel as Genre MELUS 8.1 (1981):3-
13.
Boelhower, William Q. Brave New World of Immigrant Autobiography
MELUS 9.2 (1982): 5-23.
Chambers, Sarah C. Letters and Salons: Women Reading and Writing the
Nation. Beyond imagined communities: reading and writing the nation in
nineteenth-century Latin America. Eds. Sara Castro-Klarn and John
Charles Chasteen. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2003. 54-83.
Durczak, Jerzy. Immigrant/Ethnic Autobiography in the United States Amer-
ican Studies 14 (1995): 7-18.
Espinosa, Conrado. El sol de Texas. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 2007.
Hobsbawn, E. J. Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reali-
ty. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
Howard, Tom. Rev. of Macho!, by Victor Villaseor. Multicultural Review
1(1991): 71-72.
Kanellos, Nicols. La literatura hispana de los Estados Unidos y el gnero
autobiogrfico. Hispanos en los Estados Unidos. Eds. Rodolfo Cortina
and Alberto Moncada. Madrid: Instituto de Cooperacin Iberoamericana,
1988. 219-230.
Payant, Katherine B. and Toby Rose, eds. Introduction: Stories of the Uprooted.
The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature: Carving out a
Niche. Westport: Greenwood P, 1999.
Pluecker, John. Introduction. El sol de Texas. By Conrado Espinosa. Houston.
Arte Pblico P, 2007. v-xxix. Print.
Shaffner, Randolph P. The Apprenticeship Novel. A Study of the Bildungsro-
man as a Regulative Type in Western Literature with a Focus on Three
Classic Representatives by Goethe, Maugham, and Mann. New York: Peter
Lang Publishing, 1984.
Villaseor, Victor. Macho!. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 2007.
Zeitz, Joshua. Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women
Who Made America Modern. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
Part IV
Nationalism in Contact Zones
171
The Mexican-American Novel of the Revolution
Reading the Immigrant Nationalism of Leonor
Villegas de Magnns The Rebel
YOLANDA PADILLA
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
N
umerous Mexican-American and proto Mexican-American literary texts
of the early twentieth century focus their attention on the Mexican Rev-
olution. These include narratives as varied as the short stories of Mara
Cristina Mena, the plays and novels of Josefina Niggli, Luis Prezs autobio-
graphical novel El Coyote, the Rebel, and the writings of Amrico Paredes. Such
texts share much with the preeminent Mexican narrative form of the twentieth
century, the novel of the Revolution. Like their Mexican counterparts, Mexican-
American versions do more than simply use the Revolution as a background set-
ting. Rather, they are politically and historically engaged narratives that grapple
with the meanings and consequences of Mexicos civil war. Often, they follow
in the tradition of the Mexican genre by emphasizing similar themes, such as the
betrayal of the Revolutions agrarian principles, or by exploring the repercus-
sions of that betrayal on understandings of Mexican national identity. At the
same time, however, the borderlands perspective from which most of these
authors wrote distinguishes what I am calling the Mexican-American novel of
the Revolution. All of these narratives, for example, express a deeply transna-
tional understanding of the Revolution, one that is shaped by an awareness of
the neocolonial relationship between Mexico and the United States. They regis-
tereither explicitly or implicitlywhat a number of historians recently have
posited, that the U.S.s role in the exploitation of the Mexican countryside was
one of the final sparks that ignited the rebellion, and which informed its often
nationalist and anti-imperial forms.
1
Moreover, such writings focus their atten-
tion on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, placing the region and its people at the
center of the Mexican national narrative in a way that inevitably demonstrates
the transnational contact that has shaped the histories of Mexico and the United
States, while in turn revealing the significance of those histories for the emer-
gence of the border subject.
Thus, at the same time that they grappled with issues of urgent importance
to the Mexican nation, the writers locations as subjects of the United States nec-
essarily shaped the terms in which they framed their work. In writing about the
Revolution, often from nationalist perspectives, such authors never simply
reproduced nationalist ideologies as articulated in Mexico. Rather, their narra-
tives were shaped by and responded to their local conditions as immigrants in
the United States, exemplifying what historian Eiichiro Azuma calls immigrant
nationalism, expressions of nationalism that respond to outreaches from the
home nation, but which produce activities that are shaped by the local political
situations and affective needs of the immigrants themselves. As a result of the
transnational perspective from which they expressed Mexican nationalist con-
cerns, these writers produced works that shed light on the web of interlocking
relationships between Mexico and the United States that informed nationalist
practices, while also carving a place for the Mexican-American subject in the
narratives of both countries.
Leonor Villegas de Magnns memoir The Rebel is an example of the kind
of immigrant nationalism I am identifying. The author recounts her role as a par-
ticipant in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), focusing especially on the work
she did as the founder and director of La Cruz Blanca, a female nursing corps.
The events she relates take place largely in Mexico, but are framed and shaped
by her experience as a child of the U.S.-Mexico border. Like numerous other
early twentieth-century Mexican-American writers, Villegas de Magnn engaged
the Revolution from the vantage point of the border, positioning the region and
its inhabitants at the center of the defining event of twentieth-century Mexican
history. By viewing the war through this geopolitical and cultural optic, she
asserts a place for border Mexicans in the Mexican national narrative in ways that
inevitably have transnational resonances, and through which she simultaneously
expresses an ethnic identity for Mexicans in the United States.
Specifically, she strives to validate the place of border Mexicansproto-
Mexican Americansas crucial to the outcome of the war and to the future of
the Mexican nation despite their poor reputations among Mexican nationals,
who viewed them as barbarous and peripheral. To do this, she writes an arguably
anti-revolutionary account of the Revolution, one that paints a pastoral picture
172 ! !!!!!!!!! Yolanda Padilla
of the borderlands and omits the agrarian strife that was the driving force behind
the war. While this rehabilitation of the border is the first step the text takes to
make a place for the region in the Mexican imaginary, the move simultaneous-
ly works to calm similarif differently motivatedfears held in the U.S.
There, the border was also conceived of as a space of lawlessness, an idea that
gained force with the Revolutions anarchist associations. Villegas de Magnn
counters such notions by refiguring the border, transforming it from the zone of
anarchy imagined by both nations, to a pacifying feminine space that promotes
familial feeling between the two and defuses potential conflicts, conflicts that
are indicated through the spectral U.S. presence that pervades the narrative. As
I argue, then, writing a place for the borderlands and its people in Mexicos
future becomes the way that Villegas de Magnn begins imagining a place for
border Mexicans in the United States as well. Moreover, the narrative suggests
that transnational understandings of the rebellion shaped strategies of cultural
adaptation and emerging ethnic identities among Mexican Americans.
The Pastoral Border
Villegas de Magnn opens her memoir with a scene of chaos and agitation.
In the midst of a furious storm, rebels intrude upon her fathers ranch with the
intention of ransacking it. First they, then the Federal officials who come in
search of them, are chastened by the sight of the newborn girl whose first hours
of life they have disturbed by barging into the house. Shortly thereafter we learn
that the babe was Villegas de Magnn herself, and that because the Federals ini-
tially mistook her for one of the insurgents, her nickname from that moment on
would be the rebel. As Clara Lomas (1994, xxi) has noted, this scene initiates
the memoirs pattern of intertwining personal and national events in ways that
suggest that the author was destined to play a major part in her countrys future.
The year of her birth, 1876, marked the start of Porfirio Dazs thirty-five year
dictatorship, and the nickname given to her foreshadows her future as a leading
figure in support of Venustiano Carranzas Constitutionalist rebel army. Even
the storm indicates the tempestuous future that awaits both the author and the
Mexican nation.
However, the pages that follow this frenzied beginning are written in a very
different mode. As the narrative shifts from the Rebels birth to her childhood
on her familys ranch, the mood abruptly changes from one of turbulence and
danger to serenity and peace. While Villegas de Magnn calls her father Joaqun
a powerful capitalist (un poderoso capitalista 2004, 6), she depicts her fam-
ilys ranch as a kind of semi-feudal hacienda, with hundreds of ranch hands,
shepherds, and servants living in peaceful harmony under the watchful eye of
The Mexican-American Novel of the Revolution . . . ! ! ! 173
the patrn. This recalls other Mexican-American representations of the hacien-
da, frontier idylls identified by Vincent Prez (2006) as a significant strain of
early Mexican-American writing. They are driven by a pastoral impulse, which
Leo Marx describes as a desire to disengage from the dominant culture and to
seek out the basis for a simpler, more satisfying mode of life in a realm closer
. . . to nature (1987, 54). The pastoral mode has often been read as an anti-
revolutionary mode, one that provides arcadian representations that engage in a
kind of willful amnesia, eliding conflicts of all sorts in order to justify existing
social orders or to romanticize past orders, depending on the context. More
recently, Lawrence Buell (1995) has complicated such readings by arguing that
they ignore the ideological duality so common in pastoral, the ways in which
accomodationism and reformism are interfused (51).
Villegas de Magnns use of the pastoral works in the multiple directions
Buell suggests, and in ways that are a foundational aspect of her immigrant
nationalism. If the opening of her memoir, with its romanticization of life on the
hacienda, seems badly out of place, even anti-revolutionary in a tale of revolu-
tion, it is because the Mexican civil war was fought at least in part to overthrow
the very system she celebrates. Even after she leaves behind the pastoral world
and begins her straightforward account of her selfless day-to-day involvement
with La Cruz Blanca and Carranzas revolutionary forces, one wonders about
the almost complete absence of the agrarian poor in the narrative. Where is the
peasantry, one asks, in this chronicle of agrarian-inspired rebellion?
While Villegas de Magnons own aristocratic background might explain
much about why the peasantry is largely unrepresented in her memoir, it is not
a completely satisfactory answer, especially when we remember that she sacri-
ficed everything to overthrow the political order that oppressed the rural poor
(Lomas xxii). Another way to think about the peasantrys absence is to distin-
guish between the reasons behind Villegas de Magnns participation in the
Revolution, and her reasons for writing The Rebel. As Lomas has noted, her
most pressing aim in writing her memoir was to ensure that La Cruz Blancas
role in the Revolution would be remembered and honored (xxxiii). But she also
used her narrative to assert that the border region and its inhabitants, so marginal
in the minds of Mexicans, were central to the Revolution, and thus central to the
defining event of twentieth-century Mexican history. Even more, she strove to
forge an honored place for border Mexicans in the Mexican national narrative,
one that fashions them both as committed to the revolutionary cause and as
playing a key role in bringing unity and peace to the divided country.
This latter move runs directly counter to deeply held views of the border as
a zone of rebellion and even anarchy, and I argue that this bears on her employ-
ment of the pastoral mode and to the related issue of the peasantrys absence
from her story. As Ana Mara Alonso (1995) has shown, the northern frontier
has long been viewed as untamed space marked by a culture of warfare resis-
tant to the Mexican center (18). This view became even stronger in the years
leading up to the revolution with the rise of insurgent groups in the borderlands
such as Ricardo Flores Magns Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM). For Villegas
de Magnn to promote the borderlands as a peaceful region that would lead the
war-torn nation to unity and harmony was to go against deeply ingrained
notions concerning its inherent lawlessness. Her representation of life on the
border as a pastoral romance is a first step in its rehabilitation in the imaginar-
ies of her readers.
She builds upon this ambience of tranquility with two of the most memo-
rable scenes in the narrative. Immediately after the Rebels birth, her mother,
Doa Valeriana, contemplates the fact that her son, Leopoldo, was born on the
U.S.-side of the border, and her daughter, Leonor, on the Mexican side. Holding
the Rebel in her arms she whispers, A Mexican flag will be yours. I will wrap
it together with your brothers. His shall be an American flag, but they shall be
like one to me (bandera mexicana ser la tuya la envolver junto con la amer-
icana que es la de mi hijo, tu hermano, las dos haciendo una sola 8). Here, the
family takes on an allegorical cast that foregrounds the U.S.-Mexico relation-
ship from the outset. While Valeriana does not explicitly raise the idea that her
children might come into conflict because they were born on opposite sides of
the border, her act shows that the possibility concerns her. This familial drama
symbolically extends to the national, as Leopoldo and Leonor at least fleeting-
ly become allegorical figures who stand for the United States and Mexico,
respectively. They are represented in their mothers gesture by the flags of the
two nations, which dissolve the familial into the national, and thus replace the
potential conflict between siblings with that between nations. Ultimately, Doa
Valeriana symbolically dissolves the border and the geopolitical divisions it
marks through the familial relationship she prioritizes. But once raised, the pall
of potential conflict between Mexico and the United States remains, despite the
scenes symbolic resolution.
In a later scene, flags and tensions reappear, and again Valeriana acts sym-
bolically. The scene takes place a few years later, when Leopoldo, Leonor, and
their younger brother Lorenzo are playing with a Mexican and an American
flag. The Indian servant watching over them, Pancho, tells Leonor that she
should play with the Mexican flag because she was born in Mexico. Lorenzo,
however, snatches it away, saying you are a girl, give me that flag (t eres
mujer, dame a m esa bandera). Valeriana intervenes, telling the Rebel that she
should carry a white flag because in war, there are women who carry white
flags; they cure the wounded soldiers; you go in between those who carry
national flags (En la guerra hay mujeres que llevan banderas blancas, curan a
los soldados heridos; t vas en medio de los dos abanderados, 22). Here, again,
the narrative evokes the specter of the United States, only this time the potential
for conflict is alluded to more explicitly with Valeriana raising the idea of war.
