Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Bibliography
Marriage, Love, and Family Structure
The marriage of Don Santiago and Doña Maria Petronilla is exemplary in demonstrating a very traditional and also common relationship that occurred even before the 19th century, specifically in Mexican culture. In terms of tradition, it is evident that both Don Santiago is the dominating figure in the marriage. Through the argument between Don Santiago and Doña Dolores about “wife’s duty”, Doña Dolores feels very strongly about the topic of duty. She believes that “A wife has rights too” she even suggested that Doña Petronilla do not accept that the orders “come from only one pair of lips” (Gonzalez 25). Doña Dolores believed that Don Santiago was very disrespectful to his wife and also everyone else because he expected that everyone be respectful to him and his wishes. Yet, Doña Maria Petronilla felt that she could not do anything about that because Don Santiago had been like that all the 25 years that they had been married. In order to meet her husband’s dominance she had developed an “armor of meekness” which still did not protect her from shrinking under the “lash of his words” (Gonzalez 26).
The reason why marriages are so dominated by the male figure is because it is the tradition in the Mexican culture. Mothers teach their daughters to be meek and timid, obedient and dutiful wives. Fathers teach their sons to be powerful and be able to take over their property after they die. Fathers also teach their sons to successfully provide for their families and to maintain a high status and reputation of the family. In the case of Doña Maria Petronilla, her mother had taught her and given her the example of the perfect wife role in the home. Her mother had “implanted” in her that timid nature which forced her into being an obedient and dutiful wife that had no other choice but to accept this new personality.
In the case of Doña Petronilla and her daughter Susanita, she is trying to teach her the same marriage expectations and traditions that her mother taught her. In Susanita’s case she does not comply with those traditions because instead of being trained as a submissive wife as her mother wants her to be she falls in love. Love in marriage, as Doña Dolores believes, “love or have been loved, seemed impossible” (Gonzalez 38). Doña Dolores had the idea ingrained that “ones does not marry to have an ornament in the house.” Marriage is traditionally believed to be something that the parents had a decision over. When Susanita speaks of love, Don Santiago quickly says that “he would select a husband for Susanita and she would marry him” forcefully. “Love...other things were more important” Being “betrothed” was a very common among the Mexican culture and among the young people that lived in that period after the Mexican – American War it was evident that the young people were exposed to the ideas of love within marriage. This was seen as the Mexican youth saw how the Americans treated their wives like queens and actually treated them with respect. It was said that the “Americanos marry for love, and let their women ride a horse after marriage and give them things.” This is not the only way that love is referred to in marriage but love in another more explicit context refers to the act of love. With the example of Don Santiago and Doña Maria Petronilla, since they were not in love, they never had sex for pleasure or because they truly loved each other, instead Don Santiago had a mistress and Doña Maria Petronilla knew it but that was the norm in Mexican marriages. The young Mexicans had the idea that marriages developed out of love meant that making love after marriage as well.
Susanita, ironically enough, after she was warned by her father not to even think, look, or talk to the Americanos, she ends up falling in love with Robert Warrener. It seemed to be destiny and sure enough it was love at first sight. Their relationship is not traditional at all and therefore symbolizes the changes that occurred after the US – American War such as the assimilation of Mexicans into American culture and also to a change of more traditional ideas of modern ideas of marriage.
This in turn affected the family structure which no longer needed to be made of so many children such as the de Mendoza – Soria family. Marriage in the Mexican culture was meant to maintain ones status and to maintain ones traditions and culture and also personal property that have been passed on from generations.
Exposing Invisible Systems of Oppression: Sexism, Gender Non-Conformity, and Classism in Mexican-American Culture
In Caballero, Jovita Gonzalez complicated the traditional literary perspective of Mexican-American oppression (which focused exclusively on racial inequality) by emphasizing relationships of oppression based on sexism, gender nonconformity and classism within Mexican-American social structures. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, many Latino/a scholars were attempting to reframe Texas history to more justly portray how Mexican-Americans were involved in it. They were challenging mainstream representations by Anglo historians and scholars whose language, “to describe and define Texas history and culture constituted a ‘rhetoric of dominance’ that made the exclusion and domination of Mexicans and Indians seem natural and even justified.”[1] These skewed histories are a result of anti-Mexican racial sentiments that had appeared during the struggles between Mexico and the US in the mid 19th Century. These ‘poisonous racial ideolog[ies],”[2] then crystallized over time and were used by these Anglo scholars to justify and defend Anglo domination and conquest over the Mexicans. In this environment, then, Latino/a scholars were attempting to redefine the historical image of the Mexican communities in Texas as strong and courageous people whose lands were unjustly stolen and whose rich cultures and traditions were cruelly persecuted.
