Frederick Luis Aldama and Lourdes Torres, Series Editors
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GLOBAL LATIN/O AMERICAS Frederick Luis Aldama and Lourdes Torres, Series Editors Spanish Perspectives on Chicano Literature Literary and Cultural Essays EDITED BY Jesús Rosales and Vanessa Fonseca WITH A FOREWORD BY Francisco A. Lomelí THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS | COLUMBUS Copyright © 2017 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rosales, Jesús, 1955– editor. | Fonseca, Vanessa (Assistant professor of English), editor. | Lomelí, Francisco A., writer of foreword. Title: Spanish perspectives on Chicano literature : literary and cultural essays / edited by Jesús Rosales and Vanessa Fonseca ; with a foreword by Francisco A. Lomelí. Other titles: Global Latin/o Americas. Description: Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2017] | Series: Global Latin/o Americas | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017011629 | ISBN 9780814213421 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 0814213421 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: American literature—Mexican American authors—History and criticism. | Mexican American literature (Spanish)—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PS153.M4 S68 2017 | DDC 810.9/86872073—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011629 Cover design by Larry Nozik Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Myriad Pro The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii FOREWORD From La Mancha to Aztlán: Spanish Approaches in Chicano Literature FRANCISCO A. LOMELÍ ix INTRODUCTION JESÚS ROSALES AND VANESSA FONSECA 1 PART I • SPANISH PERSPECTIVES DE ACÁ CHAPTER 1 Reading, from Don Quijote de La Mancha to The House on Mango Street: Chicano/a Literature, Mimesis, and the Reader MANUEL M. MARTÍN-RODRÍGUEZ 19 CHAPTER 2 Mestizaje in Afro-Iberian Writers Najat El Hachmi and Saïd El Kadaoui Moussaoui through the Borderland Theories of U.S. Third World Feminisms CARMEN SANJUÁN-PASTOR 35 CHAPTER 3 Toward a Transnational Nos/otr@s Scholarship in Chican@ and Latin@ Studies RICARDO F. VIVANCOS-PÉREZ 58 CHAPTER 4 Tempted by the Words of Another: Linguistic Choices of Chicanas/os and Other Latinas/os in Los Angeles ANA SÁNCHEZ-MUÑOZ 71 vi Contents CHAPTER 5 The Cultural Border, Magic, and Oblivion in Bless Me, Ultima (2013), Obaba (2005), and Un embrujo (1998) JUAN PABLO GIL-OSLE 82 CHAPTER 6 El Malcriado (1964–1975): La voz impresa del campesino y su impronta VÍCTOR FUENTES 90 PART II • SPANISH PERSPECTIVES DE ALLÁ CHAPTER 7 Tendiendo puentes, compartiendo conocimientos: The International Conference on Chicano Literature in Spain (1998–2016) JULIO CAÑERO 109 CHAPTER 8 Women’s Literary Gardens as Eco-Spaces: Word Gathering with Anzaldúa and Hurston CAROLINA NÚÑEZ-PUENTE 126 CHAPTER 9 La Tierra: Sense of Place in Contemporary Chicano Literature CARMEN LYDIA FLYS JUNQUERA 139 CHAPTER 10 La narración de los linchamientos de los méxicoamericanos en el suroeste de los EEUU en el siglo XIX y principios del XX ARMANDO MIGUÉLEZ 155 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 175 INDEX 181 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I WANT to thank my mentors, Francisco A. Lomelí, María Herrera-Sobek, and, especially, the late Don Luis Leal, all of whom served as an inspiration for this project. I also want to thank my colleague Vanessa Fonseca for co- editing the book and Frederick L. Aldama for believing in its potential. More importantly, I thank my wife, María, and nuestros hijos, Angélica, Daniel, and Francisco, for all their love and support. Jesús Rosales I want to thank Dr. Jesús Rosales for extending the opportunity to collabo- rate on this project and for his unconditional guidance and friendship. I also want to thank Frederick L. Aldama for his excitement about the project and his encouragement throughout the submission process. Most importantly, I’d like to thank my family, my husband Raúl, and my son Kendyl for keeping me grounded and always supporting me. Vanessa Fonseca vii FOREWORD From La Mancha to Aztlán Spanish Approaches in Chicano Literature CHICANO LITERATURE has overcome many obstacles in its development and evolution due to a series of complex circumstances and long-standing dilem- mas: it didn’t begin to become known as a body of literature until the late 1960s (and even then mainstream critics hesitated/resisted it until the 1970s); its definition took some time to gain acceptance because some feared the term Chicano was a recent social phenomenon; its premodern literary origins were not identified until 1973, when Luis Leal penned the foundation of its literary history in “Mexican American Literature: A Historical Approach”;1 a general notion persisted that peoples of Mexican descent up to the early 1970s were either invisible, insignificant, or both; and some Chicanos claimed that the lit- erature’s thematics had to be tied directly to the Chicano Movement agenda of social justice, civil rights, and race relations. As one can appreciate, pressures existed from within and