Both of these scenes happen early in the Rebels tale, when she is still a child.
Thus, long before the narrative broaches its main topic, the Revolution, it has
already brought up the United States twice, both times in association with ten-
sion and conflict, and, in the latter case, in association with war. These scenes,
the memoirs most memorable, condition us to read all that follows with the
United States in mind, and suggest that the ostensibly national event of the Rev-
olution will have transnational repercussions.
If in the first scene Leonora symbolized Mexico, in the second she is set
apart from any national associations. Of course, Valerianas words foreshadow
the role the Rebel will play in the Revolution, but they also ensure that we
understand that role to be gender appropriate, not something to be feared or that
should be associated with recklessness. On one level, this bears on how we are
meant to view the Rebel herself. However, I want to suggest that this character-
ization matters beyond the Rebel, that it is, like the use of the pastoral, part of
the discursive process of rehabilitating the borderlands. Villegas de Magnn
means for us to associate her with the region; the two flag scenes drive the point
home most strongly, but she also accentuates her connection through details of
her everyday life. Yet in the white flag scene, she is transformed from an
inhabitant of the border to a symbol of the border. Valeriana speaks in general
terms of the Rebel carrying a flag of peace between those who carry the flags
of nations, but the brothers are playing with the flags of Mexico and the United
States. The Rebel, then, walks between those two nations and keeps the peace
between them.
Moreover, once the white flag, the border, and the Rebel are all tied togeth-
er, the nursing corps Villegas de Magnn later founds also becomes part of this
symbolic matrix, thus further accentuating the idea that the borderlands are to
be thought of as a region of peace and even succor. As Lomas points out, much
of Villegas de Magnns memoir is devoted to chronicling La Cruz Blancas
monumental efforts to unify, harmonize, and pacify the otherwise massive,
chaotic, destructive revolutionary hurricane (xxviii). If we think of the nursing
corps as a body emanating from and standing in for the pastoral border world
the narrative has established, we see that Villegas de Magnn figures the region
as a force of peace that moves out into the rest of the nation to bring unity and
harmony. Hers is a vision that feminizes the border, but not in a way that indi-
cates emasculation or weakness. Rather, she imbues the border with a feminine
strength that emphasizes peace, nurturance, and unity over aggression and law-
lessness. Just as it takes the borders La Cruz Blanca to pacify the revolution-
ary hurricane, so, then, will it take the border and its people to calm the ten-
sions between Mexico and the United States.
Villegas de Magnns iconoclastic view of the borderlands might not be so
compelling were it not for her insistence on the transnational scope of the Rev-
olution. Indeed, her memoir takes for granted that the U.S.-Mexico relationship
is one of the Revolutions central concerns. Rather than go into detail about the
tensions in the relationship that she repeatedly, if obliquely, thematizes, she uses
her glancing references to them as a way to assert a central role for the border
Mexican in the Mexican national narrative. Yet despite Villegas de Magnns
efforts to paint a picture of the borderlands as a region of peace and tranquility,
any reader at all familiar with the area would know it was largely untrue. And it
is hard to fathom that Villegas de Magnn believed it, given how savvy, realis-
tic, and pragmatic she was. I read her frontier idyll, then, not as an example of
wishful thinking or simple fantasy, but as an extended argument for the crucial
position the border and its people could play to the future of the Mexican nation.
While national borders are dissolved in the narratives most symbolic moments,
especially early on, they emphatically are reasserted later when attention is
directed almost exclusively to Mexicos social, cultural and political problems
as a nation at war with itself. In The Rebel, such problems include the future of
the Mexican-U.S. relationship, and that issue is developed through the spectral
U.S. presence that persists throughout the book.
Certainly Villegas de Magnns focus on the borderlands reflects the reali-
ty of her family situation. But the insistence on the familial feeling between the
two countries moves beyond autobiographical sentiment to narrative strategy. It
becomes a way to highlight the sensitive geopolitical position of the border, and
the role it could play in diminishing any future threat posed by the United
States. She announces the importance of this theme at the outset of her memoir,
in the preface: The Ro Grandes turbulent and menacing waters have been
tamed. The divisive line has been converted into a fountain of life that nourish-
es two sister nations, Mexico and the United States, destined to be friends (Las
aguas turbulentas y amenazadoras del Ro Grande han sido amansados. La lnea
divisoria se ha convertido en fuente de vida que nutre a dos naciones hermanas,
Mxico y Estados Unidos, destinadas a ser amigas, 3).
I see Villegas de Magnns sustained focus on the borderlands as an attempt
to fashion a place of honor and centrality for the region and its people in the
Mexican national narrative, both in terms of the work of peacemaking engaged
in by those representatives of the border, the nurses of La Cruz Blanca, and in
terms of the future of the U.S.-Mexico relationship. At the same time, the nar-
rative is shaped by the local concerns of those Mexican border residents on the
U.S.-side of the line, and shows how a narrative that positions the border as
important to the Mexican nation might also work to fashion an ethnic identity
for Mexicans in the United States.
1776 and 1810
One prominent line of thought about Mexicans in the first decades of the
twentieth century is summed up by a New York Times editorial published in
1920: To the average American the Mexican of today is an insurgent or bandit
or, at any rate, a conspirator against his government (Qtd. in Delpar 1992; 5).
Such thinking was reinforced by the U.S. film industrys penchant for depicting
a Barbarous Mexico (the title of a 1913 documentary). The Hearst Motion Pic-
ture Company, for example, expressed great antipathy for Mexico and its Rev-
olution, representing Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata as respectively a bar-
barian and The Atilla of the South, implying that the struggle in Mexico
mirrored the savage war of Huns and Romans, with civilization itself at stake
(Slotkin 1998; 412). So prominent were cinematic depictions of Mexicans as
cowardly greasers and villains that the Mexican government began to censor
such films in protest (Delpar 1984). Images such as these fed the persistent
notion that Mexico was unfit for self-government. These ideas would usually
take the mixed race nature of the Mexican people as their chief line of reason-
ing. Hubert Howe Bancroft, the wealthy book dealer and publisher, declared in
1912 that Porfirio Daz had no choice but to impose dictatorial rule on Mexico
because a nation of mestizos was not, like the Anglo Americans, predisposed
toward democratic institutions (Qtd. in Snchez 1995; 30). Madison Grant
whose Passing of the Great Race was among the most influential expressions of
the rising eugenic view of immigration in the 1920sargued that the true
achievement of the melting pot was best exemplified by the racial mixture we
call Mexican, and which is now [through the Mexican Revolution] engaged in
demonstrating its incapacity for self-government (Qtd. in Jacobson 1998; 81).
Like other Mexican-American and proto-Mexican-American authors, Vil-
legas de Magnn engaged such U.S. stereotypes about Mexico in her writings.
At the same time, then, that her memoir is finely attuned to Mexicos political
and cultural contexts, it is also a text that represents Mexico through the lens of
U. S. prejudices, aspirations, and anxieties. This complicated transnational optic
produces a representation of the Revolution that is sensitive to concerns ema-
nating from both sides of the border, concerns that often overlap. I want to sug-
gest that this sort of overlap motivates the memoirs de-emphasis of the peas-
antry in its account of the rebellion. While Villegas de Magnns pastoral
portrait of the borderlands counters Mexican notions of the region as untamed
and lawless space, it simultaneously contradicts similar apprehensions held by
the U.S. about Mexico as a whole. And if her presentation of hacienda life on
the border does little to promote the image of liberal democracy so central to
American mythology, it does work to take the edge off of any perceived threat
Mexico might pose. More specifically, the de-emphasis of the peasantry is one
way that the Revolution is represented less as a story of agrarian revolt with
socialist underpinnings and more as a fight for political justice, and thus more
reminiscent of the American Revolution.
Attempts to interpret Mexicos civil war in terms of the American Revolu-
tion were prominent throughout the twentieth century and on both sides of the
border. As Richard Slotkin has documented, President Eisenhower and his
advisers tried to understand the Third World revolutions in progress at the begin-
ning of his presidency through discussions of the Mexican Revolution. The
question for them came down to whether the Mexican rebellion had more in
common with the progressive change they associated with the American Revo-
lution, or with the despotism they linked to communist revolutions. They came
to no clear conclusions, but the elements of revolution that they considered to
be negativeradicalism and violencetook precedence in their discussions,
slightly tarnishing even the American revolutionary tradition in their minds
(Slotkin, 408-9).
This example demonstrates the profound impression the Mexican Revolu-
tion made on the American imaginary, and gives an indication of the ways in
which the Mexican civil war was judged and interpreted in terms of the Ameri-
can Revolution. Such comparisons, however, had already been prominent for
decades, gaining currency almost as soon as the first shots were fired in Mexi-
co. Ral Ramos discusses this strategy of equating the Mexican and American
revolutions in his compelling study of centenary celebrations of Mexican inde-
pendence by ethnic Mexican communities in the U.S. Southwest.
2
Of course,
the war for Mexican independence began in 1810, and the Mexican Revolution
began in 1910, leading to the celebration of the anniversary of one revolution in
the midst of the outbreak of another. As Ramos discusses, this meant that many
of the centenary celebrations were staged in ways that commented on the events
happening in Mexico at that moment, and that the Mexican Independence
parades became a site of contestation, encompassing transnational politics and
multiple social identities (4). These parades were irreducible to a single idea or
message; as Ramos further notes, differences of political position, class, and
even migrant generation often led to tensions within the border communities as
the celebrations played out: for ethnic Mexicans, the parades served as a space
to debates ideas about the Mexican past, present, and future (9).
One prominent concern of a number of the celebrations was how such
ostentatious signs of Mexican patriotism might be interpreted in the United
States. Would they be seen as signs of disloyalty to the U.S.? The San Antonio
Daily Express addressed this concern in its description of the celebration with
the following admonishment:
The Mexicans of San Antonio were urged to be better citizens of the
United States in order that they may live as worthy sons of the forefa-
thers who left them the same proud heritage which the heroes of 1776
gave to the people of the United States. (Qtd. in Ramos 8)
In this passage, we see the kinds of connections being made between the Mex-
ican and American revolutionary traditions that were a common theme among
more conservative segments of the Mexican-American population. Certainly
this was not the only approach among Mexicans who were striving to make a
place for themselves north of the bordermany others were proud of their anar-
chist politics and agitated quite openlybut the idea that fears about a bar-
barous Mexico needed to be refuted in ways that made sense within U.S. para-
digms was a significant aspect of the forging of a Mexican-American identity in
this period. The newspaper account continues in a way that is of particular inter-
est for my discussion of Villegas de Magnn:
Most of those who attended the celebrations at San Pedro Springs and
Electric Park are American citizens, who speak both English and Span-
ish. In their decorations, the Mexican and American flags were
entwined and at both parks speeches were made in both English and
Spanish. Bands played medleys of both national anthems, changing in
the middle of a bar. (Qtd. in Ramos 8)
In his analysis of such accounts, Ramos argues that this theme of entwined
banners and equating Mexican and American independence was repeated in
almost all the parades in the U.S. and even in some ceremonies in Mexico City.
After all both revolutions did represent opposition to European colonialism (8).
The intertwined flags, of course, recall Villegas de Magnn, and suggest
that she, too, was attempting to equate the two revolutions, and to make ethnic
Mexicans in the U.S. seem less threatening, and more recognizable in terms of
the revolutionary tradition they came from. Her representations of intertwining
flags go further in their symbolism, as they not only indicate the inextricability
of the U.S.-Mexico relationship and the similar sensibility shared by the two
revolutionary traditions, but they also assert a familial relationship through
Leopoldo and Leonor, one that will not be broken by arbitrary national bound-
aries. Moreover, and in light of Ramoss analysis, we see that Villegas de Mag-
nns symbolic intertwining of the U.S. and Mexican flags is not simply the fan-
ciful imagining of a single individual, but rather that it fits into a long tradition
of such symbolism. The tradition Villegas de Magnn re-animates through her
account is one that counters U.S. ideas about the uncivilized nature of Mexico
and its lack of fitness for self-government.
It is a tradition that she turns to again in the English-language version of her
memoir, which she wrote in the late 1940s, some twenty-five years after she
drafted the Spanish-language version. There she includes a memorable scene in
which she quotes from a speech her brother Leopoldo gave before dedicating a
bridge between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas:
As I close my eyes tonight, when the two cities are wrapped in slumber,
two familiar forms appear at this bridge, and at this monument unite
their hands. The tall form with the white wig, on the American side, will
be George Washington. The other from the Mexican side is the monu-
mental Hidalgo. (Villegas de Magnn 1994; 77)
Here 1776 and 1810 come together once more through the figures of Washing-
ton and Hidalgo. This passage is much more explicit in its melding together of
the American and the Mexican revolutionary traditions. I argue that the direct-
ness of the comparison here bears on the earlier and more oblique thematiza-
tions of the U.S.-Mexico relationship in the Spanish-language version I have
been examining. It shows that making Mexico legible to the U.S. through its
national paradigms was one of her key strategies in representing that relation-
ship, and serves as a telling example of how such cross-cultural translation
became a key theme in the cultivation of an ethnic identity for Mexicans in the
United States.