Jovita Gonzalez, however, complicates this image of the Mexican-American community by exposing the systems of oppression based on sexism, gender non-conformity, and classism that marginalized members within the community at the same time that the community as a whole was marginalized by racism. Jovita Gonzalez paid special attention in Caballero (and her other works) to expose the struggles of individuals in the community who were often over-looked. Maria Cotera notes, “[Jovita Gonzalez] also spends a good deal of time taking the reader through the social spaces and gendered practices in which the often invisible expressions of women’s work and women’s thinking are found.”[3] Her writings similarly explore the caste-like system of peonage that hacienda life was constructed around and hostility that existed against gender non-conformists.
Dona Maria Petronilla, the matriarch of the Mendoza y Soria family, is the most explicit target of sexism in Caballero. She is a powerless victim, perpetually at the mercy of her husband’s capricious rage and unrelenting will.
“When words came [to Don Santiago after a clash with his sister], he piled them upon his wife, tramping back and forth before her. … Dona Maria Petronilla folded her hands over the crocheting and sat still till the storm wore itself out. In the twenty-five years of marriage to this man, she had fashioned only the armor of meekness to meet his dominance, and it gave her no protection. For she still shrank under the lash of his words even when, as now, she was the handy recipient and not the target of them. She did not resent it. Such was the law according to her mother’s teaching and example, and, implanted into a nature innately timid, it could not make her other than she was – an obedient, dutiful wife.”[4]
Dona Maria Petronilla is utterly held captive. She has no capacity to resist the verbal injury forged by Don Santiago’s fury and has endured through the years only by an “armor of meekness” which she admits provides no real protection. What is more, this is a role she was taught to expect and internalized by her mother’s image. This destructive power Don Santiago wields over his wife becomes not merely the irregular exception of how one man treats his wife but rather emblematic of an entire gendered system of oppression. We are able to arrange this single event with many countless others to reveal the pervasive and substantial role sexism played in Mexican-American culture.
In Caballero, we also see the sad story of Luis Gonzaga who is victimized endlessly by his father for his gender non-conformity. There are clearly strong allusions in the text to suggest that Luis Gonzaga feels same-sex attraction and desire. Despite how revolutionary it might be to have a queer-identified character in this novel, what really is at issue is the way that he acts regardless of his sexuality and how he is treated as a result of those actions. [5] Don Sontiago, a man set deep in traditional convictions of proper masculinity and honor, unrelentingly assaults his son because of his son’s “lack of interest in traditional male activities, and his fondness for the feminized world of the artist.”[6] Don Santiago first scornfully thinks of Luis Gonzaga, “Painting pictures like a woman, and he a Menoza y Soria! An artist – insult to a father’s manhood! A milksop, and his son!”[7] Don Santiago is also quick call his son a marica, a term that in English is roughly equivalent to the highly derogative and threatening term ‘fag.’ Luis Gonzaga’s struggle, then, is one to navigate in a social structure, “that allows no suitable outlets to his creativity,”[8] and that marginalizes him for failing to conform to expectations of proper gendered behavior. His gender non-conformity then becomes a pernicious obstacle that he is able to overcome only by permanently exchanging the community in which he was raised for a foreign one in which his deviations of gendered behaviour would be tolerated.
Finally, Caballero privileges us with a unique examination of the system of labor, peonage, which was vital to sustain the hidalgo way of life and is a cornerstone of classism. Maria Cotera related, “that like the Southern slave economy, the economic success of the rancho was grounded on a debt-peonage system that extracted profit from the forced labor of all but enslaved subjects. This debt peonage system, transplanted from northern Mexico, had, according to Gonzalez, created subjects without a ‘will.’”[9] We find an entire community of beings whose determination over their lives, happiness and well being are wielded exclusively by their master. Don Santiago, by right of his social position, may beat one of these people with complete license no matter how arbitrary nor absurd his reasoning. It is well within his jurisdiction to have one put to death for the most insignificant of trespasses. He even has the power to use these people without restraint to satiate his sexual appetite indiscriminately. Jovita Gonzalez depicts the hopeless situation of the peon constantly throughout the novel precisely so the reader is forced to contend with the issue of classism, a real system of oppression that was an active part of Mexican-American social structure.