from the outside. As a literature of endurance, it had to metamorphose more than once to gain a widespread acceptance. Then there is the iceberg effect in which we realized we were only wit- nessing the tip of a larger literary legacy that had deep roots in the early writ- ten documents by Spanish subjects—who often referred to themselves as “españoles mexicanos” (Spanish Mexicans)—during the colonial era gener- 1. It appears in the first volume of Revista Chicano-Riqueña (1.1:6–13), founded by Nicolás Kanellos and David Dávalos. ix x • FOREWORD, LOMELÍ ally known as the Hispanic Period, 1519–1821. Chicanos in the 1970s had to reconcile the fact that we are descendants of those early Spanish explorers and conquerors who eventually extended into northern Mexico, or what after 1848 became the American Southwest. The ideology of cultural nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s propelled an anti-Spanish rhetoric against the effects of the conquest, indigenous subjugation, cultural hegemony, the imposition of European values and aesthetics, land appropriation, and the creation of a social caste system that disadvantaged the conquered people—that is, mesti- zos, mulatos, and criollos.2 A neo-indigenist philosophy emerged within the context of a revolutionary zeal, consequently romanticizing our indigenous cultural past while vilifying the Hispanic side. But in 1967 Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, in his epic poem I am Joaquín, made it clear that our identity is driven by the fusion of symbolic, paradoxical elements that are inextricably tied. In other words, we are both Indian and Spanish. Alurista, in his Flo- ricanto en Aztlán,3 was instrumental in promoting an Aztec aesthetics as a renewed connection with our ancestors while situating this new form of expression within the barrio. Chicanos in 1970 clearly were divided. In California, for example, most assumed we were a product of recent waves of immigration, plus the chain of missions from the eighteenth century seemed far removed and exclusively part of Spanish colonization. Any connections we might have with the land- holding Californios also seemed to be part of a fuzzy past. We sometimes uttered in silence: Are we the same people? Chicanos in California appeared to be uprooted, to have a shaky historical past, and as struggling to fit into American society via acculturation and assimilation. Other Chicanos, such as New Mexicans and Texans, shared another sense of history and belonging: they recognized a background that could be traced back for generations to the sixteenth century in New Mexico and the seventeenth century in Texas. Nonetheless, they too had to prove worthy of becoming part of the Ameri- can Union.4 Whereas most Californio descendants were either displaced, integrated (especially via intermarriage with elite Anglo Americans or rep- resentatives of the military), or co-opted by the late nineteenth century, their sense of community dwindled down to small pockets of inhabitants who were relegated to contribute in terms of services and physical labor. Albert 2. Although a complex system of caste classifications was used, in general these categories allude to racial mixtures between Europeans and Indians, Europeans and Africans, and finally Europeans born in the Americas, respectively. 3. Published by the Chicano Studies Center at UCLA, 1971. 4. It is no coincidence that New Mexico struggled to obtain statehood by 1912. Texas, on the other hand, was welcomed into the Union as a protest against Mexico, but Texans’ Mexican- ness continued to be a racially contentious issue for decades. SPANISH APPROACHES IN CHICANO LITERATURE • xi Camarillo describes this process as barrioization in his book Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848–1930.5 While the Chicano Movement from the 1960s and 1970s temporarily dis- tanced us from our Hispanic background in order to partly recover our indig- enous past, we soon realized we could ill afford to dichotomize such a cultural legacy. Some militants believed Chicanos emerged in the 1960s, but others questioned that myopic historical notion as suggesting we had sprung up like mushrooms. Of course there had been figures such as Aurelio M. Espinosa in the first half of the twentieth century who espoused a strong connection with Spain, even claiming that much of the Chicano folklore, that is, corridos (ballads), décimas (poems of ten verses), alabados (religious hymns proper to Penitente brotherhoods), pastorelas (Christmas plays), and others were fun- damentally derivations of Spain.6 By the 1970s we began to come across early works that clearly attested to a long-standing literary tradition that contained both Hispanic and native Mexican elements. So, while the 1980s came to be known as the “Decade of the Hispanic,” again, privileging our Iberian roots, some Chicanos resisted that characterization as neocolonialist. While the uplifting label of the 1980s turned out to be a mirage, the 1990s opened new possibilities of systematically exploring our literary past, thanks in great part to the Recovering U.S.