Ultimately, Villegas de Magnns narrative moves in two different directions,
making the borderlands central to the Mexican national narrative by virtue of their
very geographical and cultural marginality, while in the same stroke crafting an
identity for Mexicans in the United States through the assertion of a shared revo-
lutionary past. In the end, the emergence of the Mexican-American becomes cen-
tral to Villegas de Magnns Mexican-American novel of the Revolution.
Notes
1
For examples of such scholarship, see the essays in Nugents Rural Revolt in
Mexico, especially John Coatsworth, Measuring Influence: The United States
and the Mexican Peasantry, Hart, Social Unrest, and Rubn Osorio, Villis-
mo: Nationalism and Popular Mobilization in Northern Mexico. For an analy-
sis of such themes in another work by a Mexican-American author, see my
forthcoming article on Josefina Nigglis Mexican Village.
2
The following discussion is heavily influenced by Ramoss work.
Works Cited
Alonso, Ana Mara. Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on
Mexicos Northern Frontier. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1995.
Azuma, Eiichiro. Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism
in Japanese America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.
Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing,
and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap P of
Harvard UP, 1995.
Delpar, Helen. Goodbye to the Greaser: Mexico, the MPPDA and Derogatory
Films, 1922-1926, Journal of Popular Film and Television 12 (1984): 34-41.
______. The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations between
the United States and Mexico, 1920-1935. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P,
1992.
Jacobson, Matthew Frey. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants
and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998.
Lomas, Clara. Introduction to The Rebel by Leonor Villegas de Magnn. Hous-
ton: Arte Pblico P, 1994: xi-lvi.
______. Transborder Discourse: The Articulation of Gender on the Border-
lands in the Early Twentieth Century. Frontiers 24, nos. 2-3 (2003): 51-74.
Marx, Leo. Pastoralism in America. Ideology and Classic American Litera-
ture. Eds. Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1987: 36-69.
Nugent, Daniel, ed. Rural Revolt in Mexico: U.S. Intervention and the Domain
of Subaltern Politics. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.
Padilla, Yolanda. The Transnational National: Race, the Border, and the Immi-
grant Nationalism of Josefina Nigglis Mexican Village. CR: The New Cen-
tennial Review, forthcoming.
Prez, Vincent. Remembering the Hacienda: History and Memory in the Mexi-
can American Southwest. College Station: Texas A&M P, 2006.
Ramos, Ral. Creating Transnational Identity: Celebrating the Centennial of
Mexican Independence in the United States. Unpublished manuscript.
Snchez, Rosaura. Telling Identities: The Californio Testimonios. Minneapolis:
U of Minnesota P, 1995
Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-
Century America. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1992.
Villegas de Magnn, Leonor. The Rebel. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 1994.
______. La Rebelde. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 2004.
185
The Return of Jos Castro: The Baja California
Correspondence of Alta Californias Last
Commander General
JULIANNE BURTON-CARVAJAL
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ
A
s Commander General of Alta California from early 1845, Colonel Jos
Antonio Mara de Jess Castro resolutely confronted John Charles Fr-
mont and his band of United States topographical engineers at their
unauthorized camp near San Juan Bautista in June of 1846, then headed north
to contend with the Bear Flag Republic rebels at Sonoma the following
month. Near Los Angeles on August 10th, facing Commodore Stocktons fresh
and well-armed forces, triple the number of his own, Colonel Castro offered his
weary troops three options: continue to fight under the command of his younger
cousin Captain Manuel de Jess Castro; return to their families; or follow him
to seek reinforcements from the Mexican Army.
Taking with him a contingent of sixteen soldiers, Castro headed southeast
across the vast Sonora desert on what turned out to be a futile errand. On Sep-
tember 9th, from an unspecified location, he sent a letter to the Mexican Minis-
ter of War announcing the loss of Alta California:
. . . I feel regret at not having been able to make greater sacrifices in
defense of the Department that was under my command at the time
when the American squadron took possession of it. . . . The extreme
scarcity of supplies of every nature, particularly arms and munitions,
compelled me to retire [after] three months . . . Finally I resolved to
place myself at the disposal of the Supreme Government, which I have
the honor to address, hoping that its deliberations on this important
subject will result in restoring this beautiful country to the enjoyment of
its rights and liberties. From this place, I await the order of the gov-
ernment, as I am unable to continue my march for want of supplies.
Six weeks later, Castros official letter was published in the October 16th edi-
tion of Mexico Citys Diario de Gobierno and, six weeks after that, in the
December 4th edition of Washington, D.C.s Daily Union.
Inadequate Mexican forces were then struggling vainly to repel American
troops from every cardinal point: Texas, Veracruz, La Paz, and eventually from
Mexico City. Largely uninformed of the chaotic situation in Mexico and dis-
mayed by events at home, altacalifornios anxiously awaited the return of Jos
Castro. Amid growing resentment toward the American newcomers, they
invoked the prospect of their commanders return resolutely at first, later with
frustration or skepticism, and ultimately as a bald expression of incredulity. The
once-hopeful phrase Cuando vuelva Jos Castro . . . had evolved into the col-
loquial equivalent of When pigs fly . . .
The exact whereabouts of Colonel Jos Castro and his men during the dura-
tion of the Mexican-American War are unknown. Castro was already familiar
with Mexico City, having spent several months there in 1840-41 in connection
with the expulsion from Alta California of some 45 American and British citi-
zens, a boomerang episode known as the Isaac Graham Affair. There is reason
to believe that Castro might have visited Baja California between 1846 and
1848, since his ownership of salt quarries at San Quintn on the Pacific coast
dated from 1841.
As the conflict dragged on, Castro made the long journey north for occa-
sional visits to family and associates, but it wasnt until after ratification of the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in mid-1848 that he came home apparently to stay.
In the fall of 1849, while in Monterey to cover the constitutional convention of
the prospective 31st state, New York Herald Tribune reporter Bayard Taylor
caught a glimpse of the redoubtable leader of the California troops in Upper
and Lower California. (His inclusion of the latter territory is significant.) In
Taylors memorable description, Castro was:
. . . a man of medium height, but stoutly and strongly made [with] a
very handsome face. His eyes are large and dark, and his mouth shad-
ed by mustaches with the gloss and color of a ravens wing, meeting on
each side with his whiskers. He wore the sombrero, jacket and cal-
zoneros [side-buttoned trousers] of the country. His temperament, I
thought, seemed gloomy and saturnine, and I was gravely informed by
186 ! !!!!!!! Julianne Burton-Carvajal
a Californian who sat opposite me that he meditated the reconquest of
the country! (128)
Challenged, like all his Californio countrymen, by a new fiscal and legal
order that included annual property taxes and the onerous mandate to reconfirm
all titles before the United States Land Commission, Castro struggled to support
his wife and their many offspring. As his associates opted to embrace American
citizenship, he proudly refused to relinquish his Mexican nationality.
In August of 1856 he resumed service to Mexico, posted to northern Baja
California in a combined military and political capacity. Although honored by
three successive official notices of appointment to the governorship of the Baja
California Territory, Colonel Castro never assumed that office but rather the less-
er one of Vice-Governor of the Northern Section, La Frontera. He met an igno-
minious end there, reportedly shot in a drunken brawl by one of his own men.
The year 2010 marks the 150th anniversary of Jos Castro death. In that
interval, his lifelong associates Juan Bautista Alvarado and Mariano Guadalupe
Vallejo have both warranted biographies while Castro, the third member of this
influential trio, has remained in the backgroundinvitations by leading histori-
ans notwithstanding. Hubert Howe Bancroft declared in 1886 apropos of Jos
Castro: No [other] Californian has been more thoroughly abused in what has
passed for history; it should be stated from the outset that nine-tenths of all that
has been said about him by American writers has no foundation in truth. (752)
Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., another eminent historian of California, stated in 1971,
Castros enviable record of public service in Mexican California rightly
deserves a biography.
What constituency has had an investment in the return of Jos Castro as a
lead player on the stage of California history? Certainly not the conquering
Americans, who wanted him out of the picture. Not the Mexicans in general, or
Baja Californians in particular, for whom he remained an outsider. Not his fel-
low Californios, disappointed by his inability to mount an effective resistance,
and themselves so quickly outnumbered and disempowered by successive
waves of English-speakers. Perhaps not even members of his own family. While
collecting the reminiscences of dozens of aging Californios in the 1880s on
behalf of premier historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, Thomas Savage noted that
his attempt to interview the Colonels widow, Modesta Castro de Castro, was
rebuffed. (376)
The impetus for reexamining the career of this capable and dedicated but
ill-starred leader came from the rediscovery, in 2004, of a cache of personal,
official, and business correspondence. Of the eighteen letters preserved in the
Society of California Pioneers library in San Francisco, four are holographic
The Return of Jos Castro: The Baja California Correspondence . . . ! 187
duplicates of letters written by Castro and the remainder communications
received by him. In addition to family members, correspondents include the
President of Mexico, distinguished Alta Californians Juan Bautista Alvarado
and Juan Bandini, and noted Baja Californian Jos Matas Moreno.
In hopes of augmenting the scant population of La Frontera with resettled
Alta California families, including his own, Castro applied his considerable mil-
itary and civic expertise to governing that remote, inhospitable, unruly region.
Myriad hardships, setbacks, and betrayals eventually left him vulnerable. When
called north again in mid-1859, he appointed Feliciano Ruiz de Esparza as his
temporary replacement. Upon his superiors return, Esparza refused to relin-
quish military command, leaving Castro isolated and exposed.
Jos Castro was in his fifty-third year when he was buried some twenty
miles south of Ensenada, leaving behind no constituency capable of countering
the distortions and slanders that his successors in Old as well as New Cali-
fornia hastened to promulgate. The process of translating the letters and
researching their context suggests that Colonel Castros demise on April 5, 1860
at an unidentified misin vieja was an assassination.
The following overview tells the story of Castros final years through select
quotations from eighteen letters written between April 7, 1856 and February 2,
1860two months before he was killed. (The span may be greater because
three letters bear no dates.) When arranged in plausible sequence and adequate-
ly contextualized, this apparent miscellany of letters, sold for a trivial sum in the
mid-1950s by granddaughter Mrs. Modesta Castro Smith, tells a surprisingly
coherent and revealing tale. The tragic separation of this man from the family
and the populationwhose future he so earnestly sought to secure is emblem-
atic of the high personal price paid by altacalifornianos and bajacalifornianos
alike in the overlapping transition from Mexican to American California, and
from oligarchic New Spain to republican Mexico.
The first dated letter was sent by Jos Castro to the President of Mexico on
April 7, 1856 from the Port of Mazatln. Addressed to His Supreme Excellen-
cy Don Ignacio Comonfort in Mexico City, and the longest of the four letters
penned by Castros own hand, it is reproduced here in full:
Most Excellent Sir,
Upon addressing Your Excellency personally for the second time, permit me
to do so with the candor that corresponds to my character, revealing my mis-
fortunes to you in these terms.
In the year 1846, being Commander General of Upper California during
the war with the North Americans, the absolute lack of resources needed to sup-
press them in that country obliged me to evacuate itwithout capitulating, with-
out taking any oath, without imperiling the dignity of a soldier, and without
making any other compromise.
It was my goal to unite with the [Mexican] army and collaborate as a sol-
dier in that very just war. I remained outside that country for two years, leaving
behind there a veritable fortune for living [expenses].
I returned after the time Ive stated and did not find any capital other than
my own personal labor. Despite my misfortunes, I retained, alone among the
Californios, the rights of a Mexican Citizen, with the hope of lending my ser-
vices some other time. The absence of fortune, the need to go to work myself in
order to aid my sizeable family, perhaps prevented me from leaving [that coun-
try] as soon as I should have.
With the passage of time, constant labor and a thousand sacrifices, I had
managed to arrange an honest mode of living when I received the appointment
to be Commander General and Political Chief of Lower California. I assumed
in light of this that the Supreme Government was aware of the critical nature of
my position in that countryjust as the former Californios, along with the
employees from various nations then living in those towns, and even the Amer-
icans themselves understood it to be, as the press of those days made clear.
Determined to march in compliance with Supreme orders, I was staying at
this Port when, to my surprise, I saw the Governments disposition change and
myself named Second Lieutenant under the orders of General Blancarte, whom
I was to be relieving, as was understood.
What can I do in this position? Simply whatever I am ordered to do and
nothing more. This was not what I had in mind, as I have made clear, since my
principal [motive], the one that decided me to come to this country, was that
being myself in military and political command, I could protectthrough immi-
grationa multitude of former Californio families who suffer vexations and
were hoping to be protected by a man already known to them. For them and for
me, that hope has changed completely.
Because of commitments that General Blancarte has already made, it is
unlikely that even my wages would be paid on time so that, with a portion of
them, I might attend to my family, which is made up of my wife and eight chil-
dren, who depend solely upon me for their subsistence.
On the frontier of Lower California close to the Upper California border, I
could still be of use to my Californio countrymen, as I have offered to be in the
past, and there too I could organize little colonies, something that would [also]
be of individual benefit because of the immediate protection I could offer my
family. Otherwise, Sir, my position is too critical, and I will obey the Supreme
orders with the hope that the Government will not forget what I say most par-
ticularly to Your Excellency.