Jovita Gonzalez contributed to the literary and historical image of Mexican-American culture during the formation of Texas in a time that this history was being reframed by many scholars and historians. Her works actively challenge Anglo representations that are built upon anti-Mexican ideologies to justify and praise the actions of the US to invade and conquer the people of what was northern Mexico. At the same time, she resists the trend of many fellow Latino/a scholars to glorify the image Mexican-American culture during the formation of Texas by directly ignoring the real systems of inequality that did exist in the community. She exposes these Mexican-Americans, marginalized and oppressed as individuals and groups by sexism, gender non-conformity, and classism, at the same time as the exposes the marginalization and victimization of the Mexican-American community as a whole by racism.
[1] Cotera, Maria. “Introduction.” In Life Along the Border, edited by Maria Cotera (Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 4.
[2] Ibid., 8.
[3] Ibid., 23.
[4] Gonzalez, Jovita and Eve Raleigh. Caballero (Texas A&M University Press, 1996), 26.
[5] It is a common misconception that one’s gender performance (one’s relative expression of masculinity/femininity or masculinity/non-masculinity) is securely attached to one’s sexuality (straight, gay, and bisexual). While often these two characteristics are observed to exist in unity (such as the stereotypical gay man who is outrageously flamboyant and femme), there are many cases where they do not line up as one might expect. For example, a current manifestation of the individual whose gender performance does not line up with their sexuality is the ‘metro-sexual.’ This is a man whose behaviours are effeminate yet whose heterosexual desires are unshakable. With this in mind, while speculation regarding Luis Gonzaga’s sexuality is certainly interesting, it is not nearly as fruitful and conclusive of an investigation as is his gender performance alone.
[6] Cotera, Maria. "Deconstructing the Corrido Hero: Caballero and its Gendered Critique of Nationalist Discourse." Perspectives in Mexican American Studies 5 (1995), page unclear.
[7] Gonzalez, Jovita and Eve Raleigh. Caballero (Texas A&M University Press, 1996), 6.
[8] Cotera, Maria. "Deconstructing the Corrido Hero: Caballero and its Gendered Critique of Nationalist Discourse." Perspectives in Mexican American Studies 5 (1995), page unclear.
[9] Cotera, Maria. “Introduction.” In Life Along the Border, edited by Maria Cotera (Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 22.
The US-Mexico War, 1846-1848
“…The agrarian development of this period can be seen as the last in a series of crises that eroded the centuries old class structure of the Mexican ranch settlements. By 1920, the Texas Mexican people had generally been reduced, except in a few border counties, to the status of landless and dependent wage laborers” (Montejano)
The US-Mexican was the commencement of change in lives of the Mexican people near the border. The war began on April 25, 1846 and it ended on February 2, 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe – Hidalgo. This treaty marked not only Texas as US territory, but all the northern half of Mexico’s territory as well. In return, Mexico received 15 million dollars and also a “sense of crisis” that the people had to deal with as they realized that their lives would change forever as the United States actively entered their lives.
Ever since a contract was made with Stephen F. Austin with the consent of the Mexican government, in 1824, the first Anglo – Americans settled in Texas. This contract allowed the Anglo’s own land in Texas with the as long as they adhered to certain conditions such as: becoming Mexican citizens, integrating into Mexican society, converting to Catholicism, and obeying Mexican law, among others. Between 1830 and 1840 more than one thousand families migrated each year. The Anglos in Texas, not willing to adhere to the conditions that were in place decided to openly revolt Mexican rule in 1830.
This causes General Santa Anna to get rid of the rebels at the Alamo which later causes the United States to fight back. The battle at San Jacinto is causes the defeat of Santa Anna and the loss of Texas. In addition to the loss of Texas, there was a dispute over the Nueces river area being claimed as part of Texas. This dispute and the willingness of the United States to annex Texas unleashed the war between both nations. It is here where the novel Caballero comes into context. Disputes, conflicts, within the Mexican community and with the Anglo community in Texas cause tensions after the war. There is resentment towards the Anglos for causing dispossession of land, recriminations, violence, and revenge of the Mexican population in Texas. As time passed, like Montejano explained the Mexican population had been reduced to laborers, in a land that was formerly belonged to them, mostly due to racist feelings.
