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.
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