Letter 2, undated, would have most likely been destined to former Alta Cal-
ifornia Governor Juan Bautista AlvaradoCastros lifelong friend, business
associate, and compadre. Born and raised in the same remote outpost of the
Spanish empire, steeped in the same liberal ideologies gleaned from forbidden
books, comrades-in-arms during the tumultuous times preceding the American
takeover, these two native Montereyans were also linked by joint commercial
endeavors before and after the American takeover. As young men, they joined
forces with Alvarados uncle Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Castros exact con-
temporary, in an otter-hunting venture, proposing to market the pelts in China,
where they were coveted for their unrivaled warmth. As of 1854, Castro and
Alvarado were in partnership with Castros younger cousin, Manuel de Jess
Castro, and French Consul Jacques Morenhout in a salt-extraction venture at
Cabo San Quintn, on the western coast of Baja California, just south of the
region where Castro was to spend his final years. Letter 2 mentions Grisar &
Company, an entity that continued to have a stake in the Cabo San Quintn salt
deposits long after Castros death.
Addressed to Amigo y compadre, Castros letter begins: Via the copies
that I enclose, you will [be informed] of my circumstances. Have no doubt that
very soon I will have found a better path, or [else] I will go to La Frontera with
the principal goal that I fight to achieve in all of this: to protect our enterprise
of the Salinas [salt quarries]. There are great ambitions in Mexico regarding this
matter. He continues, I have encountered enemies on all sides who have
wished to confuse me, conceding that For the time being they have succeeded
in damaging me, but also hastening to reassure his friend, You will always find
me on the right path. Taking a stance between toughness and forbearance, he
asserts, You should assume that I will not put up with this, then intones in the
same breath, It is necessary to pause and work as circumstances dictate. His
promise to tell you later what is happening, Compadre, may reflect frustra-
tion with the limitations of written discourse, distrust in the channels of com-
munication, or both.
In the body as well as the postscript of this letter, Castro urges his corre-
spondent to oversee the welfare of the young family he was obliged to leave
behind in Monterey, expressing the anxiety of a father who can see from here
that my children are in a thousand straits and endeavoring to ensure that
friends and associates provide his wife with the promised $100 per month. Stat-
ing his intention to set sail for San Franciscoas various obligations would
compel him to do periodically during his years in Baja Californiahe warns
that he will reckon severely with associates who have neglected their obligation
to assist his family because It is unjust that while I am working in [their] inter-
ests, they should leave my family [in need].
Letter 3, written on April 10, 1856 by eldest son Esteban from the Castro
family home on the Monterey Mesa, begins bluntly: Up until today we have
not had news of youa lapse attributable to unreliable channels of transmis-
sion rather than to neglect. Lest this declaration be taken as a reproach, the
twenty year old hastens to add in staccato rhythm: The family is fine. I am
alone in the house. I am looking after the cows.
Esteban reveals that the family is short of both cash and credit, and that
shopkeepers and neighbors are unsympathetic. The need is acute because, The
house has a lien of $1600 as of today and is for sale. They have not sold it
because the law requires giving three months notice when the owner is out of
the country. Explaining that the French Consul has not succeeded in securing
a loan for the family because real estate funds cannot be found even in San Fran-
cisco, Esteban declares his intention to depart the following day for San Juan
Bautista, where old friends will be in a position to help. Esteban reassures his
father, Even if they auction off the house, they will still give a term of seven and
a half months in which it can be redeemed. Apparently anxious to lighten his
fathers load of care, he adds earnestly, I do the best I can in everything. I am
much more orderly and I pay more attention to the business of the house while
at the same time studying a little English.
Letter 4 is undated. Written by Jos Castro, presumably at Mazatln, to
Esteban at Monterey, it is plausibly a response to Estebans previous letter. It is
also the only letter in which Castro evinces hesitation and rethinking, crossing
out and replacing phrases. These telltale signs of distress, atypical of his char-
acteristically resolute personality, plausibly derive from the heartbreaking news
conveyed in the second sentence of Estebans previous letter: On February
28th my Mother had a little girl who looked a lot like Rufinita and died on the
7th of March.
This infant daughter would be the fourteenth and last child born to Jos and
Modesta. Castro writes, Tell your Mother I will soon be at her side and then
crosses out the prepositional phrase, substituting the less intimate with all of
you. In the copy that he retained, Castro also crossed out the phrase all of you
suffer greatly. He tells his son in closing his note, At this moment, as I occu-
py myself in writing this letter, my soul breaks into pieces. This letter carries
with it your fathers heart.
Letter 5, written by Castros compadre Alvarado from San Francisco on
Christmas Eve 1856, begins:
The same officials who return [with this letter] will inform you how dis-
astrous the expedition to Sal [unspecified salt quarry] was, and that this
is the reason your order is not being sent to you. They will likewise indi-
cate to you just what my own daily lot is like, and how every day things
get more difficult for us, as they do for all the Californios in general. Do
your best to put together some kind of capital for your family in those
parts, because here there is no hope for us.
Before apprising his friend of local developments, Alvarado provides welcome
reassurance to an anxious father:
Esteban is here [in San Francisco] at present. He has been appointed to
the Legislature, and Smith, son-in-law of [William E.P.] Hartnell, is giv-
ing him some competition, since [Esteban allegedly] is not an American
Citizen according to the supposition that you renounced said national-
ity. Notwithstanding all this, in the Monterey elections and everything
[else], your friends will unceasingly make whatever efforts we can in
favor of Estebans placement in the Chamber. He has known how to win
the sympathy and affection of everyone who becomes acquainted with
him, something that should be a great satisfaction to you.
On February 4, 1857, nearly a year after Esteban wrote Letter 3, Modesta
Castro de Castro enlisted a scribe to dictate Letter 6, with the intention of
entrusting its hand-delivery to Seor Sacramento, one of her husbands business
associates who may have also acted as her scribe. This arrangement with a trust-
ed family friend is the source of her full confidence that [this letter] will not
go astray like the others we have written to you since, according to what Seor
Sacramento tells me, you have not received a single one from us during the time
you have been at your present post, despite the fact that we have written you
several.
Notwithstanding the money that her husband has managed to send, the fam-
ily home is still imperiled:
Regarding the business of the house, and the money that you sent, I
must tell you that, not having received instructions from you, we had
resolved to let the house be lost. Butseeing that the laws allowed our
creditor to put an embargo on our little ranch, our animals, and all that
we might possess, both in the present and in the future, until it totaled the
equivalent of $2500after prolonged reflection we finally decided to give
over the money, always remaining unclear whether or not we were doing
right or wrong, since you have not said a word to us on the matter.
Esteban gave Seor Zabala $1500. I have no knowledge of Este-
bans motive for withholding the remaining thousand pesos, but what I
do know is that he got Zabala to agree to wait another six months for
the [remaining amount] without our paying any interest. And if within
that time the remainder is still unpaid, he will give us an additional six
months with payment of interest.
The clarity with which Modesta lays out this daunting scenario attests to
her equilibrium in a trying situation. What she adds to this status report offers
additional insight into her character:
I confess and assure you that I wish to be definitively through with this
business as soon as possible and therefore, as soon as Esteban comes
back, I intend to give Zabala the remainderthat is, as long as you dont
write to me promptly giving me instructions as to what I should do . . .
In addition, I should let you know that I took 250 pesos, not for the
benefit of my own daily needs or those of the household, but rather to
pay down even a little bit of the debt, since you would not believe how
much mortification all this causes me. I think I would rather suffer want
than see myself tormented by so many debts, . . . which they approach
me to collect with great frequency.
Modesta concludes her letter with assurances of the familys well-being,
adding: Seor Sacramento will tell you better than I can the wishes we all have
for you. If you cannot come soon, I beg you to send for us to join you. Finan-
cial shortfalls, the great distance involved, the tender age of many of their off-
spring, and family responsibilities in Alta California were not all that kept the
Castro family from reuniting in Baja California. The unstable political situation
in La Frontera, lack of suitable accommodations in an improvised town made
up largely of cantinas, Castros official obligation to travel frequently, as well as
opposition to the resettlement of what some influential bajacalifornianos
referred to as ex-mexicanos, would have been additional factors that deferred
the familys fervent wish for reunion.
Letter 7, dated March 5, 1857, also comes from Modesta via the services of
another scribe, Ambrosio Gmez. Financial pressures and communicational dif-
ficulties persist. Modesta gives positive reports regarding the conduct of Este-
ban, who is still exercising his employment, and of Seor Sacramento, in
whose care the letter will travel, asking her husband to perform whatever ser-
vice he might find himself in need of, because here he has handled himself very
commendably. The scribe Ambrosio Gmez appends a personal postscript, reit-
erating his unwavering friendship and requesting a reciprocal greeting in Cas-
tros reply, along with news of how life is lived in that country.
Writing from Sacramento on March 12, 1857, Esteban tries to reassure his
father about the familys financial situation in Letter 8: Our needs right now
are not as acute as they were from the time you went away until two months ago,
but we still lack a little stock of capital free from creditors. The household debts
come to nearly 2000 pesos. His own prospects seem to be bright, since It is
very likely that I will be named Customs Inspector at San Luis Obispo, which is
worth 2000 pesos a year. Lest his father be inclined to react negatively to this
news, Esteban explains, I have mentioned this resource [because] in case your
business ventures turn out badly, this salary will be very beneficial.
Like Ambrosio Gmez, Esteban is anxious to learn more about La Frontera:
According to what Seor Sacramento and Seor Sosa have told me, I have
formed a good idea of that country, and I now have a good opportunity to get
to know it in person, since you are there. He adds hopefully, Perhaps I could
be useful to you in some business opportunity, which must not be lacking in a
country as new as that one. Within three months, I will know if this job of mine
will work out, but Id like to be with you even sooner. Deferring to his parent
regarding the choices that will determine his future, Esteban adds, You know
better what is advisable for me.
Letter 11, from Alvarado in San Francisco on May 4, 1857, was personal-
ly delivered to Castro by none other than Ambrosio Gmez, who apparently left
Upper California in great haste. Alvarado writes guardedly that the courier will
give you a verbal explanation of the causes that made his retreat from here
indispensable. I am unable to find out what lies behind these things . . . I know
very well that our friend Gmez has not killed or robbed anyone. Certain trai-
torous friendships may have led him to a point in matters of honor in which his
character may have suffered, . . . but I am not well acquainted with these cir-
cumstances and therefore omit forming an opinion . . . Alvarado defers to Cas-
tros judgment in the matter.
In Letter 15, written from San Diego on August 23, 1857 by Rufus K.
Porter, publisher of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, mentions conducting
some export business at San Quintn, a possible connection to Castros salt
enterprise. Papers left behind at Porters San Diego home by Castros second-
in-command, Feliciano Ruiz de Esparza, give Porter the opportunity to evince
a great deal of faith in Esparza and the belief that he is quite patriotic.
Porter sends his regards to your worthy family and admonishes Castro to
answer this letter with the next steamer, telling me all the news, suggesting that
he sent his letter while Castro was visiting Upper California.
A pair of apparently disconnected sentences in Porters concluding para-
graph chillingly foreshadow future events: Moreno is very angry with me. They
say that Juan Mendosa is in Ta Juana [Tijuana], and they say that he has a
brand new pistol, given him recently by our friend Pedro X [illegible surname].
Jos Matas Moreno, born at La Paz, Baja California to a Mexican mother and
an English seaman named Brown (moreno in Spanish) had a long career in
public service to his credit. As secretary to Governor Po Pico of Los Angeles in
the mid-1840s, he traveled to Monterey and into the sphere of Picos political
rival, Jos Castro. Moreno distinguished himself by resisting the successful
American takeover of Baja California in 1846-47 and is still revered as a war
hero in Baja California. By the date of Porters letter, Moreno was married to a
natural daughter of Mariano Vallejo and, from his home in San Diego, avidly
attempting to manage Baja California affairs. Unsuccessful in persuading Jos
Castro to grant him a coveted property, Moreno determined to have Castro
replaceda task potentially easier to accomplish in the Colonels absence.
Juan Mendosa was a sometime employee of prominent San Diegan Juan
Bandini, owner of the desirable Rancho Guadalupe in the northwestern section
of La Frontera, near San Diego. Moreno publicly denounced Bandini, who had
befriended Castro from his earliest days as La Fronteras chief authority. Ban-
dinis friend Santiago Carrillo was another San Diegan whose prominence con-
tinued into the American era. Owner of Rancho Ta Juana, nucleus of the pre-
sent-day city of that name, Carrillo was another target of Morenos
denunciations and machinations. Porters reference to our friend Pedro [X]
sounds like an ironic reference to a man of ill repute.
Letter 17 was sent to Jos Castro on February 2, 1860 by Juan Mendosa,
owner of the (no longer new) pistol. Writing from San Diego, Mendosa express-
es his regret at not being able to attend a meeting of La Frontera landowners
convoked by Castro, explaining Unfortunately, we are away from our homes
and all our few interests and business concerns [are] abandoned. This decla-
ration opens a window onto the situation in La Frontera not been alluded to in
the preceding correspondence. Mendosa elaborates:
Comrade, I perceive your good intentions that we carry this miserable
country forward, and for my part that very same desire and good faith
remains engraved upon my heart. But I am afraid. Perhaps it will turn
out that I am right to be fearful, or perhaps not. And although now is
the time to live calmly in my house in the anticipation that I have felt
day by day for the past ten years [ever] since I chose that place, . . . the
time that I felt most contented was also the time when I was the most
persecutedsentenced to death in such a way that I was put outside the
law, like a habitual criminal, like a murderer, like a thief . . . It is wrong
that upstanding men should be so harassed . . . Comrade, this [is what]
makes me fearful. Not of you, because I know your feelings. But any
calumny would cause me to fall into disgrace.