1.)http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/svolk/latinam.htm
2.)Dew on a Thorn
3.)Lecture 09/16/09 – US – Mexican War
Jovita Gonzalez: a "Counter" Historian
Jovita Gonzalez pursued further education after graduating from high school with great dedication. In fact, she was forced at various times even to leave school and work as a teacher along the borderlands and in Rio Grande City just to save up money for schooling. She ended up receiving her teaching certificate from the Summer Normal School and spent one year at the University of Texas in Spanish studies under Lilia Casis. Following that she finished her bachelor’s degree at Lady of the Lake College in San Antonio. In 1929 she won the Lapham Scholarship that allowed her to finish up her master’s work in history under Eugene C. Barker at the University of Texas by collecting research from along the Texas-Mexico border for her master’s thesis, “Social Life in Cameron, Starr, and Zapata Counties.”
The year that Jovita Gonalez was born, 1904, was a pivotal year during which the Saint Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway construction was finished. The area between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers until this time had supported a fragile stability of intermarriage and coexistence between the Mexican-American ranching elite and Anglo settlers due to relative isolation from the rest of the country. Land speculation then brought massive numbers of Anglo Midwesterners into the region and introduced into the region, “a poisonous racial ideology that was often at odds with that of the established Anglo-Mexican ranching community.” [2] Sadly, “Within fifteen years of the construction of the railway system, the Texas Mexican people of the border region, with a few exceptions, were reduced to the ‘status of landless and dependent wage laborers.’ In the end, the modernization process that brought South Texas into the national and international flow of goods and service led to the demise of the world that Jovita Gonzalez new.”[3]
Maria Cotera, in an interview, suggested that it was in this context that Jovita Gonzalez then became determined to document the “first-ness” of Mexican inhabitants in the border regions of Texas and what had been northern Mexico[4] and introduces the idea of Jovita Gonzalez’ works as “counter-histor[ies]”.[5] Jovita Gonzalez struggled against two different discourses regarding Mexican history in the border regions as she attempted to document this Mexican history, culture, and life. The first was that of a “‘whitewashing’…. a ‘rhetoric of dominance’ that made the exclusion and domination of Mexicans and Indians seem natural and even justified,”[6] by Texas Anglo historians and folklorists. These people were her professors, J. Frank Dobie and Eugene Barker at the University of Texas, and her colleagues in the Texas Folklore Society to whom she made various presentations, such as her first that explored the masculine world of the ‘vaquero’ through song and legend. Maria Cotera sees in Gonzalez’ works this “counter-history” such as in master’s thesis when she, “enacts a subtle but devastating critique of dominant narratives about the ‘founding fathers’ of Texas. In effect, she recasts the ‘heroes’ of Texas – from the politicians to the ‘freebooters’ and the ‘entrepreneurs’ – not as defenders of freedom against Mexican despotism, but as despoilers of legitimate democratic movements.”[7] In these Anglo spheres of intellectual academia, Gonzalez represents a new voice that challenges dominant perceptions and narratives of Texas history justify Anglo imperialism and “establishes the rootedness of Mexicans in Texas.”[8]
At the same time, Jovita Gonzalez works to combat representations of Mexican life that, while celebrating it, fail to acknowledge the real social inequalities that existed. What she is resisting can be seen in the works by Americo Paredes who portrays the ‘Tejano’ community as “some prelapsarian utopia.”[9] Maria Cotera notes, “Instead, she [Jovita Gonzalez] offers an unflinching examination of the oppressive ideologies and social contradictions that fractured the Tejano community along race, gender and class line before the influx of Anglos….”[10] Gonzalez spends significant portions of her works looking at women’s spheres of activity and influence bringing them into visibility, exploring the system of peonage and its inherent similarities to slavery, and dissecting the draconian patriarchal culture and gendered contradictions that allowed, “an action which in a man was overlooked as insignificant [to be] an offense for a woman.”[11] She then leaves us with a narrative that seems, “perhaps less satisfying” as an attempt to whole-heartedly celebrate Mexican history but that is a “more realistic vision of the borderlands as a geopolitical zone rife with conflict and contradiction with respect to both its less-than-utopic past and its future possibilities.”[12]
[1] Cotera, Maria. “Introduction” In Life Along the Border, edited by Maria Cotera (Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 9.