In his closing paragraph, Mendosa circles back to the reasons why he aban-
doned his ranch: For now, Comrade, it is not advisable for me to go live on my
ranch. That will come later, if circumstances permit. . . . When we were not
allowed to plant our crops, it was an upheaval and a grievance, having to
search out [another source of] sustenance during a period of two years.
Like Ambrosio Gmez, Mendosa has been driven across the U.S.-Mexico
borderalthough in the opposite directionby accusations that have placed
him outside the protection of the law, accusations that he maintains are unwar-
ranted. Furthermore, he has been deprived of the use of his chosen place of res-
idence and means of subsistence, offering a concrete example of the countless
individuals and families driven to take refuge far from their homes and means
of livelihood.
This letter may also have been sent to Castro while he was in Upper Cali-
fornia, since Mendosa adds, As I say, Comrade, I told you all these things that
happened to me before your departure from that countrypresumably La
Frontera. Other sources confirm that Castro was in San Francisco and Monterey
in the early weeks of 1860, leaving Esparza in command. Whereas R.D. Porter
in Letter 15 found Castros second very patriotic, Mendosa holds a contrary
opinion which he expresses candidly to Castro, Esparzas superior and pre-
sumed ally:
Our comrade Esparza used to say that he was defending your Authori-
ty and the Constitution of 1857. Whoever proclaims the law should
exercise it. Comrade Esparza has been bellowing it for his own gain.
The law says that property [rights] are inviolable. Another article says
that there is no death penalty for political crimes. There is no law but
repudiation and whim. So in the last analysis, Comrade, we have com-
mitted a thousand illegal acts.
The latter sentence, which includes Jos Castro in its sardonic irony, suggests
that false accusations were being widely used as political and economic
weapons.
Mendosa then politely requests that Castro entrust the titles of my lands
along with my private papers to his (Mendosas) wife should she decide to
travel to La Frontera on personal business. The final topic broached in this, the
penultimate letter in the Society of Pioneers series, comes as a total surprise,
particularly since virtually all this surviving correspondence has been motivat-
ed by the needs of others and by Castros efforts to meet those needs: Don
Jos, I have offered you a piece of land on my Rancho de San Marcos. You can
have a judiciary deed of sale drawn up . . . since it has been and continues to
be my will to make this gift to you.
Castro returned to San Diego on January 9, and promptly headed for Santo
Toms, taking with him a single companion although friends advised him that
the situation warranted more protection. Juan Mendosas letter may have arrived
too late for Castro to consider his correspondents offer with its implicit possi-
bility of resettling the Castro family in closer proximity to Mexico.
The final letter in this provisionally ordered series, in Castros hand but
undated, was destined to an unidentified superior, the Your Authority men-
tioned in its fourth paragraph. If Letter 18 dates from mid-to-late 1859, it would
have most likely been directed to Ramn Navarro as incoming Military and
Political Chief of Baja California Territory. In order to grasp the challenges fac-
ing Jos Castro during his Baja California years, it is essential to keep in mind
that the political situation in Mexico during that period was chaotic in the
extreme, as governments of radically antagonistic political persuasions replaced
one another with dizzying speed, and new constitutions were drafted and pro-
mulgated every few years.
Letter 18 serves as a fitting complement to Letter 1, in which Castro sum-
marized his circumstances for the President of the Mexican nation. Here, with
the same terse directness, Castro foregrounds his fiscal frustration, singles out
his principal source of satisfaction, and discerns the pending threats that will, in
the end, not only rob him of his life but also suppress his achievements.
The first two paragraphs deal with the failure of the salt mining venture and
of mining prospects at Santiago and San Antonio which he had taken pains to
search out in an era when mineral discoveries were a leading source of wealth
for governments as well as individuals:
With [my letter] dated last August 15th I notified you through the impre-
sario Don Antonio L. Sosa that the salt enterprise at San Quintn had
failed. And since there is no other party desirous of taking it over due to
the high number of difficulties entailed, I have had no other option but
to open the salt deposits to any citizen who wishes to take charge of them.
However, no one has come forth. As a result, the only prospective [source
of] income for the Public Treasury has been rendered non-existent.
In the next section, Castro allows himself an expression of pridethe only
such instance in the various letters and documents located to date in both Mex-
ican and California repositories: Notwithstanding, in the midst of the scarcity of
resources in which I find myself, I have up to now been able to maintain order
and public calm by keeping at my side a small party of twenty national citizens
who accompany me thanks to the long-standing bonds of friendship that I have
with my compatriots.
As already noted, when Castro left Alta California in August 1846, he took
sixteen of his countrymen with him to Sonora and points south. At least five of
these menCaptain Eugenio Montenegro, Lieutenant Manuel Mrquez, Ensigns
Francisco Arce, Jos Maria Soberanes, and Manuel R. Castroeventually made
their way to Baja California. Their presence is amply documented in Bancroft
Library holdings usefully annotated by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert
Senkewicz in their guide to Baja California documents in that collection.
The settler populations of Baja and Alta California share common origins,
both areas having been settled by soldiers and their families who accompanied
missionary priests charged with converting the native populations. Jointly
administered for significant periods of time, the two regions were both cattle-
raising cultures. Yet Alta Californians displaced by the American takeover of
their homeland were treated warily by their Baja California cousins, who
referred to them as ex-mexicanos instead of the more neutral altacaliforni-
anos. The hostility suggested by this term may have undermined Castros goal
of bringing more settlers to his largely unimproved, underpopulated jurisdiction.
Castro was accusedby the same Jos Matas Moreno mentioned in R.K.
Porters Letter 15of conspiring to turn La Frontera over to the Americans, a
far-fetched claim indeed to anyone familiar with Castros sympathies and
antipathies. In his extended appeal to incoming Governor Ramn Navarro writ-
ten on July 29, 1859 (The Huntington Library, CT 1686), Matas Moreno
alleged that Castro . . . accuses you and the rest of the peninsula of being
rebels and anarchists . . . ; that he received his portfolio [and] reassumed to
the Supreme degree the legislative, executive and judicial powers of La Frontera
. . . from a nefarious deceit; and that he and his collaborators, seeing that all
their dreams of legally holding superior office are crumbling, are attempting to
make La Frontera independent of the national union in order to immediately
annex it to the United States in exchange for a sum [of money] . . .
Castro believed that his ability to maintain public order in a notoriously
unruly region was due to the loyalty of his Alta California compatriots. But at
least one of those comrades in armsManuel Mrquezwas poised to betray
him, and both Juan Mendosa and Jos Matas Moreno were implicated in that
betrayal. Mendosa, one of a succession of under-qualified candidates proposed
by Moreno to replace Castro and Esparza, later led the anti-Esparza contingent
in the internecine struggle that decimated an already scarce population.
In three letters from October 1860, six months after Castros death,
Moreno, safely ensconced in San Diego, gives orders to Mendosa in La Fron-
tera. On October 23rd, for example, he urges his delegate: Do not retreat from
Esparza. Surround him eternally . . . If he gets out of the encirclement, attack
him and give it to him until you take him. In closing, Moreno informs Mendosa
that his wife (or infant sonthe construction is characteristically ambiguous)
charges him with bringing home Esparzas ears. (The Huntington Library, CT
1685)
In the two closing paragraphs of Letter 18, Castro identified the enemies
who were maligning him:
Since it is very natural [to be expected] that, upon his arrival at
that [city?], Seor [A.E.] Beruman has gone about distorting things
from what they really are, I have a positive feeling that Your Authority
would [not] let yourself be surprised by the false information that said
gentleman might be spreading around in order to blatantly offend my
honor, as he has done since he left the country, acting in accord with my
arch enemy Seor Moreno. You know very well that this kind of individ-
ual speaks out and says things against the person who prevents him
from satisfying his depraved intentions when he is not able to realize his
ambitions and designs. Just to think that you might credit the two of
them would be to offend the rectitude of your good judgment, which is
well known to me.
Buried in the middle of Morenos long letter of July 29, 1859 welcoming
incoming Governor Navarro is the request for permission to dispose of Castro
on the grounds that transporting political prisoners the hundreds of leagues
from Santo Toms to the territorial capital at La Paz was impractical. The sim-
plest thing is to remove the cause in order to get rid of the effects, Moreno
wrote. Persuaded of Castros ambition to rule and the abuses to which he is
accustomed, Navarro gave the go-ahead on November 4, 1859 (The Huntington
Library, CT 1728) affirming to Moreno in his capacity as Sub-Prefect the gov-
ernments trust in your zeal to maintain public order at any price, [taking] care
that the administration of justice is performed rapidly and thoroughly . . . Anx-
ious to ensure that in the future the same scandals are not repeated, and
aware that the territory cannot be pacified due to the immense distance that
separates it [from the capital at La Paz], Governor Navarro gave Moreno carte
blanche to do whatever you believe prudent and necessary to the maintenance
of order and safety of that frontier.
In contrast to his unfortunate elder cousin, Manuel Castro was blessed with
a long life. The Huntington Library contains his note of 1868 [Stearns Collec-
tion, Box 60, #62] requesting that the prominent San Diegan Abel Stearns offer
any needed support to another cousin, Captain Jos Ramn Pico, in connection
with an unspecified Baja California enterprise to be undertaken by the latter.
This note offers one plausible explanation for how the cache of letters from Jos
Castros Baja California years came into the possession of his descendants, hav-
ing been retrieved by Manuel Castro or one of his delegates.
We may never know the survival stories of letters associated with Colonel
Jos Castro, but their number is disproportionate to documentation left by his
peers. Some 200 documents from Captain Manuel Castros three years in Baja
California (1848-1852) are in the Bancroft collection, for example, in compari-
son to only a few dozen related Jos Castro, all dealing with the allocation of
Baja California lands. The Huntington Library holds pertinent correspondence
from several individuals, but only a small number related to Jos Castro. My
collaborator Dr. Angela Moyano Pahissa, distinguished senior historian of U.S.-
Mexico relations, has located only seven letters pertinent to Jos Castro in Mex-
ican national and regional archives.
Given the chaos unleashed by Jos Castros death, when fighting by the
rival bands of Feliciano Esparza and Juan Mendosa brought about an estimated
80% reduction of La Fronteras already sparse population, the dearth of docu-
ments comes as no surprise. Certain evidence, however, points to the possibili-
ty that Castros successor may have reshaped the historical record. Jos Matas
Moreno relinquished the post of Political Sub-Chief of La Frontera within a
year, lamely citing the perennial lack of support from higher authorities as the
reason for his resignation. Abb Henri Alric, a French missionary priest whose
tenure in La Frontera overlapped with Castros, wrote that Moreno seemed to
take despotism as a rule of conduct . . . ; he consummated the despoliation of a
great number of lawful [land] owners, then seized and sold a treasury of silver-
ware, all that remained of what had belonged to the border missions . . . Final-
ly, a pronunciamiento [public declaration] forced him to take flight. (135)
On June 9, 1861, fourteen months after Castros assassination, Moreno was
arrested in San Diego by a U.S. Marshall. Charged with violating international
laws of neutrality, he was placed under $10,000 bond, tried three days later, and
released, possibly erroneously due to negligence. (Nunis in Alric, 135-36, n. 20)
An embittered Moreno turned his back on San Diego, where he had long
resided, and moved his family to La Frontera where they assumed ownership of
Rancho Guadalupe, acquired upon the death of one of Morenos former targets,
Juan Bandini.
The ambitious and verbose Moreno positioned himself as the source of La
Fronteras recorded history. If he acknowledged Castro at all in the accounts he
wrote for the San Diego Union newspaper, it was with outrage or derision. He
also worked energetically to have any land grants made by his predecessor
annulled. Might the dearth of documentation regarding Jos Castros tenure in
La Frontera be due to some sleight of hand on the part of his successor, the only
individual explicitly identified by Castro as my arch enemy?
Because Manuel Mrquez, one of the sixteen Alta Californians who had
marched to Sonora with Castro three and a half years before, had joined in the
camp of Jos Senz, another would-be Castro replacement delegated by
Moreno, he could hardly be regarded as one of Castros own men at the time
he pulled the trigger. When he fired the fatal bullet, Castros assassin was
already under indictment at Los Angeles for murder. Father Alric recounts that
Mrquez fled to Sonora, where he found hospitality he did not deserve.
According to Robert Glass Clelland, a desperado of the same name was the
leader of a band of robbers and murderers [who] infested the region between
San Juan Capistrano and Santa Ana in 1862. (71)
Jos Castros recently rediscovered correspondence opens many lines of
inquiry as it resolves. Many additional repositories need to be combed for per-
tinent letters and documents. The present summary, along with the monograph
from which it has been extracted, will hopefully elicit pertinent information
from descendants as well as useful contributions from historians specializing in
either of the two Californias. After 150 years of negation, misrepresentation and
indifference, the moment seems ripe for the return of Colonel Jos Castro.