[2] Ibid., 8.
[3] Ibid., 9.
[4] Cotera, Maria. Interview by Sofia Bolanos and Walter Hyde. 24 November 2009. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
[5] Cotera, Maria. “Introduction” In Life Along the Border, edited by Maria Cotera (Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 17.
[6] Ibid., 4.
[7] Ibid., 18-19.
[8] Ibid., 17.
[9] Ibid., 21.
[10] Ibid., 21
[11] Gonzalez, Jovita. "Social Life in Cameron, Starr, and Zapata Counties." In Life Along the Border, edited by Maria Cotera (Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 81.
[12] Cotera, Maria. “Introduction” In Life Along the Border, edited by Maria Cotera (Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 23.
Overview of "Caballero"
Caballero by Jovita Gonzalez and Margaret Eimer (who wrote under the name Eve Raleigh) is a historical novel set back in the mid-19th Century. The novel begins in 1846 as neighboring racheros, elite Mexican families who have lived between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers for generations, begin hearing rumors that no longer are their lands a part of Mexico. In fact, this is the time period during which the shared US-Mexico border was pushed south to the Rio Grande and many Mexican families experienced an immigration of Anglo settlers. Through a narrative both tragic and hopeful, the reader experiences the events with the Hidalgo Rancheros (the Mexican noble families) as Anglo immigrants arrogantly move in to the lands and challenge the social structures and customs the Hidalgo Rancheros had defended for generations with their blood.[1] Caballero, then, is a heart-wrenching story that takes the reader through love, death, happiness and treachery to illuminate a history of ‘Americans’ who cared for the lands of northern Mexico for generations before the Anglo immigrants came and forcibly took those lands for the United States of America.
This novel focuses on the Mendoza y Soria family who have lived and died, cried and loved, in their beautiful hacienda, Rancho La Palma de Cristo, passed down from father to son for generations. Don Santiago is the classic male patriarch of the family and a man of draconian traditionalism and staunch resolution. “Such was Don Santiago, lord of land many miles beyond what his eye could compass, master of this hacienda and all those that would soon gather before him.”[2] He is married to Maria de Petronilla, a meek woman, who, after years of dutiful submission and obedience, is left with little will nor choice. She firsts appears, “[gliding] like a black ghost… [appearing with] self-effacing meekness and… faded thinness.”[3] Dona Delores, Don Santiago’s sister, lives with them in their hacienda as a result of having been widowed at a young age. Dona Delores is remarkable as she is the only character in the book to consistently stand up to Don Sontiago’s severe traditionalism and to advocate for family members around her. Don Santiago first describes her entering with, “dignity slowly propelling the full skirt of stiffest silk…, [she] took time to look at the flowers along the portico, quite as if she did not see them a dozen times a day. To aggravate him, he knew, because yesterday she had come sooner than he wished and he had told her so.”[4]
Don Santiago and Maria de Petronilla have four children. Their oldest son and heir is Alvaro, a handsome young man who is eager to begin his own path as head of a family and guardian of tradition. His, “spurs clinking, [Alvaro] swaggered past the servant women, lustful, possessive eyes on the youngest and prettiest ones.”[5] Luis Gonzaga is his younger brother. Luis defies all traditional masculine roles in his talent as an artist and is unceasingly harassed by his father as a marica (an extremely derogative term equivalent to ‘fag’) for his effeminacy. Don Santiago thinks of Luis Gonzaga, “Painting pictures like a woman, and he a Mendoza y Soria! An artist – insult to a father’s manhood! A milksop, and his son!”[6]
Don Santiago’s oldest daughter is Maria de los Angeles (Angela). Driven by a most devout nature, Angela fashions herself in the image of utmost humility and piety preferring the nun’s habit over the soft, silk clothes customarily worn by the hidalgo women. She, “had wanted to go to the convent and, forbidden to do so by her father, had bought the convent to herself, inasmuch as she was able.”[7] The youngest daughter, Don Santiago’s pride and joy, is Susanita. The picture of innocence, she reveals the, “heritage from [Don Santiago’s] Asturian ancestors – already so rare among his people that it seemed a gift from heaven,” with her golden curls of hair, light creamy skin, delicate red lips and “eyes… like limpid green water upon which a vagrant cloud had left a remembrance of gray….”[8]
This novel primarily centers around the events that take place the winter of 1846 as the Mendoza y Soria family, along with many other Hidalgo Ranchero families, make their annual stay in Matamoros for the winter holiday services. In Matamoros, the families are able to show off their extravagant fineries with lavish dinners and excessive dresses and to settle promising marriages between their children. The latter enterprise consumes vast amounts of time and calculation as families craft the most desirable unions that preserve the purity of their noble blood and the honor of their family names. With the news of widespread Anglo presence, Don Santiago decides amidst the dismay and distress of the women in his family that they will not make their way to Matamoros (Susanita desperately prevails, “Why, papacito, don’t you want to show the Americanos what a handsome caballero looks like – why in your Sunday suit you are the handsomest man in the world!”[9]). Very quickly, though, Don Santiago receives a message from neighboring rancheros compelling him to bring his family to Matamoros such that the heads of families may convene to address the increasing intrusion of the Anglos and what strategies might be affected to resist them.
This single event, when Don Santiago is convinced to restore his originals plans for Matamoros, represents the greatest irony of the novel. Matamoros has actually become a theatre in which, due to the close proximity of Anglo soldiers stationed at Fort Brown, Anglo and Mexican cultures collide and mix. By resuming travel to Matamoros in order to organize against Anglo infiltration, Don Santiago in fact facilitates even more quickly the process by which foreign Anglo customs and influences irrevocably change the Hidalgo way of life and proceed to tear his family apart. Maria Cotera observed,
“What the hidalgos (male aristocrats) do not realize [about Matamoros] is that prolonged exposure to Americano men and Americano values have a profound effect on those people in their culture who are not insulated by power, and who are not included in their decision making: their wives, children, and peones. Slowly, as [Don Santiago’s] children leave him to explore a wider range of possibilities in the world of the Americans, and his peones reject the slave-like system of the hacienda in order to explore their identities as free labor in a world of capital, the power base that Don Santiago has been consummately unaware of, yet which has held his hacienda together, begins to erode beneath him.”[10]
Don Santiago, finally aware of the pervasive Anglo influence, prematurely ends his family’s stay in Matamoros and flees back to his domain of Rancho La Palma de Cristo.
The remainder of the novel chronicles the ensuing break up of Don Santiago’s family. Luis Gonzaga leaves the hacienda after proclaiming his love for are and being disowned forever by his father. He moves to Maryland with an Anglo Captain Devlin amidst their budding romantic relationship. Captain Devlin shares Luis Gonzaga’s passion for art and is eager to facilitate Luis Gonzaga’s involvement in formal instruction. Susanita similarly finds love in Anglo Officer Robert Warrener. After heroically saving her brother, Alvaro, from certain death only to receive reprimand and rejection from her father, Susanita joins Warrener once again in Matamoros to be wed. Maria de los Angeles, too, finds companionship in a charismatic and gregarious politician, Alfred “Red” McLane with whom she moves to San Antonio. Their union, however, is not one based on love but rather one based on personal motives mutually facilitated by the other. Married to McLane, Angela would have the opportunity to pursue a life of service to others especially as his large fortune allowed. McLane, on the other hand, was motivated by the strategic advantage Angela would provide him to access the large Tejano population whose political loyalties had not yet been cultivated. Alvaro, grabbed by brash pride, joins the merciless guerrilleros of Juan Cortina to harass Anglo forces crossing into Mexico. He gains a reputation as “El Lobo and a wolf he is, too. He’s a bad hombre….”[11] The last straw to destroy Don Santiago as a man, though, comes with Alvaro’s unremarkable death when he is shot by a ranger while they are out riding along the Rio Grande. Don Santiago, who witnesses this, realizes that Rancho la Palma de Cristo, the laws by which he knew himself as ruler and master, and the noble family name of Mendoza y Soria, precious treasures which his ancestors before him had vowed to protect with their lives and which they had passed down from father to son for generations, would no longer be.