Works Cited
Abb Henri J.-A. Alric. Sketches of a Journey on the Two Oceans to the Interi-
or of America and of a Civil War in Northern Baja California. Translated
from the French by Norah E. Jones. Edited with an Introduction by Doyce
B. Nunis, Jr. Los Angeles: Dawsons Bookshop, 1971.
Burton-Carvajal, Julianne. Commander Jos Castro in the Two Californias,
Including His Final Correspondence, 1856-1860. San Diego: Vanard for
Los Californios, 2008. Translates and reproduces with permission the cache
of eighteen letters to and from Jos Castro in the Hall Collection, Alice
Phelan Sullivan Library, Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco and
supplementary letters from The Huntington Library, San Marino.
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Pioneer Register and Index, History of California
XIX, San Francisco: The History Company, 1886.
Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz, compilers. Gua de manuscritos con-
cernientes a Baja California en las colecciones de la Biblioteca Bancroft.
Berkeley: University of California Library, 2002.
Miller, Robert Ryal. Juan Alvarado: Governor of California, 1836-1842. Nor-
man: U of Oklahoma P, 1998.
Alan Rosenus. General M.G. Vallejo and the Advent of the Americans: A Biog-
raphy. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1995.
Thomas Savage. Report of Labors in Archives and Procuring Material for His-
tory of California 1876-9, in Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz,
eds., Testimonios: Early California through the Eyes of Women, 1815-1848.
Berkeley: The Bancroft Library and Heyday Books, 2006.
Bayard Taylor. El Dorado: Adventures in the Path of Empire. Berkeley: Heyday
Books, 2000 (reprinted from Knopf, 1949)
203
La figura del sacrificio como expresin
nacionalista en las obras Hatuey y
La muerte de Plcido
CECILIA MARRUGO
E
n los grandes momentos de la historia mundial, el descubrimiento de
Amrica ocupa un lugar de importancia que marca el origen de grandes
conflictos polticos, sociales y religiosos que han sido objeto de gran parte
de la literatura a travs de los siglos. La llegada del imperio espaol a tierras
americanas trajo consigo consecuencias para los nativos que ya son largamente
conocidas. Los hechos sumados a la leyenda negra hispanoamericana crearon
alrededor de la imagen colonizante un aura de barbarie y opresin, lejos del
emblema de cristianizacin de los pueblos. Opuesto a esta concepcin, fueron
inevitablemente asociados a la subyugacin fsica y moral de los indgenas que
habitaban las supuestas Indias, y a su aniquilacin ya fuese en batalla o por
las diversas enfermedades que traan de Europa. El oprimido pueblo latinoame-
ricano incipiente solo identificaba como verdaderos mviles de Espaa la ambi-
cin por la riqueza de sus pases y el afn de expandir su podero imperial. En
vista de la falta de mano de obra indgena, los espaoles trajeron entonces a los
esclavos africanos a trabajar la tierra americana. Negro e indgena llegan a com-
partir el mismo escenario geogrfico de explotacin colonial, lo que fue engen-
drando a travs de los siglos un inconmensurable afn de rebelin. Asimismo se
da el surgimiento de una nueva generacin de espaoles nacidos en las Amri-
cas, quienes llegaron a dominar la esfera de las clases dominantes: los criollos.
Se constituyeron como los mayores dueos de tierras y esclavos, cuya idea de
gobierno procuraba la exclusin de la clase baja de toda esfera poltica o de
poder, procurando mantener su control ante el miedo de las insurrecciones de
negros e indgenas.
Ms adelante durante el siglo XIX en Hispanoamrica, los movimientos de
independencia crearon un clima poltico apto para el surgimiento, tanto de las
ideas como de los sentimientos nacionalistas dirigidos por el deseo de crear nacio-
nes libres. Es en esta poca que se puede rastrear de manera ms evidente el ori-
gen del nacionalismo, trmino que es entendido y compuesto en s mismo por
categoras cvicas o de etnia y puede ser analizado de acuerdo con estudiosos
como una ideologa, un sentimiento o movimiento colectivo, o como un proceso
de construccin de la nacin
1
. Como resultado de la influencia del pensamiento
de la Ilustracin del siglo XVIII y de la opresin del gobierno desde Espaa, sur-
gi en Amrica este espritu independentista liderado por criollos como Simn
Bolvar, quien con ideales de unificacin busc la liberacin de la mentalidad
opresora del espaol, para abrazar otra que incluyera a los indgenas o a las negri-
tudes dentro del esquema de la nacin que se comenzaba a engendrar.
La labor de los manifiestos, las novelas o la prensa escrita son importantes
en la diseminacin de estas ideologas y su mpetu liberal. Como apunta el estu-
dioso Bendict Anderson: the novel and the newspaper [ . . . ] provided the tech-
nical means for re-presenting the kind of imagined community that is the nation
(25). Segn Anderson, es precisamente la influencia de la labor de la imprenta
dirigida por los criollos lo que permiti que se creara la comunidad imaginada
del pueblo americano, propagando la idea de liberarse del rgimen opresor.
En el siglo XIX, la primera manifestacin novelesca en Amrica proviene
de 1816, despus de un tiempo considerable de haberse desatado las guerras de
independencia
2
. Jos Joaqun Fernndez Prez de Lizardi escribe El Periquillo
Sarniento donde a travs de la vida del personaje del Periquillo al estilo pica-
resco, se hace un recorrido por hospitales, prisiones y establece su contacto con
indgenas y negros. Todo esto le permite a Lizardi hacer una crtica aguda a la
administracin espaola en Mxico, constituyndose como la primera novela
nacionalista en el mbito latinoamericano.
Entrando a finales de siglo, el tema de oposicin entre lo espaol y lo nati-
vo es tratado por representantes cubanos. En la esfera del teatro hispano de los
Estados Unidos, esta tendencia nacionalista se aprecia en las obras La muerte de
Plcido (1875) de Diego Tejera y Hatuey (1891) de Francisco Selln, quienes
fueron poetas y traductores que vivan en el exilio en los Estados Unidos. La
influencia de ese espritu de independencia de los otros pases latinoamericanos
llega a ellos y a sus obras, haciendo una reminiscencia de su pas natal en un
tono nostlgico y patritico con el fin de crear una identidad como nacin. Estas
manifestaciones que tomaban como inspiracin los orgenes indgenas y negros,
204 ! !!!!!!!!! Cecilia Marrugo
haban tenido sus antecedentes en escritores como Gertrudis Gmez de Avella-
neda y Sab o Cirilo Villaverde con Cecilia Valds.
Diego Tejera poeta, patriota y pensador cubano, se hizo exiliado en los
Estados Unidos hacia finales de la dcada de 1870. Formaba parte del grupo de
lderes intelectuales que luchaba por la independencia de Cuba. En Nueva York,
dirigi el peridico La Verdad de la junta revolucionaria, conoci a Jos Mart
y colabor con La Amrica. Sus publicaciones fueron hechas mayormente en
peridicos en espaol. Por su parte, Francisco Selln (1838-1907) desde su
posicin de exiliado, se convirti en uno de los periodistas ms importantes e
influenciables de su poca. Sus poemas y escritos se caracterizaron por el amor
a la naturaleza del trpico y por su intencin patritica. Colabor en publica-
ciones de carcter poltico como Revista de la Habana, Siglo y fund el peri-
dico La Aurora de la Habana que comentaba los problemas sociales de los tabal-
caleros. Desde el exilio fue fundador y redactor del peridico El Educador
Nacional o El Nuevo Mundo y tuvo influencia en el mbito literario, lo que fue
reconocido por intelectuales de su poca como Mart. Estos poetas y traducto-
res desde el exilio en los Estados Unidos crearon sus obras haciendo una remi-
niscencia de su pas natal en un tono nostlgico y patritico con el fin de crear
una identidad como nacin, tomando como base de su discurso ideolgico los
orgenes indgenas y negros del pueblo cubano. Su fundamento era unir a las
gentes que estaban segregadas racialmente, como consecuencia de una sociedad
esclavista y aniquiladora (mayormente en el caso indgena), apelando a este ori-
gen racial comn en la representacin del indio Hatuey y del mulato Gabriel de
la Concepcin Valds o Plcido. Pero cmo llegan Selln y Tejera desde su
posicin como blancos criollos a emprender una campaa nacionalista basada
en la nocin de razas? Cules fueron las causas o influencias ideolgicas que
les llevan a tomar este enfoque? Es importante para el desarrollo de este estudio
establecer un breve marco histrico sobre el caso cubano que proporcione res-
puestas a estos cuestionamientos.
El incipiente nacionalismo popular en Cuba y sus orgenes pueden ser tra-
zados desde antes de 1820, con casos concretos como el del padre Flix Varela
quien fomenta la ideas separatistas del imperio espaol, que aos ms tarde se
convertiran en los mviles de la revolucin. Las posibilidades de adquirir ms
independencia para los cubanos, eran traducidas en tres vertientes segn el his-
toriador Gerald Poyo: la reforma, entendida como la instalacin de un gobierno
autocrtico cubano en el contexto del sistema colonial espaol, la anexin a los
Estados Unidos que prolongaba el colonialismo, o la independencia total de la
isla. Algunos de los exiliados se vieron influenciados por las ideas independen-
tistas norteamericanas, inspirndose en su lucha anti colonialista del siglo
XVIII. Esto provoc que ciertos lderes revolucionarios proclamaran una inde-
La figura del sacrificio como expresin nacionalista . . . ! ! 205
pendencia de Cuba, pero anexndose al gobierno estadounidense, que buscaba
expandir su imperio: . . . the Cuban filibustero embodied the contradiction of
protonationalist (Cuban) discourse and U.S. expansionism (Lazo 7). Esto se
dio segn Poyo por razones econmicas y polticas. Algunos de los exiliados
eran dueos de esclavos y era de su conveniencia que Cuba siguiera bajo el rgi-
men esclavista propuesto por los ideales americanos. Asimismo, a mediados de
siglo el temor a las consecuencias econmicas de una independencia y a perder
el poder ante los negros o mulatos o los lderes independentistas, hacan ms
provechosa la opcin de anexin a los Estados Unidos (Poyo xvi). Adems, se
tema por la total independencia de la isla al ser testigos de la crisis a la que
haban sucumbido otros pases en Latinoamrica. ste, al contrario del ideal
independentista, se constitua como un proyecto antinacionalista. Sin embargo,
la independencia total del rgimen hegemnico fue la opcin que tuvo ms aco-
gida, gracias al creciente sentido de cubanidad, lo que facilit el nacimiento de
un movimiento que promoviera el nacionalismo.
Segn Margaret Olsen, el siglo XIX en Cuba estuvo caracterizado por el
miedo, la represin, la censura y la persecucin (136), lo que en las manifesta-
ciones literarias fue un impedimento para la libertad de expresin de las ideas
separatistas. El exilio surgi entonces como una opcin favorable que les per-
mita a los intelectuales mayormente criollos hacer su propaganda nacionalista.
Desde mediados del siglo, los cubanos exiliados se haban dedicado a publicar
poemas, artculos de peridicos y panfletos que tuvieron repercusin en el
gobierno colonial de la isla. La libertad de prensa en los Estados Unidos les dio
la oportunidad de propagar las ideas independentistas hacia un pblico que se
hallara, ya fuera en el exilio o ya en la isla, y de alentar al pueblo a alzarse en
contra del rgimen colonial espaol. El estudioso Rodrigo Lazo comenta sobre
la afirmacin de Nicols Kanellos y la labor de prensa de los exiliados polticos:
. . . political refugees [ . . . ] took advantage of a free press to offer their com-
patriots (here and in their homelands) uncensored news and political commen-
tary- even if their sheets had to be smuggled on and off ships and passed surrep-
titiously hand-to-hand back home (65). La experiencia transnacional de escribir
y publicar desde los Estados Unidos hacia la isla se constitua en un reto para los
exiliados que anhelaban construir un discurso nacionalista. Sin embargo, su
situacin desterritorializada aumentaba su sentido identitario como cubanos,
siendo reforzada por la idea de la contraposicin con el Otro, es decir Espaa:
Writers often referred to themselves as cubanos, but that self-
identification as Cubans was not transparent; their desire to become
Cuban in a governmentally sanctioned sense was heightened by the dis-
tance from home. Their publications attempted to connect Cuban
identity with revolution and opposition to Spain. (Lazo 13)
El proyecto independentista haba sido mayormente liderado por la lite
criolla, cuya idea de nacin era predominantemente blanca. Esta visin trunca-
ba la creacin de esa comunidad imaginada a la que se refiere Anderson, de fra-
ternidad y relaciones horizontales: the nation is always conceived as a deep,
horizontal comradeship(7). Esta ideologa fue evolucionando progresivamente
hacia otras vertientes, gracias a la creciente clase obrera con su liberalismo y a
la campaa de unin multirracial liderada por Jos Mart o Antonio Maceo, que
animaban a la creacin de un ejrcito militante donde todos, tanto blancos como
negros o mulatos se unieran para alcanzar la libertad. Mart llamaba a luchar por
unos mismos derechos como hombres, siendo el nico que abiertamente se pro-
clamaba como antirracista en una postura moderna y cientfica: Mart called on
his countrymen to put aside racial animosities in order to work for a common
nationalist goal (Poyo 105).
De acuerdo con Eric Hobsbawn, la nocin de la etnicidad compartida
aumenta el xito de una campaa nacionalista: Kinship and blood have
obvious advantages in bonding together members of a group and excluding out-
siders, and are therefore central to ethnic nationalism (63). Tejera y Selln
fomentaban un nacionalismo basado en una identidad cubana forjada desde la
unin del pueblo y desde la diferencia del espaol. Desde la intervencin inicial
de Hatuey en la obra, se establece la idea del Otro como diferente, tanto por su
carcter traidor y maltratador de los nativos a pesar de que fueron bien recibi-
dos y de autodenominarse cristianos, como por su raza, por ser blancos: . . .
Aquellos hombres, / Que espaoles se nombran cristianos, / Con amor, con res-
peto recibidos, / El bien con mal, como el jagey, pagaron / [ . . . ] De todo, por
la fuerza, despojarnos: / siervos suyos hacernos: su codicia / quisieron con la
sangre y el trabajo / De los nuestros saciar, cual si nacidos / Furamos solo para
el hombre blanco (13). De igual forma los espaoles deseaban eliminar a los
nativos y sobre todo a su lder para tener un poder total sobre la tierra: Su muer-
te es necesaria; / Necesario es tambin un escarmiento / y queda as la paz ase-
gurada (127). Adems de la idea de la erradicacin de indgenas, estaba la de
adjudicarles una posicin inferior, como seres a los que haba que colocar bajo
la proteccin de la corona por su origen. El personaje de Las Casas le dice a
Velsquez: Considerad, seor, que es un salvaje (128). Vale la pena anotar que
Selln utiliza la imagen personificada de Las Casas ya que era una figura que
hacia representar a ese ser como el buen salvaje, figura que en el siglo XIX
fue alimentada por los escritores, lo que ms adelante provocara el surgimien-
to de la corriente del indigenismo.
Sin embargo, la concepcin del salvaje por la Espaa de la poca era sus-
tancialmente diferente. Una de las razones declaradas por la corona para venir
a las Amricas fue cristianizar a los indios e incluirlos dentro de una concep-
cin homogeneizante, que a su vez conllevara a colocarse bajo las rdenes del
rey. Esta tendencia segn Claudio Lomnitz en su texto sobre nacionalismo, pro-
viene desde el reinado de Carlos III:
The move to associate nation with common subjection to the king was
promoted by Charles III, who sought to diminish differences of caste in
favor of a broad and homogenized category of subjects. Thus a ten-
dential identification between nation and sovereignty was being built up
by absolutist monarchs. (9)
Los espaoles tanto dentro como fuera de la obra, lograron traer su con-
cepcin de nacin monrquica a las Amricas y a Cuba. Pero Selln buscaba
contraponerse a esta visin hegemnica, desligarse de las ataduras de la escla-
vitud a la que haban estado expuestos por siglos.
Asimismo, en La muerte de Plcido se presenta la crueldad del espaol
desde su inicio con la conversacin entre los soldados previa a su fusilamiento.
La obra est llena de referencias negativas hacia el espaol. Plcido proclama
su crueldad: Cubanos y africanos, confundidos / ante el Ibero cruel, por tres
centurias (22). Y Tejera destaca la diferencia racial al enfatizar los dos colores:
Y qu hace el blanco ante tamao ultraje? / De que le sirve su rencor oculto
. . . / El negro, en la abyeccin en que se abisma, / halla disculpa en su igno-
rancia misma (23). Esta aberracin por el Otro y el racismo es una de las carac-
tersticas de las bases del nacionalismo que contiene: its roots in fear and
hatred of the Other , and its affinities with racism (Anderson 129).
Al establecer la diferencia racial, Selln y Tejera crean la idea de dos ban-
dos, uno es el indgena/ negro y otro es el blanco espaol. En otras palabras,
crean una idea unificada de Cuba al acudir a las races nativas, a los orgenes.
Por su parte los autores, criollos blancos, no se ven reflejados en la caracteriza-
cin de sus obras, aunque se afilian a las causas de los nativos frente a los espa-
oles, con quienes compartan un origen en comn y contra los que a su vez se
alzaban. Sin embargo, es importante profundizar en el propsito y la ideologa
de estos trabajos. En La muerte de Plcido se establece la mulatez como el ori-
gen identitario de la incipiente nacin cubana, una mulatez que ms que biol-
gica es cultural. Por su parte, en Hatuey la bsqueda de las races indgenas no
se constituye una propuesta de mestizaje en s, sino ese afn del criollo por iden-
tificarse con un modelo, como es el indio Hatuey, que represente lo contrario a
lo espaol. La idealizacin de este personaje en cuanto a su oratoria y tcticas
militares son segn el anlisis de Marcela Salas, ms que su deseo de resaltar el
origen indgena, quienes ya prcticamente no existan en Cuba, una identifica-
cin de los criollos con este modelo heroico de resistencia a la conquista, es
decir una desespaolizacin (209).
La figura del sacrificio
En las grandes guerras de la historia hispanoamericana por la lucha de la
independencia hacia naciones libres, el sacrificio por la patria fue uno de los
motores que provocaron grandes prdidas humanas. Los soldados y militantes
se comprometan en batallas donde terminaban con las vidas de otros e incluso
con su propia existencia a fin de lograr el objetivo de la causa. Estos sacrificios
encuentran su razn de ser, segn Anderson en el nacionalismo:
These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central problem
posed by nationalism: what makes the shrunken imaginings of recent
history (scarcely more than two centuries) generate such colossal sacri-
fices? I believe that the beginnings of an answer lie in the cultural roots
of nationalism. (7)
Con el establecimiento de la unidad entre las gentes en su comunidad ima-
ginada, el cubano poda adquirir ese sentido de patriotismo necesario para lle-
gar a sacrificarse por su nacin. Para este efecto Tejera y Selln abogaban por
un nacionalismo patritico que llevara al pueblo a preferir la muerte por causas
justas pasando a la historia como mrtires, que la vida bajo una esclavitud sin
pena ni gloria.
Desde el prlogo de Hatuey, el autor proclama el propsito de resaltar la
figura de este indgena para celebrar su memoria como el mrtir que, con su
temple, fue el precursor de los cubanos quienes le buscaban a Cuba un puesto
entre las naciones libres de este mundo (Selln 5). Selln introduce la idea de
una nacin libre, apuntando que aunque el destino les fuera adverso, este era el
comienzo del proceso independentista. Era optimista y a la vez incitaba a los
lectores a seguir estos ideales al afirmar que espera que su obra . . . cuando
tengamos patria, llegue a ser nuestro teatro nacional (6).
En La muerte de Plcido, Diego Tejera en un tono sombro y de nostalgia,
destaca el sacrificio de Gabriel de la Concepcin Valds o ms conocido como
Plcido, poeta de la Habana quien fue acusado de participar en un intento falli-
do de insurreccin por parte de los esclavos, llamado la Conspiracin de La
Escalera en 1844. Cientos fueron condenados a la muerte, entre los cuales Pl-
cido fue ejecutado de manera pblica.
Establecemos entonces que las dos obras promulgan la idea de sacrificio
humano como fundador de un nacionalismo exacerbado. Los protagonistas cen-
trales son mrtires que mueren defendiendo su pueblo y su causa. Por un lado
est Hatuey, inspirado en la historia del cacique tano de los primeros aos de la
conquista antes de la salida de Diego Velsquez a Cuba, el cual defendi con
arrojo y gran mpetu la tierra americana, formando una especie de guerrilla con
la que pele varias batallas y que fue sacrificado en la hoguera al luchar por su
gente. Selln no buscaba que el cubano de su tiempo se identificara con la cre-
acin del espaol del indio salvaje y sometido, sino con la del indgena guerre-
ro, ese que buscaba llegar a la libertad haciendo de la lucha su oficio: Mientras
en Cuba el espaol impere, / Odio es mi oficio, mi virtud venganza (126). En
la obra, este personaje es evocado para resaltar el sacrificio violento que corres-
ponde a la ideologa promovida por Selln de un nacionalismo militante, una
visin que es el resultado de aos de lucha y guerra. Selln se vale de la ya men-
cionada leyenda negra hispanoamericana para contrastar la visin ambiciosa del
espaol con la del indio desinteresado, que pelea por conviccin, aunque tam-
bin en esta obra por orgullo, lo cual se constituye en su falla trgica. En la obra
se destaca esta idea de morir por la causa en varias ocasiones. Tenemos a Hatuey
cuando afirma:
. . . y si no es dado / Triunfar, al menos moriremos libres: / Menor mal
es morir que ser esclavos (19). Y ms adelante: . . . Mas someternos /
Sin luchar, y que despus / la esclavitud nos abrume . . . / Antes ah! Que
esclavo ser / Mas vale morir; la muerte / Nos libra de la avidez / De los
cristianos. Luchemos. (28)
Selln aboga por una lucha con conciencia social, que bien pudo haber sido
influida por los movimientos de la clase obrera de segunda mitad de siglo, o por
su trabajo con los tabalcaleros en la isla. El sacrificio que promueve, es anal-
izado por Hobsbawn, aunque aplicado al caso europeo, como patriotismo: The
class consciousness which working classes in numerous countries were acquir-
ing in the last decades before 1914 implied, nay asserted, a claim to the Rights
of Man and Citizen, and thus a potential patriotism (88). Para reforzar esta idea
de patriotismo, el autor busca, al igual que muchos gobiernos al intentar crear
la nacin imaginada, un smbolo, un icono que en este caso es el mrtir Hatuey,
que vendr a unir al pueblo bajo una misma herencia, la indgena.
Tejera por su parte, propone una visin sacrificial desde una perspectiva
religiosa. Gran parte de la totalidad de la obra transcurre a travs de una con-
versacin entre un sacerdote y Plcido estando en la crcel bajo pena capital. La
concepcin del mrtir en esta obra, es ms fiel a la representacin cristiana de
la muerte injusta de un ser inocente, cuyos orgenes se hallan en los relatos
bblicos de la muerte de Cristo. Veamos el siguiente aparte al final de la obra,
que corresponde al poema Plegaria a Dios de Plcido:
Ser de inmensa bondad! Dios Todopoderoso / A vos acudo en mi dolor
vehemente: / estended vuestro brazo omnipotente, / rasgad de la calum-
nia el velo odioso / y arrancad este sello ignominioso / con que el
mundo manchar quiere mi frente/ . . . Mas si cuadra a tu suma Omni-
potencia / que yo perezca, cual malvado impo, / y que los hombres mi
cadver fro / ultrajen con maligna complacencia / suene tu voz y acabe
mi existencia / cmplase en mi tu voluntad Dios mo (35).
La mayor semejanza con la muerte de Jess radica en el hecho de cumplir con
la voluntad del Padre y dejar que se lleve a cabo el castigo de los opresores.
Cuba personificada en Plcido, haba sido llevada hacia la opresin, pero este
estado de muerte vera su final redentor en la resurreccin de la patria gloriosa:
En pie! Levntate! Lo ordeno! Cual Jess a un cadver grit un da, / al eco de
mi voz, contra el Destino, / a despecho del hombre, pese al mundo/ si Lzaro se
alz, de vida lleno, Cuba, llena de gloria, se alzara! (24). La resurreccin de
Lzaro prefiguraba la de Cristo as como, por analoga, la de Cuba. La concep-
cin temporal de las prefiguraciones es analizada por Anderson, para lo que cita
a Auerbach cuando afirma:
If an occurrence like the sacrifice of Isaac is interpreted as prefiguring
the sacrifice of Christ, so that in the former the latter is as it were
announced and promised and the latter fulfills . . . the former, then a
connection is established between two events which are linked neither
temporally nor casually- a connection which is impossible to establish
by reason in the horizontal dimension . . . It can be established only if
both occurrences are vertically linked to Divine Providence, which
alone is able to devise such a plan of history and supply the key to its
understanding (24).
De esta forma la conexin entre pasado y futuro, la simultaneidad del tiem-
po es definida como tiempo mesinico, donde los dos convergen en un pre-
sente inmediato. La resurreccin de Cuba despus de su muerte bajo la esclavi-
tud colonial poda darse por hecho, as como los sacrificios del pasado fueron
sombra del porvenir.
Como se ve en el fragmento anterior, la vida es la libertad y la muerte escla-
vitud. La nacin restablecida que imagina Tejera es la del paraso redimido, la
tierra prometida de los israelitas. Una tierra donde todos son un mismo pueblo,
lo que es una concepcin que analiza Hobsbawn desde su teora nacionalista:
Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent politi-
cal destiny, are a myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes pre-existing cultu-
res and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates
pre-existing cultures: . . . (10). Tejera hace una elaboracin de la utopa que l
anhela en Cuba, culturas que a pesar de su previa conformacin vienen a ser una
sola patria: La rica, la feliz, la siempre bella! / No hay esclavos all: negros,
cubanos, son iguales, son hombres, son hermanos! Reina la Paz: a su hlito
fecundo/ el oro en ros de sus campos brota . . . (33). Se hace notable que en
esta obra potica es la motivacin divina lo que rige.
Los smbolos sagrados de Jess como el cordero sacrificado, el paraso, la
resurreccin, son ejemplos de lo que Hobsbawn llamara holy icons o iconos
sagrados: They represent the symbols and rituals or common collective practi-
ces which alone give a palpable reality to otherwise imaginary community.