[1] Often times, though, this challenge was less direct than outright confrontation (although that did happen, too!). In many cases it was merely the presence of the Anglos and their contrary beliefs that discursively challenged Mexican traditional customs and structures.
[2] Gonzalez, Jovita and Eve Raleigh. Caballero. Texas A&M University Press, 1996, 3.
[3] Ibid., 4.
[4] Ibid., 5.
[5] Ibid., 5.
[6] Ibid., 7.
[7] Ibid., 4.
[8] Ibid., 5.
[9] Ibid., 28.
[10] Cotera, Maria. "Deconstructing the Corrido Hero: Caballero and its Gendered Critique of Nationalist Discourse." Perspectives in Mexican American Studies 5 (1995): page uncertain.
[11] Gonzalez, Jovita and Eve Raleigh. Caballero. Texas A&M University Press, 1996, 268.
Introduction
At the end of the US-Mexico War it was clear to the Mexican (and now Mexican-American) population living north of the newly formed border, the Rio Grande, that their lives would change drastically. After the United States claimed the northern part of Mexico in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, there was a moment of confusion for Mexican-Americans. A wave of mixed feelings developed such as feelings of nostalgia and of not belonging. Meanwhile, the Americans acted seemingly with hate as they claimed everything from the new land for themselves. In what ways were the lives of Mexican-Americans changed? This is a question that Jovita Gonzalez attempts to portray in her novel Caballero. Jovita Gonzalez, having lived through similar circumstances in Texas, was forced to move from her hacienda. She was a well educated woman having received her education in part from the University of Texas and was deeply involved in folkloric studies. Through her novel Caballero we can know her unique perspective on Texas history and also on period in which northern Mexico became United States.
Caballero presents a timeless story of love, family, duty and pride. As a 'Historical Novel,' it is set beginning in 1846, a key time in Texas history, just as the Anglo-Americans (the 'Americanos' or 'Gringos') began to push aggressively for extending the southern border of the United States in Texas to the Rio Grande. Jovita Gonzalez uses her novel as a platform on which to establish an existing Mexican culture and society that displays tradition, sophistication and autonomy prior to the invasion of the Americans. Through this she is able to target the popular vision among historians and her fellow Folklorists that focused on Texas history as beginning in 1848 and is able to hint at the rich cultural histories and traditions that extend far before that point in time. She is also able to combat an image of the backwards and primitive Mexican saved by American growth and speculation and shows instead their perspective, often ignored, as proud Mexicans who, after generations of love and work for the land, see their way of live crumble before their eyes. Finally, the novel Caballero acts as an excellent resource through which to analyze various aspects of Mexican society as it existed prior to and during the American invasion including gender roles, marriage, tradition, duty, patriarchy, and socio-economic class relations.
Welcome To Our Blog
Welcome to our blog!
We would like to take a moment to introduce our project. We are both undergraduate students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. Together we are taking American Cultures 213: Introduction to Latino/a Studies with Prof. Anthony Mora. As a part of this class, we have joined together to create a blog that explores the roles that Jovita Gonzalez and her works, primarily her historical novel Caballero, have played in Latino/a studies.
Her novel Caballero is a romantic and heart-wrenching portrayal of early Mexican-American life and touches upon so many universal themes and struggles unique to no single community nor culture. We hope this blog will help to make Jovita Gonzalez and her works more visible and to spread awareness of her tremendous impact upon Latino/a studies and perspectives of Mexican-American life, assimilation and history.
As a class project created by undergraduates we do not claim to present an authoritative nor complete examination of her influence and works. We do hope, though, that this will be a springboard from which further discussion, research and writing can be done. Our Bibliography will serve as a great starting place for any person looking to pursue further study and critical analysis.
We would like to thank Prof. Anthony Mora for the opportunity to take advantage of his wonderful class and for sharing his witty humor and dashingly handsome looks with us twice a week. Also, we would like to thank Hannah Noel, our Graduate Student Instructor and expert on all things from the Maya Diaspora to tipping etiquette for getting a tattoo, who helped encourage us to pursue our interests and have a blast in the meantime! Finally, we would like to thank Prof. Maria Cotera for her wonderful lecture which inspired this project from the beginning and for her unyielding determination and dedication to Jovita Gonzalez and Latino/a Studies that got her through a rather lengthy interview with, believe it or not, no coffee (Yikes!).
Thank you!