Tejera con su ideal de redencin y con el apoyo en la tradicin cristiana, trans-
mite al pueblo un mensaje de esperanza de una patria libre y apela al sacrificio
que traer reconocimiento y honra: . . . Acepta desdichado, / por amor a tu
patria el sacrificio: / tu recompensa te dar la historia. / por el crimen que aqu
has confesado, / los hombres darn la muerte, Dios la gloria! (27). Por eso vale
la pena su muerte. La conjugacin de etnia y religin es, en el caso de La muer-
te de Plcido, lo que configura su discurso nacionalista. Esta combinacin es
analizada como . . . a peoples junction with larger cultures, especially literate
cultures, which is often mediated by a conversion to a variant of a world reli-
gion, does allow ethnic groups to acquire assets which may later help to turn
them into nations and to structure them as such (Hobsbawn 71).
A continuacin en este anlisis, retomo el punto de vista de Anderson sobre
el sacrificio por la nacin como una expresin de camaradera a nivel horizontal,
en contraposicin con la del antroplogo Claudio Lomnitz. De acuerdo con el
anlisis de Benedict Anderson, la razn por la cual un individuo llega a conside-
rar el auto sacrificio por su nacin como una opcin no slo posible sino honro-
sa, es producto del ideal de fraternidad o camaradera a un nivel horizontal:
Finally, [the nation] is imagined as a community, because, regardless of
the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the
nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ulti-
mately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two cen-
turies, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly
to die for such limited imaginings. (7)
Este concepto se entiende como la hermandad de individuos que no son
hermanos en realidad o que ms an no tienen relacin alguna, son hermanos
metafricos, hermanos en armas. El producto final y ms contundente del nacio-
nalismo que inspira al mrtir sacrificial es el amor, en tanto que . . . nations
inspire love, and often profoundly self-sacrificing love (Anderson 141). Aun-
que el nacionalismo puede estar infectado por el racismo, su naturaleza princi-
pal es inspirar al patriotismo por amor a la nacin.
Por su parte Claudio Lomnitz elabora una crtica a la posicin de Anderson,
en cuanto que afirma: belonging to an imagined national community does not
necessarily imply deep horizontal comradery (9). De acuerdo con su posi-
cin, podan existir diferentes categoras dentro de una misma nocin de suje-
tos pertenecientes a una nacin:
Women and children could and can very much identify with their
nations even though they are usually not their nations representative
subjects. Similarly, a master and a servant could be part of the same
nation without having to construct this tie as a horizontal link based on
fraternity. (10)
De manera similar, la capacidad para generar sacrificio no tiene que estar
necesariamente ligado a la idea de fraternidad. En muchas ocasiones entran en
juego otros factores como la coercin de un gobierno:
The capacity to generate personal sacrifice in the name of the nation is
usually not a simple function of communitarian imaginings of com-
radery. Ideological appeals to nationhood are most often coupled with
coercive, moral, or economic force of other social relationships, includ-
ing the appeal to the defense of heart and home, or the economic or
coercive pressure of a local community, or the coercive apparatus of the
state itself. (11)
En sus obras, Tejera y Selln recrean la historia de Hatuey y Plcido, por
un lado como smbolos del sacrificio por la nacin al estilo de un horizontal
comradery, al ser constituidos como mrtires que mueren representando el
imaginario de toda una comunidad. Por otro, son la coercin y violencia direc-
tas del gobierno colonial la va que les dirige hacia su sacrificio final. Fueron
atrapados y obligados a rendirse en su voluntad de insurreccin y colocarse bajo
los designios de los espaoles. Ahora bien, tanto Selln como Tejera instan a los
cubanos a la lucha por la independencia como un pueblo unido. Para crear esa
idea de unin es que acuden al origen indgena y mulato que instauren una iden-
tidad nacional, lo que equivale a la nocin de camaradera horizontal de Ander-
son. Pero esta lucha se daba en contra de la opresin a la que Espaa les haba
imbuido. La nacin cubana comienza a formarse cuando se percibe esta amena-
za desde afuera, constituyndose como el estimulo ms potente. Por lo tanto,
podemos concluir que ambos autores apelan a la defensa de su pueblo tanto por
los lazos de comunidad como por librarse de la tirana hegemnica. En sus
representaciones convergen estas dos posiciones de Anderson y Lomnitz, que no
parecen correlativamente excluyentes.
En conclusin, las obras Hatuey y La muerte de Plcido logran crear una
idea de sacrificio con fines nacionalistas, con diferentes estilos y elementos pero
con una misma dinmica de representacin racial o social. Aunque no es posi-
ble medir su capacidad de recepcin en la isla o en los Estados Unidos, se sabe
que su audiencia, sobre todo de La muerte de Placido fue mayormente en este
pas y es probable que Hatuey haya sido representada en reuniones patriticas
para recoger fondos para la causa. Los exiliados a pesar de su inestabilidad,
logran con sus obras generar la posibilidad de cambio: Exile, then, is an incom-
plete and unstable position, but it presents possibilities for individual and collec-
tive change (Lazo 14). Bajo la luz de las teoras analizadas vemos como estas
dos obras del teatro del exilio en los Estados Unidos, se validan como verdade-
ras piezas que para su poca fomentaron los ideales nacionalistas de unin de
identidad. Aunque Cuba pas a ser colonia de los Estados Unidos despus de la
intervencin americana en la guerra contra Espaa en 1898, los fundamentos del
nacionalismo popular
3
apelaron a una autonoma que moviliz a los cubanos a
conseguir una independencia cuya militancia pas de manos exclusivamente
criollas a mestizas y mulatas.
Notas
1
Mark Suzman en su texto Ethnic Nationalism define por lo menos dos tipos de
nacionalismo: el cvico y el tnico. Enfatiza la relacin entre el nacionalismo
tnico con su propsito poltico.
2
Segn Benedict Anderson, la razn por la cual no se producen manifestaciones
literarias en el tiempo colonial es debido a la falta de una clase de inteligent-
sia, que cultivara esta labor. En cambio, las clases medias procurando imitar
el estilo europeo se preocupaban por sus propios intereses ms vanales: For in
those quiet colonial days little reading interrupted the stately and snobbish
rhythm of mens lives (48).
3
El experto en el tema Gerald Poyo en su estudio establece la diferencia entre
nacionalismo popular y nacionalismo liberal. Aunque los dos buscan la sepa-
racin de Espaa, los nacionalistas populares cuestionaban las proposiciones
liberales tradicionales con respecto a los asuntos sociales y econmicos. En las
obras estudiadas, se propone la idea de un tipo de nacionalismo ms cultural y
genrico, sin una afiliacin directa a los debates nacionalistas del exilio. Sin
embargo, queda abierta esta proposicin ya que en el caso de Diego Tejera, su
ideologa en relacin con el socialismo que le llev a ser fundador del Partido
Socialista Cubano en 1899, puede permitir la afiliacin de su obra a un tipo de
nacionalismo popular, ms no al liberal.
Bibliografa
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. Londres: Verso Editions, 1983.
Hobsbawm, Eric. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1990.
Lazo, Rodrigo. Writing to Cuba: Filibustering and Cuban Exiles in the United
States. North Carolina: U of North Carolina P, 2005.
______. Los Filibusteros: Cuban Writers in the United States and Deterritori-
alized Print Culture. American Literary History. 15 (2003): 87-106.
Lomnitz, Claudio. Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico. An Anthropology of National-
ism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001.
Olsen, Margaret. Manzanos Zafira and the Performance of Cuban Nation-
hood. Hispanic Review. 75(2007): 135-158.
Poyo, Gerald. With All, and for the Good of All: The Emergence of Popular
Nationalism in the Cuban Communities of the United States, 1848-1898.
Durham y Londres: Duke UP, 1989.
Salas, Marcela W. El exilio cubano del siglo XIX: La leyenda negra y la figu-
ra del indio en Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage. Gutirrez,
Ramn y Genaro Padilla, eds. Houston: Arte Pblico P, 1993.
Seyhan, Azade. Writing outside the Nation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.
Selln, Francisco. Hatuey: poema dramtico en cinco actos. Nueva York, 1891.
Smith, Anthony. Nationalism. Theory, Ideology, History. Cambridge: Polity P,
2001.
Suzman, Mark. Ethnic Nationalism and the State: A Comparative Analysis of
the Rise to Power of Irish Nationalism, Afrikaner Nationalism and Zionism.
U of Oxford, 1996.
Tejera, Diego. La muerte de Plcido. Nueva York: Imprenta Ponce de Len,
1875.
217
Contributors
Patricia A. Bonn is Executive Assistant in the Center for Community Develop-
ment and Civil Rights at Arizona State University. She is the author of the play
Joaquin: The Life and Times of Joaqun Murrieta as well as articles on Arizona
history.
Montse Feu is a Spanish adjunct lecturer at the University of Houston Down-
town and a Womens Studies lecturer at the University of Houston. As a result
of her dissertation, she is currently engaged in a long-term research project on
the Spanish Civil War and on the antifascist and anti-Francoist activism and
writing of previously unknown Spanish exile workers associated with the
transnational Confederation of Hispanic Societies (1936-1977, New York). She
has published on the leadership of Hispanic women in grassroots activism
against Franco and fascism in the United States in Feminism and Migration:
Cross-Cultural Engagements edited by Glenda Bonifacio.
Laura Garza is a Ph.D. candidate at the Hispanic Studies Department at the
University of Houston. She is currently working in her dissertation Jovita
Gonzlez, Adela Vento y Consuelo Aldape de Vega Hidalgo: El discurso femeni-
no en la frontera del Valle de Texas 1930-1960, where she explores the differ-
ent border perspectives of these writers about immigration, assimilation, nation-
hood, power and feminine discourse. She is planning to graduate on May 2012.
Beth Hernandez-Jason is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California,
Merced in the World Cultures program under the direction of Manuel Martn-
Rodrguez. She is currently completing her dissertation about the reception of
John Rechys novels within multiple transnational literary traditions and the use
of literary and visual intertexts and metaliterary discourse in his work. She has
presented papers on Jess Coln, poetry and the use of Cal, and the work of
Mara Cristina Mena and Josefina Niggli.
Donna Kabalen de Bichara is Professor of Literature and Chair of the Depart-
ment of Humanities Studies at the Tecnolgico de Monterrey. She is the author
of numerous articles concerning the writings and autobiographical texts of
Mexican-American women. She is co-editor of Recovering the U.S. Hispanic
Literary Heritage Project Volume IX. Her book, Telling Border Life Stories:
Four Mexican-American Women Writers is forthcoming from the Border Series
of Texas A&M University Press.
Cecilia Marrugo-Puello, Ph.D. in Spanish, Department of Hispanic Studies,
University of Houston, is the author of the dissertation Croniqueas: La crni-
ca del Caribe colombiano 1948-2011. She is currently teaching at the Spanish
Language Program and the Honors College at the Univeristy of Houston.
Norma A. Mouton is a graduate in U.S. Hispanic Literature from the Universi-
ty of Houston. Her research focuses on the subjectivity of U.S. Latinos as
expressed in autobiographical conversion narratives. She obtained the Gregorio
Valenzuela collection of sermons for the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary
Heritage Project at the University of Houston and published an article on that
collection. Mouton has also published an article on the writing of Teodoro To-
rres. She is currently working on a chapter about the epistolary archives of Alon-
so S. Perales, a civil rights activist and founder of LULAC, for In Defense of My
People: Alonso S. Perales and the Development of Mexican-American Public
Intellectuals forthcoming by Arte Pblico Press.
Erin Murrah-Mandril is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department of the
University of New Mexico where she teaches English literature and composi-
tion courses and is a Graduate Assistant for the Feminist Research Institute. Her
dissertation argues that nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Mexican-
American texts employ multiple temporalities in their narratives of the past in
order to undermine hegemonic and colonialist narratives of progress within the
United States.
Belinda Linn Rincn is Assistant Professor of English and Latin American and
Latina/o Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her teaching and
research interests include Latina/o literature and popular culture, nineteenth-
and twentieth-century Latina/o narrative, Latina feminisms and war literature
218 ! !!!!!!!!! Contributors
Contributors ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 219
and film. Her article and reviews appear in Latino Studies and Aztln: A Jour-
nal of Chicano Studies. She is currently working on a project that focuses on
Chicana literary, cultural and political responses to war and militarism.
Robert Train is Associate Professor of Spanish at Sonoma State University,
where he is also Director of the Language & Culture Learning Center. His
research is interdisciplinary and socially engaged in bringing together critical
insights from sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, anthropology, philology, his-
toriography of the language, education, Latino studies, postcolonial studies and
postmodern theory to consider the contours and consequences of ideologies,
practices and policies in the lives of Spanish-speakers within and beyond the
classroom. His research grew out of his years as a public high school teacher of
students from richly varied and largely bilingual backgrounds. Drawing on his
philological training to investigate foundational texts of language education, he
is currently working on a book about Spanish-language education within shift-
ing ecologies of language, education and identity in multilingual California.

Recovering The US Hispanic Literary Heritage, Vol VIII Edited by Clara Lomas and Gabriela Baeza Ventura

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Recovering The US Hispanic Literary Heritage, Vol VIII Edited by Clara Lomas and Gabriela Baeza Ventura

Caricato da

Copyright:

Recovering the U.S.

Potrebbero piacerti anche